This is a pretty little volume of graceful poems, printed “at the author’s private press, for private distribution only.”  They are, however, entitled by their merits, to more extensive, or public circulation; for many of them evince the good taste and pure feelings of the writer.  Some of the pieces relate to domestic circumstances, others are calculated to cheat “sorrow of a smile,” whilst all are, to use a set phrase, highly honourable to the head and heart of the author.  In proof of this, we could detach several pages; but we have only space for a few: 

SONG.

  As flowers, that seem the light to shun
  At evening’s dusk and morning’s haze,
  Expand beneath the noon-tide sun,
  And bloom to beauty in his rays,
  So maidens, in a lover’s eyes,
  A thousand times more lovely grow,
  Yield added sweetness to his sighs,
  And with unwonted graces glow.

  As gems from light their brilliance gain,
  And brightest shine when shone upon,
  Nor half their orient rays retain,
  When light wanes dim and day is gone: 
  So Beauty beams, for one dear one! 
  Acquires fresh splendour in his sight,
  Her life—­her light—­her day—­her sun—­
  Her harbinger of all that’s bright![2]

[2] “There is nothing new under the sun;” Solomon was right.  I had written these lines from experiencing the truth of them, and really imagined I had been the first to express, what so many must have felt; but on looking over Rogers’s delicious little volume of Poems, some time after this was penned, I find he has, with his usual felicity, noted the same effect.  I give his Text and Commentary; they occur in his beautiful poem, “Human Life,” speaking of a girl in love, he says: 

      “—­soon her looks the rapturous truth avow,
      Lovely before, oh, say how lovely now!”

    On which he afterwards remarks: 

    “Is it not true that the young not only appear to be, but really
    are, most beautiful in the presence of those they love?  It calls
    forth all their beauty.”

    Such a coincidence might almost induce me to exclaim with the
    plagiarising pedant of antiquity, “Pereant qui ante nos nostra
    dixerunt!”

ANECDOTE VERSIFIED.

Lord Albemarle to Mademoiselle Gaucher, on seeing her look very earnestly at the Evening Star.

  Oh! do not gaze upon that star,
  That distant star, so earnestly,
  If thou would’st not my pleasure mar—­
  For ah!  I cannot give it thee.[3]

  And, such is my unbounded love,
  Thou should’st not gaze upon a thing
  I would not make thee mistress of,
  And prove in love, at least, a King!

[3] Lord Albemarle, when advanced in years, was the lover and protector of Mademoiselle Gaucher.  Her name of infancy, and that by which she was more endeared to her admirer, was Lolotte.  One evening, as they were walking together, perceiving her eyes fixed on a star, he said to her, “Do not look at it so earnestly, my dear, I cannot give it you!”—­Never, says Marmontel, did love express itself more delicately.

STANZAS TO THE SHADE OF ——­