being to the struggles it makes, and its vigour to the enemies whom it provokes :— Vivacious quality, ever doomed to meet with opposition, and still triumphing over it; and, from the nature of its dominion, incapable of being brought to the sad conclusion of Alexander, when he wept that there were no more worlds for him to conquer. Let us take a hasty retrospect of the poetical literature of this country for the greater part of the last two centuries, and see if the facts support these inferences. Who is there that can now endure to read 'The Creation" of Dubartas? Yet all Europe once resounded with his praise; he was caressed by kings; and, when his poem was translated into our language, "The Faery Queen" faded before it. The name of Spenser, whose genius is of a higher order than even that of Ariosto, is at this day scarcely known beyond the limits of the British Isles. And if the value of his works is to be estimated from the attention now paid to them by his countrymen, compared with that which they bestow on those of some other writers, it must be pronounced small indeed, "The laurel meed of mighty conquerors And poets sage" are his own words; but his wisdom has, in this particular, been his worst enemy; while its opposite, whether in the shape of folly or madness, has been their best friend. But he was a great power; and bears a high name: the laurel has been awarded to him. A dramatic author, if he write for the stage, must adapt himself to the taste of the audience, or they will not endure him; accordingly the mighty genius of Shakspeare was listened to. The people were delighted; but I am not sufficiently versed in stage antiquities to determine whether they did not flock as eagerly to the representation of many pieces of contemporary authors, wholly undeserving to appear upon the same boards. Had there been a formal contest for superiority among dramatic writers, that Shakspeare, like his predecessors, Sophocles and Euripides, would have often been subject to the mortification of seeing the prize adjudged to sorry competitors, becomes too probable, when we reflect that the admirers of Settle and Shadwell were, in a later age, as numerous, and reckoned as respectable in point of talent, as those of Dryden. At all events, that Shakspeare stooped to accommodate himself to the people, is sufficiently apparent; and one of the most striking proofs of his almost omnipotent genius, is, that he could turn to such glorious purpose those materials which the prepossessions of the age compelled him to make use of. Yet even this marvellous skill appears not to have be in enough to prevent his rivals from having some advantage over him in public estimation; else how can we account for passages and scenes that exist in his works, unless upon a supposition that some of the grossest of them, a fact which in my own mind I have no doubt of, were foisted in by the players, for the gratification of the many? But that his works, whatever might be their reception on the stage, made little impression upon the ruling intellects of the time, may be inferred from the fact that Lord Racon, in his multifarious writings, nowhere either quotes or alludes to him."—His dramatic excellence enabled him to resume possession of the stage after the Restoration; but Dryden tells us that in his time two of the plays of Beaumont and Fletcher were acted for one of Shakspeate. And so faint and limited was the perception of the poetic beauties of his dramas in the time of Pope, that, in his edition of the plays, with a view of rendering to the general reader a necessary service, he printed between inverted commas those passages which he thought most worthy of notice. At this day, the French critics have abated nothing of their aversion to this darling of our nation: "the English, with their buffon de Shakspeare," is as familiar an expression among them as in the time of Voltaire. Baron Grimm is the only French writer who seems to have perceived his infinite superiority to the first names of the French ་་ The learned Hakewill (a third edition of whose book bears date 1635), writing to refute the error touching nature's perpetual and universal decay,' cites triumphantly the names of Ariosto, Tasso. Bartas, and Spenser, as instances that poetic genius had not degenerated; but he makes no mention of Shakspeare. theatre; an advantage which the Parisian critic owed to his German blood and German education. The most enlightened Italians, though well acquainted with our language, are wholly incompetent to measure the proportions of Shakspeare. The Germans only, of foreign nations, are approaching towards a knowledge and feeling of what he is. In some respects they have acquired a superiority over the fellow-countrymen of the poet : for among us it is a current, I might say, an established opinion, that Shakspeare is justly praised when he is pronounced to be "a wild, irregular genius, in whom great faults are compensated by great beauties." How long may it be before this misconception passes away, and it becomes universally acknowledged that the judgment of Shakspeare in the selection of his materials, and in the manner in which he has made them, heterogeneous as they often are, constitute a unity of their own, and contribute all to one great end, is not less admirable than his imagination, his invention, and his intuitive knowledge of human nature! There is extant a small volume of miscellaneous poems in which Shakspeare expresses his own feelings in his own person. It is not difficult to conceive that the editor, George Steevens, should have been insensible to the beauties of one portion of that volume, the