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+Project Gutenberg's Early Reviews of English Poets, by John Louis Haney
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Early Reviews of English Poets
+
+Author: John Louis Haney
+
+Release Date: July 6, 2006 [EBook #18766]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: UTF-8
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EARLY REVIEWS OF ENGLISH POETS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Starner, Taavi Kalju and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+EARLY REVIEWS
+
+OF
+
+ENGLISH POETS
+
+
+EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION
+
+BY
+
+JOHN LOUIS HANEY, PH.D.
+
+_Assistant Professor of English and History, Central High School,
+Philadelphia; Research Fellow in English, University of Pennsylvania_
+
+
+PHILADELPHIA
+THE EGERTON PRESS
+1904
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1904
+BY JOHN LOUIS HANEY
+
+
+PRESS OF
+THE NEW ERA PRINTING COMPANY,
+LANCASTER, PA.
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+MY FRIEND AND TEACHER
+
+PROFESSOR FELIX E. SCHELLING
+
+OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+"Among the amusing and instructive books that remain to be written, one
+of the most piquant would be a history of the criticism with which the
+most celebrated literary productions have been greeted on their first
+appearance before the world." It is quite possible that when Dr. William
+Matthews began his essay on _Curiosities of Criticism_ with these words,
+he failed to grasp the full significance of that future undertaking. Mr.
+Churton Collins recently declared that "a very amusing and edifying
+record might be compiled partly out of a selection of the various
+verdicts passed contemporaneously by reviews on particular works, and
+partly out of comparisons of the subsequent fortunes of works with their
+fortunes while submitted to this censorship." Both critics recognize the
+fact that such a volume would be entertaining and instructive; but, from
+another point of view, it would also be a somewhat doleful book. Even a
+reader of meagre imagination and rude sensibilities could not peruse
+such a volume without picturing in his mind the anguish and the
+heart-ache which those bitter and often vicious attacks inflicted upon
+the unfortunate victims whose works were being assailed.
+
+Authors (particularly sensitive poets) have been at all times the sport
+and plaything of the critics. Mrs. Oliphant, in her _Literary History of
+England_, said with much truth: "There are few things so amusing as to
+read a really 'slashing article'--except perhaps to write it. It is
+infinitely easier and gayer work than a well-weighed and serious
+criticism, and will always be more popular. The lively and brilliant
+examples of the art which dwell in the mind of the reader are
+invariably of this class." Thus it happens that we remember the witty
+onslaughts of the reviewers, and often ignore the fact that certain
+witticisms drove Byron, for example, into a frenzy of anger that called
+forth the most vigorous satire of the century; and others so completely
+unnerved Shelley that he felt tempted to write no more; and still others
+were so unanimously hostile in tone that Coleridge thought the whole
+detested tribe of critics was in league against his literary success.
+There were, of course, such admirable personalities as Wordsworth's--for
+the most part indifferent to the strongest torrent of abuse; and clever
+craftsmen like Tennyson, who, although hurt, read the criticisms and
+profited by them; but, on the other hand, there are still well-informed
+readers who believe that the _Quarterly Review_ at least hastened the
+death of poor Keats.
+
+It has been suggested that such a volume of the "choice crudities of
+criticism" as is here proposed would likewise fulfill the desirable
+purpose of avenging the author upon his ancient enemy, the critic, by
+showing how absurd the latter's utterances often are, and what a
+veritable farrago of folly those collected utterances can make. We may
+rest assured that however much hostile criticism may have pained an
+author, it has never inflicted a permanent injury upon a good book. If
+there appear to be works that have been thus more or less obscured, the
+fault will probably be found not in the critic but in the works
+themselves. According to this agreeable theory, which we would all fain
+believe, the triumph of the ignorant or malevolent critic cannot endure;
+sooner or later the author's merit will be recognized and he will come
+into his own.
+
+The present volume does not attempt to fulfill the conditions suggested
+by Dr. Matthews and Mr. Collins. A history of contemporary criticism of
+famous authors would be a more ambitious undertaking, necessitating an
+extensive apparatus of notes and references. It seeks merely to gather a
+number of interesting anomalies of criticism--reviews of famous poems
+and famous poets differing more or less from the modern consensus of
+opinion concerning those poems and their authors. Although most of the
+chosen reviews are unfavorable, several others have been selected to
+afford evidence of an early appreciation of certain poets. A few
+unexpectedly favorable notices, such as the _Monthly Review's_ critique
+of Browning's _Sordello_, are printed because they appear to be unique.
+The chief criterion in selecting these reviews (apart from the effort to
+represent most of the periodicals and the principal poets between Gray
+and Browning) has been that of interest to the modern reader. In most
+cases, criticisms of a writer's earlier works were preferred as more
+likely to be spontaneous and uninfluenced by his growing literary
+reputation. Thus the volume does not attempt to trace the development of
+English critical methods, nor to supply a hand-book of representative
+English criticism; it offers merely a selection of bygone but readable
+reviews--what the critics thought, or, in some cases, pretended to
+think, of works of poets whom we have since held in honorable esteem.
+The short notices and the well-known longer reviews are printed entire;
+but considerations of space and interest necessitated excisions in a few
+cases, all of which are, of course, properly indicated. The spelling and
+punctuation of the original texts have been carefully followed.
+
+The history of English critical journals has not yet been adequately
+written. The following introduction offers a rapid survey of the
+subject, compiled principally from the sources indicated in the
+bibliographical list. I am indebted to Professor Felix E. Schelling of
+the University of Pennsylvania, and to Dr. Robert Ellis Thompson and
+Professor Albert H. Smyth of the Philadelphia Central High School for
+many suggestions that have been of value in writing the introduction.
+Dr. Edward Z. Davis examined at my request certain pamphlets in the
+British Museum that threw additional light upon the history of the early
+reviews. Dr. A.S.W. Rosenbach and Professor J.H. Moffatt read the proofs
+of the introduction and notes respectively, and suggested several
+noteworthy improvements.
+
+J.L.H.
+
+CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL,
+PHILADELPHIA.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+Preface                                                       vii
+Introduction                                                 xiii
+Bibliography                                                  lvi
+
+REVIEWS
+
+GRAY       Odes (_Monthly Review_)                              1
+GOLDSMITH  The Traveller (_Critical Review_)                    5
+COWPER     Poems, 1782 (_Critical Review_)                     10
+BURNS      Poems, 1786 (_Edinburgh Magazine_)                  13
+           Poems, 1786 (_Critical Review_)                     15
+WORDSWORTH Descriptive Sketches (_Monthly Review_)             16
+           An Evening Walk (_Monthly Review_)                  19
+           Lyrical Ballads (_Critical Review_)                 20
+           Poems, 1807 (_Edinburgh Review_)                    24
+COLERIDGE  Christabel (_Edinburgh Review_)                     47
+SOUTHEY    Madoc (_Monthly Review_)                            60
+LAMB       Blank Verse (_Monthly Review_)                      65
+           Album Verses (_Literary Gazette_)                   66
+LANDOR     Gebir (_British Critic_)                            68
+           Gebir (_Monthly Review_)                            69
+SCOTT      Marmion (_Edinburgh Review_)                        70
+BYRON      Hours of Idleness (_Edinburgh Review_)              94
+           Childe Harold (_Christian Observer_)               101
+SHELLEY    Alastor (_Monthly Review_)                         115
+           The Cenci (_London Magazine_)                      116
+           Adonais (_Literary Gazette_)                       129
+KEATS      Endymion (_Quarterly Review_)                      135
+           Endymion (_Blackwood's Magazine_)                  141
+TENNYSON   Timbuctoo (_Athenæum_)                             151
+           Poems, 1833 (_Quarterly Review_)                   152
+           The Princess (_Literary Gazette_)                  176
+BROWNING   Paracelsus (_Athenæum_)                            187
+           Sordello (_Monthly Review_)                        188
+           Men and Women (_Saturday Review_)                  189
+
+Notes                                                         197
+Index                                                         223
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+To the modern reader, with an abundance of periodicals of all sorts and
+upon all subjects at hand, it seems hardly possible that this wealth of
+ephemeral literature was virtually developed within the past two
+centuries. It offers such a rational means for the dissemination of the
+latest scientific and literary news that the mind undeceived by facts
+would naturally place the origin of the periodical near the invention of
+printing itself. Apart from certain sporadic manifestations of what is
+termed, by courtesy, periodical literature, the real beginning of that
+important department of letters was in the innumerable _Mercurii_ that
+flourished in London after the outbreak of the Civil War. Although the
+_British Museum Catalogue_ presents a long list of these curious
+messengers and news-carriers, the only one that could be of interest in
+the present connection is the _Mercurius Librarius; or a Catalogue of
+Books Printed and Published at London_[A] (1668-70), the contents of
+which simply fulfilled the promise of its title.
+
+Literary journals in England were, however, not a native development,
+but were copied, like the fashions and artistic norms of that period,
+from the French. The famous and long-lived _Journal des Sçavans_ was
+begun at Paris in 1665 by M. Denis de Sallo, who has been called, since
+the time of Voltaire, the "inventor" of literary journals. In 1684
+Pierre Bayle began at Amsterdam the publication of _Nouvelles de la
+République des Lettres_, which continued under various hands until
+1718. These French periodicals were the acknowledged inspiration for
+similar ventures in England, beginning in 1682 with the _Weekly Memorial
+for the Ingenious: or an Account of Books lately set forth in Several
+Languages, with some other Curious Novelties relating to Arts and
+Sciences_. The preface stated the intention of the publishers to notice
+foreign as well as domestic works, and to transcribe the "curious
+novelties" from the _Journal des Sçavans_. Fifty weekly numbers appeared
+(1682-83), consisting principally of translations of the best articles
+in the French journal.
+
+A few years later (1686), the Genevan theologian, Jean Le Clerc, then a
+resident of London, established the _Universal Historical Bibliothèque;
+or, an Account of most of the Considerable Books printed in All
+Languages_, which was continued by various hands until 1693 in a series
+of twenty-five quarto volumes. Contemporary with this review was a
+number of similar publications which had for the most part a brief
+existence. Among them was the _Athenian Mercury_, published on Tuesdays
+and Saturdays (1691-1696), the _History of Learning_, which appeared for
+a short time in 1691 and again in 1694; _Works of the Learned_
+(1691-92); the _Young Student's Library_ (1692) and its continuation,
+the _Compleat Library_ (1692-94); _Memoirs for the Ingenious_ (1693);
+the _Universal Mercury_ (1694) and _Miscellaneous Letters, etc._
+(1694-96). Samuel Parkes includes among the reviews of this period Sir
+Thomas Pope Blount's remarkable _Censura Celebrium Authorum_ (1690).
