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is rare in these days, when periodical criticism is, (speaking generally,) so shallow or so partial, is so much the mere echo of vulgar opinion, or so much the suggestion of party spirit or personal prejudice, that readers of any sagacity have ceased to place the slightest confidence in its decisions.

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Amongst others, Mr. Atherstone, the author of "Nineveh," has designated his countryman, the Scottish Shakespeare. One is almost tempted on occasions of this nature to imitate the sarcasm of Coleridge, who on being told, that Klopstock was styled the German Milton, exclaimed, a very German Milton indeed!" The Scotch are too fond of these inconsiderate and injudicious comparisons. They call Joanna Baillie, the Female Shakespeare. She is undoubtedly a truly admirable writer, but not a Shakespeare! Shakespeares are not quite so common. Nature has not produced such a miracle of genius in every age nor in every country. It is doing a positive injury to the reputation of any modern writer to compare him with the mighty prince of Dramatists; and no one would have been more sensible of the vast inequality of genius between the author of Macbeth, Lear, Hamlet and Othello, and the writer of the Lay of the Last Minstrel, Marmion, the Lady of the Lake, and the celebrated Scottish prose romances, than Walter Scott himself. He would have been unaffectedly shocked at such critical blasphemy. His

Mr. Carlyle's first publication was a "Life of Schiller." That work is written in a pure and easy style, and though full of the philosophical thought and subtle criticism, which characterize all his writings, it has nothing in the mere composition that would lead any one to associate it with his later works, in which he seems to be getting more and more remarkable in his manner in proportion to the notice that he is attracting. He seems desirous that we shall not gain his sweets of sentiment and fancy at too easy a rate. We must study him. He is not satisfied with making his matter original, but is determined to surprise us with his manner also. It must be acknowledged that as we get more familiar with his style we discover merits in it that are in keeping with the peculiarity of the thoughts, and that a certain freshness and point is thus given them which might be lost in some degree if they were conveyed in a different form. The style would be very unfit for a feeble and commonplace writer.

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sound and modest mind had taken a just measure of its own powers. I cannot imagine any thing more honorably characteristic of his frank and manly spirit than his lively sense of the higher poetical genius of many of his contemporaries, at a time too when his own popularity was quite unrivalled. His own estimate of his poetical powers some twenty years ago, was a most prophetic anticipation of the general judgment of the present day. No critic who pretends to any discrimination and who is wholly unbiassed by national partialities, would now pretend for a moment to consider him the equal in poetical genius of William Wordsworth, of Shelley, or of Coleridge. Those of his countrymen who hold him up as a Scottish Shakespeare do not say much for Scottish genius. The English never expect, perhaps never hope, for a greater poet than their immortal dramatist, and they may well be contented with such a specimen of their national genius. But if our Northern neighbours are satisfied with Walter Scott, and think their country can never produce a greater poet, they do but little justice to their own nature. a poet, is infinitely superior to Walter Scott. strong lines of the Ayrshire ploughman, the Baronet's octosyllabics are absolute namby-pamby. The former was a true poet, and as one illustration of the genuineness of his genius, it is only necessary to observe, that his productions have so deeply entered into the hearts and minds of men, that many of his "thoughts that breathe and words that burn" are as familiar to us as the common air. But Scott's poetry is rarely quoted and still more rarely remembered. He has many fresh and vivid descriptions in easy and flowing verse, but he has no intensity of passion or profundity of thought. To speak as a phrenologist, he is deficient in the organ of ideality. He interests us in a rapid narrative, but we feel not the spiritual presence of the Muse, and we meet with no words steeped in Castalian dews, and colored like

Robert Burns, as
Compared to the

"The golden exhalations of the dawn.”

