sity'-the pride that burns amidst the ruins of their | divine natures, and their genius, that feels with the ardour and debates with the eloquence of heaven." pp. 242, 247. We have already said, that we think Shirley overpraised-but he is praised with great eloquence. There is but little said of Dryden in the Essay-but it is said with force and with judgment. In speaking of Pope and his contemporaries, Mr. C. touches on debateable ground: And we shall close our quotations from this part of his work, with the passage in which he announces his own indulgent, and, perhaps, latitudinarian opinions. “There are exclusionists in taste, who think that they cannot speak with sufficient disparagement of the English poets of the first part of the eighteenth century; and they are armed with a noble provocative to English contempt, when they have it to say that those poets belong to a french school. Indeed Dryden himself is generally included in that school; though more genuine English is to be found in no man's pages. But in poetry there are many mansions. I am free to confess, that I can pass from the elder writers, and still find a charm in the correct and equable sweetness of Parnell. Conscious that his diction has not the freedom and volubility of the better strains of the elder time, I cannot but remark his exemption from the quaintness and false metaphor which so often disfigure the style of the preceding age; nor deny my respect to the select choice of his expression, the clearness and keeping of his imagery, and the pensive dignity of his moral feeling. Pope gave our heroic couplet its strictest melody and tersest expression. D'un mot mis en sa place il enseigne le pouvoir. If his contemporaries forgot other poets in admiring him, let him not be robbed of his just fame on pretence that a part of it was superfluous. The public ear was long fatigued with repetitions of his manner; but if we place ourselves in the situation of those to whom his brilliancy, succinctness and animation were wholly new, we cannot wonder at their being captivated to the fondest admiration. In order to do justice to Pope, we should forget his imitators, if that were possible; but it is easier to remember than to forget by an effort to acquire associations than to shake them off. Every one may recollect how often the most beautiful air has palled upon his ear, and grown insipid, from being played or sung by vulgar musicians. It is the same thing with regard to Pope's versification. That his peculiar rhythm and manner are the very best in the whole range of our poetry need not be asserted. He has a gracefully peculiar manner, though it is not calculated to be an universal one; and where, indeed, shall we find the style of poetry that could be pronounced an exclusive model for every composer? His pauses have little variety, and his phrases are too much weighed in the balance of antithesis. But let us look to the spirit that points his antithesis, and to the rapid precision of his thoughts, and we shall forgive him for being too antithetic and sententious."-pp. 259-262. And to this is subjoined a long argument, to show that Mr. Bowles is mistaken in supposing that a poet should always draw his images from the works of nature, and not from those of art. We have no room at present for any discussion of the question; but we do not think it is quite fairly stated in the passage to which we have referred; and confess that we are rather inclined, on the whole, to adhere to the creed of Mr. Bowles. Of the Specimens, which compose the body of the work, we cannot pretend to give any account. They are themselves but tiny and slender fragments of the works from which they are taken; and to abridge them further would be to reduce them to mere dust and rubbish. Besides, we are not called upon to review the poets of England for the last four hundred years!-but only the present editor and critic. In the little we have yet to say, therefore, we shall treat only of the merits of Mr. Campbell. His account of Hall and Chamberlayn is what struck us most in his first volumes-probably because neither of the writers whom he so judiciously praises were formerly familiar to us. Hall, who was the founder of our satirical poetry, wrote his satires about the year 1597, when only twenty-three years old; and whether we consider the age of the man or of the world, they appear to us equally wonderful. In this extraordinary work, He discovered," says Mr. C. " not only the early vigour of his own genius, but the power and pliability of his native tongue: for in the point, and volubility and vigour of Hall's numbers, we might frequently imagine ourselves perusing Dryden This may be exemplified in the harmony and picturesqueness of the following description of a magnif icent rural mansion, which the traveller approaches in the hopes of reaching the seat of ancient hospitality, but finds it deserted by its selfish owner. Beat the broad gates, a goodly hollow sound, With double echoes, doth again rebound; But not a dog doth bark to welcome thee, Nor churlish porter canst thou chafing see. All dumb and silent, like the dead of night,' The marble pavement hid with desert weed, Or dwelling of some sleepy Sybarite; With