lascivious fancy fills the mind with vicious phantasies; and, as a fourth objection, he repeats the old cry of Plato's banishing poets out of his republic. To these, he offers the following replies;-to the first, that it begs the question, and utterly denies that there is sprung out of the earth a more fruitful knowledge. The answer to the second, is contained in a defence of the vraisemblance of the poet's fable. The third objection, he admits, has some force; but then it is by the way; the incidental lapses of bad or wicked poets hurts not good poetry, any more than vice hurts the essential beauty of virtue. It may affect partially, and for a time, the character, but it does not affect the thing itself. As to the fourth objection, Plato did not depreciate fine poetry, but lascivous strains. He was himself a poet, and in his own person honored the muse. He was too religious to allow infidel rhymers (of which modern times is not wanting in parellels) to vent their impious blasphemies. He might have excluded Byron: but there is no question he would have received Wordsworth with open arms.

After an enumeration of patrons and favorers of poetry among the great and good, the wise and powerful, kings, nobles, senators, cardinals, philosophers, wits, orators, and statesmen, he proceeds to the discussion of some still mooted points. e., whether tragedy should be on the Grecian and modern French mode, free from any mixture of comedy, or whether like Shakspeare's dramas, it should partake of both? Such points as respect the unities are closely scrutinized, and even humorously satirized, wherein he appears to glance at Shakspeare, or at least, at his predecessors. There is a very nice and discriminating passage on laughter, which we would quote but for its length. The antithesis in this section may be regarded as a type of Johnson's style, in the use of this

figure. Much sensible criticism is expended on diction, with lively raillery on the current euphuisms of the time. A liberal eulogy follows, on the English tongue, and the piece concludes with a page of rhetoric worthy of the subject and of the writer, clear, copious, insinuating and harmonious; a passage such as you often find the like of in the writers of the age of Elizabeth, and afterwards in the reigns of the first two Stuarts; but very rarely in the present day, or since that glorious era:

"So that since the ever praiseworthy poesy is full of virtue, breeding, delightfulness, and void of no gift that ought to be in the noble name of learning; since the blames laid against it are either false or feeble; since the cause why it is not esteemed in England, is the fault of poet-asses, not of poets; since, lastly, our tongue is most fit to be honored by poesy;-I conjure you all that have had the evil luck to read into this wasting toy of mine, even in the name of the nine muses, no more to scorn the sacred mysteries of poesy; no more to laugh at the name of poets as though they were next inheritors to fools; no more to jest at the reverend title of 'rhymer,' but to believe with Aristotle, that they were the ancient treasures of the Grecian's divinity; to believe with Bembus, that they were the first bringers in of all civility; to believe with Scaliger, that no philosopher's precepts can sooner make you an honest man than the reading of Virgil; to believe with Clauserus, the translator of Cornutu, that it pleased the heavenly Deity by Hesiod and Homer, under the veil of fables, to give us all knowledge, logic, rhetoric, philosophy natural and moral, and quid non? To believe with me, that there are many mysteries contained in poetry, which of purpose were written darkly, lest by profane wits it should be abused; to believe with Landui, that they are so beloved by the gods, that whatsoever they write proceeds of a divine fury; lastly, to believe themselves when they tell you they will make you immortal by their verses.

Thus doing, your names shall flourish in the printers' shops: thus doing, you shall be of kin to many a poetical preface: thus do

ing, you shall be most fair, most rich, most wise, most all-you shall dwell upon superlatives: thus doing, though you be libertino patronatus, you shall suddenly grow Herculea proles:

• Si quid mea carmine possunt.'

Thus doing, your soul shall he placed with Dante's Beatrix, or Virgil's Anchisis. But if (fie for such a but!) you be born so near the dull-making Cataract of Nilus, that you cannot hear the planet-like music of poetry; if you have so earth-creeping a mind that it cannot lift itself up to look at the sky of poetry, or rather by a certain rustical disdain, will become such a mome, as to wish to be a momus of poetry, then, though I will not wish unto you the ass's ears of Midas, nor be driven by a poet's verses as Bubonax was, to hang himself; nor to be rhymed to death, as is said to be done in Ireland; yet thus much curse I must lend you in the behalf of all poets,-that while you live, you live in love, and never get favor, for lacking skill of a sonnet; and when you die, your memory die from the earth for want of an epitaph.

