songs, he is at times eminently happy. He has generally erred on the
side of the too much rather than of the too little. His defect is not so
much want of genius as of taste. His thoughts were forcible and vivid;
but the words in which he clothed them, are sometimes ill-chosen, and
sometimes awkwardly disposed. He degenerates occasionally into mere
turgidness and verbosity, as in the following lines:

Oh, partner of my infant grief and joys!
Big with the scenes now past my heart o'erflows,
Bids each endearment fair at once to rise,
And dwells luxurious on her melting woes.

When his stanza forced him to lop off this vain superfluity of words,
that the sense might be brought within a narrower compass, he succeeded
better. Who would suppose, that these verses could have proceeded from
the same man that had written the well known song, beginning "And are ye
sure the news is true," from which there is not a word that can he taken
without injury, and which seems so well to answer the description of a
simple and popular song in Shakspeare?

--It is old and plain:
The songsters, and the knitters in the sun,
And the free maids that weave their threads with bone,
Do use to chaunt it. It is silly sooth,
And dallies with the innocence of love,
Like the old age.

Syr Martyn is the longest of his poems. He could not have chosen a
subject in itself much less capable of embellishment. But whatever the
pomp of machinery or profuseness of description could contribute to its
decoration has not been spared. After an elaborate invocation of the
powers that preside over the stream of Mulla, a "reverend wizard" is
conjured up in the eye of the poet; and the wizard in his turn conjures
up scene after scene, in which appear the hopeful young knight, Syr
Martyn, "possest of goodly Baronie," the dairy-maid, Kathrin, by whose
wiles he is inveigled into an illicit amour, the good aunt who soon dies
of chagrin at this unworthy attachment, the young brood who are the
offspring of the ill-sorted match, his brother, an openhearted sailor,
who is hindered by the artifices of Kathrin from gaining access to the
house, and lastly, the "fair nymph Dissipation," with whom Syr Martyn
seeks refuge from his unpleasant recollections, and who conspires with
"the lazy fiend, Self-Imposition," to conduct him to the "dreary cave of
Discontent," where the poet leaves him, and "the reverend wizard" (for
aught we hear to the contrary) in