The Sun.
London, England, 1834-06-09 00:00:00

toilsome efforts ; he would secure it at, once, on his
very first trial of skill, or be wonli quit the lists in
disgust.- -Had thi,i nnual:‘, oyor-Fensitive feeling
influenced Milton t;:0 world would
never have been (1,.!.!;•••-1. a",l instructed by " Pa-
radise Lost," or • " The subjoined
observations of Sic ET•rion 1117. -Ages arc full of
truth :

Few who are not encouraged persevere till the
strength of their genius comes out. He • who expects no
reward works carelessly and languidly. He cannot en-
tirely abandon the chase, but he has no energy, because he
has no hope."
" Philip van Arteveldr" is a generous and discri-
minating criticism on a play whose author (if he will
only persevere) bids fair to revive the golden age of
dramatic literature. From the specimens adduced
by the Quarterly, we are inclined to think more
highly of this play than any that has been produced
since the days of Shirley ; but we shall procure the
book and judge for ourselves. Of the " Travels in
Italy, &c., by Mr. Beckford," we quote the follow-
ing just criticism. The remaining articles are of
the usual calibre. We have neither time nor space
to enter into an analysis of them : _ _

" England's wealthiest son' performs his travels, of
course, in a style of great external splendour.
" Conspicuus longe cunctisque notabilis intrat'—
court and palaces, as well as convents and churches, and
galleries of all sorts, fly open at his approach : he is caressed
in every capital—he is fete in every chateau. But though
he appears amidst such accompaniments with all the airi-
ness of a Juan, he has a thread of the blackest of Harold
in his texture ; and every now and then seems willing to
draw a veil between him and the world of vanities. He is
a poet, and a great one too, though we know not that he
ever wrote a line of verse. His rapture amidst the sub-
lime scenery of mountains and forests—in the Tyrol espe-
cially, and in Spain—is that of a spirit cast originally in
one of nature's finest moulds; and he fixes it in language
which can scarcely be praised beyond its deserts—simple,
massive, nervous, apparently little laboured,
.yet revealing,
in its effect, the perfection of art Some immortil pas-
sages in Gray's letters and Byron's diaries, are the only
things, in our tongue, that seem to us to come near the
profound melancholy, blended with a picturesque of de-
scription at once true and startling, of many of these extra-
ordinary pages. Nor is his sense for the highest beauties
of art less exquisite. He seems to us to describe classical
architecture, and the pictures of the great Italian schools,
with a most passionate feeling of the grand, and with an
inimitable grace of expression. On the other hand, he
betrays, in a thousand places, a settled voluptuousness of
temperament, and a capricious recklessness of self-indul-
gence, which will lead the world to identify him henceforth
with his Vathek, as inextricably as it has long since con-
nected Harold with the poet that drew him ; and then,
that there may be no limit to the inconsistencies of such a
strange genius, this spirit, at once so capable of the noblest
enthusiasm, and so dashed with the gloom of over-pam-
pered luxury, can stoop to chairs and china, ever and anon,
with the zeal of an auctioneer—revel in the design of a
clock or a candlestick, and be as ecstatic about a fid-
dler or a soprano as the fools in Hogarth's concert. On
such occasions he reminds us, and will, we think, remind
every one, of the Lord of Strawberry-hill. But even
here all we have is on a grander scale. The oriental pro-
digality of his magnificence shines out even about trifles.
He buys a library where the other would have cheapened a
missal. He is at least a male Horace Walpole ' • as supe-
rior to the ' silken baron,' as Fonthill, with its York-like
tower embosomed among hoary forests, was to that silly-
band-box which may still be admired on the road to
Twickenham."