+That popular bibliographical dictionary of criticism (reprinted 1694,
+1710 and 1718) is only remembered now for its omission of Shakespeare,
+Spenser, Jonson and Milton from its list of "celebrated authors."
+Neither that volume nor the same author's _De Re Poetica_ (1694) finds a
+proper place in a list of periodicals. They should be grouped with such
+works as Phillips' _Theatrum Poetarum_ (1675) and Langbaine's _Account
+of the English Dramatic Poets_ (1691) among the more deliberate attempts
+at literary criticism.
+
+Between 1692-94 appeared the _Gentleman's Journal; or, the Monthly
+Miscellany. Consisting of News, History, Philosophy, Poetry, Music,
+Translations, etc._ This noteworthy paper, edited by Peter Anthony
+Motteux while he was translating Rabelais, included among its
+contributors Aphra Behn, Oldmixon, Dennis, D'Urfey and others. In many
+ways it anticipated the plan of the _Gentleman's Magazine_ (1731), which
+has usually been accorded the honor of priority among English literary
+magazines. The _History of the Works of the Learned; or, an Impartial
+Account of Books lately printed in all Parts of Europe_ was begun in
+1699 and succumbed after the publication of its thirteenth volume
+(1711). Among its editors was George Ridpath, who was afterwards
+immortalized in Pope's _Dunciad_. The careers of the _Monthly
+Miscellany_ (1707-09) and _Censura Temporum_ (1709-10) were brief. About
+the same time an extensive series of periodicals was begun by a Huguenot
+refugee, Michael De la Roche, who fled to England after the revocation
+of the Edict of Nantes and became an Episcopalian. After several years
+of hack-work for the booksellers, he published (1710) the first numbers
+of his _Memoirs of Literature, containing a Weekly Account of the State
+of Learning at Home and Abroad_, which he continued until 1714 and for a
+few months in 1717. In the latter year he began at Amsterdam his
+_Bibliothèque Angloise_ (1717-27), continued by his _Memoires
+Littéraires de la Grande Bretagne_ (1720-1724) after the editorship of
+the former had been placed in other hands on account of his pronounced
+anti-Calvinistic views. At Amsterdam, Daniel Le Clerc, a brother of the
+Jean Le Clerc already mentioned, published his _Bibliothèque Choisée_
+(1703-14) and his _Bibliothèque Ancienne et Moderne_ (1714-28). Both of
+these periodicals suggested numerous ideas to De la Roche, who returned
+to London and conducted the _New Memoirs of Literature_ (1725-27). His
+last venture was a _Literary Journal, or a Continuation of the Memoirs
+of Literature_, which lasted about a year.
+
+Contemporary with De la Roche, Samuel Jebb conducted _Bibliotheca
+Literaria_ (1722-24), dealing with "inscriptions, medals, dissertations,
+etc." In 1728 Andrew Reid began the _Present State of the Republick of
+Letters_, which reached its eighteenth volume in 1736. It was then
+incorporated with the _Literary Magazine; or the History of the Works of
+the Learned_ (1735-36) and the joint periodical was henceforth published
+as a _History of the Works of the Learned_ until 1743. Other less
+extensive literary journals of the same period were Archibald Bower's
+_Historia Literaria_ (1730-34); the _Bee; or, Universal Weekly Pamphlet_
+(1733-35), edited by Addison's cousin, Eustace Budgell; the _British
+Librarian, exhibiting a Compendious Review or Abstract of our most
+Scarce, Useful and Valuable Books, etc._, published anonymously by the
+antiquarian William Oldys, from January to June, 1737, and much esteemed
+by modern bibliophiles as a pioneer and a curiosity of its kind; a
+_Literary Journal_ (1744-49) published at Dublin; and, finally, the
+_Museum; or the Literary and Historical Register_. This interesting
+periodical printed essays, poems and reviews by such contributors as
+Spence, Horace Walpole, the brothers Warton, Akenside, Lowth and others.
+It was published fortnightly from March, 1746 to September, 1747, making
+three octavo volumes.
+
+The periodicals enumerated thus far can hardly be regarded as literary
+in the modern acceptation of the term; they were, for the most part,
+ponderous, learned and scientific in character, and, with the exception
+of the _Gentleman's Journal_ and Dodsley's _Museum_, rarely ventured
+into the domain of _belles-lettres_. An occasional erudite dissertation
+on classical poetry or on the French canons of taste suggested a
+literary intent, but the bulk of the journals was supplied by articles
+on natural history, curious experiments, physiological treatises and
+historical essays. During the latter half of the eighteenth century
+theological and political writings, and accounts of travels in distant
+lands became the staple offering of the reviews.
+
+A new era in the history of English periodicals was marked by the
+publication, on May 1, 1749, of the first number of the _Monthly
+Review_, destined to continue through ninety-six years of varying
+fortune and to reach its 249th volume. It bore the subtitle: _A
+Periodical Work giving an Account, with Proper Abstracts of, and
+Extracts from, the New Books, Pamphlets, etc., as they come out. By
+Several Hands._ The publisher was Ralph Griffiths, who continued to
+manage the review until his death in 1803. It seems remarkable that this
+periodical which set the norm for half a century should have appeared
+not only without preface or advertisement, but likewise without
+patronage or support of any kind. From the first it reviewed poetry,
+fiction and drama as well as the customary classes of applied
+literature, and thus appealed primarily to the public rather than, like
+most of its predecessors, to the learned. Its politics were Whig and its
+theology Non-conformist. Griffiths was not successful at first, but
+determined to achieve popularity by enlisting Ruffhead, Kippis,
+Langhorne and several other minor writers on his critical staff. In
+1757 Oliver Goldsmith became one of those unfortunate hacks as a result
+of his well-known agreement with Griffiths to serve as an
+assistant-editor in exchange for his board, lodging and "an adequate
+salary." About a score of miscellaneous reviews from Goldsmith's
+pen--including critiques of Home's _Douglas_, Burke's _On the Sublime
+and the Beautiful_, Smollett's _History of England_ and Gray's
+_Odes_--appeared in the _Monthly Review_ during 1757-58. The contract
+with Griffiths was soon broken, probably on account of incompatibility
+of temper. Goldsmith declared that he had been over-worked and badly
+treated; but it is quite likely that his idleness and irregular habits
+contributed largely to the misunderstanding.
+
+Meanwhile, a Tory rival and a champion of the Established Church had
+appeared on the field. A printer named Archibald Hamilton projected the
+_Critical Review: or, Annals of Literature. By a Society of Gentlemen_,
+which began to appear in February, 1756, under the editorship of Tobias
+Smollett and extended to a total of 144 volumes when it ceased
+publication in 1817. Its articles were of a high order for the time and
+the new review soon became popular. The open rivalry between the reviews
+was fostered by an exchange of editorial compliments. Griffiths
+published a statement that the _Monthly_ was not written by "physicians
+without practice, authors without learning, men without decency,
+gentlemen without manners, and critics without judgment." Smollett
+retorted that "the _Critical Review_ is not written by a parcel of
+obscure hirelings, under the restraint of a bookseller and his wife, who
+presume to revise, alter and amend the articles occasionally. The
+principal writers in the _Critical Review_ are unconnected with
+booksellers, unawed by old women, and independent of each other." Such
+literary encounters did not fail to stimulate public interest in both
+reviews and to add materially to their circulation.
+
+When the first volume of the _Critical Review_ was complete, the
+"Society of Gentlemen" enriched it with an ornate, self-congratulatory
+Preface in which they said of themselves:
+
+     "However they may have erred in judgment, they have declared their
+     thoughts without prejudice, fear, or affectation; and strove to
+     forget the author's person, while his works fell under their
+     consideration. They have treated simple dulness as the object of
+     mirth or compassion, according to the nature of its appearance.
+     Petulance and self-conceit they have corrected with more severe
+     strictures; and though they have given no quarter to insolence,
+     scurrility and sedition, they will venture to affirm, that no
+     production of merit has been defrauded of its due share of
+     applause. On the contrary, they have cherished with commendation,
+     the very faintest bloom of genius, even when vapid and unformed, in
+     hopes of its being warmed into flavour, and afterwards producing
+     agreeable fruit by dint of proper care and culture; and never,
+     without reluctance disapproved, even of a bad writer, who had the
+     least title to indulgence. The judicious reader will perceive that
+     their aim has been to exhibit a succinct plan of every performance;
+     to point out the most striking beauties and glaring defects; to
+     illustrate their remarks with proper quotations; and to convey
+     these remarks in such a manner, as might best conduce to the
+     entertainment of the public."
+
+Moreover, these high ideals were entertained under the most unfavorable
+circumstances. By the time the second volume was complete, the editors
+took pleasure in announcing that in spite of "open assault and private
+assassination," "published reproach and printed letters of abuse,
+distributed like poisoned arrows in the dark," yea, in spite of the
+"breath of secret calumny" and the "loud blasts of obloquy," the
+_Critical Review_ was more strongly entrenched than before.
+
+There was more than mere rhodomontade in these words. Not only did open
+rivalry exist between the two reviews, but they were both made the
+subject of violent attacks by authors whose productions had been
+condemned on their pages. John Brine (1755), John Shebbeare (1757),
+Horace Walpole (1759), William Kenrick (1759), James Grainger (1759) and
+Joseph Reed (1759) are the earliest of the many writers who issued
+pamphlets in reply to articles in the reviews. In 1759 Smollett was
+tried at the King's Bench for aspersions upon the character of Admiral
+Sir Charles Knowles published in the _Critical Review_. He was declared
+guilty, fined £100, and sentenced to three months' imprisonment. Yet in
+spite of such difficulties, the _Critical Review_ continued to find
+favor among its readers. The articles written by its "Society of
+Gentlemen" were on the whole far more interesting in subject and
+treatment than the work of Griffiths' unfortunate hacks; but the
+_Monthly_ was also prospering, as in 1761 a fourth share in that review
+was sold for more than £755.
