The Sun.
London, England, 1841-05-03 00:00:00

•
Tcas iii, letign With evil spirits;—all these
various incidents are described with a dramatic
vigour worthy of the most striking scenes in the
author's play of the " Merchant Of London:"
The only defect we find i,i the present romance
is, that the heroinf+3 Jedit4 is lint brOtigilt Noon
enough on the tapir; site IS scarcely heard of till
towards the close of the first volume, the earlier
tedious, portions of which some What
riotkVitlitandin,,o• that we have an ani-
ili„Mo3 .'tecount—too much protracted, however—
Or the siege of Orleans by the English army
under the command of the Earl of Salisbury.
The story is supposed to be recited by an old
Frenchman, Jacques Alain, who was in the first
flush of manhood when the circumstances re-
corded took place,

THOMPSON'S POEMS AND PLAYS.
Smith, London, 1841,
In addition to his popular " Seasofts," we have
here Thompson's tragedies; his " Castle of In-
d.olence"—decidedl his chef trceuvre; and his
declamatory and "
somewhat prosy poem on
" Liberty," which, though it found special fa-
vour in his own partial eyes, was but coldly re-
ceived by the public, and is now all but forgot-
trn. We do not wonder at this, for Thompson
was ill-qualified to write on such a theme. His
Muse was far too indolent and good-natured to
chaunt, with becoming fervour, the praises of
Freedom) and those who had fought and died, in
its deibme, and could not muster up aaht.
elle) gy enough to anathematize Tyranny and
tyrants, in the way best suited to make an im-
pression on the reader: ThonwScii.4B thigedles
are failtiVeS pteity the fOkOn.
Tit ftre devoid equally of passion and pathos,
substituting for these main requisites, without
which the (lectriiit fs a mare edpiit Tilcirtnum, ver-
bbse, declamatory dialogttes, wherein it Sediii6 to
be the chief ohjeet of the dilferent s ieilkers to
le Willi tali Tailded and
Sigismunda" is the best; but even here, die dd4
tion is languid throughout, like the long, mono-
tonous course of a Dtitgli and the charac-
ters have nothing of mark or likelihood'' to
recommend them: Th 4, are eloquent gene-
ralities, nothing thofe. et; flW.fe are: Pevral
beautiful touches of poetry scattered throtiginnit
Thompson's dramatic productions—as, for in-
stance) iti his " Agamemnon," where Areas de-
scribes to his friend Melisander the desert island
on which he had been left at midnight by order
of Egistlitis; but these are, or should be. minor
considerations with a tragic poet, Nvhoie first at-
tention should be devoted to character, and
whose next care should be for action. Of the
well-known " Seasons" we need say nothing, for
the poem has already taken its station, and de-
servedly so, as the best of its kind in the lan-
guage. The present edition is cheap, elegant,
and as complete as it is possible to be, for it con-
tains every scrap, in the shape of verses, that
Thompson ever penned.

CRABBE'S TALES.
Smith, Londun, 1841.
Ti,is is another of Smith's compendious repub-
lications, and contains some of Crabbe's best
poems. Among them we find, his " Patron,"
which was a great favourite with Sir Walter
Scott; and should be got by heart—for the use-
ful lesson it conveys—by every aspiring youth
of genius, who thinks that his talents alone are
sufficient to raise him above all the stormy vicis-
situdes [of life. In this impressive poem it is
manifest in every line that Crabbe drew from
his own personal experience.

