THE GEORGE II. & GEORGE III. HE reign of George II. was not prolific of original genius. There was no rich patronage from the crown or from ministers of state to encourage or reward authors. The magnificence of Dorset and Halifax found no imitators. Sir Robert Walpole, the great minister of the period, is said to have spent in ten years-from 1731 to 1742-above £50,000 on public writers; but his liberality was extended only to obscure and unscrupulous partisans, the supporters of his government, whose names would have passed into oblivion but for the satire of Pope. And Pope himself, by his ridicule of poor authors and their Grub-street productions, helped to accelerate that downfall of the literary character which he charged upon the throne and the ministry. The tone of public morality also was low; and authors had to contend with the neglect and difficulties incident to a transition period between the loss of patronage and the growth of a reading public numerous and enlightened enough to appreciate and support sound literature. These disadvantages, however, were only partial. The novels of Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett render the reign of the second George the brightest epoch in English fiction. Hume and Robertson had also commenced as historians. In theology and mental philosophy, the names of Bishop Butler and Jonathan Edwards stand out prominently. Literary periodicals abounded, and monthly magazines were then first established. alone, of all the eminent authors of this period, seems to have directly copied the style of Pope and Dryden. It is true that few or none of the poets we have named had much immediate influence on literature: Gray was ridiculed, and Collins was neglected, because both public taste and criticism had been vitiated and reduced to a low ebb. The spirit of true poetry, however, was not dead; the seed was sown, and in the next generation Cowper and Burns completed what Thomson had begun. The conventional style was destined to fall, leaving only that taste for correct language and polished versification which was established by the example of Pope, and found to be quite compatible with the utmost freedom and originality of conception and expression. In poetry, the name of Pope continued to be the greatest. His Moral Essays and Imitations of Horace the happiest of his works-were produced in this period. The most distinguished of his contemporaries, however, adopted styles of their own, or at least departed widely from that of their illustrious master. Thomson-who survived Pope only four years-made no attempt to enter the school of polished satire and pungent wit. His enthusiastic descriptions of nature, and his warm poetical feeling, seemed to revive the spirit of the elder muse, and to assert the dignity of genuine inspiration. Young in his best performances-his startling denunciations of death and judgment, his solemn appeals, his piety, and his epigram-was equally an original. Gray and Collins aimed at the dazzling imagery and magnificence of lyrical poetry-the direct antipodes of Pope. Akenside descanted on the operations of the mind, and the associated charms of taste and genius, in a strain of melodious and original blank verse. And the best of the secondary poets, as Shenstone, Dyer, and Mason, had each a distinct and independent poetical character. Johnson In the early part of the reign of George III. Johnson was still the great literary dictator, and he had yet to produce his best work, the Lives of the Poets. The exquisite poetry of Goldsmith, and the writings of Burke-that 'resplendent, far-sighted rhetorician-are perhaps the most precious products of the period. In fiction, Sterne was triumphantly successful, and he found many imitators, the best of whom was Henry Mackenzie. Several female writers-as Miss Burney, Mrs Inchbald, Charlotte Smith, and Mrs Radcliffealso enjoyed great popularity, though they are now comparatively little read. The more solid departments of literature were well supported. Hume and Robertson completed their historical works, and a fitting rival or associate appeared in Gibbon, the great historian of the Roman Empire. In theological literature we have the names of Paley, and Campbell, and Blair-the latter highly popular, if not profound. In metaphysics or mental philosophy, the writings of Reid formed a sort of epoch; and Smith's Wealth of Nations first explained to the world, fully and systematically, the principles upon which the wealth and prosperity of states must ever rest. One remarkable peculiarity of the period is, that it comprises the two most memorable of literary frauds or forgeries-those of Macpherson and Chatterton. Macpherson had some foundation for his Ossianic poems, though assuredly he discovered no epic in the Hebrides; and Chatterton, while yet a boy, possessed the genius of a true poet, combined with the taste and acquirements of the antiquary. It is some apology for these literary felonies or misdemeanours, that the oldest of the culprits was barely of age when he entered on his perilous and discreditable enterprise, and was