PAST From Fraser's Magazine. | poems of real and lasting merit-poems as varied, AND PRESENT CONDITION OF BRITISHI may add, as any era in our literature can exhibit, the celebrated Elizabethan period, perhaps, but barely excepted. POETRY. A new race of poets came in with King George III., for the poets of the preceding reigns who lived to witness the accession of the king either survived that event but a very few years, or were unwilling to risk their reputations in any new contest for distinction. Young was far advanced in years, and content-and wisely so-with the fame 'Tis sixty years since a thin quarto volume appeared in London with the plain and unpretending title of An Ode to Superstition, and some other Poems, and exactly the same number of years since a thin octavo appeared at Kilmarnock, entitled, Poems, chiefly in the Scottish Dialect. The thin quarto was the production of Samuel Rogers, a young gentleman of education, the son of a Lon-of his Satires and his Night Thoughts; Gray had don banker; the thin octavo the production of Robert Burns, a Scottish ploughboy, without education, and almost without a penny in the world. 'Tis fifty years since Burns was buried in the kirkyard of St. Michael's: "O early ripe, to thy abundant store written his Elegy and his Odes, and was annotating Linnæus within the walls of a college; Shenstone found full occupation for the remainder of his life in laying out the Leasowes to suit the genius of the place; Johnson was put above necessity and the booksellers by a pension from the crown; Akenside and Armstrong were pursuing their profession of physicians; Lyttleton was busy putting points and periods to his History; Smollett, in seeking a precarious livelihood from prose; and Mallet employed in defending the administration of Lord Bute, and earning the wages of a pension from the minister. Three alone adhered in any way to verse; Mason was employed in contemplating his English Garden; Glover, in brooding over his posthumous Athenaid; and Home, in writing new tragedies to eclipse, if possible, the early lus What could advancing age have added more!" While the poet of the Ode to Superstition is still among us, full of years and full of health, and as much in love with poetry as ever. "It is, I confess," says Cowley, "but seldom seen that the poet dies before the man; for when once we fall in love with that bewitching art, we do not use to court it as a mistress, but marry it as a wife, and take it for better or worse, as an inseparable companion of our whole life." It was so with Waller when he was eighty-two, and is so with Mr.tre of his Douglas. Rogers now that he is eighty-one. Long may it be so : "If envious buckies view wi' sorrow Thy lengthen'd days on this blest morrow, Rake them, like Sodom and Gomorrah, Waller " was the delight of the House of Com- " There was room for a new race of poets. Nor was it long before a new set of candidates for distinction came forward to supply the places of the old. The voice of the Muse was first awakened in Edinburgh and Aberdeen. I can find no earlier publication of the year 1760 than a thin octavo of seventy pages, printed at Edinburgh, entitled, Fragments of Ancient Poetry, collected in the Highlands of Scotland, and translated from the Gaelic or Erse language, the first edition of a work which has had its influence in the literature of our country, the far-famed Ossian, the favorite poem of the great Napoleon. "Have you seen," says Gray, The poet of An Ode to Superstition has outlived the Erse Fragments since they were printed? a whole generation of poets, poetasters, and poeti-I am more puzzled than ever about their antiquity, tos; has seen the rise and decline of schools, Lake, Cockney, and Satanic-the changeful caprices of taste the injurious effects of a coterie of friends -the impartial verdicts of Time and a third generation-another Temple of Fame-a new class of occupants in many of the niches of the old-restorations, depositions, and removals, and, what few are allowed to see, his own position in the Temple pretty well determined, not so high as to be wondered at, nor so low that he can escape from envy and even emulation. Nor is this all; he has lived to see Poetry at its last gasp among us; the godlike race of the last generation expiring or extinct, and no new-comers in their stead; just as if Nature chose to lie fallow for a time, and verse was to usurp the place of poetry, desire for skill, and the ambition and impudence of daring for the flight and the raptures of the true-born poet. If such is the case, that Poetry is pretty well extinct among us-which no one, I believe, has the hardihood to gainsay-a retrospective review of what our great men accomplished in the long and important reign of King George III. (the era that has just gone by) will not be deemed devoid of interest at this time. The subject is a very varied one, is as yet without an historian, nor has hitherto received that attention in critical detail so preeminently due to a period productive of so many though I still incline (against everybody's opinion) to believe them old." Many, like Gray, were alive to their beauties: inquiry was made upon inquiry, and dissertation led to dissertation. It was long, however, before the points in dispute were settled, and the authorship brought home to