the young and rising poets to a wider range for study and imitation. an 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 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. Young, the sole survivor of the poets of the last generation, died at the great age of eighty-four, on the 5th of April; and Mr. Rogers, the still surviving patriarch of the past generation of poets, was born on the 30th of July of the same year. his encomiums "in kind." But the poet of the year 1766 was Anstey, with his New Bath Guide. "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 soul looked into it, concluding No such thing. its name was its true name. It is a set of letters in verse, describing the life at Bath, and incidentally every thing 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 reprinted, 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. The effect of the Reliques was more immediate than some have been willing to imagine. The Hermit of Goldsmith, a A publication of the year 1767, called publication of the following year, originat- the Beauties of English Poesy, selected by ed in the Reliques; and the Minstrel of Oliver Goldsmith, deserves to be remarked. Beattie, a publication of the year 1771, in The selection seems to have been made as the preliminary dissertation prefixed to the a 30rt of antidote to Percy's Reliques. volumes. If Percy had rendered no other" My bookseller having informed me," he service to literature than the suggestion of says, "that there was no collection of Engthe Minstrel, his name would deserve re-lish poetry among us of any estimation,. spect. "The Minstrel," says Southey,. . . I therefore offer this," he adds, "to was an incidental effect of Percy's vol- the best of my judgment, as the best columes. Their immediate consequence was lection that has yet appeared. I claim no to produce a swarm of legendary tales,' merit in the choice, as it was obvious, for bearing, in their style, about as much re- in all languages the best productions are semblance to the genuine ballad as the he- most. easily found." It will hardly be beroes of a French tragedy to the historical lieved by any one who hears it for the first personages whose names they bear, or a set time, that a poet of Goldsmith's taste in of stage-dances to the lads and lasses of a poetry could have made a selection from village-green, in the old times of the may- our poets without including a single poet pole." This was the more immediate ef- (Milton excepted) from the noble race of fect; the lasting result of the Reliques poets who preceded the Restoration. Yet was their directing the rude groupings of such, however, is the case,; and I can only genius in a Scott, a Southey, a Coleridge, account for the principle on which the seand a Wordsworth. lection would appear to have been made, that it was meant as an antidote to Percy's publications, or that Goldsmith (and this is not unlikely) was perfectly unacquainted with the poets of a period previous to Dryden and Pope. Beattie reappeared 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 simple-hearted poetry. Poor Cunningham made no great way with his verse; he had dedicated his volume, with all the ambition of an actor, to no less a personage than Garrick; but the head of the patentee players received the stroller's poetry with indifference, and did not on this occasion repay-which he commonly did 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 authorpossess unusual beauties. His Lockleven is callen 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, 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. "O, how canst thou renounce," and shares with a stanza in the Castle of Indolence the applause of nations. Mason, in 1771, put forth a new edition the same year the first book of his English of his Poems, and in a separate publication Garden. To the Poems he has made a few additions, but nothing so beautiful as his epitaph on his wife, inscribed upon her The poem of the year 1770 was The grave in Bristol Cathedral. The lines are well known, but not so the circumstance Deserted Village-in some respects a superior poem to The Traveller. It was im-lines were written by Gray :-only recently published, that the last four mediately 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!' "Tell them, though 'tis an awful thing to die, Heav'n lifts its everlasting portals high, We learn from the same unquestionable If The Deserted Village was, as it cer- quarter (the Reminiscences of the Rev. tainly is, an accession to our poetry, the Norton Nicholls), that Gray thought very death of Akenside and the far too prema- little of what he had seen of the English ture removal of Chatterton were real losses Garden. "He mentioned the poem of the in the very same year in which Goldsmith's Garden with disapprobation, and said it great poem appeared. Akenside had, no should not be published if he could prevent doubt, sang his song, but Chatterton was it." There are lines and passages, howevonly in his eighteenth year. What a pro- er, of true poetry throughout the poem, duction for a boy was the ballad of "Sir which form in themselves an agreeable acCharles Bawdin!" There is nothing no- cession to our stock of favorite passages. bler of the kind in the whole compass of How exquisite, for instance, is this: 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. The haunt of wood-gods only; where, if art "Many a glade is found 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 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 the poem on which his fame) The only remembered publication in porelies, and securely too for an hereafter, etry of the year 1773 was The Heroic many poems of a far loftier and even a Epistle to Sir William Chambers,—a causmore original character have been added to tic attack, replete with wit, humor, and inthe now almost overgrown body of our po-vective, on the architect's Chinese eccenetry, yet Beattie is still the poet for the tricities in the gardens at Kew. It was young; and still in Edwin-that happy long before Mason was suspected of the personification of the poetic temperament satire. Tom Warton was the first to attrib-young and enthusiastic readers delight ute it to his pen; he said it was Walpole's and recognize a picture of themselves. buchramed up by Mason. But Walpole, Gray lived to commend and to correct it from a letter to Mason only recently publishwith the taste of a true poet and the gener-ed, would appear to have had nothing to do In 1776 Mickle put forth his translation of the Lusiad-free, flowery, and periphrastical, full of spirit, and not devoid of beauties, but untrue to the majestic simplicity of the great Portuguese. with it. "I have read it," writes Walpole, epistle to Lord Clare, full of characteristic so very often, that I have got it by heart, beauties peculiar to its author. Both and now I am master of all its beauties. I pieces owe something to Anstey and his confess I like it infinitely better than I did, Guide-the suggestion certainly. 