PERIOD IV.

POETS BORN IN THE

XVIITH CENTURY.

ADDISON TO SWIFT.

ADDISON.

An Account of the greatest English Poets.
To Mr. Henry Sacheverell.

[1694

SINCE, dearest Harry, you will needs request
A short account of all the muse-possest,
That, down from Chaucer's days to Dryden's
times,

Have spent their noble rage in British rimes;
Without more preface, writ in formal length,
To speak the undertaker's want of strength,
I'll try to make their several beauties known,
And show their verses' worth, though not my own.

Long had our dull forefathers slept supine,
Nor felt the raptures of the tuneful nine;
Till Chaucer first, a merry bard, arose,
And many a story told in rime and prose.
But age has rusted what the poet writ,
Worn out his language, and obscured his wit:
In vain he jests in his unpolish'd strain,
And tries to make his readers laugh in vain.

Chaucer.

Old Spenser next, warm'd with poetic rage,

Spenser.

In ancient tales amused a barbarous age;
An age that yet uncultivate and rude,

Cowley.

Where'er the poet's fancy led, pursued
Through pathless fields and unfrequented floods,
To dens of dragons and enchanted woods.
But now the mystic tale that pleased of yore,
Can charm an understanding age no more;
The long-spun allegories fulsome grow,
While the dull moral lies too plain below.
We view well-pleased at distance all the sights
Of arms and palfreys, battles, fields, and fights,
And damsels in distress, and courteous knights.
But, when we look too near, the shades decay,
And all the pleasing landscape fades away.

Great Cowley then, a mighty genius, wrote,
O'er-run with wit, and lavish of his thought:
His turns too closely on the reader press :

He more had pleased us, had he pleased us less.
One glittering thought no sooner strikes our eyes
With silent wonder, but new wonders rise.
As in the milky-way a shining white

O'erflows the heavens with one continued light;
That not a single star can show his rays,
Whilst jointly all promote the common blaze.
Pardon, great poet, that I dare to name

The unnumber'd beauties of thy verse with blame;
Thy fault is only wit in its excess,

But wit like thine in any shape will please.
What muse like thine can equal hints inspire,
And fit the deep-mouth'd Pindar to thy lyre:
Pindar, whom others in a labour'd strain,
And forced expression, imitate in vain ?
Well-pleased in thee he soars with new delight,
And plays in more unbounded verse, and takes a
nobler flight.

Blest man! whose spotless life and charming lays
Employ'd the tuneful prelate in thy praise:
Blest man! who now shall be for ever known,
In Sprat's successful labours and thy own.

But Milton next, with high and haughty stalks,
Unfetter'd in majestic numbers walks ;
No vulgar hero can his muse engage;

Nor earth's wide scene confine his hallow'd rage.
See! see, he upward springs, and towering high
Spurns the dull province of mortality,

Shakes heaven's eternal throne with dire alarms,
And sets the almighty thunderer in arms.
Whate'er his pen describes I more than see,
Whilst every verse, array'd in majesty,
Bold and sublime, my whole attention draws,
And seems above the critic's nicer laws.
How are you struck with terror and delight,
When angel with archangel copes in fight!
When great Messiah's outspread banner shines,
How does the chariot rattle in his lines!

What sounds of brazen wheels, what thunder,
scare,

And stun the reader with the din of war!
With fear my spirits and my blood retire,
To see the seraphs sunk in clouds of fire;
But when, with eager steps, from hence I rise,
And view the first gay scenes of Paradise ;
What tongue, what words of rapture can express
A vision so profuse of pleasantness!

O, had the poet ne'er profaned his pen,
To varnish o'er the guilt of faithless men,
His other works might have deserved applause!
But now the language can't support the cause;

Milton.