+
+In 1760 appeared a curious anonymous satire entitled _The Battle of the
+Reviews_, which presented, upon the model of Swift's spirited account of
+the contest between ancient and modern learning, a fantastic description
+of the open warfare between the two reviews. After a formal declaration
+of hostilities both sides marshal their forces for the struggle. The
+"noble patron" of the _Monthly_ is but slightly disguised as the Right
+Honourable Rehoboam Gruffy, Esq. His associates Sir Imp Brazen, Mynheer
+Tanaquil Limmonad, Martin Problem, and others were probably recognized
+by contemporary readers. To oppose this array the _Critical_ summons a
+force that contains only two names of distinction, Sampson MacJackson
+and Sawney MacSmallhead (_i.e._, Smollett). The ensuing battle, which is
+described at great length, results in a victory for the _Critical
+Review_, and the banishment of Squire Gruffy to the land of the
+Hottentots.
+
+Dr. Johnson's well-known characterization of the two reviews was quite
+just. On the occasion of his memorable interview (1767) with George III,
+Johnson gave the King information concerning the _Journal des Savans_
+and said of the two English reviews that "the _Monthly Review_ was done
+with most care; the _Critical_ upon the best principles; adding that the
+authors of the _Monthly Review_ were enemies to the Church." Some years
+later Johnson said of the reviews:
+
+     "I think them very impartial: I do not know an instance of
+     partiality.... The Monthly Reviewers are not Deists; but they are
+     Christians with as little Christianity as may be; and are for
+     pulling down all establishments. The Critical Reviewers are for
+     supporting the constitution both in church and state. The Critical
+     Reviewers, I believe, often review without reading the books
+     through; but lay hold of a topick and write chiefly from their own
+     minds. The Monthly Reviewers are duller men and are glad to read
+     the books through."
+
+Goldsmith's successor on the _Monthly_ staff was the notorious libeller
+and "superlative scoundrel," Dr. William Kenrick, who signalized his
+advent (November, 1759) by writing an outrageous attack upon Goldsmith's
+_Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe_. His
+utterances were so thoroughly unjustified that Griffiths, who had scant
+reason for praising poor Oliver, made an indirect apology for his
+unworthy minion by a favorable though brief review (June, 1762) of _The
+Citizen of the World_. During 1759 the _Critical Review_ published a
+number of Goldsmith's articles which probably enabled the impecunious
+author to effect his removal from the garret in Salisbury Square to the
+famous lodgings in Green Arbour Court. After March, 1760, we find no
+record of his association with either review, although he afterwards
+wrote for the _British Magazine_ and others.
+
+During the latter half of the century several reviews appeared and
+flourished for a time without serious damage to their well-established
+rivals. The _Literary Magazine; or Universal Review_ (1756-58) is
+memorable for Johnson's coöperation and a half-dozen articles by
+Goldsmith. Boswell tells us that Johnson wrote for the magazine until
+the fifteenth number and "that he never gave better proofs of the force,
+acuteness and vivacity of his mind, than in this miscellany, whether we
+consider his original essays, or his reviews of the works of others."
+The _London Review of English and Foreign Literature_ (1775-80) was
+conducted by the infamous Kenrick and others who faithfully maintained
+the editor's well-recognized policy of vicious onslaught and personal
+abuse. Paul Henry Maty, an assistant-librarian of the British Museum,
+conducted for five years a _New Review_ (1782-86), often called _Maty's
+Review_, and dealing principally with learned works. It apparently
+enjoyed some authority, but both Walpole and Gibbon spoke unfavorably of
+Maty's critical pretensions. _The English Review; or, an Abstract of
+English and Foreign Literature_ (1783-96), extended to twenty-eight
+volumes modelled upon the plan of the older periodicals. In 1796 it was
+incorporated with the _Analytical Review_ (1788) and survived under the
+latter title until 1799. The _Analytical Review_ deprecated the
+self-sufficient attitude of contemporary criticism and advocated
+extensive quotations from the works under consideration so that readers
+might be able to judge for themselves. It likewise hinted at the tacit
+understanding then existing between certain authors, publishers and
+reviews for their mutual advantage, but which was arousing a growing
+feeling of distrust on the part of the public. The _British Critic_
+(1793-1843) was edited by William Beloe and Robert Nares as the organ of
+the High Church Party. This "dull mass of orthodoxy" concerned itself
+extensively with literary reviews; but its articles were best known for
+their lack of interest and authority. The foibles of the _British
+Critic_ were satirized in Bishop Copleston's _Advice to a Young
+Reviewer_ (1807) with an appended mock critique of Milton's _L'Allegro_.
+In 1826 it was united with the _Quarterly Theological Review_ and
+continued until 1843.
+
+_The Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine; or, Monthly Political and
+Literary Censor_ (1799-1821) played a strenuous rôle in the troublous
+times of the Napoleonic wars. It continued the policy of the
+_Anti-Jacobin, or Weekly Examiner_ (1797-98) conducted with such marked
+vigor by William Gifford, but it numbered among its contributors none of
+the brilliant men whose witty verses for the weekly paper are still read
+in the popular _Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin_. The _Review_ was conducted
+by John Richards Green, better known as John Gifford. Its articles were
+at times sensational in character, viciously abusing writers of known or
+suspected republican sentiments. From its pages could be culled a new
+series of "Beauties of the Anti-Jacobin" which for sheer vituperation
+and relentless abuse would be without a rival among such anthologies.
+
+At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the principal reviews in
+course of publication were the _Monthly_, the _Critical_, the _British
+Critic_, and the _Anti-Jacobin_. The latter was preëminently vulgar in
+its appeal, the _Critical_ had lost its former prestige, and the other
+two had never risen above a level of mediocrity. There was more than a
+lurking suspicion that these periodicals were, to a certain extent,
+booksellers' organs, quite unreliable on account of the partial and
+biassed criticisms which they offered the dissatisfied public. The time
+was evidently ripe for a new departure in literary reviews--for the
+establishment of a trustworthy critical journal, conducted by capable
+editors and printing readable notices of important books. People were
+quite willing to have an unfortunate author assailed and flayed for
+their entertainment; but they did not care to be deceived by laudatory
+criticisms that were inspired by the publisher's name instead of the
+intrinsic merits of the work itself.
+
+Such was the state of affairs when Francis Jeffrey, Henry Brougham and
+Sydney Smith launched the _Edinburgh Review_ in 1802, choosing a name
+that had been borne in 1755-56 by a short-lived semi-annual review.
+There were several significant facts associated with the new enterprise.
+It was the first important literary periodical to be published beyond
+the metropolis. It was the first review to appear quarterly--an interval
+that most contemporary journalists would have condemned as too long for
+a successful review. Moreover, it was conducted upon an entirely
+different principle than any previous review; by restricting its
+attention to the most important works of each quarter, it gave extensive
+critiques of only a few books in each number and thus avoided the
+multitude of perfunctory notices that had made previous reviews so
+dreary and unreadable.
+
+The idea of founding the _Edinburgh Review_ was apparently suggested by
+Sydney Smith in March, 1802. Jeffrey and Francis Horner were his
+immediate associates; but during the period of preparation Henry
+Brougham, Dr. Thomas Brown, Dr. John Thomson and others became
+interested. After some delay, the first number appeared on October 10,
+1802, containing among its twenty-nine articles three by Brougham, five
+by Horner, six by Jeffrey and nine by Smith. Although there was a
+slight feeling of disappointment over the mild political tone of the new
+review, its success was immediate. The edition of 750 copies was
+speedily disposed of, and within a month a second edition of equal size
+was printed. There was no regular editor at first, although the
+publication of the first three numbers was practically superintended by
+Smith. Afterwards Jeffrey became editor at a salary of £300. He had
+previously written some articles (including a critique of Southey's
+_Thalaba_) for the _Monthly Review_ and was pessimistic enough to
+anticipate an early failure for the new venture. However, at the time he
+assumed control (July, 1803) the circulation was 2500, and within five
+years it reached 8,000 or 9,000 copies. Jeffrey's articles were
+recognized and much admired; but the success of the _Edinburgh_ was due
+to its independent tone and general excellence rather than to the
+individual contributions of its editor. Its prosperity enabled the
+publishers to offer the contributors attractive remuneration for their
+articles, thus assuring the coöperation of specialists and of the most
+capable men of letters of the day. At the outset, ten guineas per sheet
+were paid; later sixteen became the minimum, and the average ranged from
+twenty to twenty-five guineas. When we recall that the _Critical Review_
+paid two, and the _Monthly Review_ sometimes four guineas per sheet, we
+can readily understand the distinctly higher standard of the _Edinburgh
+Review_.
+
+Horner left Scotland for London in 1803 to embark upon a political
+career. During the next six years occasional articles from his pen--less
+than a score in all--appeared in the review. Smith and Brougham likewise
+left Edinburgh in 1803 and 1805 respectively; but they ably supported
+Jeffrey by sending numerous contributions for many years. During the
+first quarter-century of the review's existence, this trio, with the
+coöperation of Sir James Mackintosh and a few others, constituted the
+mainstay of its success. Jeffrey's remarkable critical faculty was
+displayed to best advantage in the wide range of articles (two hundred
+in number) which he wrote during his editorship. It is true that his
+otherwise sound judgment was unable to grasp the significance of the new
+poetic movement of his day, and that his best remembered efforts are the
+diatribes against the Lake Poets. Hence, in the eyes of the modern
+literary dilettante, he figures as a misguided, domineering Zoilus whose
+mission in life was to heap ridicule upon the poetical efforts of
+Wordsworth, Coleridge and the lesser disciples of romanticism.
+
+There are in the early volumes of the _Edinburgh_ no more conspicuous
+qualities than that air of vivacity and graceful wit, so thoroughly
+characteristic of Sydney Smith. The reader who turns to those early
+numbers may be disappointed in the literary quality of the average
+article, for he will instinctively and unfairly make comparison with
+more recent standards, instead of considering the immeasurably inferior
+conditions that had previously prevailed; but we may safely assert that
+the majority of Smith's articles can be read with interest to-day. He
+was sufficiently sedate and serious when occasion demanded; yet at all
+times he delighted in the display of his native and sparkling humor.
+Although most of his important articles have been collected, far too
+much of his work lies buried in that securest of literary
+sepulchres--the back numbers of a critical review.
+
+Henry Brougham at first wrote the scientific articles for the
+_Edinburgh_. Soon his ability to deal with a wide range of subjects was
+recognized and he proved the most versatile of the early reviewers. In
+the first twenty numbers are eighty articles from his pen. A story that
+does not admit of verification attributes to Brougham a whole number of
+the _Edinburgh_, including an article on lithotomy and another on
+Chinese music. Later he became especially distinguished for his
+political articles, and remained a contributor long after Jeffrey and
+Smith had withdrawn. A comparatively small portion of his _Edinburgh_
+articles was reprinted (1856) in three volumes.