house-leek, thistle, dock, and hemlock seed. * Look to the tow'red chimnies, which should be The wind-pipes of good hospitality, Through which it breatheth to the open air, Betokening life and liberal welfare, Lo, there th' unthankful swallow takes her rest, * * * And fills the tunnel with her circled nest. * "His satires are neither cramped by personal hostility, nor spun out to vague declamations on vice; but give us the form and pressure of the times, exhibited in the faults of coeval literature, and in the foppery or sordid traits of prevailing manners. The age was undoubtedly fertile in eccentricity." Vol. ii. pp. 257, 258. What he says of Chamberlayn, and the extracts he has made from his Pharonnida, have made us quite impatient for an opportunity of perusing the whole poem. The poetical merits of Ben Jonson are chiefly discussed in the Essay; and the No. tice is principally biographical. It is very pleasingly written, though with an affectionate leaning towards his hero. The following short passage affords a fair specimen of the good sense and good temper of all Mr. Campbell's apologies. The poet's journey to Scotland (1617) awakens many pleasing recollections, when we conceive him anticipating his welcome among a people who might be proud of a share in his ancestry, and setting out, miles, on foot. We are assured, by one who saw with manly strength, on a journey of four hundred him in Scotland, that he was treated with respect and affection among the nobility and gentry; nor 294 was the romantic scenery of the country lost upon The notice of Cotton may be quoted, as a perfect model for such slight memorials of writers of the middle order. "There is a careless and happy humour in this poet's Voyage to Ireland, which seems to anticipate the manner of Anstey, in the Bath Guide. The tasteless indelicacy of his parody of the Eneid has found but too many admirers. His imitations of Lucian betray the grossest misconception of humorous effect, when he attempts to burlesque that which is ludicrous already. He was acquainted with French and Italian; and among several works from the former language, translated the Horace of Corneille, and Montaigne's Essays. "The father of Cotton is described by Lord Clarendon as an accomplished and honourable man, who was driven by domestic afflictions to habits which rendered his age less reverenced than his youth, and made his best friends wish that he had not lived so long. From him our poet inherited an incumbered estate, with a disposition to extravagance little calculated to improve it. After having studied at Cambridge, and returned from his travels abroad, he married the daughter of Sir Thomas Owthorp, in Nottinghamshire. He went to Ireland as a captain in the army; but of his military progress nothing is recorded. Having embraced the soldier's life merely as a shift in distress, he was not likely to pursue it with much ambition. It was probably in Ireland that he met with his second wife, Mary, Countess-Dowager of Ardglass, the widow of Lord Cornwall. She had a jointure of 1500l. a year, secured from his imprudent management. He died insolvent, at Westminster. One of his favourite recreations was angling; and his house, which was situated on the Dovs, a fine trout stream which divides the counties of Derby and Stafford, was the frequent resort of his friend Isaac Walton. There he built a fishing house, Piscatoribus sacrum,' with the initials of honest Isaac's name and his own united in ciphers over the door. The walls were painted with fishing-scenes, and the portraits of Cotton and Walton were upon the beaufet.pp. 293, 294. There is a very beautiful and affectionate account of Parnell.-But there is more power of writing, and more depth and delicacy of feeling, in the following masterly account and estimate of Lillo. "George Lillo, was the son of a Dutch jeweller, who married an Englishwoman, and settled in London. Our poet was born near Moorfields, was bred to his father's business, and followed it for many years. The story of his dying in distress was a fiction of Hammond, the poet; for he bequeathed a considerable property to his nephew, whom he made his heir. It has been said, that this bequest "Lillo is the tragic poet of middling and familiar "The peculiar choice of his subjects was, at all events, happy and commendable, as far as it regarded himself; for his talents never succeeded so well when he ventured out of them. But it is another question, whether the familiar cast of those subjects was fitted to constitute a more genuine, or only a subordinate walk in tragedy. Undoubtedly the genuine delineation of the human heart will please us, from whatever station or circumstances of life it is derived: and, in the simple pathos of tragedy, probably very little difference will be felt from the choice of characters being station. But something more than pathos is repitched above or below the line of mediocrity in quired in tragedy; and the very pain that attends our sympathy, would seem to require agreeable and romantic associations of the fancy to be blended with its poignancy. Whatever attaches ideas of importance, publicity, and elevation to the object of pity, forms a brightening and alluring medium to the