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    With the recollections which most of our readers must have of Mr . Johns ' numerous and valuable contributions to the pages of the Monthly Repository ^ they will , while they join in the hearty greeting we give him—not , indeed , to the old-established and customary household corner , but as he appears , " point device , in his accoutrements" in the public lists , tilting for fame—at the same time concur with us , that to institute any critical inquiry into the nature and character of his claims , would be altogether unnecessary here .

    It is , indeed , especially rendered so , by there being little in the collection of poems before us to warrant any alteration in our already-formed estimate of the author ' s capabilities . We were prepared to expect , if not a volume of poetry , at least a poetical volume , and we are not disappointed . Nor are we surprised at finding it of a class far beyond the common run of miscellaneous collections , abounding in specimens of native energy and giace , and evincing an accomplished taste , a vigour of thought and feeling , with a

    more pervading spirit of patriotism and piety , than one is accustomed to meet with in the countless multitude of fugitive productions which swarm about us ; while it is , on the whole , freer from the mawkish affectation and unmeaning sentimentality which frequently characterize what might properly be entitled Drawing-room Rhymes , to distiDguish them from their simpler and more sensible sisters of the Nursery , That it is not more entirely so , we will believe less its author ' s fault than that of a corrupt fashion , to which

    he has in some instances been , perhaps unwarily , induced to conform . Of this we think there is internal evidence in the present volume . He has divided it into separate books , arranging his subjects as they belong either to the lyrical , historical , descriptive , didactic and devotional , elegiac , or legendary , class . In some of these departments he is evidently much more at home than in others . But even in productions of the same class there are palpable inequalities , we had almost said inconsistencies , of style . It seems

    as if the author , while he sometimes wrote , as a poet ought , because the power of inspiration was upon him , at other times made verses because he felt it his duty to be poetical : and we take the fact of his success and failure being referable to the involuntary impulse and the voluntary act of his pen , ( while they are again referrible to , and contingent on , the excellence or depravity of the sources from which his materials are drawn , ) to be the best mode of

    accounting for these discrepancies—for their having been written , that is ; for it is yet a mystery to us how the good taste and sound judgment which Mr . Johns evidently possesses , should have permitted so much that is unworthy to appear— unworthy of the fellowship in which we find it . Take , for example , the spirited Stan 2 as on Riego ' s Death , or that well-sustained burst of feeling occasioned by the sight of Emmet ' s name written with his own hand in one of his own school-books , and others of equal nerve and pathos , —and contrast them with the absurd tales and bad likenesses of Love ( and if Love had

    • Dews of Ca . stalie ; Poems , composed on various Subjects and' Occasions . By J . Johns . Post 8 vo . pp . 272 . London , R , Huuter . 1828 . ¦ f The following , amongst others , will be recognized among the contents of the present volume : Hymn to the Stars , The first Swallow of the Year , Evening Stanzas , Hymn to Liberty , On the Death of Riego , Naval Ode , Sunset , Alexander at Paradise , On the Grave of a Friend , &c \

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    < 178 )

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    DEWS OF CASTAUE . *

• Citation
  • Monthly Repository (1806-1838) and Unitarian Chronicle (1832-1833), March 2, 1829, page 178, in the Nineteenth-Century Serials Edition (2008; 2018) ncse-os.kdl.kcl.ac.uk/periodicals/mruc/issues/vm2-ncseproduct2570/page/26/