We are left entirely to our own imagination to realize the great
bliss which Tamar is enjoying as a counterfoil to the miseries
reserved for his unfortunate brother, though the dark side of
the picture is minutely portrayed. Horrid warnings assail
* End of Book vi.
174 ESTIMATE OF MODERN ENGLISH POETS.
Gebir on the very morning Tamar is led over the waves to
his bridal home. About to snatch his triumph, he is circum-
vented by " pain, diseases, death,'' and all the other evils which

Stamp on the slippery pavement of the proud,
And ring their sounding emptiness through earth. *

Tamar's happiness involved that of his nymph bride and all
their associates. The disasters of Gebir destroyed the peace
of Charoba and the fortunes of their subjects : —

Thus raved Charoba : horror, grief, amaze,
Pervaded all the host ; all eyes were fix'd ;
All stricken motionless and mute. The feast
Was like the feast of Cepheus, when the sword
Of Phineus, white with wonder, shook restrain'd,
And the hilt rattled in his marble hand.
She heard not, saw not ; every sense was gone ;
One' passion banish'd all : dominion, praise,
The world itself was nothing. Senseless man !
What would thy fancy figure now from worlds ?
There is no world to them that grieve and love.t

This poem ought to form the evangelium of the Peace
Society, or of the respectable confraternity of Quakers. For
vice and virtue are identified in it with ambition and repose ;
and war, no matter what its object, earns for its instigator
eternal castigation.