XII.

BURTON'S (6 ANATOMY OF MELANCHOLY."

THE Anatomy of Melancholy is a book oftener mentioned than read, and upon the subject of which it is easier to write than upon the treatise itself. Connected criticism is out of the question, on account of the variety of the topics and the mosaic character of the text: to say nothing of the tedious diffuseness, (an extravagance in point of copiousness,) the harsh, crabbed accumulation of images and scholastic references, and the half medical, half metaphysical style of execution. Some stupid old physician placed this among the volumes "without which no medical man's library is com

plete." And it is so frequently entitled and ranked in booksellers' catalogues. Neither is it wholly a work of humor or the production of pure wit. It is not a burlesque, but a serious essay of rising seven hundred folio pages. But its chief character is a total want of decided character. It is a medley, a common-place book, a hodge-podge, a complete farrago. He touches, incidentally or purposely, upon almost every object under the sun and upon the face of the earth, things known and things unknown, dogmas and mere speculations, medicine and magic, anatomy and the arts, devils and diet, love and madness, religion and superstitious folly. Not a poet or historian, critic or commentator, naturalist or divine, of antiquity, of modern times, or of the middle age, but is called upon the stand as a witness, and requested to bear his testimony to the author's theories or counsel. A whole sentence of plain English occurs rarely. The usual style is a mixed manner, English cut on Latin, or an interlacing of the two. Half a passage in one language is balanced by the remaining portion in another, and one member nods to another, as Pope's groves and alleys. so made up of quotation and reference. say, if all his quotations were taken from able would be left; a similar abstraction from Burton would leave him pretty bare, as his best passages are translations or imitations of rare old writers. This leads to an unnecessary fullness and repetition; and, indeed the whole matter might be reduced into one-third its present compass. From but a superficial knowledge of the works, we should suspect it to be tinged with the prevalent defects in two other celebrated treatises, the one political and the other metaphysical: we refer to "Grotius de Jure Belli et Pacis," and "Cudworth's Intellectual System," both of them works always alluded to

Never was a book Montaigne used to him, nothing valu

with respect but very seldom familiarly read. And however it may astonish a vulgar reader, this fertility of quotation argues an innate deficiency of original power. A good cause or a sound judgment needs few witnesses and no propitiating patrons. A clear eye needs no spectacles to see through, and the unaided vision of good natural sight is blurred by the speckled glasses of prejudice and traditionary opinion. The learning, then, of this curious treatise, together with its length and perversely ingenious tautology; its jumble of phrases and ideas, realizing the witty strictures of Hudibras ; the endless digresssions, and want of condensed, methodical argument, render it a work that will be sought after chiefly for its oddity and fantastic strangeness. It cannot ever reach popularity, and is indeed written only for antiquarian scholars. Lamb, himself the true lover and warm eulogist of the Anatomy, admitted this fact, nor can it be concealed that even liberal and philosophic students care for little else than a taste of it, a glimpse of its index and a few particular references-a mere sip at this Lethean stream.

We feel constrained to this confession at the risk of losing caste in the eyes of those who make no distinction among the writers of our elder literature. Yet we add, “Can these dry bones live?" Is a witty or eloquent description, buried under a long chapter of heterogeneous matter, to save that from decay? There is salt to preserve, but too little of it we apprehend. Ourselves, retrospective critics, we must admit we find not sufficient in Burton to reward a thorough perusal (if, indeed, any man but Lamb ever read it entirely through.) Johnson's criticism cannot be taken for a standard in this instance, since it proved so unequal and deficient in former cases. Sterne used the book well, but then for thievish purposes, which Dr. Ferriar has tracked with remorseless scrutiny.