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DESCRIPTION OF JOHNSON.

[From The Ghost.]

Pomposo, insolent and loud,
Vain idol of a scribbling crowd,
Whose very name inspires an awe,
Whose every word is sense and law;
(For what his greatness hath decreed,
Like laws of Persia and of Mede,
Sacred through all the realm of Wit,
Must never of repeal admit)
Who, cursing flattery, is the tool
Of every fawning, flattering fool;
Who wit with jealous eye surveys,
And sickens at another's praise :
Who, proudly seiz'd of learning's throne,
Now damns all learning but his own:
Who scorns those common wares to trade in,
Reas'ning, convincing, and persuading,
But makes each sentence current pass
With 'puppy,' 'coxcomb,' ' scoundrel,' 'ass':
(For 'tis with him a certain rule

That folly's proved when he calls 'Fool!')
Who to increase his native strength
Draws words six syllables in length,
With which, assisted with a frown
By way of club, he knocks us down:

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His comrades' terrors to beguile,

Grinn'd horribly a ghastly smile:
Features so horrid, were it light,

Would put the devil himself to flight.

CHARLES THE FIRST.

[From Gotham.]

List'ning uxorious, whilst a woman's pratc

Model'ed the church, and parcelled out the state:

Whilst, in the state not more than women read,
High-churchmen preached, and turned his pious head:
Tutored to see with ministerial eyes,

Forbid to hear a loyal nation's cries:

Made to believe (what can't a favourite do?)
He heard a nation, hearing one or two:
Taught by state-quacks himself secure to think,
And out of danger e'en on danger's brink:
Whilst power was daily crumbling from his han
Whilst murmurs ran through an insulted land,
(As if to sanction tyrants Heav'n was bound!)
He proudly sought the ruin which he found.

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Unhappy Stuart! (harshly though that name
Grates on my ear) I should have died with shame,
To see my king before his subjects stand,

And at their bar hold up his royal hand:

At their command to hear the monarch plead,

By their decrees to see that monarch bleed.

What though thy faults were many and were great?

What though they shook the basis of the state?

In royalty secure thy person stood,

And sacred was the fountain of thy blood.

Vile ministers, who dared abuse their trust,

Who dared seduce a King to be unjust,

Vengeance, with justice leagued, with power made strong,
Had nobly crushed: the King could do no wrong.

Yet grieve not, Charles; nor thy hard fortunes blame,
They took thy life, but they secured thy fame.

Had'st thou in peace and years resigned thy breath.

At nature's call-had'st thou lain down in death

As in a sleep-thy name, by Justice borne

On the four winds, had been in pieces torn.
Pity, the virtue of a generous soul,

(Sometimes the vice) hath made thy memory whole.

Misfortune gave what virtue could not give,

And bade the tyrant slain the martyr live.

JAMES BEATTIE.

[JAMES BEATTIE was born at Laurencekirk in 1735, and died at Aberdeen in 1803. He published his first volume of poems in 1761, The Judgment of Paris in 1765, and Some Lines on the Proposed Monument to Churchill in 1766. The first part of The Minstrel appeared in 1770, the second in 1774.]

Beattie is perhaps the most difficult poet of the eighteenth century for a nineteenth-century reader to criticise sympathetically. His original poetical power was almost nil. But he had a delicate and sensitive taste, and was a diligent student of the works of Gray and Collins on the one hand, and of the ballads which Percy had just published on the other. His earlier poems are merely so many variations on the Elegy and the Ode on the Passions. His Judgment of Paris and his Lines on Churchill are perhaps those of his works in which he was least indebted to others, and they are almost worthless intrinsically, besides being (at least the Churchill lines) in the worst possible taste. As for The Minstrel, it is certainly a most remarkable poem. The author has shown his judgment in prefixing no argument to either book, for in truth neither admits of one. The poem has neither head nor tail, and the central figure of the youthful Edwin is a mere peg on which to hang descriptive passages, moral disquisitions, and digressions of every kind. The general effect upon the modern reader is exactly that of a sham ruin or a Gothic edifice of the Wyatt period. Yet the poem was, and long continued to be, extremely popular; and it gave the impulse in many cases to the production of much better work than itself. In fact it exactly reflected the vague and ill-instructed craving of the age for the dismissal of artificial poetry and for a return to nature, and at the same time to the romantic style. This fact must always give it an interest which its elegant secondhand imagery, its feeble Werterisms, and above all its extraordinary incoherence, may on closer acquaintance fail to sustain.

Beattie would have been a poet if he could, and his sedulous efforts and gentle sensibility sometimes bring him within sight, though at a long distance, of the promised land. But he never reaches it, and his best work is only made up of reminiscences of others' visits and of far-off echoes of the heavenly music. GEORGE SAINTSBURY.

FROM THE MINSTREL,' Book I.

When the long-sounding curfew from afar
Loaded with loud lament the lonely gale,
Young Edwin, lighted by the evening star,
Lingering and listening, wandered down the vale.
There would he dream of graves and corses pale;
And ghosts that to the charnel-dungeon throng,
And drag a length of clanking chain, and wail,
Till silenced by the owl's terrific song,

Or blast that shrieks by fits the shuddering isles along.

Or, when the setting moon, in crimson dyed
Hung o'er the dark and melancholy deep,
To haunted stream, remote from man, he hied,
Where fays of yore their revels wont to keep;
And there let Fancy rove at large, till sleep
A vision brought to his entranced sight.
And first a wildly murmuring wind 'gan creep
Shrill to his ringing ear; then tapers bright

With instantaneous gleam illumed the vault of night.

Anon in view a portal's blazoned arch

Arose; the trumpet bid the valves unfold,
And forth an host of little warriors march
Grasping the diamond lance, and targe of gold.
Their look was gentle, their demeanour bold,
And green their helms, and green their silk attire,
And here and there, right venerably old,
The long-robed minstrels wake the warbling wire,
And some with mellow breath the martial pipe inspire.

With merriment, and song, and timbrels clear,
A troop of dames from myrtle bowers advance;
The little warriors doff the targe and spear,
And loud enlivening strains provoke the dance.
They meet, they dart away, they wheel askance ;

To right, to left, hey thrid the flying maze ;
Now bound aloft with vigorous spring, then glance
Rapid along with many-coloured rays

Of tapers, gems and gold, the echoing forests blaze.

The dream is fled. Proud harbinger of day,
Who scar'd'st the vision with thy clarion shrill,
Fell chanticleer! who oft hath reft away
My fancied good, and brought substantial ill!
O to thy cursed scream, discordant still,
Let harmony aye shut her gentle ear:
Thy boastful mirth let jealous rivals spill,
Insult thy crest, and glossy pinions tear,

And ever in thy dreams the ruthless fox appear!

Forbear, my Muse. Let Love attune thy line.
Revoke the spell. Thine Edwin frets not so.
For how should he at wicked chance repine
Who feels from every change amusement flow?
Even now his eyes with smiles of rapture glow,
As on he wanders through the scenes of morn,
Where the fresh flowers in living lustre blow,
Where thousand pearls the dewy lawns adorn,
A thousand notes of joy in every breeze are born.

But who the melodies of morn can tell?
The wild brook babbling down the mountain side,
The lowing herd; the sheep-fold's simple bell;
The pipe of early shepherd dim descried
In the lone valley; echoing far and wide
The clamorous horn along the cliffs above,
The hollow murmur of the ocean-tide;
The hum of bees, the linnet's lay of love,
And the full choir that wakes the universal grove.

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