vour, that
they look very like Macpherson; and we are positive they are pretty
nearly as stupid and tiresome.

It is a sort of privilege of poets to be egotists; but they should 'use
it as not abusing it;' and particularly one who piques himself (though
indeed at the ripe age of nineteen), of being 'an infant bard,'--('The
artless Helicon I boast is youth;')--should either not know, or should
seem not to know, so much about his own ancestry. Besides a poem above
cited on the family seat of the Byrons, we have another of eleven pages,
on the self-same subject, introduced with an apology, 'he certainly had
no intention of inserting it;' but really, 'the particular request of
some friends,' &c., &c. It concludes with five stanzas on himself, 'the
last and youngest of a noble line.' There is a good deal also about his
maternal ancestors, in a poem on Lachin-y-gair, a mountain where he
spent part of his youth, and might have learned that _pibroch_ is not a
bagpipe, any more than duet means a fiddle.

As the author has dedicated so large a part of his volume to immortalize
his employments at school and college, we cannot possibly dismiss it
without presenting the reader with a specimen of these ingenious
effusions. In an ode with a Greek motto, called Granta, we have the
following magnificent stanzas.

'There, in apartments small and damp,
The candidate for college prizes,
Sits poring by the midnight lamp,
Goes late to bed, yet early rises.

Who reads false quantities in Sele,
Or puzzles o'er the deep triangle;
Depriv'd of many a wholesome meal,
In barbarous Latin doom'd to wrangle.

Renouncing every pleasing page,
From authors of historic use;
Preferring to the lettered sage,
The square of the hypothenuse.

Still harmless are these occupations,
That hurt none but the hapless student,
Compar'd with other recreations
Which bring together the imprudent.' p. 123, 124, 125.

We are sorry to hear so bad an account of the college psalmody as is
contained in the following Attic stanzas.

'Our choir would scarcely be excus'd.
Even as a band of new beginners;
All mercy, now, must be refus'd
To such a set of croaking sinners.

If David, when his toils were ended,
Had heard these blockheads sing before him
To us, his psalms had ne'er descended,
In furious mood, he would have tore 'em.' p. 126, 127.