REGULUS—A TRAGEDY.
Miller, London, 1841.
We learn by the title-page that the author of
this play, Mr. Jacob Jones, is the same gentleman
to whom we are indebted for " Spartacus"—a
tragedy which contains some spirited scenes, and
exhibits in places poetic as well as dramatic ex-
cellence. We cannot, we fear, say so much for
his present performance. It is, in truth, a very
so-so affair, abounding in dialogues whose lan-
guage is specially ridiculous and extravagant,
and in incidents which seem put together without
the slightest regard to propriety. We subjoin a
brief, hasty sketch of the plot. The play opens
with a conversation on the Exchange of Carthage
between several merchants, from which it ap-
pears that the leading commercial man of that
city, one Dives, has had some ships taken by the
Romans, which he, is of course, anxious to have
restored to him. Accordingly, he applies to
Regulus, who is at the time confined in a Car-
thaginian dungeon, and offers to allow him to
return to Rome, if he will exert his influence to
negotiate a peace between the rival cities. Pre-
viously, however, to this interview, a remarkable,
and somewhat desultory, conversation,which leads
to no result, takes place between two of the sub-
ordinate characters, Parocles and Phylas, re-
specting the murder of Asdrubal, the Cartha-
ginian General, who has been crucified by order
of Dives, for having been unfortunate in a recent
engagement with the enemy. Alluding to this
painful theme, Parocics observes,
" This is no time to laugh, or I could roar ;"
whereupon, Vulpex, a soldier and a comical sort
of a fellow, who just then enters with a huge
flask of wine in his hand, abruptly bursts forth
in the following highly poetic style :
"I am brave always. but when fierce with wile,
I could flog Hercules. and ride the Sphynx !"
reply of Pnylas to this lively remark is ap-
propriate and emphatic in a high degree—
" I tell thee there's a ghost—l cannot drink!"
This refusal greatly annoys the anti-tee-total
Vulpex, who instantly addresses himself to the
supposed apparition, observing,
" tombless Shade !
Come and get drunk with us !"
After some further sprightly conversation on
various matters of business, &c., between this
bright couple, they each drink the following
philanthropic toast :
VuLrEx—Here's suffocation to all gaolers—drink.
PHYLA s—Here's to all gaolers.
Vu LPEX— Suffo—suffocat ion.
PHI LA S—Suffo—sutio-cation.
VuLrEx—Well done !"
The scene shortly afterwards changes to the
chamber of the Supreme Council, where Dives
and the other Carthaginian Elders are assembled
in solemn conclave, to decide upon the fate of
some prisoners. ne Elder beneficently says—
" Let them have their choice,
We'll flay them or impale;"
to which Dives replies, with uncommon felicity,
" Perplexing scheme !
A puzzling choice !"
We are now transported to the walls of Rome,
where Regulus has arrived, Dives hoping, by his
powerful influence, to get back his captured
ships. The news of the great Roman's return
soon spreads throughout the city, and his wife
and his younger children are, in consequence, all
as frisky as kittens. The former, turning to one
of the latter, remarks—
" We will not sleep to-night ; your sire will watch."
The child thus addressed makes answer in these
exact terms, which shows how singularly preco-
cious in intellect some children are—
" And poor old nurse will snore."
A few minutes afterwards, we find Regulus's
eldest son describing the joy of the citizens at his
father's restoration, in language eminently ori-
ginal and beautiful. We quote this descriptive
gem :
" The youths and maidens in the Forum dance ;
The children climb, and clap their li tie hands ;
The mothers venture with their babes at breast ;
I picked a cripple from the press myself,
And heaved him to a niche ; anon, his crutch
Thumped on our shoulders !"
To say limiting of the exquisite happiness of the
expression, " picked a cripple" just as if the
speaker had been picking a gooseberry—what
a humiliating idea does not this passage convey
to us of the ''flagrant ingratitude of humanity !
Here we find a young lad "picking" a cripple
from the crowd, and " heaving" him for safety to
a niche; and how is he rewarded for such benevo-
lence ? By the scamp anointing his philanthropic
shoulders with a crutch ! Shameful! Had the New
Police Act been in force then, the fellow would
have been carried instantly to the station-house,
and might have considered himself lucky in get-
ting off with a month at Brixton! The tragedy
now hurries towards a close. Regulus, on being
ushered—together with Dives, who had accom-
panied him from Carthage—into the presence of
the Roman Senators, advises them not to snake
peace, but vigorously to pursue the war; which
so enrages Dives, who in consequence finds him-
self done out of his ships, that he insists on
the illustrious Roman going back to Quod,
which the latter heroically agrees to, and the
drama closes with his death, and that also of his
tormentor! In the above hurried sketch, we
have given merely a slight outline of the tragedy,
which is altogether unworthy of its author, whose
" Spartacus" redly showed some promise, and
was deservedly successful on its representation at
the Bath theatre.

A CONTROVERSIA I. DISCUSSION.
Andrews, Londwi, X 841.

We have here an authenticated Report of a
Controversial Discussion that took place about a
year and a half ago in the British School-room.
at Hammersmith, between the Rev. John Cum- '
ming and Mr. Daniel French, a Catholic barris-
ter, on the subject of some, of the leading tenets
in their respective religions. We cannot say we
approve of these public discussions on. mat-
ters of faith, for they rarely produce con-
viction, and not unfrequently tend to un-
settle men's minds On the present occasion—
as indeed on almost every one of -the sort we
have ever heard or read of—neither of-the dis-.
putants was satisfied with the other's arguments,