use of money, and on the foundation of value; and the language is sometimes so metaphorical as to admit of cavil, though the meaning of the author can rarely be misunderstood; but it ought to be read by all who would learn the progress and present state of this science, and to be diligently studied by those, who undertake to communicate their thoughts on this important and intricate subject to the public.

ART. XXV.-Yamoyden a tale of the wars of king Philip, in six cantos. By the late Rev. James Wallis Eastburn, A. M. and his friend. New York, James Eastburn. pp.

339.

THIS is one of the most considerable attempts in the way of poetry, which have been made in this country. It is no less than a metrical tale in six cantos, after the manner of Scott; in saying which, we do not imply that it is in any obnoxious sense an imitation, for it is no more upon the model of Marmion and Rokeby, than are the Fire Worshippers of Moore, and the Bride of Abydos, Parisina, &c. of Lord Byron. The success of its inventor has given a classical character to this form of a poem between the ballad and the epic, and the author who adopts it is no more to be reckoned an imitator, than others who for no better reason divide epics into twelve parts, and tragedies into five.

Yamoyden is the joint production of two gentlemen of New York, one of whom, at the time of its completion, had numbered but twenty years, and the other was two years his junior. The former,-to whose history, as partly sketched in a very unostentatious manner in the advertisement, the work owes not a little of its interest,-first projected it in 1817, while pursuing theological studies at Bristol, Rhode Island, in which place and the vicinity the scene is laid. The plan was matured when the authors knew no more of the history of which they designed to make use, than they had gathered from a few pages of Hubbard's Narrative of the Indian Wars; and the poem, written in such moments as could be spared from severer occupations, was mutually communicated within six months after;-an example of rapid execution fully equal to Southey's epic of six weeks; for in

literary composition we suppose it is fair to allow that partnership doubles the labour, and that what two persons do in six months, one might do in three; and of the time thus reduced, one half is little enough to deduct for the mutual transmission of the manuscripts. The first draught thus completed, the revision of it was undertaken by the author now deceased, who meantime had taken orders, and was soon after settled in the ministry in Virginia. He had proceeded no further than the two first cantos, when he was interrupted by a sickness, which terminated in his death. At the request of his friends, and encouraged by Dr. Jarvis of this town, the surviving author prepared the work for the press, making some considerable additions, and such alterations as were at the same time needed, and consistent with preserving the poetical identity of his associate.

These circumstances subject the poem to the double disadvantages of a work in part posthumous, and a production of two authors without the opportunity of frequent conference. We notice them, not that the apology they afford is in any peculiar manner called for, but because they ought to affect the estimate formed of it, heightening the opinion entertained of its merit, and excusing its defects; and because the editor in language at once modest and manly, bespeaks in consideration of them a candid judgment. He need not fear the most prejudiced criticism, when he writes such lines as those of the proem, in which the only thing to be blamed is the threat, to meditate the thankless muse no more.' We should be glad to extract it entire, but must pay deference enough to our narrow limits to give but a few of the first and last stanzas. Go forth, sad fragments of a broken strain, The last that either bard shall e'er essay! The hand can ne'er attempt the chores again, That first awoke them, in a happier day: Where sweeps the ocean breeze its desert way, His requiem murmurs o'er the moaning wave; And he who feebly now prolongs the lay, Shall ne'er the minstrel's hallowed honours crave; His harp lies buried deep, in that untimely grave!

Friend of my youth! with thee began the love Of sacred song; the wont, in golden dreams, Mid classic realms of splendours past to rove, O'er haunted steep, and by immortal streams; New Series. No. 6.

60

Where the blue wave, with sparkling bosom gleams
Round shores, the mind's eternal heritage,
For ever lit by memory's twilight beams;
Where the proud dead, that live in storied page,
Beckon, with awful port, to glory's earlier age.

There would we linger oft, entranc'd, to hear,
O'er battle fields, the epic thunders roll;
Or list, where tragic wail upon the ear,
Through Argive palaces shrill echoing, stole ;
There would we mark, uncurbed by all control,
In central heaven, the Theban eagle's flight;
Or hold communion with the musing soul

Of sage or bard, who sought, mid Pagan night,
In loy'd Athenian groves, for truth's eternal light.

'Homeward we turned, to that fair land, but late
Redeemed from the strong spell that bound it fast,
Where Mystery, brooding o'er the waters, sate
And kept the key, till three millenniums past.

*

-And so began our young, delighted strain,
That would evoke the plumed chieftains brave,
And bid their martial hosts arise again,

Where Narragansett's tides roll by their grave,
And Haup's romantic steeps are piled above the wave.