the pen of the translator. The Fragments have had a beneficial and a lasting effect upon English literature. The grandeur of Ossian emboldened the wing of the youthful Byron, and the noble daring of the allusions and illustrations countenanced the author of The Rime of the Ancient Mariner in what was new and hazardous, when Hayley held, and Darwin was about to assume, a high but temporary position in our poetry. The Aberdeen volume of poems and translations (8vo. 1761) was the first publication of Beattie, the author of The Minstrel. So lightly, we are told, did Beattie think of this collection that he used to destroy all the copies he could procure, and would only suffer four of the pieces-and those much altered— to stand in the same volume with the Minstrel. Beattie acquired a very slender reputation by this first heir of his invention; nor would it appear to have been known much beyond the walls of the Marischal College, before the Minstrel drew attention to its pages, and excited curiosity to see what the successful poet on this occasion had written unsuc The effect of the Reliques was more immediate than some have been willing to imagine. The Hermit of Goldsmith, a publication of the following year, originated in the Reliques; and the Minstrel of Beattie, a publication of the year 1771, in the preliminary dissertation prefixed to the volumes. If Percy had rendered no other service to literature than the suggestion of the Minstrel, his name would deserve respect. "The Minstrel," says Southey," was an incidental effect of Percy's volumes. Their immediate consequence was to produce a swarm of legendary tales,' bearing, in their style, about as much resemblance to the genuine ballad as the heroes of a French tragedy to the historical personages whose names they bear, or a set of stage-dances to the lads and lasses of a village-green in the old times of the Maypole." This was the more immediate effect; the lasting result of the Reliques was their directing the rude gropings of genius in a Scott, a Southey, a Coleridge, and a Wordsworth. cessfully before. In the same year in which Beat- | Young, the sole survivor of the poets of the last tie appeared, a new candidate came forward to generation, died, at the great age of eighty-four, startle, astonish, and annoy. The reputation of on the 5th of April; and Mr. Rogers, the still sura poet of higher powers than Beattie seemed like- viving patriarch of the past generation of poets, ly to exhibit would have sunk before the fame of was born on the 30th of July of the same year. the new aspirant. I allude to Churchill, whose first publication, The Rosciad, appeared in the March of 1761, and without the author's name. This was a lucky, and, what is more, a clever hit. The town, a little republic in itself, went mad about the poem; and when the author's name was prefixed to a second edition, the poet was welcomed by the public as no new poet had ever been before. Nor was his second publication-his Apology-inferior to his first. His name was heard in every circle of fashion, and in every coffee-house in town. Nor did he suffer his reputation to flag, but kept the public in one continual state of excitement for the remainder of his life. He attacked the whole race of actors in his Rosciad; the Critical Reviewers, (the Edinburgh and Quarterly Reviewers of the day,) in his Apology; the whole Scottish nation, in his Prophecy of Famine; Dr. Johnson, in The Ghost; and Hogarth, in A Familiar Epistle. Every person of distinction expected that it was to be his turn next; and there was no saying where his satire would not have reached, for he was busy with a caustic dedication to Warburton when, on the 4th of November, 1764, he died at Boulogne, at the too early age of three-and-thirty. Dr. Young survived him nearly a year. What the predecessor of Pope in satire thought of the new satirist, no one has told us. Beattie reäppeared in 1766 with a volume of poems, better by far than what he had done before, but still insufficient to achieve the reputation which the Minstrel subsequently acquired for the author of the volume. A second candidate was Cunningham, a player, still remembered for his Kate of Aberdeen, a short but charming piece of simpleWhile the noisy Churchill" engrossed to him-hearted poetry. Poor Cunningham made no great self the whole attention of the public, a poem appeared in May, 1762, likely to outlive the caustic effusions of the satirist, because, with equal talent, it is based on less fleeting materials. This was The Shipwreck, a Poem, in Three Cantos, by a Sailor; better known as Falconer's Shipwreck, and deservedly remembered for its "simple tale," its beautiful transcripts of reality, and as adding a congenial and peculiarly British subject to the great body of our island poetry. The popularity of Churchill kept it on the shelves of the booksellers for a time, but it soon rose into a reputation, and nothing can now occur to keep it down. When Goldsmith published his first poem (The Traveller) in the December of 1764, Churchill had been dead a month, and there was room for a new poet to supply his place. Nor were critics wanting who were able and willing to help it forward. "Such is the poem,' says Dr. Johnson, who reviewed it in the Critical Review, "on which we now congratulate the public, as on a