+
+Although the young men who guided the early fortunes of the review were
+Whigs, the _Edinburgh_ was not (as is generally believed) founded as a
+Whig organ. In fact, the political complexion of their articles was so
+subdued that even stalwart Tories like Walter Scott did not refrain from
+contributing to its pages. Scott's _Marmion_ was somewhat sharply
+reviewed by Jeffrey in April, 1808, and in the following October
+appeared the article by Jeffrey and Brougham upon Don Pedro Cevallos'
+_French Usurpation of Spain_. The pronounced Whiggism of that critique
+led to an open rupture with the Tory contributors. Scott, who was no
+longer on the best terms with Constable, the publisher of the
+_Edinburgh_, declared that henceforth he could neither receive nor read
+the review. He proposed to John Murray--then of Fleet Street--the
+founding of a Tory quarterly in London as a rival to the northern review
+that had thus far enjoyed undisputed possession of the field, because it
+afforded "the only valuable literary criticism which can be met with."
+Murray, who had already entertained the idea of establishing such a
+review, naturally welcomed the prospect of so powerful an ally. Like a
+good Tory, Scott felt that the "flashy and bold character of the
+_Edinburgh's_ politics was likely to produce an indelible impression
+upon the youth of the country." He ascertained that William Gifford,
+formerly editor of the _Anti-Jacobin_ newspaper, was willing to take
+charge of the new review, which Scott desired to be not exclusively nor
+principally political, but a "periodical work of criticism conducted
+with equal talent, but upon sounder principle than that which had gained
+so high a station in the world of letters."
+
+In February, 1809, appeared the first number of the _Quarterly Review_.
+Three of its articles were by Scott, who continued to contribute for
+some time and whose advice was frequently sought by both editor and
+publisher. Canning, Ellis, and others who had written for the then
+defunct _Anti-Jacobin_ became interested in the _Quarterly_; but the
+principal contributors for many years were Robert Southey, John Wilson
+Croker and Sir John Barrow. This trio contributed an aggregate of almost
+five hundred articles to the _Quarterly_. In spite of its high standard,
+the new venture was a financial failure for at least the first two
+years; later, especially in the days of Tory triumph after the overthrow
+of Napoleon, the _Quarterly_ flourished beyond all expectation.
+Gifford's salary as editor was raised from the original £200 to £900;
+for many years Southey was paid £100 for each article. Gifford was
+distinctly an editor of the old school, with well-defined ideas of his
+official privilege of altering contributed articles to suit himself--a
+weakness that likewise afflicted Francis Jeffrey. While it appears that
+Gifford wrote practically nothing for the review and that the savage
+_Endymion_ article so persistently attributed to him was really the work
+of Croker, he was an excellent manager and conducted the literary
+affairs of the _Quarterly_ with considerable skill. His lack of system
+and of business qualifications, however, resulted in the frequently
+irregular appearance of the early numbers.
+
+On account of his failing health, Gifford resigned the editorship of the
+_Quarterly_ in 1824, and was succeeded by John Taylor Coleridge, whose
+brief and unimportant administration served merely to fill the gap until
+an efficient successor for Gifford could be found. The choice fell upon
+Scott's son-in-law, John Gibson Lockhart, who, from 1825 to 1853, proved
+to be a most capable editor. The subsequent history of the review under
+Whitwell Elwin (1853-1860), William Macpherson (1860-1867), Sir William
+Smith (1867-1893), Mr. Rowland Prothero (1894-1899) and the latter's
+brother, Mr. George Prothero, the present editor, naturally lies beyond
+the purposes of this introduction.
+
+The period of Lockhart's editorship of the _Quarterly_ was likewise the
+golden epoch of the _Edinburgh_. Sydney Smith's contributions ceased
+about 1828. In the following year Jeffrey was elected Dean of the
+Faculty of Advocates. He felt that the tenure of his new dignity
+demanded the relinquishment of the editorship of an independent literary
+and political review; accordingly, after editing the ninety-eighth
+number of the _Edinburgh_, he retired in favor of Macvey Napier, who had
+been a contributor since 1805. Napier conducted the review with great
+success from 1829 until his death in 1847. His policy was to prefer
+shorter articles than those printed when he assumed control. At first,
+each number contained from fifteen to twenty-five articles; but the
+growing length and importance of the political contributions had reduced
+the average to ten. The return to the original policy naturally resulted
+in a greater variety of purely literary articles.
+
+Macaulay had begun his association with the _Edinburgh_ by his
+remarkable essay on _Milton_ in 1825--a bold, striking piece of
+criticism, full of the fire of youth, which established his literary
+reputation and gave a renewed impetus to the already prosperous review.
+During Napier's editorship he contributed his essays on _Croker's
+Boswell_, _Hampden_, _Burleigh_, _Horace Walpole_, _Lord Chatham_,
+_Bacon_, _Clive_, _Hastings_ and many others. Napier experienced some
+difficulty in steering a middle course for the review between Lord
+Brougham, who sought to use its pages to further his own political
+ambitions, and Macaulay, who vigorously denounced the procedure. The
+_Edinburgh_ was no longer conspicuous among its numerous contemporaries;
+but the literary quality was much higher than at first. Among the other
+famous contributors of this period were Carlyle, John Stuart Mill,
+Thackeray, Bulwer, Hallam, Sir William Hamilton and many others. This
+was undoubtedly the greatest period in the history of the review. Its
+power in Whig politics is shown by the fact that Lord Melbourne and Lord
+John Russell sought to make it the organ of the government.
+
+Napier's successor in 1847 was William Empson, who had contributed to
+the _Edinburgh_ since 1823 and who held the editorship until his demise
+in 1852. Next followed Sir George Cornewall Lewis, who, however,
+resigned in 1855 to become Chancellor of the Exchequer in Lord
+Palmerston's cabinet. During his régime he wrote less than a score of
+articles for the review. His immediate successor was the late Henry
+Reeve, whose forty years of faithful service until his death in 1895
+brings the review practically to our own day. When Reeve began his
+duties by editing No. 206 (April, 1855) Lord Brougham was the only
+survivor of the contributors to the original number. In 1857, when a
+discussion arose between editor and publisher concerning the
+denunciatory attitude assumed by the review toward Lord Palmerston's
+ministry, Reeve drew up a list of his contributors at that time,
+including Bishop (afterwards Archbishop) Tait, George Grote, John
+Forster, M. Guizot, the Duke of Argyll, Rev. Canon Moseley, George S.
+Venables, Richard Monckton Milnes and a score of others--most of them
+"names of the highest honour and the most consistent adherence to
+Liberal principles." Within the four decades that followed, the
+personnel of the review has made another almost complete change. A new
+group of contributors, under the editorship of Hon. Arthur R.D. Elliot,
+is now striving to maintain the standards of old "blue and yellow." A
+caustic note in the (1890) Annual Index of _Review of Reviews_ said of
+the _Edinburgh_:
+
+     "It has long since subsided into a respectable exponent of high and
+     dry Whiggery, which in these later days has undergone a further
+     degeneration or evolution into Unionism.... Audacity, wit,
+     unconventionality, enthusiasm--all these qualities have long since
+     evaporated, and with them has disappeared the political influence
+     of the _Edinburgh_."
+
+The two great rivals which are now reaching their centenary[B] are still
+the most prominent, in fact the only well-known literary quarterlies of
+England. During their life-time many quarterlies have risen, flourished
+for a time and perished. The _Westminster Review_, founded 1824, by
+Jeremy Bentham, appeared under the editorship of Sir John Bowring and
+Henry Southern. As the avowed organ of the Radicals it lost no time in
+assailing (principally through the vigorous pens of James Mill and John
+Stuart Mill) both the _Edinburgh_ and the _Quarterly_. In 1836 Sir
+William Molesworth's recently established _London Review_ was united
+with the _Westminster_, and, after several changes of joint title,
+continued since 1851 as the _Westminster Review_. Since 1887 it has been
+published as a monthly of Liberal policy and "high-class philosophy."
+The _Dublin Review_ (London, 1836) still continues quarterly as a Roman
+Catholic organ; similarly the _London Quarterly Review_, a Wesleyan
+organ, has been published since 1853. Of the quarterlies now defunct, it
+will suffice to mention the dissenting _Eclectic Review_ (1805-68) owned
+and edited for a time by Josiah Conder; the _British Review_ (1811-25);
+the _Christian Remembrancer_ (1819-68), which was a monthly during its
+early history; the _Retrospective Review_ (1820-26, 1853-54) conducted
+by Henry Southern and afterwards Sir Nicholas Harris Nicolas as a
+critical review for old and curious books; the _English Review_
+(1844-53); and the _North British Review_ (1844-71), published at
+Edinburgh. The impulse toward the study of continental literature during
+the third decade of the century gave rise to the _Foreign Quarterly
+Review_ (1827-46); the _Foreign Review and Continental Miscellany_
+(1828-30) and the _British and Foreign Review_ (1835-44), continued as
+the _British Quarterly Review_ (1845-86).
+
+A most determined effort to rival the older quarterlies resulted in the
+_National Review_, founded in 1855 by Walter Bagehot and Richard Holt
+Hutton. Its articles were exhaustive, well-written and thoroughly
+characteristic of their class. In addition to the excellent work of both
+editors, there were contributions by James Martineau, Matthew Arnold,
+and Hutton's brother-in-law, William Caldwell Roscoe. Yet, in spite of
+the high standards maintained until the end, the _National_ ceased
+publication in 1864. The many failures in this class of periodicals seem
+to indicate quite clearly that the spirit of the age no longer favors a
+quarterly. For our energetic and progressive era such an interval is too
+long. The confirmed admirer of the elaborate essays of the _Edinburgh_
+and the _Quarterly_ will continue to welcome their bulky numbers; but
+the average reader is strongly prejudiced in favor of the more frequent,
+more attractive and more thoroughly entertaining monthlies.
+
+It is one of the curiosities in the history of periodical literature
+that no popular monthly developed during the first half of the
+nineteenth century: the great quarterlies apparently usurped the entire
+field. We have already seen that the _Critical Review_ came to an end in
+1817 whilst the _Monthly_ continued until 1843. In both cases, however,
+the publication amounted to little more than a sheer struggle for
+existence. The _Monthly's_ attempt to imitate in a smaller way the plan
+of the quarterlies proved an unqualified failure. Neither of the two
+periodicals established at the beginning of the century ever achieved a
+position of critical authority. The _Christian Observer_, started (1802)
+by Josiah Pratt and conducted by Zachary Macaulay until 1816, was
+devoted mainly to the abolition of the slave-trade. Its subsequent
+history until its demise in 1877 is confined almost wholly to the
+theological pale. The second periodical was the _Monthly Repository of
+Theology and General Literature_ (1806-37), which achieved some literary
+prominence for a time under the editorship of W.J. Fox. During the last
+two years of its existence, Richard Hengist Horne and Leigh Hunt became
+its successive editors, but failed to avert the final collapse.
