phael, to go along with them in their imitation of Nature, is to be so far like them to be occupied only with that in which they fell short of others, instead of that in which they soared above them, shows a vulgar, narrow capacity, insensible to any thing beyond mediocrity, and an ambition still more grovelling. To be dazzled by admiration of the greatest excellence, and of the highest works of genius, is natural to the best capacities, and the best natures; envy and dulness are most apt to detect minute blemishes and unavoidable inequalities, as we see the spots in the sun by having its rays blunted by mist or smoke. It may be asked, then, whether mere extravagance and enthusiasın are proofs of taste? And I answer, no, where they are without reason and knowledge. Mere sensibility is not true taste, but sensibility to real excellence is. To admire and be wrapt up in what is trifling or absurd, is a proof of nothing but ignorance or affectation on the contrary, he who admires most what is most worthy of admiration, (let his raptures or his eagerness to express them be what they may,) shows himself neither extravagant nor" unwise." When Mr Wordsworth once said that he could read the description of Satan in Milton, "Nor seem'd Less than archangel ruin'd, and the excess Of glory obscur'd," till he felt a certain faintness come over his mind from a sense of beauty and grandeur, I saw no extravagance in this, but the utmost truth of feeling. When the same author, or his friend Mr Southey, says, that the Excursion is better worth preserving than the Paradise Lost, this appears to me, I confess, a great piece of impertinence, or an unwarrantable stretch of friendship. Nor do I think the preference given by certain celebrated reviewers, of Mr Rogers's Human Life over Mr Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads, founded on the true principles of poetical justice; for something is, after all, better than nothing. We have not ventured to make any change in the words of the ingenious essayist, although we are by no means ourselves of opinion either that Mr Rogers's poem on Human Life is nothing, or Mr To hasten to a conclusion of these desultory observations. The highest taste is shown in habitual sensibility to the greatest beauties; the most general taste is shown in a perception of the greatest variety of excellence. Many people admire Milton, and as many admire Pope, while there are but few who have any relish for both. Almost all the disputes on this subject arise, not so much from false, as from confined taste. We suppose that only one thing can have merit : and that, if we allow it to any thing else, we deprive the favourite object of our critical faith of the honours due to it. We are generally right in what we approve ourselves; for liking proceeds from a certain conformity of objects to the taste; as we are generally wrong in condemning what others admire; for our dislike mostly proceeds from our want of taste for what pleases them. Our being totally senseless to what excites extreme delight in those who have as good a right to judge as we have, in all human probability implies a defect of faculty in us, rather than a limitation in the resources of nature or art. Those who are pleased with the fewest things, know the least; as those who are pleased with every thing, know nothing. Shakespeare makes Mrs Quickly say of Falstaff, by a pleasant blunder, that "Carnation was a colour he could never abide." So there Wordsworth's Lyrical Ballads only something. We have long intended to give our readers some quotations from the first of these poets, whose late work we have unaccountably passed over; and we hope yet to do so. We owe likewise an amende honorable to Mr Wordsworth, who, by the way, has now added a Benjamin to his Bell, and we shall certainly give it These are poets him one day or other. whom it is never too late to take up, because they are among our classics, and Milton. Who told this lively writer that we speak of them as we do of Pope or Mr Southey ever preferred the Excursion to the Paradise Lost? He might, perhaps, have traced, with truth, some resem blance in the genius of the two poets. We wish our essayist would carry his own principles throughout, and think it a proof of taste to admire poets of his own as well as of former days, or at least let him End all dispute, and fix the year precise, When British bards begin t'immortalize! En. are persons who cannot like Claude, because he is not Salvator Rosa; some who cannot endure Rembrandt, and others who would not cross the street to see a Vandyke; one reader does not like the neatness of Junius, and another objects to the extravagance of Burke; and they are all right, if they expect to find in others what is only to be found in their favourite author or artist, but equally wrong if they mean