o or
Rafaelle had wasted their talents in painting Dutch boors or the humours
of a Flemish wake?

The other ballads of this kind are as bald in story, and are not so
highly embellished in narration. With that which is entitled the Thorn,
we were altogether displeased. The advertisement says, it is not told in
the person of the author, but in that of some loquacious narrator. The
author should have recollected that he who personates tiresome
loquacity, becomes tiresome himself. The story of a man who suffers the
perpetual pain of cold, because an old woman prayed that he might never
be warm, is perhaps a good story for a ballad, because it is a
well-known tale: but is the author certain that it is '_well
authenticated?_' and does not such an assertion promote the popular
superstition of witchcraft?

In a very different style of poetry, is the Rime of the Ancyent
Marinere; a ballad (says the advertisement) 'professedly written in
imitation of the _style_, as well as of the spirit of the elder poets.'
We are tolerably conversant with the early English poets; and can
discover no resemblance whatever, except in antiquated spelling and a
few obsolete words. This piece appears to us perfectly original in style
as well as in story. Many of the stanzas are laboriously beautiful; but
in connection they are absurd or unintelligible. Our readers may
exercise their ingenuity in attempting to unriddle what follows.

'The roaring wind! it roar'd far off,
It did not come anear;
But with its sound it shook the sails
That were so thin and sere.

The upper air bursts into life,
And a hundred fire-flags sheen
To and fro they are hurried about;
And to and fro, and in and out
The stars dance on between.

The coming wind doth roar more loud;
The sails do sigh, like sedge:
The rain pours down from one black cloud,
And the moon is at its edge.

Hark! hark! the thick black cloud is cleft,
And the moon is at its side:
Like waters shot from some high crag,
The lightning falls with never a jag
A river steep and wide.

The strong wind reach'd the ship: it roar'd
And dropp'd down, like a stone!
Beneath the lightning and the moon
The dead men gave a groan.' P. 27.

We do not sufficiently understand the story to analyse it. It is a Dutch
attempt at German sublimity. Genius has here been employed in producing
a poem of little mer