imagination. Athens herself, with all her simplicity and democracy, delighted on the stage 10 'Let gorgeous Tragedy In scepter'd pall come sweeping by.' "Even situations far depressed beneath the familtar mediocrity of life, are more picturesque and poetical than its ordinary level. It is certainly on the virtues of the middling rank of life, that the strength and comforts of society chiefly depend, in the same way as we look for the harvest, not on cliffs and precipices, but on the easy slope and the uniform plain. But the painter does not in general fix on level countries for the subjects of his noblest landscapes. There is an analogy, I conceive, to this in the moral painting of tragedy. Disparities of station give it boldness of outline. The commanding situations of life are its mountain scenery the region where its storm and sunshine may be portrayed in their strongest contrast and colouring." Vol. v. pp. 58-62. Nothing, we think, can be more exquisite than this criticism, though we are far from being entire converts to its doctrines; and are moreover of opinion, that the merits of Lillo, as a poet at least, are considerably overrated. There is a flatness and a weakness in his diction, that we think must have struck Mr. C. more than he has acknowledged,—and a tone, occasionally, both of vulgarity and of paltry affectation, that counteracts the pathetic effect of his conceptions, and does injustice to the experiment of domestic tragedy. The critique on Thomson is distinguished by the same fine tact, candour, and concise ness. "Habits of early admiration teach us all to look back upon this poet as the favourite companion of our solitary walks, and as the author who has first or chiefly reflected back to our minds a heightened and refined sensation of the delight which rural scenery affords us. The judgment of cooler years may somewhat abate our estimation of him, though it will still leave us the essential features of his poetical character to abide the test of reflection. The unvaried pomp of his diction suggests a most unfavourable comparison with the manly and idiomatic simplicity of Cowper: at the same time, the pervading spirit and feeling of his poetry is in general more bland and delightful than that of his great rival in rural description. Thomson seems to con: template the creation with an eye of unqualified pleasure and ecstasy, and to love its inhabitants with a lofty and hallowed feeling of religious happiness; Cowper has also his philanthropy, but it is dashed with religious terrors, and with themes of satire, regret, and reprehension. Cowper's image of nature is more curiously distinct and familiar. Thomson carries our associations through a wider circuit of speculation and sympathy. His touches cannot be more faithful than Cowper's, but they are more soft and select, and less disturbed by the intrusion of homely objects. It is but justice to say, that amidst the feeling and fancy of the Seasons, we meet with interruptions of declamation, heavy narrative, and unhappy digression-with a parhelion eloquence that throws a counterfeit glow of expression on common-place ideas as when he treats us to the solemnly ridiculous bathing of Musidora; or draws from the classics instead of nature; or, after invoking inspiration from her hermit seat, makes his dedicatory bow to a patronizing countess, or speaker of the House of Commons. As long as he dwells in the pure contemplation of nature, and appeals to the universal poetry of the human breast, his redundant style comes to us as something venial and adventitious-it is the flowing vesture of the druid; and perhaps to the general experience is rather imposing; but when he returns to the familiar narrations or courtesies of life, the same diction ceases to seem the mantle of inspiration, and only strikes us by its unwieldy difference from the common costume of expression."-pp. 215-218. There is the same delicacy of taste, and beauty of writing, in the following remarks on Collins-though we think the Specimens afterwards given from this exquisite poet are rather niggardly. "Collins published his Oriental Eclogues while "That from some mountain's side And in the line, Where faint and sickly winds "A cloud of obscurity sometimes rests on his highest conceptions, arising from the fineness of his associations, and the daring sweep of his illusions; little with the light of his imagery, or the warmth but the shadow is transitory, and interferes very of his feelings. The absence of even this speck of mysticism from his Ode on the Passions is perhaps popularity. Nothing, however, is common-place the happy circumstance that secured its unbounded in Collins. The pastoral eclogue, which is insipid in all other English hands, assumes in his a touching interest, and a picturesque air of novelty. It seems that he himself ultimately undervalued those eclogues, as deficient in characteristic manners; but surely no just reader of them cares any more about this circumstance than about the authenticity of the tale of Troy. ambition; and he planned several tragedies. Had "In his Ode to Fear he hints at his dramatic he lived to enjoy and adorn existence, it is not easy to conceive his sensitive spirit and harmonious ear descending to mediocrity in any path of poetry; yet it may be doubted if his mind had not a passion for the visionary and remote forms of imagina tion, too strong and exclusive for the general purposes of the drama. His genius loved to breathe rather in the preternatural and ideal element of poetry, than in the atmosphere of imitation, which lies closest to real life; and his notions of poetical excellence, whatever vows he might address to the manners,' were still tending to the vast, the undefinable, and the abstract. Certainly, however, he carried sensibility and tenderness into the highest regions of abstracted thought: His enthusiasm spreads a glow even amongst the shadowy tribes of mind,' and his allegory is as sensible to the heart as it is visible to the fancy."