+
+It would be useless to enumerate the many short-lived attempts, such as
+the _Monthly Censor_ (1822) and Longman's _Monthly Chronicle_ (1838-41)
+that were made to provide a successful monthly review. The first of the
+modern literary monthlies was the _Fortnightly Review_, established in
+1865, evidently upon the model of _Revue des Deux Mondes_, which had
+been published at Paris since 1831. Like the great French periodical,
+it was issued fortnightly (at first) and printed signed articles. It was
+Liberal in politics, agnostic in religion and abreast of the times in
+science. The publishers, Messrs. Chapman and Hall, secured an
+experienced editor in George Henry Lewes, who had contributed
+extensively to most of the reviews then in progress. The success of the
+new review was assured by the presence of such names as Walter Bagehot,
+George Eliot, Sir John Herschel, Mr. Frederic Harrison and Herbert
+Spencer on its list of contributors. It provided articles of timely
+interest in politics, literature, art and science; in its early volumes
+appeared serially Anthony Trollope's _Belton Estate_ and Mr. George
+Meredith's _Vittoria_.
+
+Lewes edited the first six volumes, covering the years 1865-66. The
+review was then made a monthly without, however, changing its now
+inappropriate name, and the editorship was accepted by Mr. John Morley,
+who conducted the _Fortnightly_ with great success for sixteen years.
+Most of the earlier contributors were retained; others like Mr.
+Swinburne, J.A. Symonds, Professor Edward Dowden and (Sir) Leslie
+Stephen established a standard of literary criticism that was
+practically unrivalled. The authority of its scientific and political
+writers was equally high; as for serial fiction, Mr. Morley published
+Mr. Meredith's _Beauchamp's Career_ and _The Tragic Comedians_, besides
+less important novels by Trollope and others. More recently the
+publication of fiction has been exceptional. The (1890) _Review of
+Reviews_ Index said of the _Fortnightly_:
+
+     "While disclaiming 'party' or 'editorial consistency,' and
+     proclaiming that its pages were open to all views, the
+     _Fortnightly_ seldom included the orthodox among its contributors.
+     The articles which startled people and made small earthquakes
+     beneath the crust of conventional orthodoxy, political and
+     religious, usually appeared in the _Fortnightly_. It was here that
+     Professor Huxley seemed to foreshadow the expulsion of the
+     spiritual from the world, by his paper on 'The Physical Basis of
+     Life,' and that Professor Tyndall propounded his famous suggestion
+     for the establishment of a prayerless union or hospital as a
+     scientific method for testing the therapeutic value of prayer. Mr.
+     Frederic Harrison chanted in its pages the praises of the Commune,
+     and prepared the old ladies of both sexes for the imminent advent
+     of an English Terror by his plea for Trade Unionism. It was in the
+     _Fortnightly_ also that Mr. Chamberlain was introduced to the
+     world, when he was permitted to explain his proposals for Free
+     Labour, Free Land, Free Education, and Free Church. Mr. Morley's
+     papers on the heroes and saints (Heaven save the mark!) of the
+     French Revolution appeared here, and every month in an editorial
+     survey he summed up the leading features of the progress of the
+     world."
+
+Since Mr. Morley's retirement in 1883, the editors of the _Fortnightly_
+have been Mr. T.H.S. Escott (1883-86), Mr. Frank Harris (1886-94) and
+the present incumbent, Mr. W.L. Courtney.
+
+The _Fortnightly_ was not long permitted to enjoy undisputed possession
+of the field. In 1866, while it was still published semi-monthly, the
+_Contemporary Review_ was launched. Alexander Strahan, the publisher,
+selected Dean Alford as its editor in order to assure a more reserved
+tone than that of its popular predecessor. Although Liberal in politics,
+like the _Fortnightly_, it assumed a very different and apparently
+corrective attitude in religious matters. Most of its articles for many
+years were upon theological subjects and were written by scholars
+comparatively unknown to the public. The gradual change in policy
+furthered by its later editors, especially Mr. James Knowles and Mr.
+Percy Bunting has brought the _Contemporary_ nearer to the general type
+of popular monthlies. Its principles seem to tend toward "broad
+evangelical, semi-socialistic Liberalism."
+
+In 1877 Mr. Knowles found it impossible to conduct the _Contemporary_
+any longer in the independent manner that seemed essential to him;
+accordingly, he withdrew and established the _Nineteenth Century_, which
+in deference to the new era and a desire to be abreast of the times,
+recently adopted the somewhat awkward title of the _Nineteenth Century
+and After_. Like the _Fortnightly_, it presented a brilliant array of
+names from the first. The initial number contained a Prefatory Sonnet by
+Tennyson, and articles by Gladstone, Matthew Arnold, Cardinal Manning,
+and the Dean of Gloucester and Bristol. It is sufficient to state that
+this standard has since been maintained by Mr. Knowles and has made his
+_Nineteenth Century and After_ the most popular of the monthlies.
+
+The _National Review_ (not to be confounded with Bagehot and Hutton's
+quarterly of that name), is the youngest and least important of the
+monthly reviews. It was established in 1883 as a Conservative organ
+under the editorship of Mr. Alfred Austin and Professor W.J. Courthope.
+Well-known writers have contributed to its pages, yet it has never
+assumed a place of first importance in the periodical world. Its present
+editor is Mr. Louis J. Maxse.
+
+It is well to bear in mind that these reviews all seek to discuss the
+most important subjects of contemporary interest, and to secure the
+services of writers best qualified to treat those subjects. In the
+narrow sense of the term, they are not literary reviews; the function of
+periodicals that discuss present day politics, sociology, theology,
+history, science, art and numerous other generic subjects is more
+inclusive and appeals to a much larger audience than the periodical of
+literary criticism. In the quarterlies and monthlies we look for the
+most authoritative reviews of the important books of the day; but for
+general literary review and gossip, a new class of monthlies, best
+represented by Dr. Robertson Nicoll's _Bookman_ (1891) and the American
+_Bookman_ (1895) and _The Critic_ (1881) has appeared. These fill a gap
+between the more substantial monthlies and the very popular weekly
+papers.
+
+The last-mentioned class was practically developed during the nineteenth
+century. The frequency of publication forbade a strict devotion to the
+cause of _belles-lettres_; hence, in most cases, politics or music and
+art were included in the scheme. At first literature was granted meagre
+space in newspapers of the _Weekly Register_ and _Examiner_ type.
+William Cobbett, profiting by his previous experience with _Porcupine's
+Gazette_ and the _Porcupine_, began his _Weekly Political Register_ in
+1802 and continued its publication until his death in 1835. It was so
+thoroughly political in character that it hardly merits recognition as a
+literary periodical. The _Examiner_, begun in 1808 by John Hunt, enjoyed
+during the thirteen years of his brother Leigh's coöperation a wide
+reputation for the excellence of its political and literary criticism.
+Under Albany Fonblanque, John Forster and William Minto it continued
+with varying success until 1880.
+
+The first truly literary weekly review was the _Literary Gazette_,
+established in 1817 by Henry Colburn, of the _New Monthly Magazine_,
+under the joint editorship of Mr. H.E. Lloyd and Miss Ross. After the
+first half-year of its existence, Colburn sold a third share to the
+Messrs. Longman and another third to William Jerdan, who became sole
+editor and eventually (1842) sole proprietor. The original price of a
+shilling was soon reduced to eight pence. Jerdan set the prototype for
+later literary weeklies in his plan, which embraced "foreign and
+domestic correspondence, critical analyses of new publications,
+varieties connected with polite literature, philosophical researches,
+scientific inventions, sketches of society, biographical memoirs, essays
+on fine arts, and miscellaneous articles on drama, music and literary
+intelligence." Thus Jerdan followed his friend Canning's advice by
+avoiding "politics and polemics" and by aiming to present "a clear and
+instructive picture of the moral and literary improvement of the times,
+and a complete and authentic chronological literary record for general
+reference." He secured the services of Crabbe, Barry Cornwall, Maginn,
+Campbell, Mrs. Hemans and others: with such an array of contributors he
+was able to crush the several rival weeklies that soon entered the
+field.
+
+Toward the end of its prosperous first decade, however, the misfortunes
+of the _Literary Gazette_ began. Colburn's publications had been roughly
+handled in its pages and he accordingly aided James Silk Buckingham in
+founding the _Athenæum_. The first number appeared on January 2, 1828,
+as an evident rival of the older weekly. For a time the new venture was
+on the verge of failure and the proprietors actually offered to sell it
+to Jerdan. Within half a year Buckingham was succeeded by John Sterling
+as editor. Frederic Denison Maurice's friends purchased the _Literary
+Chronicle and Weekly Review_ (begun 1819) and merged it with the
+_Athenæum_ in July, 1828. For a year Sterling and Maurice contributed
+some of the most brilliant critical articles that have appeared in its
+pages. The working editor at that time was Henry Stebbing who had been
+associated with the _Athenæum_ since its inception and who was the only
+survivor[C] of the original staff when the semi-centennial number was
+published on January 5, 1878.
+
+Even the high standards set by Maurice and Sterling failed to win
+public favor. The crisis came about the middle of 1830 when Charles
+Wentworth Dilke became "supreme editor," enlisted Lamb, George Darley,
+Barry Cornwall and others on his staff, and reduced the price of the
+_Athenæum_ from eightpence to fourpence. The apparent folly of reducing
+the price and increasing the expenses did not lead to the generally
+prophesied collapse; this first experiment in modern methods resulted in
+the rapid growth of the _Athenæum's_ circulation, to the serious
+detriment of the _Literary Gazette_. Jerdan tried to stem the tide by
+publishing lampoons on the dullness of Dilke's paper; but when the
+_Athenæum_ was enlarged in 1835 from sixteen to twenty-four pages
+Dilke's triumph was evident. The _Literary Gazette_ was compelled to
+reduce its price to fourpence in its effort to regain the lost
+subscriptions. Dilke labored earnestly to improve his paper and when, in
+1846, he felt that it was established on a firm basis, he made Thomas
+Kibble Hervey editor and devoted his own time to furthering his
+journalistic enterprises. However, he continued to contribute to the
+weekly; his valuable articles on Junius and Pope together with several
+others were afterwards reprinted as _Papers of a Critic_.
