We have heard often of the circumstances which led to the production of this poem, and of the astonishing rapidity with which it was composed. How this may be we know not. Judging from the beauty of its several parts, and still more from its finish as a whole, it strikes us as the result of long continued labor, polished and perfected with a scrupulous attention. The subject which our author has selected, is one admirably fitted to display his genius. It is one, however, that demands unceasing effort, and requires the constant workings of his brilliant fancy. From the ordinary range of illustration he is certainly excluded, while the path to the attainment of his object is both difficult and devious. He has drawn around himself a magic circle, into which no human form can enter. Nothing earthly is to mingle in the scenes to which he calls us. Each action, in its origin, continuance, and termination, must be fitted to the beings he has chosen for his actors. With this view of his undertaking, we may fear for the result, and watch with much anxiety its full accomplishment. It is not long, however, that we feel this apprehension. We soon discover that our author is prepared for each adventure--that he gains a ready conquest over every opposition, while his flight continues onward with an undiminished ardor. Here again we are to greet our pilgrim fairy. Long and wearisome have been his wanderings. Hour after hour has he toiled amid the passes of the mountain, and fearful are the perils he has been compelled to meet. He has followed out a dangerous track, “Through dreary beds of tangled fern, Through groves of nightshade dark and dern, Over the grass and through the brake, Where toils the ant and sleeps the snake,” till he has reached the spot appointed for the trial of his courage. He has found the treasure that he sought, protected by the warriors of the deep, and been baffled by their forces in the efforts he has made. It is in this crisis of affairs that we meet with a deliverance as ingenious as it is successful. It is necessary, for our author’s purpose, that his hero, though thus far defeated, should yet gain his object, and with that intention he has brought him to his present situation. The events which we have compressed into the narrow space of a few lines, have been presented in detail up to the period in which the Fay, driven from his purpose, stood despairing on the river’s brink. It is thus the history continues,--