-pp. 310, 312. Though we are afraid our extracts are becoming unreasonable, we cannot resist indulg ing our own nationality, by producing this specimen of Mr. Campbell's. The admirers of the Gentle Shepherd must perhaps be contented to share some suspicion of national partiality, while they do justice to their own feeling of its merit. Yet as this drama is a picture of rustic Scotland, it would perhaps be saying little for its fidelity, if it yielded no more agreeableness to the breast of a native than he could expound to a stranger by the strict letter of criti cism. We should think the painter had finished the likeness of a mother very indifferently, if it did not bring home to her children traits of undefinable expression which had escaped every eye but that of familiar affection. Ramsay had not the force of Burns; but, neither, in just proportion to his merits, is he likely to be felt by an English reader. The fire of Burns' wit and passion glows through an obscure dialect by its confinement to short and concentrated bursts. The interest which Ramsay excites is spread over a long poem, deline ating manners more than passions, and the mind must be at home both in the language and manners, to appreciate the skill and comic archness with which he has heightened the display of rustic character without giving it vulgarity, and refined the view of peasant life by situations of sweetness and tenderness, without departing in the least degree from its simplicity. The Gentle Shepherd stands quite apart from the general pastoral poetry of modern Europe. It has no satyrs, nor featureless simpletons, nor drowsy and still landscapes of nature, but distinct characters and amusing incidents. The principal shepherd never speaks out of consistency with the habits of a peasant; but he moves in that sphere with such a manly spirit, with so much cheerful sensibility to its humble joys, with maxims of life so rational and independent, and with an ascendency over his fellow swains so well maintained by his force of character, that if we could suppose the pacific scenes of the drama to be suddenly changed into situations of trouble and danger, we should, in exact consistency with our former idea of him, expect him to become the leader of the peasants, and the Tell of his native hamlet. Nor is the character of his mistress less beautifully conceived. She is represented, like himself, as elevated, by a fortunate discovery, from obscure to opulent life, yet as equally capable of being the ornament of either. A Richardson or a D'Arblay, had they continued her history, might have heightened the portrait, but they would not have altered its outline. Like the poetry of Tasso and Ariosto, that of the Gentle Shepherd is engraven on the memory, and has sunk into the heart, of its native country. Its verses have passed into proverbs, and it continues to be the delight and solace of the peasantry whom it describes."-pp. 344-346. We think the merits of Akenside underrated, and those of Churchill exaggerated: But we have found no passage in which the amiable but equitable and reasonable indulgence of Mr. Campbell's mind is so conspicuous, as in his account of Chatterton-and it is no slight thing for a poet to have kept himself cool and temperate, on a theme which has hurried so many inferior spirits into passion and extravagance. the flush of his gay hopes and busy projects ter minated in despair. The particular causes which led to his catastrophe have not been distinctly traced. His own descriptions of his prospects are but little to be trusted; for while apparently exchanging his shadowy visions of Rowley for the real adventures of life, he was still moving under the spell of an imagination that saw every thing in exaggerated colours. Out of this dream he was at length awakened, when he found that he had miscalculated the chances of patronage and the profits of literary labour. "The heart which can peruse the fate of Chatterton without being moved, is little to be envied for its tranquillity; but the intellects of those men must be as deficient as their hearts are uncharitable, who, confounding all shades of moral distinction, have ranked his literary fiction of Rowley in the same class of crimes with pecuniary forgery; and have calculated that if he had not died by his own hand he would have probably ended his days upon a gallows! This disgusting sentence has been pronounced upon a youth who was exemplary for severe