Sonnets; though there is not a part of the writings of this poet where is found, in an equal compass, a greater number of exquisite feelings felicitously expressed. But, from regard to the critic's own credit, he would not have ventured to talk of an act of parliament not being strong enough to compel the perusal of these, or any production of Shakspeare, if he had not known that the people of England were ignorant of the treasures contained in those little pieces; and if he had not, moreover, shared the too common propensity of human nature to exult over a supposed fall into the mire of a genius whom he had been compelled to regard with admiration, as an inmate of the celestial regions-" there sitting where he durst not soar." Nine years before the death of Shakspeare, Milton was born; and early in life he published several small poems, which, though on their first appearance they were praised by a few of the judicious, were afterwards neglected to that degree, that Pope, in his youth, could pilfer from them without danger of detection. Whether these poems are at this day justly appreciated I will not undertake to decide; nor would it imply a severe reflection upon the mass of readers to suppose the contrary; seeing that a man of the acknowledged genius of Voss, the German poet, could suffer their spirit to evaporate and could change their character, as is done in the translation made by him of the most popular of those pieces. At all events, it is certain that these poems of Milton are now much read, and loudly praised; yet they were little heard of till more than 150 years after their publication; and of the Sonnets, Dr. Johnson, as appears from Boswell's life of him, was in the habit of thinking and speaking as contemptuously as Steevens wrote upon those of Shakspeare. About the time when the Pinda ric Odes of Cowley and his imitators, and the productions of that class of curious thinkers whom Dr. Johnson has strangely styled metaphysical poets, were beginning to lose something of that extravagant admiration which they had excited, "The Paradise Lost" made its appearance. Fit audience find though few," was the petition addressed by the poet to his inspiring muse. I have said elsewhere that he gained more than he asked; this I believe to be true; but Dr. Johnson has fallen into a gross mistake when he attempts to prove, by the sale of the work, that Milton's countrymen were "just to it" upon its first appearance. Thirteen hundred copies were sold in two years; an uncommon example, he asserts, of the prevalence of genius in opposition to so much recent enmity as Milton's public conduct had excited. But, be it remembered that, if Milton s political and religious opinions, and the manner in which he announced them, had raised him many enemies, they had procured him numerous friends; who, as all personal danger was passed away at the time of publication, would be eager to procure the master-work of a man whom they revered, and whom they would be proud of praising. The demand did not immediately This flippant insensibility was publicly reprehended by Mr. Coleridge, in a course of Lectures upon Poetry, given by him at the Royal Institution. For the various merits of thought and language in Shakspeare's Sonnets see Numbers 27, 29, 30, 32, 33, 54. 64. 66, 68, 73, 76, 86, 91, 92, 93, 97, 98, 105, 107, 108, 109, 111, 113, 114, 116, 117, 129, and many others. increase; "for," says Dr. Johnson, "many more readers" (he means persons in the habit of reading poetry) "than were supplied at first the nation did not afford." How careless must a writer be who can make this assertion in the face of so many existing title-pages to belie it! Turning to my own shelves, I find the folio of Cowley, 7th Edition, 1681. A book near it is Flatman's Poems, 4th Edition, 1686. Waller, 5th Edition, same date. The poems of Norris of Bemerton not long after went, I believe. through nine editions. What further demand there might be for these works I do not know, but I well remember, that twenty-five years ago, the booksellers' stalls in London swarmed with the folios of Cowley. This is not mentioned in disparagement of that able writer and amiable man; but merely to show-that, if Milton's work was not more read, it was not because readers did not exist at the time. The early editions of "The Paradise Lost" were printed in a shape which allowed them to be sold at a low price, yet only 3000 copies of the work were sold in eleven years; and the nation, says Dr. Johnson, had been satisfied from 1623 to 1644, that is, forty-one years, with only two editions of the works of Shakspeare; which probably did not together make 1000 copies facts adduced by the critic to prove the "paucity of readers." There were readers in multitudes; but their money went for other purposes, as their admiration was fixed elsewhere. We are authorised, then, to affirm that the reception of "The paradise Lost," and the slow progress of its fame, are proofs as striking as can be desired that the positions which I am attempting to establish are not erroneous.