!

found, perhaps, in the lighter pieces of Prior. That tone
of polite raillery - that airy, rapid, picturesque narrative,
mixed up
with wit and naïveté - that style, in short, of
good conversation concentrated into flowing and polished
verses, was not within the vein of our native poets; and 5
probably never would have been known among us, if we
had been left to our own resources. It is lamentable
that this, which alone was worth borrowing, is the only
thing which has not been retained. The tales and little
apologues of Prior are still the only examples of this 10
style in our language.

With the wits of Queen Anne this foreign school attained the summit of its reputation; and has ever since, we think, been declining, though by slow and almost imperceptible gradations. Thomson was the first 15 writer of any eminence who seceded from it, and made some steps back to the force and animation of our original poetry. Thomson, however, was educated in Scotland, where the new style, we believe, had not yet become familiar; and lived, for a long time, a retired and 20 unambitious life, with very little intercourse with those who gave the tone in literature at the period of his first appearance. Thomson, accordingly, has always been popular with a much wider circle of readers, than either Pope or Addison; and, in spite of considerable vulgarity 25 and signal cumbrousness of diction, has drawn, even from the fastidious, a much deeper and more heartfelt

admiration.

Young exhibits, we think, a curious combination, or contrast rather, of the two styles of which we have been 39 speaking. Though incapable either of tenderness or passion, he had a richness and activity of fancy that belonged rather to the days of James and Elizabeth, than to those of George and Anne : - But then, instead of

indulging it, as the older writers would have done, in easy and playful inventions, in splendid descriptions, or glowing illustrations, he was led, by the restraints and established taste of his age, to work it up into strange 5 and fantastical epigrams, or into cold and revolting hyperboles. Instead of letting it flow gracefully on, in an easy and sparkling current, he perpetually forces it out in jets, or makes it stagnate in formal canals; and thinking it necessary to write like Pope, when the bent of Io his genius led him rather to copy what was best in Cowley and most fantastic in Shakespeare, he has produced something which excites wonder instead of admiration, and is felt by every one to be at once ingenious, incongruous, and unnatural.

15

After Young, there was a plentiful lack of poetical talent, down to a period comparatively recent. Akenside and Gray, indeed, in the interval, discovered a new way of imitating the ancients; — and Collins and Goldsmith produced some small specimens of exquisite and original 20 poetry. At last, Cowper threw off the whole trammels of French criticism and artificial refinement; and, setting at defiance all the imaginary requisites of poetical diction and classical imagery — dignity of style, and politeness of phraseology-ventured to write again with the force 25 and the freedom which had characterised the old school of English literature, and been so unhappily sacrificed, upwards of a century before. Cowper had many faults, and some radical deficiencies; but this atoned for all. There was something so delightfully refreshing, in seeing 30 natural phrases and natural images again displaying their unforced graces, and waving their unpruned heads. in the enchanted gardens of poetry, that no one complained of the taste displayed in the selection ; and Cowper is, and is likely to continue, the most popular

of all who have written for the present or the last generation.

Of the poets who have come after him, we cannot, indeed, say that they have attached themselves to the school of Pope and Addison; or that they have even 5 failed to show a much stronger predilection for the native beauties of their great predecessors. Southey, and Wordsworth, and Coleridge, and Miss Baillie, have all of them copied the manner of our older poets; and, along with this indication of good taste, have given great 10 proofs of original genius. The misfortune is, that their copies of those great originals are liable to the charge of extreme affectation. They do not write as those great poets would have written they merely mimic their manner, and ape their peculiarities; and consequently, 15 though they profess to imitate the freest and most careless of all versifiers, their style is more remarkably and offensively artificial than that of any other class of writers. They have mixed in, too, so much of the mawkish tone of pastoral innocence and babyish 20 simplicity, with a sort of pedantic emphasis and ostentatious glitter, that it is difficult not to be disgusted with their perversity, and with the solemn self-complacency, and keen and vindictive jealousy, with which they have put in their claims on public admiration. But we have 25 said enough elsewhere of the faults of those authors; and shall only add, at present, that, notwithstanding all these faults, there is a fertility and a force, a warmth of feeling and an exaltation of imagination about them, which classes them, in our estimation, with a much higher 30 order of poets than the followers of Dryden and Addison; and justifies an anxiety for their fame, in all the admirers of Milton and Shakespeare.

Of Scott, or of Campbell, we need scarcely say any

thing, with reference to our present object, after the very copious accounts we have given of them on former occasions. The former professes to copy something a good deal older than what we consider as the golden age 5 of English poetry, — and, in reality, has copied every style, and borrowed from every manner that has prevailed, from the times of Chaucer to his own;-illuminating and uniting, if not harmonizing them all, by a force of colouring, and a rapidity of succession, which is not to Io be met with in any of his many models. The latter, we think, can scarcely be said to have copied his pathos, or his energy, from any models whatever, either recent or early. The exquisite harmony of his versification is elaborated, perhaps, from the Castle of Indolence of 15 Thomson, and the serious pieces of Goldsmith ; — and it seems to be his misfortune, not to be able to reconcile himself to any thing which he cannot reduce within the limits of this elaborate harmony. This extreme fastidiousness, and the limitation of his efforts to themes of 20 unbroken tenderness or sublimity, distinguish him from the careless, prolific, and miscellaneous authors of our primitive poetry ;- while the enchanting softness of his pathetic passages, and the power and originality of his more sublime conceptions, place him at a still greater 25 distance from the wits, as they truly called themselves, of Charles II. and Queen Anne.

We do not know what other apology to offer for this hasty, and, we fear, tedious sketch of the history of our poetry, but that it appeared to us to be necessary, in 30 order to explain the peculiar merit of that class of writers

to which the author before us belongs; and that it will very greatly shorten what we have still to say on the characteristics of our older dramatists. An opinion prevails very generally on the Continent, and with

foreign-bred scholars among ourselves, that our national taste has been corrupted chiefly by our idolatry of Shakespeare; and that it is our patriotic and traditional admiration of that singular writer, that reconciles us to the monstrous compound of faults and beauties that 5 occur in his performances, and must to all impartial judges appear quite absurd and unnatural. Before entering upon the character of a contemporary dramatist, it was of some importance, therefore, to show that there was a distinct, original, and independent school of liter- 10 ature in England in the time of Shakespeare; to the general tone of whose productions his works were sufficiently conformable; and that it was owing to circumstances in a great measure accidental, that this native school was superseded about the time of the Restoration, 15 and a foreign standard of excellence intruded on us, not in the drama only, but in every other department of poetry. This new style of composition, however, though adorned and recommended by the splendid talents of many of its followers, was never perfectly naturalised, 20 we think, in this country; and has ceased, in a great measure, to be cultivated by those who have lately aimed with the greatest success at the higher honours of poetry. Our love of Shakespeare, therefore, is not a monomania or solitary and unaccountable infatuation; but is merely 25 the natural love which all men bear to those forms of excellence that are accommodated to their peculiar character, temperament, and situation; and which will always return, and assert its power over their affections, long after authority has lost its reverence, fashions been 30 antiquated, and artificial tastes passed away. In endeavouring, therefore, to bespeak some share of favour for such of his contemporaries as had fallen out of notice, during the prevalence of an imported literature, we con