+
+Jerdan withdrew from the _Literary Gazette_ in 1850. The hopeless
+struggle with the _Athenæum_, involving a third reduction in price to
+threepence, lasted until 1862, when the _Gazette_ was incorporated with
+the _Parthenon_ and came to an end during the following year. Hervey
+edited the _Athenæum_ until 1853 when ill-health necessitated his
+resignation. The later editors include William Hepworth Dixon, Norman
+MacColl and at present Mr. Vernon Rendall. After the withdrawal of Dixon
+in 1869 a reformation in the staff and management of the _Athenæum_ took
+place.
+
+     "Some old writers were parted with, and a great many fresh
+     contributors were found. While special departments, such as
+     science, art, music and the drama, were of necessity entrusted to
+     regular hands, indeed, the reviewing of books, now more than ever
+     the principal business of 'The Athenæum,' was distributed over a
+     very large staff, the plan being to assign each work to a writer
+     familiar with its subject and competent to deal with it
+     intelligently, but rigidly to exclude personal favouritism or
+     prejudice, and to secure as much impartiality as possible. The rule
+     of anonymity has been more carefully observed in 'The Athenæum'
+     than in most other papers. Its authority as a literary censor is
+     not lessened, however, and is in some respects increased, by the
+     fact that the paper itself, and not any particular critic of great
+     or small account, is responsible for the verdicts passed in its
+     columns." (Fox Bourne.)
+
+Half a year after the inception of the _Athenæum_, the first number of
+the _Spectator_ was issued (July 6, 1828) by Robert Stephen Rintoul, an
+experienced journalist who had launched the ill-fated semi-political
+_Atlas_ two years before and therefore decided to confine his new
+venture to literary and social topics. The political excitement of the
+time soon aroused Rintoul's interest, and he undertook the advocacy of
+the Reform Bill with all possible ardor. From him emanated the famous
+battle-cry: "The Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill." He
+conducted the _Spectator_ with great skill until 1858, when he sold it
+two months before his death. Although he wrote little for its pages,
+Rintoul made the _Spectator_ a power in furthering all reforms. The
+literary standard, while somewhat obscured for a time by its politics,
+was high. In 1861 the _Spectator_ passed into the hands of Mr. Meredith
+Townsend who sold a half share to the late Richard Holt Hutton with the
+understanding that they should act as political and literary editors
+respectively. During the four years of the American Civil War, the
+_Spectator_ espoused the cause of the North and was consequently
+unpopular; but the outcome turned the sentiment in England and likewise
+the fortunes of the _Spectator_. Hutton's contributions included his
+most memorable utterances upon theological and literary subjects. In the
+midst of religious controversy he was able to discuss delicate questions
+without giving offense, to enlist all parties by refraining from
+expressed allegiance to one. The _Spectator_ of Hutton's day was, in
+Mrs. Oliphant's opinion, "specially distinguished by the thoughtful tone
+of its writing, the almost Quixotic fairness of its judgments, and the
+profoundly religious spirit which pervades its more serious articles."
+Hutton retired shortly before his death in 1897. The present editor is
+Mr. J. St. Loe Strachey.
+
+The _Saturday Review_ was established in November, 1855, by A.J.
+Beresford Hope. Its first editor was John Douglass Cook, who had indexed
+the early volumes of the _Quarterly_ for Murray and had gained his
+journalistic experience with the _Times_ and the _Morning Chronicle_.
+Though possessed of no great personal ability, Cook had the useful
+editorial faculty of recognizing talent, and consequently gathered about
+himself the most promising writers of the younger generation, including,
+among others, Robert Talbot Cecil, the late Lord Salisbury. The
+_Saturday Review_ at once became the most influential and most energetic
+of the weekly papers. Its politics, independent at first, later assumed
+a pronounced Conservative complexion. Cook remained editor until his
+death (1868) when he was succeeded by his assistant, Philip Harwood.
+Since the latter's retirement in 1883 the more recent editors include
+Mr. Walter H. Pollock, Mr. Frank Harris and the present incumbent, Mr.
+Harold Hodge. Professor Saintsbury wrote of the _Saturday Review_:
+
+     "Its staff was, as a rule, recruited from the two Universities
+     (though there was no kind of exclusion for the unmatriculated; as a
+     matter of fact, neither of its first two editors was a son either
+     of Oxford or Cambridge), and it always insisted on the necessity of
+     classical culture.... It observed, for perhaps a longer time than
+     any other paper, the salutary principles of anonymity (real as well
+     as ostensible) in regard to the authorship of particular articles;
+     and those who knew were constantly amused at the public mistakes on
+     this subject."
+
+Such "salutary principles of anonymity" were not observed by the
+_Academy, a Monthly Record of Literature, Learning, Science and Art_,
+which began to appear in October, 1869, and was published for a short
+time by John Murray. Its founder, Dr. Charles E. Appleton, edited the
+_Academy_ until his death in 1879. All the leading articles bore the
+authors' signatures, and, following the example of the more ambitious
+monthlies, Dr. Appleton secured the best known writers as contributors.
+The first number opened with an interesting unpublished letter of Lord
+Byron's; its literary articles were by Matthew Arnold, Gustave Masson
+and Mr. Sidney Colvin, theology was represented by the Rev. T.K. Cheyne
+and J.B. Lightfoot (later Bishop of Durham), science by Thomas Huxley
+and Sir John Lubbock (now Lord Avebury), and classical learning by Mark
+Pattison and John Conington. This remarkable array of names did not
+diminish in subsequent numbers. Besides those mentioned Mr. W.M.
+Rossetti, Max Müller, G. Maspero, J.A. Symonds, F.T. Palgrave and others
+contributed to the first volume. Later such names as William Morris,
+John Tyndall, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Walter Pater and Robert Louis
+Stevenson appeared in its pages.
+
+In spite of its brilliant program, the size of the _Academy_, even at
+its price of sixpence, was too slight to rank as a monthly. After four
+years' experience, first as a monthly, then as a fortnightly, it became
+and has remained a weekly. The editorial succession since the death of
+Dr. Appleton has been C.E. Doble (1879-81); Mr. James Sutherland Cotton
+(1881-96); Mr. C. Lewis Hind (1896-1903); and Mr. W. Teignmouth Shore.
+The issue of November 7, 1896, announced Mr. Cotton's retirement and the
+inauguration of a new policy, which, in addition to technical
+improvements, promised the issue of occasional supplements of a purely
+academic and educational character, and the beginning of the series of
+_Academy Portraits_ of men of letters. At the same time the publication
+of signed articles was abolished and the _Academy_ remained anonymous
+until the recent editorial change. A new departure in October, 1898,
+made the _Academy_ an illustrated paper--the most attractive though not
+the most authoritative of the weeklies. It has departed widely from the
+set traditions of Dr. Appleton, but most readers will agree that the
+departure has been justified by the needs of the hour. There is small
+satisfaction in reading a one-page review from the pen of an Arnold or a
+Pater; we feel that such authorities should express themselves at length
+in the pages of the literary monthlies; that the reader of the weekly
+should be content with the anonymous (and less expensive) review written
+by the staff-critic. Whatever the personal bias, it is at least certain
+that under present conditions the _Academy_ appeals more generally to
+the popular taste. Its recent absorption of a younger periodical is
+indicated in the compounding of its title into the _Academy and
+Literature_--a change that does not commend itself on abstract grounds
+of literary fitness and tradition.
+
+A consideration of periodicals of the _Tatler_, _Spectator_ and
+_Rambler_ class evidently lies beyond our present purpose; though
+Addison's papers on _Paradise Lost_ and similar articles show an
+occasional critical intent. The magazines, however, have in various
+instances shown such an extensive interest in matters literary that a
+brief account of their development will not be amiss. The primary
+distinction between the review and the magazine is well understood; the
+former criticizes, the latter entertains. Hence fiction, poetry and
+essays are better adapted than book-reviews to the needs of the literary
+magazine. As already stated, Peter Motteux's _Gentleman's Journal_
+(1692-94) probably deserves recognition as the first English magazine,
+though its brief career is forgotten in the honor accorded to the
+_Gentleman's Magazine_, established in 1731 by Edward Cave and which,
+still under the editorship of "Sylvanus Urban, Gentleman," is now
+approaching its three hundredth volume. In the early days its lists of
+births, deaths, marriages, bankrupts, events, etc., must have made it a
+useful summary for the public. In literature it printed merely a
+"Register of New Books" without comment of any sort. It is exasperating
+to find such books as _Pamela_ or _Tom Jones_ listed among "New
+Publications" without a word of criticism or commendation. We could
+spare whole reams of pages devoted to "Army Promotions" and "Monthly
+Chronicle" for a few lines of literary review.
+
+Although the booksellers refused to aid Cave in establishing his
+magazine, the demonstration of its success brought forth numerous
+rivals. As they all followed Cave's precedent in ignoring literary
+criticism, it will suffice to mention merely the names of the _London
+Magazine_ (1732-79); the _Scots Magazine_ (1739-1817), continued as the
+_Edinburgh Magazine_ until 1826; the _Universal Magazine_ (1743-1815);
+the _British Magazine_ (1746-50); the _Royal Magazine_ (1759-71); and
+finally the _British Magazine, or Monthly Repository for Gentlemen and
+Ladies_ (1760-67) edited by Tobias Smollett, who published his _Sir
+Launcelot Greaves_ in its pages--perhaps the first instance of the
+serial publication of fiction. Goldsmith wrote some of his most
+interesting essays for Smollett's magazine.
+
+An important addition to the ranks was the _Monthly Magazine_ begun in
+1796 by Sir Richard Phillips under the editorship of John Aikin. The
+principal contributor was William Taylor of Norwich who, during a period
+of thirty years, supplied to the _Monthly Magazine_ and other
+periodicals a series of 1,750 articles of remarkable quality. His
+contributions gave the Magazine standing as a literary review. Hazlitt
+accorded to Taylor the honor of writing the first reviews in the style
+afterwards adopted by the Edinburgh Reviewers, which established their
+reputations as original and impartial critics. He is remembered to-day
+as the author of an unread _Historic Survey of German Poetry_ which was
+vigorously assailed by Carlyle in the _Edinburgh Review_. The _New
+Monthly Magazine_ was started in 1814 by Henry Colburn and Frederick
+Shoberl in opposition to Phillips' magazine. Its first editors were Dr.
