"Then shriek'd the timid and stood still the brave."
"The bubbling cry
Of some strong swimmer in his agony."
"For he, poor fellow, had a wife and children,
Two things to dying people quite bewildering,"--


and the inimitable description of the rainbow, closing with,--


"Then changed like to a bow that's bent, and then--
Forsook the dim eyes of these shipwreck'd men."


The technicalities introduced are fewer; and are handled with greater
force, and made to tell more on the general effect. You marvel, too, at
the versatility of the writer, who seems this moment to be looking at
the scene with the eye of the melancholy Jacques; the next, with the
philosophical aspect of the moralizing Hamlet; the next, with the rage
of a misanthropical Timon; and the next, with the bitter sneer of a
malignant Iago: and yet, who, amidst all these disguises, leaves on you
the impression that he is throughout acting the part, and displaying the
spirit, of a demon--a deep current of mockery at man's miseries, and at
God's providence, running under all his moods and imitations. We read it
once, when recovering from an illness, and shall never forget the
withering horror, and the shock of disgust and loathing, which it gave
to our weakened nerves.

Since Falconer's time, besides Byron, Scott, in the Pirate, and Cooper,
there has not, as we hinted, been much of the poetical extracted from