unsurmountable difficulty, where such new combinations are not repeated
with any degree of uniformity, but are multiplied, through the whole
composition, with an unbounded licence of variation. Such, however, is
confessedly the case with the work before us; and it really seems
unnecessary to make any other remark on its versification.

The author, however, entertains a different opinion of it. So far from
apprehending that it may cost his readers some trouble to convince
themselves that the greater part of the book is not mere prose, written
out into the form of verse, he is persuaded that its melody is more
obvious and perceptible than that of our vulgar measures. "One
advantage," says Mr. Southey, "this metre _assuredly_ possesses; the
dullest reader cannot distort it into discord: he may read it with a
_prose mouth_, but its flow and fall will still be perceptible." We are
afraid, there are duller readers in the world than Mr. Southey is aware
of.

* * * * *

The subject of this poem is almost as ill chosen as the diction; and the
conduct of the fable as disorderly as the versification. The corporation
of magicians, that inhabit "the Domdaniel caverns, under the roots of
the ocean," had discovered, that a terrible _destroyer_ was likely to
rise up against them from the seed of Hodeirah, a worthy Arab, with
eight fine children. Immediately the murder of all those innocents is
resolved on; and a sturdy assassin sent with instructions to destroy the
whole family (as Mr. Southey has it) "root and branch." The good man,
accordingly, and seven of his children, are dispatched; but a cloud
comes over the mother and the remaining child; and the poem opens with
the picture of the widow and her orphan wandering, by night, over the