excess, Whether it be love, religion, pleasure, or pain, as we may see in the case of Cowper and of Burus, and to find torment or rapture in that in which others merely find a resource from ennui, or a relaxation from common occupation. to get back, after a romantic adventure for it by the nature of the poetical temwith crazy Kate, a party of gypsies, or a perament, which carries every thing to little child on a commou, to the drawingroom and the ladies again, to the sofa and the tea kettle-No, I beg his pardon, not to the singing, well-scoured tea-kettle, but to the polished and loud hissing urn. His walks and harbours are kept clear of worms and snails, with as much an appearance of petit maitreship as of humanity. He has much of the sickly sensibility and pampered refinements of Pope; but then Pope should have taken no notice whatever We are surprised that Mr. Hazlitt prided himself in them: whereas, Cowper affects to be all simplicity and plainuess. of Cowper's blank verse translation of He had neither Thompson's love of the Homer, which unquestionably gives a unadorned beauties of nature, nor Pope's more correct and by no means unpoetiexquisite sense of the elegances of art. cal idea of the Grecian bard, than the He was, in fact, a nervous man, afraid more splendid version of Pope in rhyme. of trusting himself to the seductions of the On subjects requiring energetic brevity one, and ashamed of putting forward bis pretensions to an intimacy with the other: bard of Twickenham is admirable: and or majestic strength, the style of the but to be a coward, is not the way to succeed either in poetry, in war, or in love! there is, doubtless, a vigour, richness, Still he is a genuine poet, and deserves all harmony, and pomp in detached pashis reputation. His worst vices are amia sages of his translation of Homer, (parble weaknesses, elegant trifling. Though ticularly in the description of the fiercer there is a frequent dryness, timidity, aud battle scenes), which the correspondjejuneness in his manner, he has left a ing passages of Cowper do not reach or number of pictures of domestic comfort even approach. But, as a whole, to and social refinement, as well as of natural be accompanied throughout, to give a imagery aud feeling, which can hardly be forgotten but with the language itself. fair idea of the illustrious Grecian Puet, to interest the finer feelings of the heart, to sustain that interest, to please with all possible variety of correct cadence and nicely-balanced periods, we most decidedly prefer the blank verse translation of Cowper. Such, among others, are his memorable description of the post coming in, that of the preparations for tea in a winter's evening in the country, of the unexpected fall of snow, of the frosty morning (with the fine satirical transition to the Empress of Russia's palace of ice), and, most of all, the winter's walk at noon. Every one of these may be considered as distinct studies, or highly-finished cabinet-pieces, arranged without order or coherence. There is much truth in Mr. Hazlitt's estimate of this pleasing moral poet, whose satire he characterizes as excellent, pointed and forcible, with the polished manners of the gentleman and the honest indignation of a virtuous man. To Cowper's religious poetry, Mr. Hazlitt has not rendered ample justice, and he is also evidently, mistaken in ascribing Cowper's unhappiness, in part (which we think proceeded wholly from morbid affectation), at least to his religious sentiments. He does not, however, convert this into a charge against religion, whose object is to make men truly happy, but endeavours to account In his sixth lecture Mr. Hazlitt goes back to the age of Queen Ann, and gives a cursory account of the most eminent poets, of whom he had not before spoken, from that time to the ing lecture is appropriated to Burns and present. An entire, and very interestthe Old Ballads; and the volume terminates with a lecture on the living poets. Our extracts have already been so copious, that we have not room for any additional passages. In his enumeration of living bards, however, we were surprised to find Mrs. More noticed only in the following supercilious sentence-" She has written a great deal which I have never read!" To render his work complete, he ought in justice to himself to have perused this venerable lady's poetical productions, which have long since been stamped with the | sage, that it is impossible to hazard even a conjecture respecting it. Hans Egede, the author of the vo lume now under consideration, was a Danish clergyman, of a warm tempe rament mingled with such a portion of enthusiam, as does not readily suffer its exertions to be relaxed by difficulties, or the hopes which it has conceived, by inauspicious circumstances. Deeply impressed with the desire of ascertaining the fate of the Norwegian settlers in Greenland, (of whom no intelligence had been received for many centuries), approbation of the wise and the good, and which will continue to charm as long as there is any relish for truth and nature and virtue. It would be foreign to the plan of our work, to analyse the productions of this lady in vindication of our opinion. They want not the meed of our approbation; and if Mr. Hazlitt were to read some of her prose writings, they possibly might teach him not to introduce unnecessary allusions to scripture language, which have the appearance of levity, and certainly do not adorn his pages. There are, moreover, personalities in them, which we could wish to see expunged in a future edition. With these deductions, we dismiss Mr. Hazlitt's Lectures; sin-lized Greenlanders in the precepts of cerely thanking him for the rich fund of entertainment and instruction, which he bas furnished in his handsomely printed volume. or at least of forming a new settlement, and devoting his life to the instruction of the barbarous and uncivi christianity;-Egede for many years attempted to interest the Danish Government in the furtherance of his benevolent designs. After various fruitless attempts, he succeeded in raising by subscription a capital of £2,000, and embarked with his family for that sterile country in 1721; whence, after an A Description of Greenland, by Hans Egede who was a missionary in that country for twenty-five years, 8vo. All-abode of fifteen years, he returned to man, London, 1818 Copenhagen in 1736. In 1757 (the year before his death), he published the description of Greenland contained in the present volume, which has been very seasonably re-printed, with the addition of a perspicuous historical introduction and a life of the author. THE regions in the neighbourhood of the North Pole have lately become the objects of increased curiosity; and among these regious Greenland has attracted more than usual interest. This country was first peopled by a colony from Iceland, which occupied both the western and eastern parts of the island. The first settlers in the west appear to have been destroyed by the natives, who are called Skrellings; and though a communication was preserved for several centuries between the eastern coast of Greenland aud some parts of the Da-as Spitzbergen, and the western shore nish territory, yet it was interrupted about the close of the fourteenth cen Greenland was first discovered in the year 981 or 982 by Eric surnamed Rufus or the Red, a Norwegian chieftain, by whom it was colonized. It lies about forty miles to the west of Iceland, beginning from 59° 50' north latitude; the eastern coast extends as far north has been traced by various navigators as far as 70 and 80 degrees. Passing our author's details relative to the climate and Natural History of Greenland, we shall direct our readers' attention to the honest missionary's account of their occupations and pursuits. tury by accumulated masses of ice, which formed an impenetrable barrier of considerable extent around the shore. Various attempts have been made, at different times, to explore a passage through this frozen rampart; but we The ordinary employments of the inhave no definite account of any attempt habitants of these dreary regions are of this kind which has hitherto been hunting and fishing. On shore they successful. And the opinions of emi-hunt the rein deer, and at sea they purnent philosophers and navigators, are so divided concerning the probability of success in discovering such a pasVOL. VIII. No. 49. Lit. Pan. N. S. Aug. 1, sue whales, morses, seals, and other marine animals. In some parts of Greenland, the rein deer are to be found 2 Q in vast herds, which it is dangerous | the water. In the Northern parts of to approach. The natives spend the Greenland, where the sea is entirely whole summer season in the chase, and frozen over during the winter, they have such keen sportsmen are they that the recourse to other contrivances for catchdeer have no secure retreat that is not the seals, which are sufficiently curious. known to their pursuers. But the whale fishery is their most important avocation. They first look out for holes in the ice, which the seals themselves make with their claws, about the bigness of a halfpenny that they may fetch their breath; after they have found any hole, they seat themelves near it upon a chair, made for this purpose; and as soon as they perceive that he come up to the hole and put his nose to for some air, they immediately strike him with a small harpoon, which they have ready in their hand, to which barpoon is fastened a strap a fathom long, which they hold with the other hand After he is struck, and cannot escape, they cut the hole so large, that they may get him up through it; and as soon as they have got his head above the ice, they can kill him with one blow of the fist. When they go whale catching, they put on their best gear or apparel, as if they were going to a wedding feast, fancying that if they did not come cleanly and neatly dressed, the whale, who cannot bear slovenly and dirty habits, would shunt them and fly from them. This is the manner of their expedition: about fifty persons, men and women, set out together in one of the large boats, called koue boats; the women carry along with them their sewing tackles, consisting of needles and thread, to sew and mend their husbands' spring coats, or jackets, if they should be torn or pierced through, as also to mend the boat, in case it should receive any damage; the men go in search of the whale, and when they have found him they strike him with their harpoons, to which are fastened lines or straps two or three fathoms long, made of seal skin, at the end of which they tie a bag of a whole seal skin, filled with air, like a bladder; to the end that the whale, when he finds himself wounded, and runs away with the harpoon, may the sooner be tired, the air bag hindering him from keeping long under water. When he grows tired, and loses strength, they attack him again with their spears and lances, till he is killed, and then they put on their spring coats, made of dressed seal skin, all of one piece, with boots gloves, and caps, sewed and laced so tight together that no water can The fourth way is this: in the spring, penetrate them. In this garb they jump into the sea, and begin to slice the fat of when the seals lie upou the ice near holes, him all round the body, even under the which they themselves make to get up and water; for in these coats they cannot sink, down, the Greenlanders, clothed with seal as they are always full of air; so that they skins, and a long perch in their hand, can, like the seal, stand upright in the creep along upon the ice, moving their sea; nay they are sometimes so daring, head forwards and backwards, and snortthat they will get upon the whale's backing like a seal, till they come so near him, while there is yet life in him, to make an end of him and cut away his fat. The seals are caught nearly in a similar manner, except that they make use of a smaller harpoon, to which is attached a line of seal skin, six or seven fathoms long, at the end of which is a bladder or bag made of a small seal skin filled with air, to keep the animal when wounded, from diving and being lost in A third way of catching seals is this: they make a great hole in the ice, or, in the spring, they find out holes made by the seals, through which they get upon the ice to lie aud bask themselves in the Sul. Near to these holes they place a low bench, upon which they lie down upon their belly, having first made a small kole near the large one, through which they let softly down a perch, sixteen or twenty yards long, headed with a harpoon, a strap being fastened to it, which one holds in his hand, while another (for there must be two employed in his sort of capture) who lies upon the bench with his face downwards, watches the coming of the seal, which when he perceives, he cries" Kæ;" whereupon he, who holds the pole, pushes and strikes the seal. that they can reach him with the perch and strike him. A fifth manner of catching seals is, when in the spring the current makes large holes in the ice the seals flock thither in great shoals; there the natives watch their opportunity to strike them the ice. There is yet a sixth way of catchwith their harpoons, and haul them upon ing seals, when the ice is not covered with snow, but clear and transparent; then the catchers lay under their feet foxes or dogs tails, or a piece of a bears hide, to stand Their winter habitation is a low hut built with stone and turf, two or three yards high, with a flat roof. In this hut the windows are on one side, made of the bowels of seals dressed and sewed together, or of the maws of halibut, and are white and transparent. On the other side their beds are placed, which consist of shelves or beuches made up of deal boards raised half a yard from the ground; their bedding is made of seal and rein deer skins. The Greenlanders enter their winter habitations immediately after Michaelmas, and quit them at the approach of Spring or towards the end of March, to reside in their summer residences, which are tents. These tents are made of rafts or long poles, set in a circular form, bending at the top, and resembling a sugar loaf, and covered with a double cover, of which the innermost is of seal or rein deer skins with the hairy side inward (if they be rich,) and the outermost also of the same sort of skins, without hair, dressed with fat, that the rain may not pierce them. In these tents they have their beds, and lamps to dress their meat with; also a curtain made of the guts or bowels of seals sewed together, through which they receive the day light instead of windows. Every master of a family has got such a tent, and a great woman's boat, to transport their tents and luggage from place to place, where their business calls them. frequently terminates in blindness, the eye being covered over with a white film. Their treatment of this is barbarous enough. They make a small hook with a needle, which they fasten to this skin, to loosen it from the eye, and then with a knife they pull it off.' Though the Greenlanders rarely exceed the age of fifty or sixty, they are subject to comparatively few diseases. The most common malady among them is weakness of sight (occasioned by the Several families live together in one of piercing spring winds as well as by the these houses or huts; each family occupy-reflection from the snow and ice) which ing a room by itself, separated from the rest by a wooden post, by which also the roof is supported; before which there is a hearth or fireplace, in which is placed a great lamp in the form of a half moon seated on a trevet; over this are hung their kettles of brass, copper, or marble, in which they boil their victuals; under the