The translation from the Greek of Oudeis, which is the first poem we shall read this evening, represents the Lady Venus in a state of distress, occasioned we suppose by her too free indulgence in the fashionable follies of the day, and reduced to the extremity of sending her doves to market; a state not entirely unknown to high-dressed ladies of modern times, for a thousand years have not passed away since a certain duchess, when she found the devil in her pocket, was in the practice of sending to Faulders a set of books from her library, to obtain the means of exorcising him. The magic volumes for a time produced the desired effect. The daemon was expelled from her pocket, but he took full possession of her library. We hope the same fate will not attend the Queen of Love but that the price the happy monarch paid for her turtles will expel all evil spirits from her abode and admit none but the good Angel Economy to regulate the stipend with which her too good Papa had the kindness to endow her. The poet Oudeis is an author with whom we are unacquainted, and we shall think ourselves obliged if any of our learned readers will furnish us with particulars of his history and writings. The poem before us appears rather to be an introduction to which there hangs a tale, than a complete effusion. We long to know what His Majesty has done with the doves, for as they are immortal, they cannot be killed and eaten however fond he may be of Pigeon Pie. The little song “Believe Me Love I’ll Never Change” deserves a distinguished place among poems of this kind. We are pleased with the elegant verses addressed to Moth and rejoice that they have produced an answer of equal or superior beauty, but we should be still more delighted if they would stimulate the emerald-winged Moth to take a longer and a loftier flight, for which Apollo has given her such superior strength of pinion. She now flies but seldom, and takes such short and irregular excursions, that we scarcely can distinguish her plumage from those that are perpetually flitting before us.
A pleasing vein of sentiment runs thro’ the “Effusions on My Husband’s Birthday”, and we may remark the same on the “Verses in Answer to Anacreon Moore’s Beautiful Lines”.
For Hope shall brighten days to come
And memory gild the past.
The former poem illustrates the sentiment of Moore’s verses by recalling the pleasures that have passed away, the answer by bringing forward the gloomy parts of life’s picture. On the disposition of mind to select the bright or the gloomy in a great measure depends the happiness of declining years, and beautiful as we think the latter verses and true in the main, we recommend a cultivation of the contrary.
Then Hope shall brighten days to come
And memory gild the past.
We think the extempore verses addressed to the Lady of Lavant very beautiful, but wish to be informed whether the name has any occult meaning. The free Translation of Buondelmonte’s Sonnet is very elegant, tho’ the Sonnet is compressed to an epigram and approaches the form of the ancient epigram to which perhaps the Italian sonnet is more nearly allied, than the little pungent poem so denominated by the English.
In “The Mouse and the Oyster” our auditors may find an illustration of the old proverb of “Look before you leap”, and be warned by the fate of the herd, not to suffer their inordinate appetites to put their head in danger. On the two Cantos of the Third Book of the Restoration we can only observe that they do not much advance the story tho’ they give some little glimmerings of light into its future progress, and bring up the affairs of the Cavern to the termination of the fight as Rappin occasionally stops the progress of his Civil History to bring up the affairs of the church to the same period, an allusion which we borrow from the facetious author of Tristram Shandy.