to say, that each of those they would condemn by a narrow and arbitrary standard of taste, has not a peculiar and transcendant merit of his own. The question is not, whether you like a certain excellence, (it is your own fault if you do not,) but whether another possessed it in a very eminent degree. If he did not, who is there that possessed it in a greater-that ranks above him in that particular? Those who are accounted the best, are the best in their line. When we say that Rembrandt was a master of chiaro-scuro, for instance, we do not say that he joined to this the symmetry of the Greek statues, but we mean that we must go to him for the perfection of chiaro-scuro, and that a Greek statue has not chiaro-scuro. If any one objects to Junius's Letters, that they are a tissue of epigrams, we answer, Be it so; it is for that very reason that we admire them. Again, should any one find fault with Mr Burke's writings as a collection of rhapsodies, the proper answer always would be, Who is there that has written finer rhapsodies? I know an admirer of Don Quixote who can see no merit in Gil Blas, and an admirer of Gil Blas who could never read through Don Quixote. I myself have great pleasure in reading both these authors, and in that respect think I have an advantage over both these critics. It always struck me as a singular proof of good taste, good sense, and liberal thinking, in an old friend who had Paine's Rights of Man and Burke's Reflections on the French Revolution, bound up in one volume, and who said, that, both together, they made a very good book. To agree with the greatest number of good judges, is to be in the right; and good judges are persons of natural sensibility and acquired knowledge. I apprehend that natural is of more importance than acquired sensibility. On the other hand, it must be owned, there are critics whose praise is a libel, and whose recommendation of any work is enough to condemn it. Men of the greatest genius and originality are not always persons of the most liberal and unprejudiced taste ; they have a strong bias to certain qualities themselves, are for reducing others to their own standard, and lie less open to the general impressions of things. This exclusive preference of their own peculiar excellencies to those of others, in writers whose merits have not been sufficiently understood or acknowledged by their contemporaries, chiefly because they were not common-place, may sometimes be seen mounting up to a degree of bigotry and intolerance, little short of insanity. There are some critics I have known who never allow an author any merit till all the world" cry out upon him," and others who never allow another any merit that any one can discover but themselves. So there are connoisseurs who spend their lives and waste their breath in extolling sublime passages in obscure writers, and lovers who choose their mistresses for their ugly faces. This is not taste, but affectation. What is popular is not necessarily vulgar; and that which we try to rescue from fatal obscurity, had in general much better remain in it. M. N. sometimes repined at the hardness of their lot, and, in short, by such whose lives were in general good, but in a moment of unguardedness, fell into deep sin, and especially allowed themselves peevishly to repine against the just awards of Providence. Thus, in the beautiful romance of Orfee and Heurodiis, quoted in the notes to the Lady of the Lake, Orfee gan behold about all, And seigh full liggand within the wall, And some none arme's n'ad, And some through the body had wound, The numbers of the Unseelie Court Had he blundered out, according to the devil's expectation, with the Lord's Prayer, Scott would that moment have been precipitated from the back of his infernal charger into the bottom of the sea, and the fiend, with all his brethren, would have been for ever released from the tyranny of their irresistible and imperious mas ter. No evil sprite could endure to be touched with any thing on which the holy name of God was written; and if a fiend commissioned for an evil purpose was commanded in the name of the Trinity by the person whom he was sent to afflict, to become his servant, and turn his powers against his sender, he was compelled to obey. A very curious passage in the romance of Richard Coeur de Lion turns entirely upon this notion. It is long, but perhaps its curiousness may excuse its length. The Soldan of the Saracens lamenting the havock wherewith Richard is desolating his dominions, challenges him to single combat, but being well aware that he will never be able to overcome him by fair means, he has recourse to magic. He sends a messenger to the English monarch, to offer him a matchless steed to bear him in the approaching combat; one, compared with which, Favel of Cypre, ne Lyard of price, That one was a