+Watkins and Alaric A. Watts. At a later time Campbell, Bulwer, Theodore
+Hook and Harrison Ainsworth successively assumed charge. Under such
+capable direction the magazine naturally won a prominent place among the
+periodicals of the day. During its later years the _New Monthly_ was
+obscured by more ambitious ventures and came to an inglorious end in
+1875--thirty-two years after the suspension of Phillips' _Monthly
+Magazine_.
+
+A most significant event in the history of the magazine was the founding
+of the _Edinburgh Monthly Magazine_ in April, 1817, by William
+Blackwood. The new magazine was projected to counteract the influence
+of the _Edinburgh Review_, but under its first editors, James Cleghorn
+and Thomas Pringle, it failed to win favor. After six numbers were
+issued, a final disagreement between Blackwood and the editors resulted
+in the withdrawal of the latter. The name of the monthly was changed to
+_Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine_--popularly _Blackwood's_ or "Maga"--and
+henceforth until his death Blackwood was his own editor. John Wilson
+(Christopher North) and John Gibson Lockhart, the most important of the
+early contributors to _Blackwood's_, published in that famous seventh
+number the clever _Chaldee Manuscript_--an audacious satire upon the
+original editors, the rival publisher Constable, the _Edinburgh Review_
+and various literary personages under a thinly veiled allegory in
+apocalyptic style. It at once attracted wide attention (including a
+costly action for libel within a fortnight) and was suppressed in the
+second impression of the number. The same number of _Blackwood's_ set
+the precedent for the subsequent critical vituperation that made the
+magazine notorious. It contained an abusive article on Coleridge's
+_Biographia Literaria_ and the first of a series of virulent attacks on
+"The Cockney School of Poetry." Much of the literary criticism in the
+first few volumes is inexcusably brutal; fortunately, _Blackwood's_ soon
+became less rampant in its critical outbursts. The coöperation of James
+Hogg and the ill-fated Maginn introduced new articles of varied
+interest, particularly the witty letters and the parodies of "Ensign
+O'Doherty." Wilson's _Noctes Ambrosianæ_ became a characteristic feature
+of _Blackwood's_; John Galt and Susan Ferrier won popularity among the
+novel readers of the day; and in the trenchant literary criticism of
+Lockhart, Wilson, Hogg and their confrères an equally high standard was
+maintained.
+
+After the death of the elder Blackwood in 1834, the management of the
+magazine passed to his sons successively. John Blackwood, the sixth son,
+enjoyed the distinction of "discovering" George Eliot and beginning, by
+the publication of her _Scenes of Clerical Life_ in 1857, a relationship
+that was both pleasant and profitable to the firm. A few years earlier
+appeared the first contributions of another remarkable literary
+woman--Mrs. Margaret Oliphant, whose association with _Blackwood's_
+lasted over forty years. Her history of the house of Blackwood was
+published in the year of her death (1897).
+
+_Blackwood's_ is still a strong conservative organ. The already quoted
+Index of the _Review of Reviews_ says of it: "With a rare consistency it
+has contrived to appear for over three score years and ten as a spirited
+and defiant advocate of all those who are at least five years behind
+their time. Sometimes _Blackwood_ is fifty years in the rear, but that
+is a detail of circumstance. Five or fifty, it does not matter, so long
+as it is well in the rear." Such gentle sarcasm merely emphasizes the
+fact that _Blackwood's_ has always aimed to be more than a magazine of
+_belles-lettres_. The publishers celebrated the appearance of the one
+thousandth number in February, 1899, by almost doubling its size to a
+volume of three hundred pages, including a latter-day addition to the
+_Noctes Ambrosianæ_ and other features.
+
+An important though short-lived venture was the _London Magazine_, begun
+in January, 1820, under the editorship of John Scott. By its editorial
+assaults upon the _Blackwood_ criticisms of the "Cockney School," it
+became the recognized champion of that loosely defined coterie. The
+initial attack in the May number was further emphasized by more vigorous
+articles in November and December of 1820, and January, 1821. Lockhart,
+who was the recipient of the worst abuse, demanded of Scott an apology
+or a hostile meeting. The outcome of the controversy was a duel on
+February 16th between Scott and Lockhart's intimate friend, Jonathan
+Henry Christie. Scott was mortally wounded, and died within a fortnight;
+the verdict of wilful murder brought against Christie and his second at
+the inquest resulted in their trial and acquittal at the old Bailey two
+months later. It would have been well for the _London Magazine_ and for
+literature in general if that unfortunate duel could have been prevented
+or at least diverted into such a ludicrous affair as the meeting between
+Jeffrey and Tom Moore in 1806.
+
+The most famous contributions to the _London Magazine_ during Scott's
+régime were Lamb's _Essays of Elia_. Those charming productions, now
+ranked among our dearly treasured classics, were not received at first
+with universal approbation. The long and justly forgotten Alaric A.
+Watts said of them: "Charles Lamb delivers himself with infinite pain
+and labour of a silly piece of trifling, every month, in this Magazine,
+under the signature of Elia. It is the curse of the Cockney School that,
+with all their desire to appear exceedingly off-hand and ready with all
+they have to say, they are constrained to elaborate every sentence, as
+though the web were woven from their own bowels. Charles Lamb says he
+can make no way in an article under at least a week." In July, 1821, the
+_London Magazine_ was purchased by Taylor and Hessey. Although Thomas
+Hood was made working-editor, the _Blackwood_ idea of retaining
+editorial supervision in the firm was followed. Within a few months De
+Quincey contributed his _Confessions of an English Opium-Eater_--the
+most famous of all the articles that appeared in the magazine. Lamb[D]
+and De Quincey continued to write for the magazine for several years.
+Other contributors, especially of literary criticism, were Barry
+Cornwall, Carlyle, Hazlitt, Henry Cary and, toward the end, Walter
+Savage Landor. The magazine became less conspicuous after 1824 and
+dragged out an obscure existence until 1829; but it is probable that no
+other periodical achieved the standard of purely literary excellence
+represented by the _London Magazine_ during the first five years of its
+existence.
+
+In February, 1830, James Fraser published the first number of _Fraser's
+Magazine for Town and Country_. The magazine was not named after the
+publisher but after its sponsor, Hugh Fraser, a "briefless barrister"
+and man about town. The latter enlisted the aid of Maginn who had
+severed his connection with _Blackwood's_ in 1828. In general,
+_Fraser's_ was modelled upon _Blackwood's_; but a unique and popular
+feature was the publication of the "Gallery of Illustrious Literary
+Characters" between 1830-38. This famous series of eighty-one caricature
+portraits chiefly by Daniel Maclise, with letter-press by Maginn, has
+been made accessible to present-day readers in William Bates' _Maclise
+Portrait Gallery_ (1883) where much illustrative material has been added
+to the original articles. It is evident that the literary standard of
+_Fraser's_ soon equalled and possibly surpassed that of _Blackwood's_.
+Among its writers were Carlyle (who contributed a critique to the first
+number, published _Sartor Resartus_ in its pages, 1833-35, and, as late
+as 1875, his _Early Kings of Norway_), Thackeray, Father Prout and
+Thomas Love Peacock. Maclise's plate of "The Fraserians" also includes
+Allan Cunningham, Theodore Hook, William Jerdan, Lockhart, Hogg,
+Coleridge, Southey and several others. It is unlikely that all of them
+wrote much for _Fraser's_; but the staff was undoubtedly a brilliant
+assemblage. James Anthony Froude became editor in 1860 and was assisted
+for a time by Charles Kingsley and Sir Theodore Martin. He was succeeded
+by his sub-editor, William Allingham, during whose administration
+(1874-79) the fortunes of _Fraser's_ suffered a decline. The gradual
+failure was due to the competition of the new shilling magazines rather
+than to incompetence on the part of the editor. The end came in October,
+1882, when _Fraser's_ was succeeded by _Longman's Magazine_ which is
+still in progress.
+
+The magazines established soon after _Fraser's_ followed for the most
+part a policy that demands for them mere passing mention in the present
+connection. Literary criticism and reviews were largely abandoned in
+favor of lighter and more entertaining material. The _Dublin University
+Magazine_ (1833-80) and _Tait's Edinburgh Magazine_ (1832-61) best
+represent the transitional stage. During its early history, the latter
+employed prominent contributors, who gave it an important position. Such
+magazines as the _Metropolitan_ (1831-50) and _Bentley's Miscellany_
+(1837-68) set the standards for similar periodicals since that time.
+Charles Dickens' experience with _Bentley's_ led to the publication of
+his weeklies, _Household Words_ (1850 to date) and _All the Year Round_
+(1859), which was incorporated in 1895 with the former. _Macmillan's
+Magazine_, first of the popular shilling monthlies, began in 1859 and
+was soon followed by Thackeray's _Cornhill Magazine_ (1860) and _Temple
+Bar_ (1860). All of these magazines are still in progress. The
+occasional publication of an article by a literary critic hardly
+justifies their inclusion within the category of critical reviews, as
+their essential purpose is to instruct and entertain, rather than to sit
+in judgment upon contemporary letters.
+
+There are in course of publication to-day numerous literary periodicals
+of varying scope and importance that have not even been mentioned by
+title in our hasty survey. Enough has been said, however, to give some
+idea of the magnitude of the field, and to show that most of the great
+names of modern English literature have been more or less closely
+associated with the history of the literary reviews. Those reviews have
+usually sought to foster all that is highest and best in our
+intellectual development; and although English literary criticism has
+been, on the whole, less convincing, less brilliant and less
+authoritative than that of France, it has during the past century set a
+fairly high standard of excellence. It seems difficult to understand why
+the literary conditions in England, instead of developing critics like
+Sainte-Beuve, Gaston Paris, Brunetière and others whose utterances
+redound to the lasting glory of French criticism, should be steadily
+tending toward a lower and less influential level. Mr. Churton Collins
+in his pessimistic discussion of "The Present Functions of Criticism"
+deplores the spirit of tolerance and charity manifested toward the
+mediocre productions of contemporary writers; he attributes the
+degradation of criticism to the lack of critical standards and
+principles, and indirectly to the neglect of the study of literature at
+the English Universities. The plea for an English Academy has been made
+at different times and with different ends in view, but under modern
+conditions such an institution would hardly solve the problem. Mr.
