With this one exception, there is literally not one couplet in the publication before us which would be reckoned poetry, or even sense, were it found in the corner of a newspaper or upon the window of an inn. Must we then be doomed to hear such a mixture of raving and driv'ling, extolled as the work of a '_wild and original_' genius, simply because Mr Coleridge has now and then written fine verses, and a brother poet chooses, in his milder mood, to laud him from courtesy or from interest? And are such panegyrics to be echoed by the mean tools of a political faction, because they relate to one whose daily prose is understood to be dedicated to the support of all that courtiers think should be supported? If it be true that the author has thus earned the patronage of those liberal dispensers of bounty, we can have no objection that they should give him proper proofs of their gratitude; but we cannot help wishing, for his sake, as well as our own, that they would pay in solid pudding instead of empty praise; and adhere, at least in this instance, to the good old system of rewarding their champions with places and pensions, instead of puffing their bad poetry, and endeavouring to cram their nonsense down the throats of all the loyal and well affected.--_The Edinburgh Review_. ROBERT SOUTHEY _Madoc_, by ROBERT SOUTHEY. 4to. pp. 560. 2l. 2s. Boards. Printed at Edinburgh, for Longman and Co., London. 1805. It has fallen to the lot of this writer to puzzle our critical discernment more than once. In the _Annual Anthology_ we had reason to complain that it was difficult to distinguish his jocular from his serious poetry; and sometimes indeed to know his poetry from his prose. He has now contrived to manufacture a large quarto, which he has styled a poem, but of what description it is no easy matter to decide. The title of epic, which he indignantly disclaims, we might have been inclined to refuse his production, had it been claimed; and we suppose that Mr. Southey would not suffer it to be classed under the mock-heroic. The poem of Madoc is not didactic, nor elegiac, nor classical, in any respect. Neither is it _Macphersonic_, nor _Klopstockian_, nor _Darwinian_,--we beg pardon, we mean _Brookian_. To conclude, according to a phrase of the last century, which was applied to ladies of ambiguous character, _it is what it is_.--As Mr. Southey has set the rules of Aristotle at defiance in his preface, we hope that he will feel a due degree of gratitude for this appropriate definition of his work. It is an old saying, thoroughly descriptive of such an old song as this before us. Mr. Southey, however, has not disdained all ancient precedents in his poem, for he introduces it with this advertisement: