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Amid red roses and white lilies there,
Which the soft breezes freshen as they fly,
Secure the cony haunts and timid hare,

And stag, with branching forehead broad and high.
These, fearless of the hunter's dart or snare,
Feed at their ease, or ruminating lie;

While, swarming in those wilds, from tuft or steep,
Dun deer or nimble goat disporting leap.'-6. 20,

Rogero soon descries the city of the enchantress. The humour of Ariosto is excellently given in the following description of its exterior:

A lofty wall at distance meets his eye,

Which girds a spacious town within its bound;

It seems as if its summit touched the sky,

And all appears like gold from top to ground.
Here, some one says, it is but alchemy-
And haply his opinion is unsound-

And haply he more wittily divines:

For me, I deem it gold because it shines.'-59.

We have next the entrance and interior of this magical city. The last stanza may have been suggested by a very pretty passage in the Epithalamium Palladii et Celerina of Claudian, a writer with whom Ariosto not unfrequently betrays an acquaintance.* The version is worthy of all praise.

'Above, a cornice round the gateway goes,
Some deal projecting from the colonnade,
In which is not a single part but glows
With rarest gems of India overlaid.
Propp'd at four points, the portal did repose
On columns of one solid diamond made.
Whether what met the eye was false or true,
Was never sight more fair or glad to view.
Upon the sill, and through the columns there,
Ran young and wanton girls in frolic sport;
Who haply yet would have appeared more fair,
Had they observed a woman's fitting port.

* Pennati passim pueri, quo quemque vocavit
Umbra, jacent, fluitant arcus, ramisque propinquant,
Pendentes placido suspirant igne pharetræ.
Pars vigiles ludunt, aut per virgulta vagantur;
Scrutentur nidos avium, vel roscida læti

Mala legunt, donum Veneris, flexusque sequuntur
Palmitis, et summas pennis librantur in ulmos.
Defendunt alii lucum, Dryadasque procaces
Spectandi cupidas, et rustica Numina pellunt.
Silvestresque deos, longeque tuentibus aurum
Flammea lascivis intendunt spicula Faunis.

All

All are arrayed in green, and garlands wear
Of the fresh leaf. Him these in courteous sort,
With many proffers and fair mien entice,
And welcome to this opening paradise,
'For so with reason I this place may call,
Where, it is my belief, that Love had birth,
Where life is spent in festive game and ball,
And still the passing moments fleet in mirth.
Here hoary-headed Thought ne'er comes at all,
Nor finds a place in any bosom. Dearth,
Nor yet Discomfort, never enter here,
Where Plenty fills her horn throughout the year.
Here, where with jovial and unclouded brow,
Glad April seems to wear a constant smile,
Troop bays and damsels: one, where fountains flow,
On the green margin sings in dulcet style;
Others, the hill or tufted tree below,

In dance, or no mean sport, the hours beguile,
While this, who shuns the reveller's noisy cheer,
Tells his love sorrows in his comrade's ear.
'Above the laurel and the pine-tree's height,

Through the tall beech and shaggy fir-tree's spray,
Sport little loves, with desultory flight:

These, at their conquests made, rejoiced and gay:
These, with the well directed shaft, take sight

At hearts; and those spread nets to catch their prey:
One wets his arrows in the brook which winds,

And one on whirling stone the weapon grinds.'-71.

After these extracts, we apprehend that we may leave the translator in the hands of our readers with perfect safety; we will only add, that we trust Mr. Rose is not wedded to his author for better for worse; and that he will abstain from rendering into English those passages, (few in number and easily detached,) which, however they may have been agreeable to the age of Ariosto, are very unfit for our own, or for any. Unfortunately for Italy, the desolation occasioned by the great plague, so signally felt at Florence, was the least of the evils it produced. That total disorganization of society which attended and followed it, left the viler passions of men without a check, and the writings of the period did not escape the general infection. Boccaccio published his Decameron soon after that dismal event, and his licentious scenes were probably in part supplied to him by those licentious times, and were, at any rate, in strict conformity with the prevailing taste. Had his work betrayed less talent, it might have sunk into that oblivion which is the lot of books that have nothing but their vice to recommend them; as it was, it has tended to impart to much of the literature of Italy, (and

not

not of Italy only,) a loose and profligate character, and Ariosto has received and propagated the moral contagion. Still it is satisfactory to find that, towards the close of life, he appears to have had some misgivings of heart upon this score. Ruscellai tells us that he had seen a printed copy of the Orlando in the hands of Galeasso Ariosto, the poet's brother, containing in the margin corrections for a future edition by Ludovico himself-that amongst these he observed a pen drawn across two of the most indecent stanzas (which he specifies) and that asterisks were marked against a whole tale, as if for its omission. We have thrown out this caution, (needlessly we hope,) because it sometimes happens that those who would shrink from the responsibility of writing what is profligate, do not feel the same scruple about translating it. Quod facis per alterum facis per te ipsum, is, however, good in morals as in law. We repeat, that we hope this caution is needless, that Mr. Rose will not sully his pages with that which he would be unwilling should meet the eye of the woman he respects or loves-that he will be satisfied with the praise of having improved the literature of his country without having offended its morals, and of having won a chaplet of that chaste laurel which has no reason to fear the anger of Him 'who formeth the thunder.'

1823.