Friend of my youth! with thee began my song,
And o'er thy bier its latest accents die;
Misled in phantom-peopled realms too long,-
Though not to me the muse averse deny,
Sometimes, perhaps, her visions to descry,-
Such thriftless pastime should with youth be o'er;
And he who loved with thee his notes to try,
But for thy sake, such idlesse would deplore,-

And swears to meditate the thankless muse no more.

But, no! the freshness of that past shall still Sacred to memory's holiest musings be; When through the ideal fields of song, at will, He roved, and gathered chaplets wild with thee; When, reckless of the world, alone and free, Like two proud barks, we kept our careless way, That sail by moonlight o'er the tranquil sea; Their white apparel and their streamers gay, Bright gleaming o'er the main, beneath the ghostly ray ;

And downward, far, reflected in the clear
Blue depths, the eye their fairy tackling sees;
So, buoyant, they do seem to float in air,
And silently obey the noiseless breeze :-
Till, all too soon, as the rude winds may please,
They part, for distant ports: Thee gales benign
Swift wafting, bore, by Heaven's all-wise decrees,
To its own harbour sure, where each divine
And joyous vision, seen before in dreams, is thine.
'Muses of Helicon! melodious race

Of Jove and golden-haired Mnemosyne !
Whose art from memory blots each sadder trace,
And drives each scowling form of grief away!
Who, round the violet fount, your measures gay,
Once trod, and round the altar of great Jove;
Whence, wrapt in silvery clouds, your nightly way
Ye held, and ravishing strains of music wove,

That soothed the Thunderer's soul, and filled his courts above!
Bright choir! with lips untempted, and with zone
Sparkling, and unapproached by touch profane;
Ye, to whose gladsome bosoms ne'er was known
The blight of sorrow, or the throb of pain ;—
Rightly invoked,—if right the elected swain,
On your own mountain's side ye taught of yore,
Whose honoured hand took not your gift in vain,
Worthy the budding laurel-bough it bore,-
Farewell! a long Farewell! I worship you no more!'

pp. ix-xii.

The first canto opens with a rich description of a morning scene at Mount Hope, the seat of Philip, sachem of Pokanoket, the almost successful enemy of the New England colonists in 1675 and 1676. The previous events of that war,-in which Philip, after an anxious succession of triumphs and reverses, had at last seen his powerful tribe reduced to a handful of broken hearted men, his allies by force or art estranged, and the question of power between the native sovereigns and their neighbours settled,-are given with spirit, and with historical fidelity. Hunted back and forwards through a hundred miles of forest by the indefatigable hostility of the whites, Philip,-returned to the ancient seat of his tribe, Mount Hope, holds a council of his warriors, and attempts by a recital of their wrongs to excite them to yet another effort. Agamoun, an Indian of another tribe, but long attached to

his fortunes,-ventures to speak of flight or submission, and is in consequence put to death very summarily by Philip himself, ostensibly for his treasonable counsel, but in reality, as Philip informs his confidant, to awe his wavering followers, and gain a hold on the fears of those whom he finds no longer sufficiently accessible to other motives. The canto ends with Philip's announcing a plot, which vitiates the whole structure of the story, as it makes the main spring of it an act of almost gratuitous cruelty, and so destroys at the outset the good will intended to be excited for the hero.

"Through Nipnet tribes we hold our course:
YAMOYDEN to their broken bands

Yet dear, must through their northern lands
Make smooth our path. Thou say'st that he
Lists in Aquetnet's woods to hear
A bird, whose music is more dear
Than vengeance or than liberty.
A turtle dove he nurses there,
And shelters with a parent's care.

That nest must be despoiled! the chief

Must share our common bond of grief!' p. 50.

To the turtle dove's nest in Aquetnet woods the second canto introduces us. Yamoyden, a Nipnet Indian, of a race tributary to Philip, had won the love of a christian woman, and as the practice is, adopted her faith. Christian, however, as he was, he remained faithful to Philip, and when engaged in war or in the chase, was in the habit of leaving his wife and child in a solitude, where neither friend nor foe might find them. The evening of the same day with which the poem opens is described, with great truth to nature and beauty of expression. Yamoyden returning from an unsuccessful errand to a neighbouring tribe, visits his cottage, but only to resist the entreaties of Nora that he would separate himself from a ruined cause, and to set off again for the camp of Philip. Her reflexions after his departure are interrupted by four Indians, followers of the sachem, entering her cabin. Her child is taken from her arms and she is carried senseless away. On recovering she finds herself borne along the seashore in the arms of an Indian, who proves to have been commissioned to effect her rescue by Ahauton, a Mohegan attached to Philip's party. Incensed at the