production to which, since the death of Pope, it will not be easy to find anything equal." This was high praise, not considered undeserved at the time, nor thought so now. Such, indeed, was the reputation of the Traveller, that it was likely to have led to a further succession of poets in the school of Pope, but for the timely interposition of a collection of poems which called our attention off from the study of a single school, and directed the young and rising poets to a wider range for study and imitation. This collection of poems was Percy's Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, one of the most tasteful collections of poems in any language, and one of the best and most widely known: "The publication of which," says Southey, "must form an epoch in the history of our poetry whenever it is written." The first edition appeared in 1765, a year remarkable in more ways than one. Dr. way with his verse; he had dedicated his volume, But "There is a new thing published," says Walpole, "that will make you split your cheeks with laughing. It is called the New Bath Guide. It stole into the world, and, for a fortnight, no sour looked into it, concluding its name was its true name. No such thing. It is a set of letters in verse, describing the life at Bath, and incidentally everything else; but so much wit, so much humor, fun, and poetry, never met together before. I can say it by heart, and, if I had time, would write it you down; for it is not yet re-printed, and not one to be had." Gray commended it to Wharton, and Smollett wrote his Humphrey Clinker (the last and best of his works) on Anstey's principle in his Guide. 66 A publication of the year 1767, called the Beauties of English Poesy, selected by Oliver Goldsmith, deserves to be remarked. The selection seems to have been made as a sort of antidote to Percy's Reliques. My bookseller having informed me," he says, "that there was no collection of English poetry among us of any estimation, *** I therefore offer this," he adds, "to the best of my judgment, as the best collection that has yet appeared. I claim no merit in the choice, as it was obvious, for in all languages the best productions are most easily found." It will hardly be believed by any one who hears it for the first time, that a poet of Goldsmith's taste in poetry could have made a selection from our poets without including a single poet (Milton excepted) from the noble race of 66 "O, how canst thou renounce," poets who preceded the restoration. Yet such, vorite stanza: it is true poetry, it is inspiration." however, is the case; and I can only account for The stanza is well knownthe principle on which the selection would appear to have been made, that it was meant as an antidote to Percy's publication, or that Goldsmith (and this is not unlikely) was perfectly unacquainted with the poets of a period previous to Dryden and Pope. Michael Bruce, a young and promising poet, died in the year 1767, at the too early age of twenty-one. Some of his poems--and they were posthumously published, without the last touches of the author-possess unusual beauties. His Lochleven is called, by Coleridge, "a poem of great merit;" and the same great critic directs attention to what he calls "the following exquisite passage, expressing the effects of a fine day on the human heart :" "Fat on the plain and mountain's sunny side, Large droves of oxen, and the fleecy flocks, Feed undisturbed; and fill the echoing air With music grateful to the master's ear. The traveller stops, and gazes round and round O'er all the scenes that animate his heart With mirth and music. Even the mendicant, Bowbent with age, that on the old grey stone, Sole sitting, suns him in the public way, Feels his heart leap, and to himself he sings." Another poet, whose song ceased before he had time to do still better things, was poor Falconer, who perished at sea in the Aurora frigate, in the year 1769. He had sung his own catastrophe in his Shipwreck only a few years before. The poem of the year 1770 was The Deserted Village-in some respects a superior poem to The Travelle. It was immediately a favorite, and in less than four months had run through five editions. Gray thought Goldsmith a genuine poet. "I was with him," says Nicholls, at Malvern, when he received the Deserted Village, which he desired me to read to him; he listened with fixed attention, and soon exclaimed, This man is a poet!' 66 If The Deserted Village was, as it certainly is, an accession to our poetry, the death of Akenside and the far too premature removal of Chatterton were real losses in the very same year in which Goldsmith's great poem appeared. Akenside had, no doubt, sang his song, but Chatterton was only in his eighteenth year. What a production for a boy was the ballad of Sir Charles Bawdin!" There is nothing nobler of the kind in the whole compass of our poetry. "Tasso alone," says Campbell, can be compared to him as a juvenile prodigy. No English poet ever equalled him at the same age." 66 and shares with a stanza in the Castle of Indolence, the applause of nations. Mason, in 1771, put forth a new edition of his Poems, and in a separate publication the same year the first book of his English Garden. To the Poems he has made a few additions, but nothing so beautiful as his epitaph on his wife, inscribed