ART. III. 1. Recollections of the Peninsula. By the Author of Sketches of India. 8vo. pp. 262. 2. Campaign of the Left Wing of the Allied Army, in the Western Pyrenees and South of France, in the Years 1813-14; under Field-Marshal the Marquess of Wellington. Illustrated by a detailed Plan of the Operations, and numerous Plates of Mountain and Ricer Scenery, drawn and etched by Captain Batty, of the First or Grenadier Guards, F.R.S., &c. &c. 4to. pp. 185. 1823.

WE

E combine these works in the same Article, because they afford, when taken together, an almost unbroken series of lively and natural sketches of the warfare in which the British peninsular army was engaged; of the manners and customs of the people among whom they were thrown; and of the beautiful and magnificent scenery through which the military operations were conducted, from the middle of the campaign of 1809 in Portugal and Spain, to the termination of the struggle on the plains of Languedoc. The authors of both volumes are evidently men of education and intelligence; young, enthusiastic, and ardent in the pursuit of their profession; quick and observant in noting the peculiarities of the various situations in which they were placed, and always disposed to pour the warm colouring of

a youthful

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a youthful and vigorous imagination over the sombre realities of a life of hardship and danger. Yet they are of very different character and pretensions. The anonymous writer of the Recollections' aspires only to relate what he saw, thought, and felt, as a man, a traveller, and a soldier, for five interesting years; he gives no regular memoir of the operations of the conflicting armies, and displays little acquaintance with the scientific departments of his profession. He describes-and apparently wishes to describenothing beyond the part which a regimental officer could act, and the view which he might, under common circumstances, and without much exertion, enjoy of the great events passing around him. To the general reader, however, the charm of these Recollections' will not be the less because they are interrupted by no technical details, and burthened with none of those tactical dissertations which can interest only the professional student. They offer a genuine, animated description of the life which a soldier leads in the field; they bring before us all the pleasures, the privations, the adventures, even the feelings, which belong to such á life; and they abound moreover with the naiveté of a frank and enthusiastic spirit upon which, in a foreign country and in a new and busy career, every object and every occurrence impressed surprize, and curiosity and delight. It is impossible not to feel amused and pleased with the writer. His generous sentiments so well become the English soldier and gentleman, his principles are all so evidently in their right places, and he retains, with a romantic tinge of character, so much of that early devotion to the profession of arms which a few years of experience are too often calculated to sober, that we thoroughly respect him, even while we are tempted to smile at the boyish enthusiasm which breathes through bis pages.

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Captain Batty, on the other hand, obtrudes on us less of his personal identity and feelings, and more of the deeply interesting and momentous actions which were in progress around him. He evinces a refined yet passionate taste for the beauties of nature, an energetic and cultivated mind, and a keen relish for the pomp and circumstance of war; but he ever appears more in earnest than the author of the Recollections' in the real business of his vocation. The other seems to love the profession for its romance, but he for its science. We find him joining the Foot Guards in the Pyrenees as an ensign, and, at once, preparing his own military surveys of the country, tracing every operation of the army as methodically as he would seat himself to a study, and entering into the scientific observation of every movement as if he had grown old in twenty campaigns. His narrative of operations, and particularly of that portion of them which was entrusted to the first

division

division of infantry wherein he served is always clear, full, and unaffected; and he has illustrated the whole by an excellent plan on a good scale of the country from the Bidassoa to Bayonne, on which the principal encounters of the combatants are very distinctly marked. But, while thus occupied in the immediate object of warfare, and in the improvement of his professional acquirements, he also found leisure, in the intervals between his duties in the field, to gratify an inclination for calmer pursuits. He has studded his volume with judicious and entertaining notices on the inhabitants, and on the sublime and picturesque features of the mountain regions in which he was quartered; and he has thus relieved much of the tedium attendant on the perusal of the mere military details of which his book is otherwise composed. The numerous etchings which he has given from his own landscape sketches are highly creditable to his taste and industry, and well calculated to support the reputation of a name already rendered familiar to the lover of art, by his beautiful views of French and German scenery. But it is time to enter on our own campaigning; which we shall do first with the lively author of the Recollections,' accompanying him until he is taken prisoner by the enemy, just at the period when our young guardsman opens his military career.

It was in the month of June, 1809, that the first of these writers, then a subaltern officer of infantry, embarked at Portsmouth to follow his regiment which had already sailed for Portugal; and a prosperous breeze soon bore him to the walls of Lisbon, near which he found his corps encamped. The delighted feelings with which he gazed on the new and striking scenes that surrounded him on landing, are expressed with all the freshness of early remembrance.

The appearance of every thing around me was so totally novel, that it is impossible for me to describe the singular, yet pleasing im pression produced on my mind. To find myself walking amid a concourse of people, differing in feature, complexion and dress, so widely from the natives of England; to hear the continued sound of a language I could not understand; and to find myself, though a youthful foreigner, an object of notice and respect, as a British officer, was at once strange and delightful. The picturesque dress of the common peasants; the long strings of loaded mules; the cabriolets; the bullock cars, as rude and ancient in their construction, as those in the frontispiece to the Georgics of the oldest Virgils; the water-carriers; the lemonade-sellers; and, above all, the monks and friars in the habits of their orders: the style of the houses, the handsome entrances, the elegant balconies, the rare and beautiful plants arranged in them, all raised round me a scene which, real as it was, seemed almost the deception of a theatre. In the small square of San Paulo we stopped, and breakfasted in a light, cheerful room, which looked out on the quay. Here, while sipping my coffee, I commanded a view of the noble harbour, crowded with

vessels;

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