“Nymphs! you disjoin, unite, condense, expand, And give new wonders to the Chemist’s hand; On tepid clouds of rising steam aspire, Or fix in sulphur all its solid fire; With boundless spring elastic airs unfold, Or fill the fine vacuities of gold; With sudden flash vitrescent sparks reveal, By fierce collision from the flint and steel; Or mark with shining letters Kunkel’s name In the pale phosphor’s self-consuming flame. So the chaste heart of some enchanted maid Shines with insidious light, by love betray’d; Round her pale bosom plays the young desire, And slow she wastes by self-consuming fire.” These poems, produced in that dreary time for English poetry which elapsed between the disappearance of Cowper and Burns and the advent of Scott and Byron, had, in spite of their glaring absurdities, no lack of warm admirers. Miss Seward, in her _Life of Dr. Darwin_, published in 1804, sets no limits to her admiration:—“We are presented,” she says, “with an highly imaginative and splendidly descriptive poem, whose successive pictures alternately possess the sublimity of Michael Angelo, the correctness and elegance of Raphael, with the glow of Titian; whose landscapes have, at times, the strength of Salvator, and at others the softness of Claude; whose numbers are of stately grace, and artful harmony; while its allusions to ancient and modern history and fable, and its interspersion of recent and extraordinary anecdotes, render it extremely entertaining. * * * Each part is enriched by a number of philosophical notes. They state a great variety of theories and experiments in Botany, Chemistry, Electricity, Mechanics, and in the various species of Air, salubrious, noxious, and deadly,” &c.] THE SCOTTISH “POLITICAL MARTYRS”.