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When his admirers point to his best passages, we see nothing but lively details:-no gleams of that "light which never was by sea or land". -no thoughts that lie too deep for tears"-none of those sudden glimpses of our secret and most spiritual nature which flash upon the inward eye, and which when once reflected on the poet's page must live for ever. If it would be blind madness to compare the moss troopers of Scott with the wondrous creations of Shakespeare, it would be almost equally absurd and rash to bring his thoughts or his diction into a comparison with many of the glorious lines of Wordsworth and Coleridge, that have a charm for every mind that has a sense of harmony and beauty, and which will shine for ever in "Orient hues unborrowed of the sun." With respect to Scott's prose romances, they are undoubtedly the only true foundation of his fame. The Scotch may well be proud of their countrymen as a writer of prose fiction. When he attempted history, as in his Life of Napoleon; or criticism, as in his editions of Dryden and Swift, he was an ordinary author, and had many superiors. It was as the magician, who at a single stroke of his wand separated the thick curtain of the past, and showed his countrymen their remote ancestors in their antique garments, that his powers were seen to their best advantage. He was great in fiction and in narrative, but he was not great as a thinker. The characters in his Romances are most admirable outlines, and exhibit the most faithful traits of a particular age or country; but they are not to be compared for an instant, with the psychological delineations in the pages of the prince of Dramatic poets. Shakespeare entered the innermost regions of the general heart, and his representations of nature are not applicable to one age or country alone, but to all times and to the human race.

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NO. II.-HAZLITT AND COBBETT.

This may be thought at first sight an odd juxta-position of names, and yet there are some points of resemblance as well as of opposition between these celebrated men. I am not sure that Cobbett would feel flattered by the connection of his name with Hazlitt's*. The editor of the " Register" must naturally entertain a sovereign contempt for many of Hazlitt's passionate sympathies and profound abstractions. It is only in their controversial politics that they at all assimilate. No writers of these times have displayed greater spirit and dexterity in disarming their opponents, and in scattering their cobweb sophistries to the winds. They are both violent and pugnacious, but there is something truly English in the daring manner in which they avow and support their hostility. Neither of them stab in the dark. If they fight hard, they do not use the Italian stiletto. They hide no deadly weapon under a bravo's cloak, nor wear a mask upon their faces.

It is perhaps difficult to decide whether Hazlitt or Cobbett be most powerful as a party controversialist. No man grapples with his enemy or with a particular question with such a close and mortal vehemence as Cobbett; but in large and liberal views he is greatly surpassed, not only by Hazlitt, but by many other writers on the same side. He never troubles himself with the abstract philosophy of politics, but applies himself to a direct and practical consideration of some immediate object. In doing this he addresses himself so entirely to the common sense of mankind, with such an air of downright sincerity and in a style so colloquial, clear, forcible and unaffected, that he is sure to command the attention of his readers. It is rarely, indeed, that he is opposed to the stream of popular opinion, and the people are delighted to find their favorite notions explained and defended in their own unsophisticated way, but with a voice of more power and effect.

*This article (with the exception of one or two paragraphs) was written in the life-time of these authors.

He

In this lies the secret of Cobbett's extraordinary success. enforces and confirms all the national prejudices of his countrymen. His words come home at once to their business and bosoms. His capacity does not differ from that of ordinary people in kind, but in degree. It is of the same character, but of greater force; it is a concentration of the popular mind. Hazlitt, on the other hand, with less rude vigour and bull-dog ferocity, displays a wider range of thought and a more subtle logic. As all men are not metaphysicians and profound thinkers, the effect of Hazlitt's writings is neither so extensive nor so immediate as that of Cobbett's. They exercise, however, a deeper influence over superior minds, and are calculated to make a more lasting impression. The Essays of William Hazlitt will be recurred to for instruction and entertainment when the Political Register is forgotten; because the former teem with general truths and first principles, while the latter owes its attraction to party prejudices and temporary details. Cobbett is never quoted as an authority, and has none of those sentences pregnant with thought or felicitous in expression which linger on the reader's memory, and at last form a portion of his own mind. As a partisan, however, Cobbett is perhaps more effective than Hazlitt, because the latter is apt to lose sight of some immediate interest or narrow controversy, and to run off into speculations too deep or delicate for the comprehension of the multitude.

But though Cobbett is not a profound writer, it is impossible to read his productions, let the subject be what it may, without being struck with the force and perspicuity of the style. There is no dainty choice of uncommon phrases, no squeamish avoidance of natural images and naked truths, but a manly simplicity and directness that comes home to the reader's comprehension with a far greater effect than is attained by the finest rhetorical periods of more fastidious writers. His English is not only more racy, but more correct, than that of Swift himself; and all his compositions

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