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." 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 The Heroic Epistle was followed, in English Poetry. Our literature lies under 1774, by the Judah Restored, of Roberts, other obligations to the younger Warton,a work," says Campbell," of no common great as that obligation is for his noble but merit." Southey calls the author a poet of unfinished History. He was the first to the same respectable class as the author of explain and direct attention to many of the Leonidas and Athenaid, and adds in a note, less obvious beauties of The Faerie Queen, "Dr. Roberts's Judah Restored was one and in conjunction with Edwards, the first of the first books that I ever possessed. It to revive the sonnet among us, a favorite was given me by a lady whom I must ever form of verse with our Elizabethan poets, gratefully and affectionately remember as with Shakspeare and with Milton, but enthe kindest friend of my boyhood. I read tirely abandoned by the poets who came afit often then, and can still recur to it with ter them. The first volume of Warton's satisfaction; and perhaps I owe something History was published in 1774; his Poems to the plain dignity of its style, which is containing his sonnets in 1777. The effect suited to the subject, and every where produced by their publication was more bears the stamp of good sense and careful immediate than has hitherto been thought. erudition. To acknowledge obligations of We owe the sonnets of Bampfylde (4to. this kind is both a pleasure and duty."* 11778) to the example of the younger Warhave Southey's copy of the Judah before ton. Nor is the pupil unworthy of the me at this moment; on the fly-leaf is inscribed, in the neat handwriting of the poet, "Robert Southey-given me by Mrs. Dolignon, 1784." The poet of Kehama was born the year in which the Judah appeared, and was only ten years old when a copy of the poem was given to him, by the lady he remembers so affectionately as "the kindest friend of his boyhood." This one book may have had the same effect upon Southey that Spenser's works had upon the mind of Cowley; "I had read him all over," he says, "before I was twelve years old, and was thus made a poet as immediately as a child is made an eunuch." master, or unwilling to own his obligation. Some of the Sixteen Sonnets of Bampfylde (for such is the title of his thin unpretending quarto) are "beautiful exceedingly," and in one (the tenth) Warton is addressed in a way which he could well appreciate. The good effect of Percy's Reliques, Warton's volume of History, and Warton's Poems, received a temporary check in the year 1779, by the publication of the first part of Johnson's well-known Lives of the Poets, containing his celebrated criticism on the Lycidas of Milton, and his noble parallel between Dryden and Pope. The concluding portion of the Lives, containing his famous abuse 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. HayAley 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 per On the 4th of April, 1774, died Oliver Goldsmith, leaving unfortunately unfinished one of the best of his lighter pieces-his well-known and inimitable Retaliation. It was published a fortnight after his death, and became immediately a favorite. second posthumous publication of the same poet was The Haunch of Venison, a clever Southey's Cowper, Vol. iii. p. 32. moment. son in the world to admit it) his translation Task," says Burns, a glorious poem ?" of Du Fresnoy, in Johnson's only measure. The religion of the Task, bating a few But the fear of Dr. Johnson did not scraps of " Calvinistic divinity, is the relireach beyond the grave, and when Cowper gion of God and Nature; the religion that put forth his Task in the spring of 1785, exalts and ennobles man." "I have read the great critic was no more. Not that Burns's poems," says Cowper, " and have Cowper was likely to be deterred from read them twice; and though they be writblank verse by the criticisms of Johnson, ten in a language that is new to me, and for the Task was commenced in Johnson's many of them on subjects much inferior to lifetime, and in the same structure of ver- the author's ability, I think them on the sification. That Johnson could have hurt whole a very extraordinary production. He the sale for a time by a savage remark at is, I believe, the only poet these kingdoms the table of Reynolds, no one acquainted have produced in the lower rank of life save with the literature of the period will for a Shakspeare (I should rather say save Prior), moment doubt. That he could have kept who need not be indebted for any part of the poem fiom what it now possesses and his praise to a charitable consideration of deserves, a universal admiration, it would his origin, and the disadvantages under be equally absurd to suppose for a single which he has labored. It will be pity if he should not hereafter divest himself of When Cowper put forth his Task there barbarism, and content himself with writing was no poet of any great ability or dis- pure English, in which he appears perfectly tinguished name in the field. Hayley am- qualified to excel. He who can command bled over the course, to use an expression admiration dishonors