Euthanasia. A Poem in Four Cantos. By Erasmus H. Brodie,
one of H.M.'s Inspectors of Schools. Canto L (Longman.)—Ur. Brodie gives us here the commencement of an epic poem, in the Sponserian metre, on the discovery of the North-West Passage. He combats two objections that he thinks may be raised; the one is that this is not a poetic age, and the other that an epic poem ought to treat of a distant event. He forgets a third, and a more serious difficulty, and that is, that to write a poem requires a poet, and that he does not fulfil this condition. Au inspector of schools ought to know that prose twisted into metre does not consti- tute poetry, and that the matter so fabricated has no value in the eyes of men or angels, though the columns of a country newspaper may afford an opening which was unknown in classiest times. We subjoin a stanza taken at random in confirmation of our views :—
" Thither swift Parry, first with prosp'rous gale, Had winged his flight, and others with less toil Since then had followed his advent'rous sail, Passing on either side a barren soil, Rockbound, though there no glaciers creep and coil ; Thither was Franklin bent at once to steer, Hoping thence south and west, without a foil,
To reach Pacific waves o'er waters clear, Nor knew what icy bars, what currents interfere."
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