We are happy to find that even upon short notice, and late in the Season, our Members are too much attached to their meetings to permit us to open with a Chest scantily furnished. All have indeed been industrious and successful, and while we feel real pleasure in recognising many and old friend, it is also gratifying to perceive that we have acquired some new ones.
We are happy to hear of the Promotion of Honesty, and as we are always ready to patronize merit, especially when in fashion, have promoted it to the honour of commencing the Readings of the Season.
The Address with a Kaleidoscope has no necessity to borrow its aid to make it appear indeed a Pearl. Many of the peculiarities of that fascinating and whimsical instrument are touched with delicacy and correctness; and the poem deserves to be inscribed on the tube of the most attractive. We do not mean upon the humble pipes of tin or paper, which with a few bits of common glass and a hook are to be seen at the corner of every street, and may be bought for three shillings a dozen, but such as that made by Rundell and Bridges, where real gems are made, like Kehama, to possess the apparent property of multiplication.
We are not particularly anxious to encourage communications in French, but the Count Léandre is as usual so gallant, and his verses so suberbe, that we cannot refuse them admittance. We congratulate him on the progress he has made in our language, but are in doubt whether on occasions where precision was of importance, his French would not be the easier understood of the two. The fragment of the Grande Histoire des Genies appears to be from another hand, and is of a more serious character. Some parts are exceedingly well written, and the Characters of Imagination, Taste and Science are well discriminated, tho’ some of the attributes prove their Gallic origin. Imagination is the best described but the feelings that give a pair of compasses as the sceptre of Taste prove their relationship to those which exact from the modern Drama, a severe conformance to all the classic unities; which measure and weigh the length of an act, and will not even permit Nature to introduce a burst of feeling, or an expression of tenderness, if inconsistent with the arbitrary laws which yet profess to have taken her for their model. Science also is not much indebted to the Author for her throne of dusty books, and indeed he seems to be less intimately acquainted with her than with either of her rivals.
Want of time compels us to take a much slighter notice of many pieces than we had otherwise intended, but the Poem to the Authoress of the Arctic Expeditions is marked by the neatness and ingenuity which designate its writer, and the first number of the Family Circle by the sound sense and elegance which we have often admired in works from the same hand.