roof, just above the lamp, they have a sort of rack or shelf, to put their wet clothes upon to dry. The fore door or entry of the house is very low, so that they must stoop, and must creep in upon all fours, to get in at it; which is so contrived to keep the cold air out as much as possible. The inside of the houses is covered or lined with old skins, which before have served for the covering of their boats Some of these houses are so large, that they can harbour seven or eight families. Upon the benches or shelves, where their beds are placed, is the ordinary seat of the women, attending their work of sewing and making up the clothing. The men with their sons occupy the foremost parts of the benches, turning their back to the women: on the opposite side, under the windows, the men belonging to the family, or strangers, take their seats upon the benches there placed. Hospitality and mutual civility, together with strict integrity towards one another, are striking features in the character of the Greenlanders. They have as great an abhorrence of stealing or thieving among themselves, as any nation upon earth; wherefore they keep nothing shut up under lock and key, but leave every thing unlocked, that every body can come at it, without fear of losing it. This vice is so much detested by them, that if a maiden should steal any thing, she would thereby forfeit a good match. Yet if they can lay hands upon any thing belonging to us foreigners, they make no great scruple of conscience about it. But, as we now have lived some time in the country amongst them, and are looked upon as true inhabitants of the land, they at last have forborn to molest us any more that way. We have not room for our worthy missionary's account of the manners of the Greenlanders. They are in truth 'Delicate noses,' disgusting enough. he says Polygamy is very rarely practised among them. The nuptial ceremonies are as simple as the rest of their habits. When a young man likes a maiden, he commonly proposes it to their parents and relations on both sides: and after he has obtained their consent, he gets two or more old women to fetch the bride (and if he is a stout fellow, he will fetch her himself). They go to the place where the young woman is, and carry her away by force; for though she ever so much approves of the match, yet out of modesty she must make as if it went against the grain, and as if she was much ruffled at it; else she will be blamed and get an i name, as if she had been a love-sick weuch. After she is brought to the house of the bridegroom, she keeps for some time at a distance, and sits retired in some corner, upon the bench, with her hair dishevelled, and covering her face, being bashful and ashamed. In the mean while the bridegroom uses all the rhetorick he is master of, and spares no caresses to bring her to a compliance with his ardent wishes; and the good girl being at length persuaded and prevailed with, yields kindly to his ravishing embraces; and then they lie down together, and so the wedding is over. But sometimes they take a shorter way to work, which is to gratify their inclinations without the advice or consent of the parents,* Nevertheless their matrimony is not of so indissoluble a nature but that the husbands often repudiate and put away their wives, if either they do not suit their humours, or else, if they are barren and do not bring forth children (which they hold to be very ignominious), and marry others. But if they have children by them, they bear a great deal with them, and * When a man sends for his son's bride, to be conducted to his house, if he be in good circumstances he makes a great feast; and throws out for prizes several presents of poles, rafts, knives, and other toys. The same is practised the day following after the bedding of the new married couple. If they have children before the year is past, or if they often breed, they are blamed, and compared to dogs. A new married woman is ashamed for having changed her condition for a married state. keep them for life. It is not rare to see that a man beats his wife, and gives her black eyes, for her obstinacy and stubbornness sake; however they are soon reconciled and good friends again, without bearing any grudge. For, according to them, it siguifies nothing, that a man beats his wife; but they do not like that a master should drub a servant maid. Likewise they think it heinous that a mother chastises her children; and if she falls foul of her maid, it is with them unpardonable; and such a woman gets an ill name, The diversions, language, and superstitions of the Greenlanders furnish subjects for some interesting chapters. But for these we must refer our readers to the volume itself, which is handsomely printed, and is further ornamented with a good map and with numerous curious wood cuts, elucidating the manners, pursuits, &c. of the Greenlanders. The editor, to whom the public are much obliged for this production, has prefixed a life of the benevolent author, Hans Egede; and has also furnished a valuable introduction containing much historical information relative to this comparatively unknown country. The Life of Thomas Paine. By James This is an important and instructive Thomas Paine was born at Thetford |