that there was one death-blow
appointed for him and Thalaba, is yet represented, in the concluding
scene, as engaged with him in furious combat, and aiming many a deadly
blow at that life on which his own was dependent. If the innocent
characters in this poem were not delineated with more truth and feeling,
the notoriety of the author would scarcely have induced us to bestow so
much time on its examination.

Though the tissue of adventures through which Thalaba is conducted in
the course of this production, be sufficiently various and
extraordinary, we must not set down any part of the incidents to the
credit of the author's invention. He has taken great pains, indeed, to
guard against such a supposition; and has been as scrupulously correct
in the citation of his authorities, as if he were the compiler of a true
history, and thought his reputation would be ruined by the imputation of
a single fiction. There is not a prodigy, accordingly, or a description,
for which he does not fairly produce his vouchers, and generally lays
before his readers the whole original passage from which his imitation
has been taken. In this way, it turns out, that the book is entirely
composed of scraps, borrowed from the oriental tale books, and travels
into the Mahometan countries, seasoned up for the English reader with
some fragments of our own ballads, and shreds of our older sermons. The
composition and harmony of the work, accordingly, is much like the
pattern of that patch-work drapery that is sometimes to be met with in
the mansions of the industrious, where a blue tree overshadows a
shell-fish, and a gigantic butterfly seems ready to swallow up Palemon
and Lavinia. The author has the merit merely of cutting out each of his
figures from the piece where its inventor had placed it, and stitching
them down together in these judicious combinations.

It is impossible to peruse this poem, with the notes, without feeling
that it is the fruit of much reading, undertaken for the express purpose
of fabricating some such performance. The author has set out with a
resolution to make an oriental story, and a determination to find the
materials of it in the books to which he had access. Every incident,
therefore, and description--every superstitious usage, or singular
tradition, that appeared to him susceptible of poetical embellishment,
or capable of picturesque representation, he has set down for this
purpose, and adopted such a fable and plan