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[Sonnets. By Edward Moxon. (Printed for private circulation only.)]

(1833)

A copy of this unassuming work has fallen in our way. We are critics on publications only. It is like criticising a domestic conversation, or a friendly letter, to notice a little book, professedly not meant for the public eye. But we are pleased, and pleasure will speak out when discretion whispers it to be still. The author has professional reasons to be private. With them we have nothing to do, but to say, that if unabating industry, integrity above his avocation, unparalleled success for the short time he has entered upon it, are any auguries of success, this notice of ours will not hinder his calling. We have no parallel for this mixed character—qualities united seemingly at farthest variance—except in fine old Humphrey Mosely, the stationer (so were booksellers termed in the good old times), who, for love only, not for lucre, ushered into the world the first poems of Waller, the Juvenilia of Milton, besides a lesser galaxy of the poets of his day, with Prefaces, of his own honest composing, worthy of the strains they preluded to. Turn, reader, to his introduction to the Minor Poems of Milton, and say, if that soul, which inspirits it, worked for gain. H. M. (bibliomanists will gladlier recognise him by his initials) was, in his day, what we hope E. M. will prove in his, the fosterer of poetry, not merely the sordid trader in it. We must steal a sonnet or two from this sealed book, to justify our expectations. The first shall be 'To the Nightingale:' the originality of the concluding thought, and general sweetness of the versification, make us, reluctantly almost, give it the preference.

Lone midnight-soothing melancholy bird,

That send'st such music to my sleepless soul,

Chaining her faculties in fast controul,

Few listen to thy song; yet I have heard,

When Man and Nature slept, nor aspen stirr'd,

Thy mournful voice, sweet vigil of the sleeping—

And liken'd thee to some angelic mind,

That sits and mourns for erring mortals weeping.

The genius, not of groves, but of mankind,

Watch at this solemn hour o'er millions keeping.

In Eden's bowers, as mighty poets tell,

Did'st thou repeat, as now, that wailing call—

Those sorrowing notes might seem, sad Philomel,

Prophetic to have mourn'd of man the fall.

One more, and we have done. We mistake, if a Petrarch-like delicacy is not to be found in the following:—

Methought my Love was dead. O, 'twas a night

Of dreary weeping, and of bitter woe!

Methought I saw her lovely spirit go

With lingering looks into yon star so bright,

Which then assumed such a beauteous light,

That all the fires in heaven compared with this

Were scarce perceptible to my weak sight.

There seem'd henceforth the haven of my bliss;

To that I turn'd with fervency of soul,

And pray'd that morn might never break again,

But o'er me that pure planet still remain.

Alas! o'er it my vows had no controul.

The lone star set: I woke full glad, I deem,

To find my sorrow but a lover's dream!