upon her grave in Bristol cathedral. The lines are well known, but not so the circumstance, only recently published, that the last four lines were written by Gray : 66 Tell them, though 't is an awful thing to die, ('T was e'en to thee,) yet the dread path once trod, Heaven lifts its everlasting portals high, And bids the pure in heart behold their God.'" We learn from the same unquestionable quarter, (the Reminiscences of the Rev. Norton Nicholls,) that Gray thought very little of what he had seen of the English Garden. "He mentioned the poem of the Garden with disapprobation, and said it should not be published if he could prevent it." There are lines and passages, however, of true poetry throughout the poem, which form in themselves an agreeable accession to our stock of favorite passages. How exquisite, for instance, is this: 66 The haunt of wood-gods only; where, if art The poem, however, made but a very slender impression on the public mind, nor is it now much read, save by the student of our poetry, to whom it affords a lesson of importance. The only remembered publication in poetry of the year 1773 was The Heroic Epistle to Sir William Chambers-a caustic attack, replete with wit, humor, and invective, on the architect's Chinese eccentricities in the gardens at Kew. It was long before Mason was suspected of the satire. Tom Warton was the first to attribute it to his pen; he said it was Walpole's buckramed up by Mason. But Walpole, from a letter to Mason only recently published, would appear to have had nothing to do with it. "I have read it," writes Walpole, "so very often, that I have got it by heart, and now I am master of all its beauties. I confess I like it infinitely better than I did, though I liked it infinitely before. But what signifies what I think? All the world thinks the same. No soul has, I have heard, guessed within a hundred miles. I catched at Anstey's, and have, I believe, contributed to spread the notion. It has since been called Temple Luttrell's, and, to my infinite honor, mine. But now that you have tapped this mine of talent, and it runs so richly and easily, for Heaven's and for England's sake, do not let it rest. The Deserted Village of the year 1770 was followed in 1771 by the first book of The Minstrel, a poem which has given more delight to minds of a certain class, and that class a high one, than any other poem in the English language. Since Beattie composed his poem on which his fame relies, and securely too for an hereafter, many poems of a far loftier and even a more original character have been added to the now almost overgrown body of our poetry, yet Beattie is still the poet for the young; and still The Heroic Epistle was followed, in 1774, by the in Edwin-that happy personification of the poetic Judah Restored, of Roberts—“a work,” says temperament-young and enthusiastic readers de- Campbell, " of no common merit." Southey calls light and recognize a picture of themselves. Gray the author a poet of the same respectable class as lived to cominend and to correct it-with the taste the author of Leonidas and the Athenaid, and adds of a true poet and the generosity of an unselfish in a note, Dr. Roberts' Judah Restored was one "This of all others," he says, "is my fa- of the first books that I ever possessed. It was one. of Gray, appeared two years later, (1781,) and, like the former portion of the work, was read with deserved avidity. The effect was catching. The school of Dryden and Pope revived. Hayley wrote his Triumphs of Temper in the verse recommended by Johnson; Crabbe composed his Library and his Village in the same versification; Cowper his Table Talk, and even Mason (though the last person in the world to admit it) his translation of Du Fresnoy, in Johnson's only measure. But the fear of Dr. Johnson did not reach be given me by a lady whom I must ever gratefully and affectionately remember as the kindest friend of my boyhood. I read it often then, and can still recur to it with satisfaction; and perhaps I owe something to the plain dignity of its style, which is suited to the subject, and everywhere bears the stamp of good sense and careful erudition. To acknowledge obligations of this kind is both a pleasure and a duty."* I have Southey's copy of the Judah before me at this moment; on the flyleaf is inscribed, in the neat hand-writing of the poet, "Robert Southey-given me by Mrs. Do-yond the grave, and when Cowper put forth his lignon, 1784." The poet of Kchama was born the Task in the spring of 1785, the great critic was no year in which the Judah appeared, and was only more. Not that Cowper was likely to be deterred ten years old when a copy of the poem was given from blank verse by the criticisms of Johnson, for to him by the lady he remembers so affectionately the Task was commenced in Johnson's lifetime, and as "the kindest friend of his boyhood." This one in the same structure of versification. That Johnbook may have had the same effect on Southey son could have hurt the sale for a time by a savage that Spenser's works had upon the mind of Cow-remark at the table of Reynolds, no one acquainted by: "I had read him all over," he says, "before with the literature of the period will for a moment I was twelve years old, and was thus made a poet doubt. That he could have kept the poem from as immediately