The Liverpool Standard and General Commercial Advertiser.
Liverpool, Merseyside, England, 1836-11-15 00:00:00

DEATH.

(From the Aberdeen Observer.)
I've run beside
His awful chariot wheels, when Pestilence
And Famine were his steeds • and every heart,
SaVe mine, had sunk before the withering frown
That sat upon his brow; the invincible,
Unquenchable desire of fathoming
His awful mystery still urging on
My spirit in the search, till Reason shook
And• tottered on his throne. God! I have seen
The dying mother bending o'er her babe,
That strut ~led into being, but—to perish.
The lover drinking from the silent lips,
Upon whose smile and eloquence he lived,
Destruction ; and the bride of yesterday,
A widowthe pale rose amid her locks
Still blooming, when the hind that placed it there
Had withered. I have seen the young, the old,
The hoary patriarch, and the rosy boy,
The youthful maiden, and the wrinkled hag,
The tyrant and the slave, in one rude mast
Commingled, tombless, poisoning the ssiuds.
•

0, give me music, for my soul is faint
With an o'erwhelming passion. She is gone
Who sat beside me in this leafy bower,
And wreathing her soft arms around me, poured
The dove-like accents of her gentle voice,
Confiding, in my ear. 0, why should love
In rosy bondage lead us, and then leave
The heart to sorrow ? Why should the sweet flowers,
Which morning saw rejoicing in the sun,
Wither e'er noon within his warm embrace r
Yet su it ever hath been. Love and hupe,
And friendship, and the social ties of home,
All that the soul most fondly rests upon,
Are of the earth, and not immortal things.

LITERARY NOTICES.

ANGLO-POLISH HARP.

Forney in his Belles Lettres says that poetry is the
language of passion, where I suppose we are to understand
by passion that emotion of the mind which Lord Kaimes
affirms is ever accompanied by some desire. We shall not
stop here to review either of these definitions, but certain
it is, that when the critic judges of the higher effusions of
the mind by the stern, unbending rules of art, he acts very
much like Roberval, the French mathematician, who,after
having for the first time seen a play, asked—What does
it prove ? If the critic ought to possess a portion of the
poet's fire, what should be the feeling of him who under-
takes to sit in judgment upon the Anglo Polish Harp ?
None but a Pole should review it. We, who are sober
Englishmen, can only imagine the intensity of feeling
which gave birth to some of the expressions in the vo-
lume before us. It would be easy to give our general
impression of the work; but whilst we fall short, by many
octaves, of the thrilling notes sounding throughout it,
we are not insensible of its appeal. As a specimen of
patriotic poetry it deserves to stand very high, but we
fear it will not long survive the excitement which gave
it birth. As Mr. Jones may visit the muses on other
occasions, we will take the liberty of acquainting him
with some little of the etiquette of those ladies. They
never listen to " harsh discord," and would therefore
turn away their ear from "civilization's headland bold!"
(vide •' The Spartan's Pass may live in song.") The
composition of this piece is in almost pure iambics, and yet
we defy an Englishman, without the grossest cacophony
and violation of accent, to make the first foot of this line
an iambic. Addison is known to have been ridiculed for
the redundant burden of the beginning of Cato—
" The dawn is overcast—the morning lowers,
And heavily in clouds brings on the day."
So we should complain of the poem entitled " Poland,"
which opens thus :
" I hung my harp awhile to rest,
And gave the strings to cease their trembling."
Why surely when he "hung his harp up to rest" he also
4' gave the strings to cease their trembling." But we
are not inclined to be over fastidious, and would wish to
be understood to have only been picking out a few weeds
from a garden of flowers. The " Scenes from Longi-
ngs" have pleased us less than the minor poems. Mr.
Jones does not appear to us to have been destined by
nature to tread on the Cothurnus. The language of
Aurelius is not the language of a dramatic king—it has
not the stately tone of royalty ; and Bonosius, though
not inaptly made " a chosen officer" in the court where
Aurelius wears the diadem, is a subject that might be
found in many other courts known in the great metropo-
lis. We would advise Mr.. Jones to cut acquaintance
with Melpomene—her sisters are more kind.

Burke's History of the Commoners. Part XIII: Henry
Colburn.
With the periodicals of this month, we have received
the thirteenth part of Mr. Burke's; national work, "The
History of the Commoners of Great Britain and Ire-
land"—national truly, if nationality mean peculiar to a
particular nation ; for there is no other land on earth
which could furnish materiel for a similar undertaking.
Other countries have their noble, their ecclesiastic, their
Military orders, but where is the life's blood of all the
independent, influential, manly order of country gentle-
men to be found—where, save within the realm of his
Britannic Majesty ? Without entering into a critical
analysis of so extending a work, which we consign to the
great quarterly tribunal, we may be allowed cursorily to
observe, that the execution appears fully equal to the
conception, and that the projector deserves well of his
country.
In the part before us—which comprises nearly one-
hundred families—we find blended with houses of great
antiquity, many of modern date, which have risen to
affluence, station, and importance, through manufactu-
ring and commercial enterprise. Of the latter, are our
estimable townsmen—William Brown, Esq., of Rich-
mond Hill and Brandon ; Samuel Sandbach, Esq., of the
Woodlands; and James Pownall, Esq., of Pownall and
Mayfield ; and of the neighbouring commercial places—
James Brown, Esq., of Harehill Grove, near Leeds ; and
and John Greaves, Esq., of the Crescent, Salford, and
Irlam Hall, near Warrington. Mr. Greaves, who is a
munificent patron of arts and letters, is the only son and
heir of John Greaves, who was in partnership with Sir
Robert Peel, in the banking-house of Peel, Greaves,
and Co. of Manchester.- Of old proprietors, we have,
Kemys, Tvnte of Halsewell, Barnaby of Rockhampton,
Entwistle of Foxholes, Forde of Seaforde, Holton. of
Hutton, Fulford of Great Fulford, Tayleur of Buntings_
date, (of which our townsman, Charles Taylcur, Ecq.,)
Long of Rowde Ashston, Northey ; Hopkins of Bing
House, Paploe of Garnston, &c. &c. &c.