study, temperance, and natural affection. His Rowleian forgery must indeed be pronounced improper by the general law which condemns all serious and deliberate falsifications; but it deprived no man of his fame; it had no sacrilegious interference with the memory of departed genius; it had not, like Lauder's imposture, any malignant motive to rob a party, or a country, of a name which was its pride and ornament. "Setting aside the opinion of those uncharitable biographers, whose imaginations have conducted him to the gibbet, it may be owned that his unformed character exhibited strong and conflicting elements of good and evil. Even the momentary project of the infidel boy to become a Methodist preacher, betrays an obliquity of design and a contempt of human credulity that is not very amiable. But had he been spared, his pride and ambition would probably have come to flow in their proper channels. His understanding would have taught him the practical value of truth and the dignity of virtue, and he would have despised artifice, when he had felt the strength and security of wisdom. In estimating the promises of his genius, I would rather lean to the utmost enthusiasm of his admirers, than to the cold opinion of those who are afraid of being blinded to the defects of the poems attribwhich is thrown over them. uted to Rowley, by the veil of obsolete phraseology The inequality of Chatterton's various productions may be compared to the disproportions of the ungrown giant. His works had nothing of the definite neatness of that precocious talent which stops short in early maturity. His thirst for knowledge was that of a being taught by instinct to lay up materials for the exercise of great and unde"When we conceive," says Mr. C., "the in-veloped powers. Even in his favourite maxiin, spired boy transporting himself in imagination back pushed it might be to hyperbole, that a man by to the days of his fictitious Rowley, embodying his abstinence and perseverance might accomplish ideal character, and giving to airy nothing a local whatever he pleased, may be traced the indications habitation and a name,' we may forget the im- of a genius which nature had meant to achieve works postor in the enthusiast, and forgive the falsehood of immortality. Tasso alone can be compared to him of his reverie for its beauty and ingenuity. One as a juvenile prodigy. No English poet ever equalof his companions has described the air of rapture led him at the same age."-Vol. vi. pp. 156-162. and inspiration with which he used to repeat his passages from Rowley, and the delight which he took to contemplate the church of St. Mary Redcliffe, while it awoke the associations of antiquity in his romantic mind. There was one spot in particular, full in view of the church, where he "Goldsmith's poetry enjoys a calm and steady would often lay himself down, and fix his eyes, as popularity. It inspires us, indeed, with no admirait were, in a trance. On Sundays, as long as day-tion of daring design, or of fertile invention; but it light lasted, he would walk alone in the country around Bristol, taking drawings of churches, or other objects that struck his imagination. "During the few months of his existence in London, his letters to his mother and sister, which were always accompanied with presents, expressed the most joyous anticipations. But suddenly all The account of Gray is excellent, and that of Goldsmith delightful. We can afford to give but an inconsiderable part of it. presents, within its narrow limits, a distinct and unbroken view of poetical delightfulness. His descriptions and sentiments have the pure zest of nature. He is refined without false delicacy, and correct without insipidity. Perhaps there is an intellectual composure in his manner, which may, in some passages, be said to approach to the reserved and pro certain tone of exaggeration is incident, we fear, to the sort of writing in which we are engaged. Reckoning a little too much, perhaps, on the dulness of our readers, we are often led, unconsciously, to overstate ou sentiments, in order to make them under. stood; and, where a little controversial warmth is added to a little love of effect, an excess of colouring is apt to steal over the canvass which ultimately offends no eye so much as our own. We gladly make this expiation to the shade of our illustrious countryman. In his observations on Joseph Warton, Mr. C. resumes the controversy about the poetica! character of Pope, upon which he had entered at the close of his Essay; and as to which we hope to have some other opportunity of giving our opinions. At present, however, we must hasten to a conclusion; and shall make our last extracts from the notice of Cowper, which is drawn up on somewhat of a larger scale than any other in the work. The abstract of his life is given with great tenderness and beauty, and with considerable fulness of detail. But the remarks on his poetry are the most precious,—and are all that we have now room to borrow. saic; but he unbends from this graver strain of reflection, to tenderness, and even to playfulness, with an ease and grace almost exclusively his own: and connects extensive views of the happiness and interests of society, with pictures