as a child is made an eunuch." what it now possesses and deserves-a universal On the 4th of April, 1774, died Oliver Gold-admiration, it would be equally absurd to suppose smith, leaving unfortunately unfinished one of the for a single moment. best of his lighter pieces-his well-known and in- When Cowper put forth his Task there was no imitable Retaliation. It was published a fortnight poet of any great ability or distinguished name in after his death, and became immediately a favor-the field. Hayley ambled over the course, to use ite. A second posthumous publication of the same poet was The Haunch of Venison, a clever epistle to Lord Clare, full of characteristic beauties peculiar to its author. Both pieces owe something to Anstey and his Guide-the suggestion certainly. In 1776 Mickle put forth his translation of the Luciad-free, flowery, and periphrastical, full of spirit, and not devoid of beauties, but untrue to the majestic simplicity of the great Portuguese. an expression of Southey, without a competitor. But Hayley had done his best, poor as that was, though his day was hardly by. It was Cowper who forced us from the fetters which Johnson had forged for future poets, and Hayley had done his best to rivet and retain. Nor was Cowper without some assistance at this time. Evans' old ballads did something to extend a taste for the early but unknown masters of our poetry. Some of Mickle's imitations, in the same collection, were read by younger minds with an influence of which we enjoy the fruits to this day. Charlotte Smith put forth a volume of her sonnets, replete with touching sentiment, eminently characteristic of the softer graces of the female mind, and the late Sir Egerton Brydges, a volume of poems, containing one noble sonnet ("Echo and Silence) which, though neglected at the time, will live as long as any poem of its length in the English language. While Goldsmith was confining his selection from our poets to a period too narrow to embrace many of the nobler productions of the British muse, Gray was annotating Lydgate, and the younger Warton collecting materials for his History of English Poetry. Our literature lies under other obligations to the younger Warton-great as that obligation is for his noble and unfinished History. He was the first to explain and direct attention to many of the less obvious beauties of The Faerie Queene, and, in conjunction with Ed- The Task was followed by a volume of poems wards, the first to revive the sonnet among us, a from a provincial press full of the very finest poefavorite form of verse with our Elizabethan poets, try, and one that has stood its test, and will stand with Shakspeare and with Milton, but entirely forever. The author of the Task was of noble exabandoned by the poets who came after them. traction, and counted kin with lord chancellors and The first volume of Warton's History was pub-earls. His fellow author was a poor Scottish lished in 1774; his Poems containing his sonnets peasant, nameless and unknown when his poems in 1777. The effect produced by their publica- were put forth, but known, and deservedly known, tion was more immediate than has hitherto been wherever the language of his country has been thought. We owe the sonnets of Bampfylde (4to. heard. This poet was Robert Burns. Cowper and 1778) to the example of the younger Warton. Burns were far too nobly constituted to think disNor is the pupil unworthy of the master, or unwil-couragingly of one another. "Is not the Task," ling to own his obligation. Some of the Sixteen says Burns, a glorious poem?" The religion of Sonnets of Bampfylde (for such is the title of his the Task, bating a few scraps of "Calvinistic dithin unpretending quarto) are beautiful exceed-vinity, is the religion of God and nature; the reingly," and in one (the tenth) Warton is addressed ligion that exalts and ennobles man." "I have in a way which he could well appreciate. read Burns' poems," says Cowper, "and have The good effects of Percy's Reliques, Warton's read them twice; and though they be written in a volume of History, and Warton's Poems, received language that is new to me, and many of them on a temporary check in the year 1779, by the publi- subjects much inferior to the author's ability, I cation of the first part of Johnson's well-known think them on the whole a very extraordinary proLives of the Poets, containing his celebrated criti-duction. He is, I believe, the only poet these cism on the Lycidas of Milton, and his noble parallel between Dryden and Pope. The concluding portion of the Lives, containing his famous abuse Southey's Cowper, vol. iii., p. 32. 