*-How amusing to shape to one's self such a critique as a wit of Charles's days, or a lord of the iniscellanies or trading journalist of King William's time, would have brought forth, if he had set his faculties industriously to work upon this poem, every where impregnated with original excellence! Sostrange, indeed, are the obliquities of admiration, that they whose opinions are much influenced by authority will often be tempted to think that there are no fixed principlest in human nature for this art to rest upon. I have been honoured by being permitted to peruse, in MS., a tract composed between the period of the Revolution and the close of that century. It is the work of an English peer of high accomplishments, its object to form the character and direct the studies of his son. Perhaps nowhere does a more beautiful treatise of the kind exist. The good sense and wisdom of the thoughts, the delicacy of the feelings, and the charm of the style, are, throughout, equally conspicuous. Yet the author, selecting among the poets of his own country those whom he deems most worthy of his son's perusal, particularises only Lord Rochester, Sir John Denham, and Cowley. Writing about the same time, Shaftesbury, an author at present unjustly depreciated, describes the English muses as only yet lisping in their cradles. The arts by which Pope, soon afterwards, contrived to procure to himself a more eneral and a higher reputation than perhaps any English poet ever attained during his life-time, are known to the judicious. And as well known is it to them, that the undue exertion of these arts is the cause why Pope has for some time held a rank in literature, to which, if he had not been seduced by an over-love of immediate popularity, and had confided more in his native genius, he never could have descended. He bewitched the nation by his melody, and dazzled it by his polished style, and was himself blinded by his own success. Having wandered from humanity in his Eclogues with boyish inexperience, the praise, which these compositions obtained, tempted him into a belief that nature was not to be trusted, at least in pastoral poetry. To prove this by example, he put his friend Gay upon writing those Eclogues which the author intended to be burlesque. The instigator of the work, and his admirers, could perceive in them nothing but what was ridiculous. Nevertheless, though these poems contain some detestable passages, the effect, as Dr. Johnson well observes, "of reality and truth became conspicuous, even when the intention was to show them grovelling and degraded." These pastorals, ludicrous to those who prided themselves upon their refinement, in * Hughes is express upon this subject: in his dedication of Spenser's Works to Lord Somers, he writes thus:It was your lordship's encouraging a beautiful edition of Paradise Lost that first brought that incomparable poem to be generally known and esteemed." This opinion seems actually to have been entertained by Adam Smith, the worst critic, David Hume not excepted, that Scotland, a soil to which this sort of weed seems natural, has produced. spite of those disgusting passages, "became popular, and were read with delight, as just representations of rural manners and occupations." Something less than sixty years after the publication of "The Paradise Lost," appeared Thomson's "Winter;" which was speedily followed by his other Seasons. It is a work of inspiration; much of it is written from himself, and nobly from himself. How was it received? "It was no sooner read," said one of his contemporary biographers, "than universally admired: those only excepted who had not been used to feel, or to look for anything in poetry, beyond a point of satirical or epigrammatic wit, a smart antithesis richly trimmed with rhyme, or the softness of an elegiac complaint. To such his manly classical spirit could not readily commend itself; till, after a more attentive perusal, they had got the better of their prejudices, and either acquired or affected a truer taste. A few others stood aloof, merely because they had long before fixed the articles of their poetical creed, and resigned themselves to an absolute despair of ever seeing anything new and original. These were somewhat mortified to find their notions disturbed by the appearance of a poet, who seemed to owe nothing but to nature and his own genius. But, in a short time, the applause became unanimous; every one wondering how so many pictures, and pictures so familiar, should have moved them but faintly to what they felt in his descriptions. His digressions too, the overflowings of a tender benevolent heart, charmed the reader no less; leaving him in doubt, whether he should more admire the poet or love the man.' " This case appears to bear strongly against us-but we must distinguish between wonder and legitimate admiration. The subject of the work is the changes produced in the appearances of nature by the revolution of the year: and by undertaking to write in verse, Thomson pledged himself to treat his subject as became a poet. Now it is remarkable that, excepting the nocturnal reverie of Lady Winchelsea, and a passage or two in the Windsor Forest" of Pope, the poetry of the period intervening between the publication of "The Paradise Lost" and "The Seasons" does not contain a single new image of external nature; and scarcely presents a familiar one, from which it can be inferred that the eye of the poet had been steadily fixed upon his object, much less that his feelings had urged him to work upon it in the spirit of genuine imagination. To what a low state knowledge of the most obvious and important phenomena had sunk, is evident from the style in which Dryden has executed a description of night in one of his tragedies, and Pope his translation of the celebrated moonlight scene in the "Iliad." A blind man, in the habit of attending accurately to descriptions casually dropped from the lips of those around him, might easily depict these appearances with more truth. Dryden's lines are vague, bombastic, and senseless; those of Pope, though he had Homer to guide him, are throughout false and contradictory. verses of Dryden, once highly celebrated, are forgotten; those of Pope still retain