Dryden's Ode on Cecilia's Day, was the first instance in which the English lyric poets attained to first-rate excellence. Our great lyrists, Gray, Collins, and Mason, added, to the impassioned ideas, abrupt contrasting transitions, picturesque descriptions, and ardent apostrophes of that ode, the excellence of correct numbers and distincter plan. But how do those four great writers exceed the crude Pindarics of the straining metaphysic Cowley, the sweet Complaint excepted!—and, compared with theirs, how dim and unlustrous is Mr. Merry's muse! It is universally allowed, that " Dr Johnson had no taste for the higher walks of poetry;" nor is it much wonder that it should so be said of the man who has spoken contemptuously of the first odes in our language, that are allowed, by so large a majority in the literary world, to possess all the fire and sublimity of Pindar, with an happier and more interesting choice of subject; who has asserted that the odd ode of Dryden's, his Killigrew, is the noblest ode we have; in which there is little pathos, and no dignity, but a train of forced Cowleyan ideas about the soul of Anne Killigrew having animated the bodies of all the dead poets, and the Grecian poetess to boot; and about the malicious planets being all in trine when she was born, and about her "brother angels" tuning their lyres high, that all the people of the sky might know that a great poetess was born on earth;--and that if the bees did not swarm upon Anne Killigrew's mouth, it was only because Heaven had not leisure for such a vulgar miracle; that now the gift of poetry is profaned with fat pollutions and steaming ordures;—but I am sick of tracing the bombast mazes of this stuff, which Johnson calls the finest ode of the language. What could he mean by it? To bring lyric poetry into disgrace, I suppose, because his poetic talents had not taken that bent. I know the selfish and narrow jealousy of that, in many respects, mighty spirit, and place to its account solely those absurd critical axioms which set the world a-gape, and force it to conclude that he wanted taste, where, in reality, he only wanted truth. The Law of Lombardy is indeed a fine tragedy; the language, sentiments, and imagery have Shakespearean grandeur, simplicity, and fire. The character of Bireno is original, and drawn in a bold masterly style. Why should the murder of Alinda behind the scenes disgust, since that of Duncan and Banquo, in the same situation, and that of Desdemona upon the stage does not? It is absurd to affect dislike of striking horrors in a modern play, at which we awfully shudder in the plays of Shakespeare, and confess their fine effect. What is tragedy if we banish the terrible graces! The public is an Egyptian task-master to modern dramatic writers; it calls for Shakespearean effects, yet would preclude the use of the most important means by which they were produced. You say that, but for my ingenuousness, you should have missed seeing censures upon your last volumes, and yet tell me, that the critical reviewers passed much the same judgment upon the work in July last. I give you my solemn word of honour, that I have never seen nor heard any printed strictures upon that lovely, bewitching, slipshod slattern of yours, which I so long to see divested of her brass ring and rusty black handkerchief. My heart thanks you for the kind conclusion of your last, and warmly returns its friendly benedictions. It acknowledges also, with grateful pleasure, the continuance of Mr Piozzi's assured welcome, if ever I should have it in my power to visit Streatham. LETTER XCIII. MRS KNOWLES. Feb. 23, 1790. My dear friend, your kind letter of November 27th reached me not till the second week in January. The box of Mr Rowley's, in which it travelled, was kept unopened so long. Charming as are its contents, they were fortunately not any of them complexioned for the necessity of early comment. My beloved Mrs Knowles's letters are of all, all hours, unlike those epistolary volatiles, whose spirit evaporates as events grow stale, and popular topics change their ground. Wit, eloquence, philosophy, "These themselves do far advance They scorn such outward circumstance, Their time's for ever; everywhere their place." My heart thanks the friendly premonition with which your letter opens. It is about my taking exercise. You were, from experience, too well justified in concluding, that it would probably be fruitless; but the studious, or social sedentariness, for it is equally disposed to be either, so certainly natural to me, was, last summer, startled into peripatetic exertion, by oppressed respiration. Since that period, I have walked generally an hour in a day, as round a pace as my strength will permit, in the Dean's Walk, "when chill blustering winds, or driving rain, prevent not my willing feet”—no, I cannot quite say that, my stimulated feet-to pace their vowed mile upon the gravel. When they do prevent them, I remember your injunction in à long past letter, to tear along the gallery, clawing, like a wild cat, at the windows. There is no boasting that the whimsical portrait entirely suits me. However, along the gallery I do pace to and fro, though rather more like a tame than a wild cat; and I often make noise enough to rival cats, even in their moments of cruel love. In the conviction, that my lungs, as well as my limbs, require exercise, when I walk in the gallery, I close the end doors, and repeat long passages from our poets, aloud, the metrical treasures of my early years, or resume the pleasing labour of the memory, which continues to accumulate them. Social engage ments, or household attentions, engrossing so perpetually the later hours of the day, I am obliged to subtract this earlier one from the leisure I |