66 kingdoms have produced in the lower rank of life save Shakspeare, (I should rather say save Prior,) who need not be indebted for any part of his praise to a charitable consideration of his origin, and the disadvantages under which he has labored. It will While child in his mother's or his nurse's arms. Yet was his life the more endearing song." be pity if ne should not hereafter divest himself of barbarism, and content himself with writing pure English, in which he appears perfectly qualified to excel. He who can command admiration dishonors himself if he aims no higher than to raise a laugh." This, let it be remembered, was written at the time when the poet's reputation was as yet" For though not sweeter his own Homer sang, unconfirmed. But the praise is ample, and such as Burns would have loved to have heard from Cowper's lips. "Poor Burns!" he writes in another letter, "loses much of his deserved praise in this country through our ignorance of his language. I despair of meeting with any Englishman who will take the pains that I have taken to understand him. His candle is bright, but shut up in a dark lantern. I lent him to a very sensible neighbor of mine: but his uncouth dialect spoiled all; and before he had half read him through, he was quite ramfeezled." The word to which Cowper alludes occurs in the "Epistle to Lapraik;" the meaning was somewhat difficult at the time, few will need to be told it now. The study of Burns is very general in England, and in Ireland he is almost as much understood and appreciated as in his own country. Other poems of consequence followed at intervals, not very remote. In 1791 Cowper put forth his translation of the Iliad into English blank verse, and Darwin his Botanic Garden, a poem in two parts, written in the measure of Pope, but polished till little remained save glitter and fine words. The only poem of repute of the year 1792 that has reached our time, or seems likely to revive, and acquire an hereafter, is The Pleasures of Memory. This is a poem which Goldsmith would have read with pleasure, for it is much in his manner. "There is no such thing," says Byron," as a vulgar line in the book." The versification is very finished, but not in Darwin's manner to too great a nicety, while there are passages here and there which take silent possession of the heart, a sure sign of unusual excellence. Mr. Rogers appeared as a poet in the same year with Burns. But his Ode to Superstition was little read at the time, and his fame rests now on a Wordsworth's first poem, An Evening Walk, wide and a secure foundation. Another poet of the an epistle in verse, addressed to a young lady from same year was Henry Headley, a young and the Lakes of the North of England, appeared the promising writer, imbued with a fine and cultivated year after The Pleasures of Memory, and was foltaste, of which his two volumes of selections from lowed the same year by a volume of Descriptive our early poets, published in the following year, Sketches, in verse, taken during a Pedestrian Tour is still an enduring testimony. If Goldsmith had in the Italian Grisons, Swiss, and Savoyard Alps. lived to have seen these selections published, Every line in The Evening Walk bears the mark culled by a boy of barely twenty-one, he surely of a keen observer for himself; there is not a borwould have blushed to have looked upon his own. rowed image in the poem, though the pervading There were other candidates for distinction at character throughout reminds one too closely perthis time, imbued with the same tastes and fostered haps of The Nocturnal Reverie of the Countess of in the same quarter, the cloisters of Trinity col- Winchelsea, a wonderful poem, to which Wordslege, Oxford, and the wards of Winchester school. worth was the first to direct attention. Here is a The first was Thomas Russell, prematurely picture from Wordsworth's first volume, somesnatched away (1788) in his twenty-sixth year, thing between a Hobbima and a Hondekoeter:leaving a few sonnets and poems behind him, which his friends judged worthy of knowing here- "Sweet are the sounds that mingle from afar, after. That he had intended his poems for publi- Heard by calm lakes as peeps the folding star, cation was somewhat uncertain; that he was gifted Where the duck dabbles 'mid the rustling sedge, with no ordinary genius, the magnificent sonnet And feeding pike starts from the water's edge, supposed to be written at Lemnos has put beyond Or the swan stirs the reeds, his neck and bill the pale of cavil or suspicion. The second candidate for distinction was William Lisle Bowles, whose fourteen sonnets appeared in 1789, while he was yet an undergraduate at Oxford. The younger Warton lived long enough to foretell the future distinction of the boy his brother had brought up; Coleridge, to thank him in a sonnet for poetic obligations: "My heart has thank'd thee, Bowles, for those Whose sadness soothes me like the murmuring When Bowles was seeing his sonnets through the press, his old antagonist, Lord Byron, was a Wetting, that drip upon the waters still; : One feels that our poetry is enriched by a passage of this description-that the poet who could write in this way was likely to make what Addison calls additions to Nature, and this Mr. Wordsworth has done in a preeminent degree. Southey, in 1795, made his first public appearance as a poet in a thin duodecimo volume, printed at Bath, on the poor pale blue paper of the period. This was a kind of Lara and Jacqueline affair. One half of the volume was by Southey, the other half by Lovell, the poems of the former being distinguished by the signature of " Bion," of the latter by that of "Moschus." The poems are not very many in number, nor are they very good, yet the little volume is not without its interest in the history of a great mind, feeling its way to a proud position in our letters. The joint publication of Southey and Lovell, in 1795, was followed the next year by a similar kind of publication, between Coleridge and his school |