their hold upon public estimation,-nay, there is not a passage of descriptive poetry, which at this day finds so many and such ardent admirers. Strange to think of an enthusiast, as may have been the case with thousands, reciting those verses under the cope of a moonlight sky, without having his raptures in the least disturbed by a suspicion of their absurdity! If these two distinguished writers could habitually think that the visible universe was of so little consequence to a poet, that it was scarcely necessary for him to cast his eyes upon it, we may be assured that those passages of the elder poets which faithfully and poetically describe the phenomena of nature, were not at that time holden in much estimation, and that there was little accurate attention paid to these appearances. The Wonder is the natural product of ignorance; and as the soil was in such good con "CORTES (alone in a night-gown). All things are hushed as nature's self lay dead: -DRYDEN'S Indian Emperor. dition at the time of the publication of "The Seasons," the crop was doubtless abundant. Neither individuals nor nations become corrupt all at once, nor are they enlightened in a moment. Thomson was an inspired poet, but he could not work miracles; in cases where the art of seeing had in some degree been learned, the teacher would further the proficiency of his pupils, but he could do little more, though so far does vanity assist men in acts of self-deception, that many would often fancy they recognised a likeness when they knew nothing of the original. Having shown that much of what his biographer deemed genuine admiration must in fact have been blind wonderment,how is the rest to be accounted for?-Thomson was fortunate in the very utle of his poem, which seemed to bring it home to the prepared sympathies of every one in the next place, notwithstanding his high powers, he writes a vicious style; and his false ' ornaments are exactly of that kind which would be most likely to strike the undiscerning. He likewise abounds with sentimental common-places, that, from the manner in which they were brought forward, bore an imposing air of novelty. In any well-used copy of "The Seasons" the book generally opens of itself with the rhapsody on love, or with one of the stories (perhaps Damon and Musidora); these also are prominent in our collections of extracts; and are the parts of his work, which, after all, were probably most efficient in first recommending the author to general notice. Pope, repaying praises which he had received, and wishing to extol him to the highest, only styles him an elegant and philosophical poet;" nor are we able to collect any unquestionable proofs that the true characteristics of Thomson's genius as an imaginative post were perceived till the elder Warton, almost forty years after the publication of "The Seasons," pointed them out by a note in his Essay on the Life and Writings of Pope. In "The Castle of Indolence" (of which Gray speaks so coldly) these characteristics were almost as conspicuously displayed, and in verse more harmonious, and diction more pure. Yet that fine poem was neglected on its appearance, and is at this day the delight only of a few! When Thomson died, Collins breathed his regrets into an elegiac form, in which he pronounces a poetical curse upon him who should regard with insensibility the place where the poet's remains were deposited. The poems of the mourner himself have now passed through innumerable editions, and are universally known, but if, when Collins died, the same kind of imprecation had been pronounced by a surviving admirer, small is the number whom it would not have comprehended. The notice which his poems attained during his life-time was so small, and of course the sale so insignificant, that not long before his death he deemed it right to repay to the bookseller the sum which he had advanced for them, and threw the edition into the fire. Next in importance to "The Seasons" of Thomson, though at considerable distance from that work in order of time, come "The Reliques of Ancient English Poetry;" collected, new-modelled, and in many instances (if such a contradiction in terms may be used) composed by the editor, Dr. Percy. This work did not steal silently into the world, as is evident from the number of legendary tales, which appeared not long after its publication; and which were modelled, as the authors persuaded themselves, after the old ballad. The compilation was, however, ill suited to the then existing taste of city society; and Dr. Johnson, mid the little senate to which he gave laws, was not sparing in his exertions to make it an object of contempt. The critic triumphed. the legendary imitators were deservedly disregarded, and, as undeservedly, their ill-imitated models sank, in this country, into temporary neglect, while Bürger, and other able writers of Germany, were translating or imitating these Reliques, and composing, with the aid of inspiration thence derived, poems which are the delight of the German nation. Dr. Percy was so abashed by the ridicule flung upon his labours from the ignorance and insensibility of the persons with whom he lived, that though, while he was writing under a mask, he had not wanted resolution to follow his genius into the regions of true simplicity and genuine pathos (as is evinced by the exquisite Since these observations upon Thomson were written, I have perused the second edition of his "Seasons," and find that even that does not contain the most striking passages which Warton points out for admiration these, with other improvements, throughout the whole work, must have been added at a later period. |