encouraged and cheered on his course by popular applause. And as for the younger, his premature and tragic death—one of the saddest pages in literary history-must ever disarm criticism. POETS. MATTHEW GREEN. MATTHEW GREEN (1696-1737) was author of a poem, The Spleen, which received the praises of Pope and Gray. His parents were dissenters, but the poet, it is said, afterwards left their communion, disgusted with their austerity. He obtained an appointment as clerk in the Custom-house. His disposition was cheerful; but this did not save him from occasional attacks of low spirits, or spleen, as the favourite phrase was in his time. Having tried all imaginable remedies for his malady, he conceived himself at length able to treat it in a philosophical spirit, and therefore wrote his poem, which adverts to all its forms, and their appropriate remedies, in a style of comic verse resembling Hudibras, but allowed to be eminently original. Green terminated a quiet inoffensive life of celibacy in 1737, at the age of forty-one. The Spleen was first published by Glover, the author of Leonidas, himself a poet of some pretension in his day. Gray thought that 'even the wood-notes of Green often break out into strains of real poetry and music.' As The Spleen is almost unknown to modern readers, we present a few of its best passages. The first that follows contains one line marked by italic, which is certainly one of the happiest and wisest things ever said by a British author. It seems, however, to be imitated from Shakspeare Man but a rush against Othello's breast, Cures for Melancholy. To cure the mind's wrong bias, spleen, Laugh and be well. Monkeys have been Since mirth is good in this behalf, In rainy days keep double guard, I dress my face with studious looks, That memory minds not what is read, I sit in window dry as ark, And on the drowning world remark: And from the hipped discourses gather, Sometimes I dress, with women sit, And chat away the gloomy fit; Quit the stiff garb of serious sense, And wear a gay impertinence, Nor think nor speak with any pains, But lay on Fancy's neck the reins. I never game, and rarely bet, This view, profusely when inclined, Contentment-A Wish. Forced by soft violence of prayer, The blithesome goddess soothes my care; And thus she models my desire: Two hundred pounds half-yearly paid, A farm some twenty miles from town, And drive, while t' other holds the plough; A pond before full to the brim, Where cows may cool, and geese may swim; Behind, a green, like velvet neat, Soft to the eye, and to the feet; Where odorous plants in evening fair Where the half cirque, which vision bounds, And woods impervious to the breeze, From hills through plains in dusk array, Here stillness, height, and solemn shade, And dreams, beneath the spreading beech, Fresh pastures speckled o'er with sheep, Brown fields their fallow Sabbaths keep, And silver streams through meadows stray, And lesser nymphs on side of hills, Thus sheltered free from care and strife, May I enjoy a calm through life; See faction safe in low degree, As men at land see storms at sea, And laugh at miserable elves, Not kind, so much as to themselves, ISAAC HAWKINS BROWNE. A series of six imitations of living authors was published in 1736 by ISAAC HAWKINS BROWNE (1706-1760), which obtained great popularity, and are still unsurpassed. The nearest approach to them are the serious parodies in the Rejected Addresses. Browne was an amiable, accomplished man. He sat in parliament for some time as member for Wenlock in Shropshire. He wrote a Latin poem, De Animi Immortalitate, in the style of Lucretius, and an English poem on the subject of Design and Beauty. His imitations, however, are his happiest work. The subject of the whole is A Pipe of Tobacco, and the first of the series is A New Year's Ode, an imitation of Colley Cibber, beginning thus: Recitativo. Old battle-array, big with horror, is fled, Air. When summer suns grow red with heat, Recitativo. Like Neptune, Cæsar guards Virginian fleets, Cibber's laureate effusions are here very happily travestied. Ambrose Philips's namby-pamby is also well hit off: Little tube of mighty power, Thomson is the subject of the third imitation : O thou, matured by glad Hesperian suns, Tobacco, fountain pure of limpid truth, That looks the very soul; whence pouring thought, Burst forth all oracle and mystic song. This appears to be one of the happiest of the imitations; but as the effect of Thomson's turgid style and diction employed on such a theme levelled at him. In his poem of the Statesman, is highly ludicrous, the good-natured poet was he thus characterises the new peer : offended with Browne, and indited some angry lines in reply. The fourth imitation is in the style of Young's Satires, which are less strongly marked by any mannerism than his Night Thoughts, not then written. Pope is thus imitated: Blest leaf! whose aromatic gales dispense Swift concludes the series, but though Browne caught the manner of the dean, he also imitated his grossness. SIR CHARLES HANBURY WILLIAMS. As a satirical poet, courtier, and diplomatist, Sir