he case with the work before us; and it really seems
unnecessary to make any other remark on its versification.

The author, however, entertains a different opinion of it. So far from
apprehending that it may cost his readers some trouble to convince
themselves that the greater part of the book is not mere prose, written
out into the form of verse, he is persuaded that its melody is more
obvious and perceptible than that of our vulgar measures. "One
advantage," says Mr. Southey, "this metre _assuredly_ possesses; the
dullest reader cannot distort it into discord: he may read it with a
_prose mouth_, but its flow and fall will still be perceptible." We are
afraid, there are duller readers in the world than Mr. Southey is aware
of.

* * * * *

The subject of this poem is almost as ill chosen as the diction; and the
conduct of the fable as disorderly as the versification. The corporation
of magicians, that inhabit "the Domdaniel caverns, under the roots of
the ocean," had discovered, that a terrible _destroyer_ was likely to
rise up against them from the seed of Hodeirah, a worthy Arab, with
eight fine children. Immediately the murder of all those innocents is
resolved on; and a sturdy assassin sent with instructions to destroy the
whole family (as Mr. Southey has it) "root and branch." The good man,
accordingly, and seven of his children, are dispatched; but a cloud
comes over the mother and the remaining child; and the poem opens with
the picture of the widow and her orphan wandering, by night, over the
desarts of Arabia. The old lady, indeed, might as well have fallen under
the dagger of the Domdanielite; for she dies, without doing anything for
her child, in the end of the first book; and little Thalaba is left
crying in the wilderness. Here he is picked up by a good old Arab, who
takes him home, and educates him like a pious mussulman; and he and the
old man's daughter fall in love with each other, according to the
invariable custom in all such cases. The magicians, in the meantime, are
hunting him over the face of the whole earth; and one of them gets near
enough to draw his dagger to stab him, when a providential _simoom_ lays
him dead on the sand. From the dead sorcerer's finger, Thalaba takes a
ring, inscribed with some unintelligible characters, which he is enabled
to interpret by the help of some other unintelligible characters that he
finds on the forehead of a locust; and soon