cottish
dialect, in which these poems are written, must obscure the native
beauties with which they appear to abound, and renders the sense often
unintelligible to an English reader. Should it, however, prove true,
that the author has been taken under the patronage of a great lady in
Scotland, and that a celebrated professor has interested himself in the
cultivation of his talents, there is reason to hope, that his
distinguished genius may yet be exerted in such a manner as to afford
more general delight. In the meantime, we must admire the generous
enthusiasm of his untutored muse; and bestow the tribute of just
applause on one whose name will be transmitted to posterity with
honour.--_The Critical Review_.

WILLIAM WORDSWORTH

_Descriptive Sketches_, in Verse. Taken during a Pedestrian Tour in the
Italian, Grison, Swiss and Savoyard Alps. By W. WORDSWORTH, B.A. of St.
John's, Cambridge. 4to. pp. 55. 3s. Johnson. 1793.

More descriptive poetry! (See page 166, &c.) Have we not yet enough?
Must eternal changes be rung on uplands and lowlands, and nodding
forests, and brooding clouds, and cells, and dells, and dingles? Yes;
more, and yet more: so it is decreed.

Mr. Wordsworth begins his descriptive sketches with the following
exordium:

'Were there, below, a spot of holy ground,
By Pain and her sad family _un_found,
Sure, Nature's God that spot to man had giv'n,
Where murmuring _rivers join_ the song of _ev'n_!
Where _falls_ the purple morning far and wide
_In flakes_ of light upon the mountain side;
Where summer suns in ocean sink to rest,
Or moonlight upland lifts her hoary breast;
Where Silence, on her night of wing, o'er-broods
Unfathom'd dells and undiscover'd woods;
Where rocks and groves the _power_ of waters _shakes_
In cataracts, or sleeps in quiet lakes.'

May we ask, how it is that rivers join the song of ev'n? or, in plain
prose, the evening! but, if they do, is it not true that they equally
join the song of morning, noon, and night? The _purple morning falling
in flakes_ of light is a bold figure: but we are told, it falls far and
wide--Where?--On the mountain's _side_. We are sorry to see the purple
morning confined so like a maniac in a straight waistcoat. What the
night of wing of silence is, we are unable to comprehend: but the
climax of the passage is, that, were there such a spot of holy ground as
is here so sublimely described, _unfoun