We have pronounced these two stanzas to be original; and they are: but with reference to the first of them we admit that a distinguished living critic, to whom it was shown, remarked that it did remind him a little of something in some other author--and he rather thought it was Goldsmith; a second critic, equally eminent, was forcibly reminded by it of something which he was convinced had been written by Rogers. _So much for criticism!_ To such treatment is original genius ever subjected. Its traducers cannot even agree as to the derivation of the stolen property; they cannot name the author robbed. One cries, Spenser; another, Butler; a third, Collins. We repeat, it is the fate of Originality. "Garth did not write his own Dispensary," says Pope jeeringly; Campbell has had his Exile of Erin vehemently claimed by a desperate wrestler for renown; and at this very time a schoolmaster in Scotland is ready to swear that the author of the "Burial of Sir John Moore" never wrote a line of it. But we now pass to another piece by Sir Fretful; and this, whether its sentiments be of a high or a low order, its imagery appropriate or incongruous, is entirely his own:-- Lives there a man with soul so dead, Who never to himself has said, "Shoot folly as it flies?" Oh! more than tears of blood can tell, Are in that word farewell, farewell! 'Tis folly to be wise. And what is friendship but a name, That boils on Etna's breast of flame? Thus runs the world away: Sweet is the ship that's under sail To where yon taper cheers the vale, With hospitable ray! Drink to me only with thine eyes Through cloudless climes and starry skies! My native land, good night! Adieu, adieu, my native shore; 'Tis Greece, but living Greece no more-- Whatever is is right! We have thought it expedient to point out briefly the peculiar beauty of some of our author's lines; but it cannot be necessary to point out the one peculiar and exclusive quality of his writings--his perspicacity--his connectedness. His verse "flows due on to the Propontic, nor knows retiring ebb." You are never at a loss to know what he means. In his sublimest passages he is intelligible. This is his great beauty. No poet perhaps is so essentially _logical_. We close our specimens with another short poem; it is entitled, "ON LIFE, ET CETERA." Know then this truth, enough for man to know: Be thou as chaste as ice, as pure as snow, Who would be free themselves must strike the blow. Retreating lightly with a lovely fear From grave to gay, from lively to severe, To err is human, to forgive divine, And wretches hang that jurymen may dine Like quills upon the fretful porcupine. All are but parts of one stupendous whole, The feast of reason and the flow of soul. * * * * *