meré like. Where, were he in only need, VOL. V.. Richard is warned by an angel of the nature of the charger which the Soldan was about to present to him, who commands him to Ride upon him in God's name, and advises the king to Furney a tree stiff and strong, Though he be forty feet long, And truss it overth wart his mane, All that he meets shall have his bane, With that tree he shall down fell. Withal giving him a spear-head of steel so well tempered, that no mail, however wrought, could resist its point. Richard receives the steed, obeys the angel's command, and stops up the horse's ears with wax. rather preposterously says, He then -Be the apostles twelve, He shook his head, and stood full still. Of Saudons and of heathen kings, and their line extended no less than ten miles, while the Christian leaders did not exceed a dozen. King Richard look'd, and gan to see but, if the Soldan should conquer, then The Christian men should go And Saracens should have their will in wold. Richard vaults upon his steed, and encounters the Soldan, whose chief hopes were reposed in his enchanted mare. Her crupper hang all full of bells, For he thought that he wold there He struck the fiend that under him yede, He bare him through and under the shield. Backward over his mere's croupe, Behind the Saudon the spear outwent. In the name of the Holy Ghost, The battle was finished only with the day, The Christians lost three hun dred men. At last, They kneel'd, and thanked God of Heaven, Worship'd him and his names seven. Nothing gave fairies and evil spirits such power over the inhabitants of Middle Earth, as the indulgence of peevish repinings. If a parent or guardian, in a fit of spleen against his child or infant ward, cursed it, wishing it dead, or off this earth, it was, except the curser immediately repented, and prayed God to forgive his sin and protect the child, suddenly snatched to Fairy Land. If the child was baptized, then it became a member of the Seelie Court, and still had a chance of salvation, but if it had the misfortune to be unbaptized, it was seized by the wicked wights, and could not possibly be saved except it were won. But horrible were the consequences should an adult, in a paroxysm of impious rage, commend himself to the devil. It is related of a woman in the parish of Douglas, that having been held by her master to go and build the oats, which they were inning, upon the carts, she refused to obey. He somewhat roughly commanded her to go, when, flying into a fit of ungovernable fury," fould fiend fa' me," said she, "gin I do't." At last, however, she went and built the cart-loads as ordered. Twilight had become very grey, and the people were about to stop their inning, the woman having just finished the last cart-load of sheaves, when a huge black cloud came sweeping through middle air, and stooping down in its passage for a moment, enveloped the top of the cart-load where stood the woman cowering to the sheaves with terror. Its flight was interrupted for an instant. The servants looked up to the corn, but the woman was not there, but they heard her voice shriek ing in agony, accompanied by fiendish gaffaws, as the thick cloud in its progress passed through the Winderawood. The servants now ran home in consternation, and as soon as tomorrow's sun had risen, examined the course of the cloud, which they traced by the grass and shrubs having the appearance of being skathed with lightning. The trees of the wood were blasted, and burnt, on which were stuck the sottered legs and thighs of the woman; her body, with the entrails, wound from tree to tree, was found about the middle of the wood; the tongue, with part of the throat adhering to it, was got dangling from a 529. Scorched. See our last Number, p. branch on the opposite side of the wood, and on the top of a fir tree, skathed almost to charcoal, was stuck the ghastly head, with the eyes hanging down its cheeks. No tract of the elfin character is better known than its vindictiveness. No person ever cursed the Seely Court and prospered. Their power was believed to be dreadful. Ruin overtook the worldly circumstances of the hapless wight who, in an evil hour, spoke unguardedly of those haughty beings, and a lingering disease attacked his constitution, which carried him, after witnessing the total wreck of his affairs, into an untimely grave. In especial, they never failed to pour out the full cup of their vengeance upon the bare heads of those infatuated husbandmen who dared to violate their peculiar greens, or to tear up with the plough those beautiful circlets consecrated to their moonlight revels. For, according to the popular rhyme, He wha tills the fairy green, Nae luck again sall hae, Betide him him want an' wae, Are his till his decan' day. But the elves cannot in justice be He wha gaes by the fairy green, |