Charles Hanbury Williams (1709-1759) enjoyed great popularity during the latter part of the reign of George II. Lord Hervey, Lord Chesterfield, Pulteney, and others, threw off political squibs and light satires; but Williams eclipsed them all in liveliness and pungency. He was introduced into public life by Sir Robert Walpole, whom he warmly supported. He had come, on the death of his father, Mr Hanbury, into parliament in 1733, having taken the name of Williams for a large estate in Monmouthshire, left to him by a godfather who was no relation. After his celebrated political poetry in ridicule of Walpole's antagonists, having unluckily lampooned Isabella, Duchess of Manchester, with her second husband, Mr Hussey, an Irish gentleman, and his countrymen, he retreated, with too little spirit, from the storm that threatened him into Wales, whence he was afterwards glad to accept missions to the courts of Dresden, Berlin, and Russia.'* One verse of this truculent satire may be quoted: But careful Heaven reserved her Grace On stronger parts depending; Pulteney, in 1742, succeeded in procuring the defeat and resignation of his rival Sir Robert Walpole, and was himself elevated to the peerage under the title of Earl of Bath. From this period he sank from popular favour into great contempt, and some of the bitterest of Williams's verses were • Croker: Lord Hervey's Memoirs. When you touch on his lordship's high birth, Speak Latin as if you were tipsy ; Proclaim him as rich as a Jew, Yet attempt not to reckon his bounties; Leave a blank for his honour and truth. Say he made a great monarch change hands; In another attack on the same parties, we have this pointed verse: How Sands, in sense and person queer, No mortal yet knows why; How Pulteney trucked the fairest fame To call his vixen by. Such pasquinades, it must be confessed, are as personal and virulent as any of the subsequent political poetry of the Rolliad or Anti-Facobin men of Williams's character-painting. It is part Review. The following is a more careful speciof a sketch of General Churchill-a man not unlike Thackeray's Major Pendennis: None led through youth a gayer life than he, If you name one of Marlbro's ten campaigns, In 1822, the fugitive poetry of Williams was collected and published in three volumes; but the work is carelessly edited, and many gross pieces not written by the satirical poet were admitted. JOHN DYER. JOHN DYER was a native of Wales, being born at Aberglasslyn, Carmarthenshire, in 1698 or 1699. His father was a solicitor, and intended his son for the same profession. The latter, however, had a taste for the fine arts, and rambled over his native country, filling his mind with a love of nature, and his portfolio with sketches of her most beautiful and striking objects. The sister art of poetry also claimed his regard, and during his excursions he wrote Grongar Hill (1726), the production on which his fame rests, and where it rests securely. Dyer next made a tour to Italy, to study painting. He does not seem to have excelled as an artist, though he was an able sketcher. On his return in 1740, he published anonymously another poem, The Ruins of Rome, in blank verse. One short passage, often quoted, is conceived, as Johnson remarks, with the mind of a poet :' The pilgrim oft At dead of night, 'mid his orison, hears, Rattling around, loud thundering to the moon. Seeing, probably, that he had little chance of succeeding as an artist, Dyer entered the church, and obtained successively the livings of Calthrop in Leicestershire, of Coningsby in Huntingdonshire, and of Belchford and Kirkby in Lincolnshire. He published in 1757 his longest poetical work, The Fleece, devoted to The care of sheep, the labours of the loom. The subject was not a happy one. How can a man write poetically, it was remarked by Johnson, of serges and druggets? Yet Dyer did write poetically on his unpromising theme, and Akenside assisted him with some finishing touches. One critic asked Dodsley how old the author of The Fleece was; and learning that he was in advanced life, ‘He will,' said the critic, 'be buried in woollen.' The poet did not long survive the publication, for he died next year, on the 24th of July 1758. The poetical pictures of Dyer are happy miniatures of nature, correctly drawn, beautifully coloured, and grouped with the taste of an artist. Wordsworth has praised him highly for imagination and purity of style. His versification is remarkably musical. His moral reflections arise naturally out of his subject, and are never intrusive. All bear evidence of a kind and gentle heart, and a true poetical fancy. Grongar Hill. Silent nymph, with curious eye, Draw the landscape bright and strong; Sat upon a flowery bed, With my hand beneath my head; While strayed my eyes o'er Towy's flood, From house to house, from hill to hill, Now I gain the mountain's brow, Below me trees unnumbered rise, On which a dark hill, steep and high, A little rule, a little sway, A sunbeam in a winter's day, Is all the proud and mighty have sun, Sometimes swift, sometimes slow, Wave succeeding wave, they go |