of life, that touch the heart by their familiarity. His language is certainly simple, though it is not cast in a rugged or careless mould. He is no disciple of the gaunt and famished school of simplicity. Deliberately as he wrote, he cannot be accused of wanting natural and idiomatic expression; but still it is select and refined expression. He uses the ornaments which must always distinguish true poetry from prose; and when he adopts colloquial plainness, it is with the utmost care and skill, to avoid a vulgar humility. There is more of this elegant simplicity, of this chaste economy and choice of words, in Goldsmith, than in any modern poet, or perhaps than would be attainable or desirable as a standard for every writer of rhyme. In extensive narrative poems such a style would be too difficult. There is a noble propriety even in the careless strength of great poems as in the roughness of castle walls; and, generally speaking, where there is a long course of story, or observation of life to be pursued, such exquisite touches as those of Goldsmith would be too costly materials for sustaining it. The tendency towards abstracted observation in his poetry agrees peculiarly with the compendious form of expression which he studied; whilst the homefelt joys, on which his fancy loved to repose, required at once the chastest and sweetest colours of language, to make them harmonize with the dignity of a philosophical poem. His whole manner has a still depth of feeling and reflection, which gives back the image of nature "The nature of Cowper's works makes us unruffled and minutely. He has no redundant peculiarly identify the poet and the man in perusing them. As an individual, he was retired and weaned thoughts, or false transports; but seems on every occasion to have weighed the impulse to which he from the vanities of the world; and, as an original surrendered himself. Whatever ardour or casual writer, he left the ambitious and luxuriant subjects felicities he may have thus sacrificed, he gained a of fiction and passion, for those of real life and simhigh degree of purity and self-possession. His ple nature, and for the development of his own chaste pathos makes him an insinuating moralist; earnest feelings, in behalf of moral and religious and throws a charm of Claude-like softness over his truth. His language has such a masculine idiomdescriptions of homely objects, that would seematic strength, and his manner, whether he rises only fit to be the subjects of Dutch painting. But into grace or falls into negligence, has so much his quiet enthusiasm leads the affections to humble plain and familiar freedom, that we read no poetry things without a vulgar association; and he inspires with a deeper conviction of its sentiments having us with a fondness to trace the simplest recollections come from the author's heart; and of the enthu of Auburn, till we count the furniture of its ale-siasm, in whatever he describes, having been un. house, and listen to the varnished clock that clicked behind the door.'"-pp. 261-263. the idea of a being, whose fine spirit had been long feigned and unexaggerated. He impresses us with enough in the mixed society of the world to be polished by its intercourse, and yet withdrawn so simplicity. He was advanced in years before he soon as to retain an unworldly degree of purity and became an author; but his compositions display a tenderness of feeling so youthfully preserved, and even a vein of humour so far from being extinguished by his ascetic habits, that we can scarcely regret his For he blends the determination of age with an not having written them at an earlier period of life. exquisite and ingenuous sensibility; and though he sports very much with his subjects, yet, when he is in earnest, there is a gravity of long-felt conviction in his sentiments, which gives an uncommon ripeness of character to his poetry. There is too much of William Whitehead, and almost too much of Richard Glover, and a great deal too much of Amhurst Selden, Bramston, and Meston. Indeed the ne quid nimis seems to have been more forgotten by the learned editor in the last, than in any of the other volumes. Yet there is by no means too much of Burns, or Cowper, or even of the Wartons. The abstract of Burns' life is beautiful; and we are most willing to acknowledge that the defence of the poet, against some of the severities of this Journal, is substantially successful. No one who reads all that we unaffectedness and authenticity of his works, con"It is due to Cowper to fix our regard on this have written of Burns, will doubt of the sin-sidered as representations of himself, because he cerity of our admiration for his genius, or of the depth of our veneration and sympathy for his lofty character and his untimely fate. We still think he had a vulgar taste in letterwriting; and too frequently patronized the belief of a connection between licentious indulgences and generosity of character. But, on looking back on what we have said on these subjects, we are sensible that we have expressed ourselves with too much bitterness, and made the words of our censure far more comprehensive than our meaning. A forms a striking instance of genius writing the his- His verse |