himself if he aims of Southey, without a competitor. But no higher than to raise a laugh." Hayley had done his best, poor as that was, let it be remembered, was written at the though his day was hardly by. It was time when the poet's reputation was as yet Cowper who forced us from the fetters unconfirmed. But the praise is ample, and which Johnson had forged for future poets, such as Burns would have loved to have and Hayley had done his best to rivet and heard from Cowper's lips. "Poor Burns!" retain. Nor was Cowper without some as he writes in another letter, "loses much of sistance at this time. Evans's old ballads his deserved praise in this country through did something to extend a taste for the early our ignorance of his language. I despair but unknown masters of our poetry. Some of meeting with any Englishman who will of Mickle's imitations, in the same collec- take the pains that I have taken to undertion, were read by younger minds with an stand him. His candle is bright, but shut influence of which we enjoy the fruits to up in a dark lantern. I lent him to a very this day. Charlotte Smith put forth a vo- sensible neighbor of mine: but his unlume of her sonnets, replete with touching couth dialect spoiled all; and before he sentiment, eminently characteristic of the had half read him through, he was quite softer graces of the female mind, and the ramfeezled." The word to which Cowper late Sir Egerton Brydges, a volume of alludes occurs in the "Epistle to Lapraik ;" poems, containing one noble sonnet ("Echo if the meaning was somewhat difficult at and Silence") which, though neglected at the time, few will need to be told it now. the time, will live as long as any poem of The study of Burns is very general in Engits length in the English language. land, and in Ireland he is almost as much understood and appreciated as in his own country. This, The Task was followed by a volume of poems from a provincial press full of the very finest poetry, and one that has stood Mr. Rogers appeared as a poet in the its test, and will stand for ever. The au- same year with Burns. But his Ode to Suthor of the Task was of noble extraction, perstition was little read at the time, and and counted kin with lord-chancellors and his fame rests now on a wide and a secure earls. His fellow-author was a poor Scot-foundation. Another poet of the same year tish peasant, nameless and unknown when was Henry Headley, a young and promishis poems were put forth, but known, and ing writer, imbued with a fine and cultideservedly known, wherever the language of his country has been heard. This poet was Robert burns. Cowper and Burns were far too nobly constituted to think discouragingly of one another. "Is not the vated taste, of which his two volumes of selections from our early poets, published in the following year, is still an enduring testimony. If Goldsmith had lived to have seen these selections published, culled by a boy of barely twenty-one, he surely would have blushed to have looked upon his own. There were other candidates for distinction at this time, imbued with the same tastes, and fostered in the same quarter, the cloisters of Trinity College, Oxford, and the wards of Winchester School. The first was Thomas Russell, prematurely snatched away (1788) in his twenty-sixth year, leaving a few sonnets and poems behind him, which his friends judged worthy of knowing hereafter. That he had intended his poems for publication was somewhat uncertain; that he was gifted with no ordinary genius, the magnificent sonnet supposed to be written at Lemnos has put beyond 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 under-graduate 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: that has reached our time, or seems likely Wordsworth's first poem, An Evening Walk, an epistle in verse, addressed to a young Lady from the Lakes of the North of England, appeared the year after The Pleasures of Memory, and was followed the same year by a volume of Descriptive Sketches in verse, taken during a Pedestrian Tour in the Italian Grisons, Swiss and Savoyard Alps. Every line in The Evening Walk bears the mark of a keen observer for himself; there is not a borrowed image in the poem, though the pervading character throughout reminds one too closely perhaps of The Nocturnal Re "My heart has thanked thee, Bowles, for those verie of the Countess of Winchelsea, a won soft strains, Whose sadness soothes me like the murmuring derful poem, to which Wordsworth was the first to direct attention. Here is a picture from Wordsworth's first volume, something between a Hobbima and a Hondekoeter : and Southey, to express in prose his gratitude for similar obligations. The Vicar of Bremhill (now in his eighty-fourth year)"Sweet are the sounds that mingle from afar, has reason to be proud of such testimonies in his favor. It would be idle assertion to call them undeserved; his sonnets are very beautiful, full of soothing sadness, and a pleasing love and reverence for nature, animate and inanimate. Heard by calm lakes, as peeps the folding star, When Bowles was seeing his sonnets One feels that our poetry is enriched by through the press, his old antagonist, Lord Byron, was a child in his mother's or his who could write in this way was likely to a passage of this description,-that the poet nurse's arms. While they were yet hardly make what Addison calls additions to Naa year before the public, the younger War-ture, and this Mr. Wordsworth has done in ton was buried in the chapel of his college a pre-eminent degree. at Oxford amid the tears of many who knew the frank, confiding disposition of his nature. "For though not sweeter his own Homer sang, Yet was his life the more endearing song." ,, 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 Other poems of consequence followed at the volume was by Southey, the other half intervals, not very remote. In 1791 Cow-by Lovell, the poems of the former being per put forth his translation of the Iliad distinguished by the signature of " Bion,' 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 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. |