+Collins shows how the intellectual aristocracy of the past has been
+superseded by the present omnivorous reading-public afflicted with a
+perpetual craving for literary novelty. The inevitable rapidity of
+production results in a deluge of poor books which are foisted upon
+readers by a "detestable system of mutual puffery." This condition of
+affairs naturally offers few opportunities for the development of
+critical ideals; but it hardly applies to the incorruptible reviews of
+recognized standing. The reasons for the lack of authority in modern
+English criticism are more deeply grounded in an inherent objection to
+the restraint imposed upon an artist by artificial canons of taste, and
+in a well-founded impression that many of the greatest literary
+achievements evince a violation of such canons.
+
+It is not to be inferred that criticism is thereby disdained and
+disregarded. The critical dicta of a Dryden or a Johnson, a Coleridge or
+a Hazlitt, and, more recently, an Arnold or a Pater, are valued and
+studied because they emphasize the vital elements essential to the
+proper appreciation of a literary product; and, moreover, because such
+critics, in transcending the limitations of their kind, establish higher
+and juster standards for the criticism of the future. On the other hand,
+the great majority of critical utterances must necessarily be ephemeral;
+they may exert considerable contemporary influence, but are usually
+forgotten long before the works that called them forth. Unless this
+criticism is more than a perfunctory examination of the merits and
+defects of the work under consideration, it cannot endure beyond its own
+brief day.
+
+Several fruitless attempts have been made to reduce criticism to an
+exact science, which, quite disregarding the factor of personal taste,
+could refer all literature to a more or less fixed and arbitrary set of
+critical principles. The champions of this objective criticism point to
+the occasionally ludicrous divergence of the views expressed in
+criticism of certain poets or novelists, and insist that there is no
+occasion for such a bewildering difference of opinion. They seem to
+forget that the criticism which we esteem most highly at all times is
+the subjective criticism in which the personality of a competent and
+sincere critic is manifest. Literature, like music, painting and the
+other arts, has its own laws of technique--fundamental canons that must
+be observed in the successful pursuit of the art; but at a certain point
+difference of opinion is not only possible but profitable. The critics
+who would unite in condemning a thirteen-line sonnet or a ten-act
+tragedy could not be expected to agree on the relative merits of
+Milton's and Wordsworth's sonnets. Unanimity of opinion is as impossible
+and undesirable concerning the poetic achievement of Browning and
+Whitman as it is concerning the music of Brahms and Wagner, or the
+painting of Turner and Whistler. Great artists who have taken liberties
+with traditions and precedents have done much to prevent the critics
+from falling into a state of self-complacency over their scientific
+methods and formulas.
+
+The most helpful form of criticism is the interpretative variety, not
+necessarily the laudatory "appreciation" that is so popular in our day,
+but an honest effort to understand and elucidate the intention of the
+writer. The proper exercise of this art occasionally demands rare
+qualifications on the part of the critic; at the same time it adds
+dignity to his calling and value to his utterance. It serves to dispel
+the popular conception of a critic as a disappointed _litterateur_ who
+begrudges his more brilliant fellow craftsmen their success and who dogs
+their triumphs with his ill-tempered snarling. Interpretative criticism
+needs few rules and no system; yet it serves a noble purpose as a guide
+and monitor for subsequent literary effort.
+
+The question of anonymous criticism has occasioned much thoughtful
+discussion. In former times anonymity was often a shield for the
+slanderer who saw fit to abuse and assail his victim with the rancorous
+outburst of his malice; but it is also clear that the earlier reviewers
+were mere literary hacks whose names would have given no weight to the
+critique and hence could be omitted without much loss. The authorship of
+important _Edinburgh_ and _Quarterly_[E] articles in the days of their
+greatness was usually an open secret. Later periodicals, like the
+_Fortnightly_ and the _Academy_ found it a profitable advertisement to
+publish the signatures of their eminent critics. The tendency of the
+present day is largely in favor of anonymity; no longer as a cover for
+the dispensation of malicious vituperation, but as a necessary
+safe-guard for the unbiased and untrammeled exercise of the critical
+function. Certain abuses of the privilege are inevitable. Mr. Sidney
+Colvin in looking over the criticisms of Mr. Stephen Phillips' poetry
+recently discovered in three periodicals convincing parallels that led
+Mr. Arthur Symons to confess to the authorship of all three critiques.
+The average reader would in most cases be strongly influenced by the
+united verdict of the critics of the _Saturday Review_, the _Athenæum_
+and the _Quarterly Review_; in this instance his convictions would
+undoubtedly be rudely shattered when he learned the truth. Under such
+conditions anonymous criticism is a menace, not an aid to the reader's
+judgment.
+
+In conclusion, it must be borne in mind that criticism is not an end but
+a means to an end. All the literary criticism ever uttered would be
+useless as such if it did not evince a desire to further the development
+of literary art. The _Iliad_ and the _Œdipus_ were written long
+before Aristotle's _Poetics_, and it is not likely that either Homer or
+Sophocles would have been a greater poet if he could have read the
+Stagirite's treatise. Yet the _Poetics_, as a summary of the essential
+features of that art, served an important purpose in later ages and
+exerted far-reaching influences. Criticism in all ages has necessarily
+been of less importance than art itself--it guides and suggests, but
+cannot create. Literary history shows that true criticism must be in
+conformity with the spirit of the age; it cannot oppose the trend of
+intelligent opinion. It may praise, censure, advise, interpret--but it
+will always remain subservient to the art that called it forth. There is
+no reason to believe that criticism can ever be established in the
+English-speaking world upon a basis that will subject to an arbitrary
+and irrevocable ruling the form and spirit of the artist's message to
+mankind.
+
+[Footnote A: Reprinted in Professor Arber's _The Term Catalogues_
+(1668-1709). London, privately printed, 1903.]
+
+[Footnote B: See the centenary number of the _Edinburgh Review_
+(October, 1902). During the editor's recent tenure of government office,
+the review was temporarily edited by Mr. E.S. Roscoe.]
+
+[Footnote C: See his letter in _Athenæum_, January 19, 1878. See also
+"Our Seventieth Birthday," _Athenæum_, January 1, 1898.]
+
+[Footnote D: Mr. Bertram Dobell in his _Side-Lights on Charles Lamb_
+(1903) directs attention to some hitherto unknown articles of Lamb's in
+the _London Magazine_.]
+
+[Footnote E: In July, 1902, the _Quarterly Review_ published its first
+signed article--the widely-discussed paper on Charles Dickens by Mr.
+Algernon Charles Swinburne. Since then several other noteworthy articles
+have appeared over the authors' signatures.]
+
+
+
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHY
+
+
+British Museum. Catalogue of Printed Books. Periodicals. (Revised ed.,
+1900.)
+
+Dictionary of National Biography.
+
+Encyclopedia Britannica. Article on Periodicals, by H.R. Tedder.
+
+Barrow, Sir John. Autobiography. London, 1847.
+
+Bourne, H.R. Fox. English Newspapers. Chapters in the History of
+Journalism. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1887.
+
+Cockburn, Lord. Life of Lord Jeffrey. With a Selection from his
+Correspondence. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1852.
+
+Copinger, W.A. On the Authorship of the first Hundred Numbers of the
+"Edinburgh Review." (Privately Printed.) Manchester, 1895.
+
+Cross, Maurice. Selections from the Edinburgh Review, etc. With a
+Preliminary Dissertation. 4 vols. 8vo. London, 1833.
+
+Gates, Lewis E. Francis Jeffrey. In _Three Studies in Literature_. 12mo.
+New York, 1899.
+
+Horner, Leonard. Memoirs and Correspondence of Francis Horner, M.P.
+Edited by his brother. 2 vols. 8vo. Boston, 1853.
+
+Jennings, Louis J. The Correspondence and Diaries of John Wilson Croker.
+2 vols. 8vo. New York, 1884.
+
+Jerdan, William. Autobiography. With his Literary, Political, and Social
+Reminiscences and Correspondence, etc. 4 vols. 12mo. London, 1852-53.
+
+Laughton, John Knox. Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry
+Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1898.
+
+Napier, Macvey. Selections from the Correspondence of the late Macvey
+Napier, Esq. Edited by his son. 8vo. London, 1879.
+
+Oliphant, Mrs. M.O.W., and Porter, Mrs. Gerald. William Blackwood and
+his Sons, etc. 3 vols. 8vo. New York, 1897-98.
+
+Paston, George. The "Monthly Review." In _Side-Lights on the Georgian
+Period_. 8vo. London, 1903.
+
+Smiles, Samuel. A Publisher and his Friends. Memoir and Correspondence
+of the late John Murray, etc. 2 vols. 8vo. London and New York, 1891.
+
+
+Last Century Magazines. (By T.H.) _Fraser's Magazine_, XCIV (325-333).
+
+Layton, W.E. Early Periodicals. In _The Bibliographer_, III (36-39).
+
+Lee, William. Periodical Publications during the Twenty Years 1712 to
+1732. _Notes and Queries_ (Third Series), IX (53-54, 72-75, 92-95). Cf.
+_ibid._, pp. 164, 268, and X, p. 134.
+
+Niven, G.W. On some Eighteenth Century Periodicals. In _The
+Bibliographer_, II (38-40).
+
+Parkes, Samuel. An Account of the Periodical Literary Journals which
+were Published in Great Britain and Ireland, from the Year 1681 to the
+Commencement of the Monthly Review in the year 1749. In _The Quarterly
+Journal of Science, Literature and the Arts_ (1822), XIII (36-58,
+289-312).
+
+Stephen, (Sir) Leslie. The First Edinburgh Reviewers. In _Cornhill
+Magazine_, XXXVIII (218-234). Also in _Living Age_, CXXXVIII (643-653).
+
+Waugh, Arthur. The English Reviewers. A Sketch of their History and
+Principles. In _The Critic_, XL (26-37).
+
+
+Allingham, William. Varieties in Prose. 3 vols. 12mo. London, 1893. Vol.
+III contains _Some Curiosities of Criticism_, reprinted from _Fraser's
+Magazine_, LXXXVII (43-51).
+
+Arnold, Matthew. Essays in Criticism. First Series. 12mo. London, 1865.
+Contains _The Function of Criticism at the Present Time._
+
+Birrell, Augustine. Men, Women, and Books. 16mo. London, 1894. Contains
+_Authors and Critics_.
+
+Collins, J. Churton. Ephemera Critica, or Plain Truths about Current
+Literature. 12mo. Westminster and New York, 1901.
+
+[Copleston, Edward.] Advice to a Young Reviewer, with a Specimen of the
+Art. 8vo. Oxford and London, 1807. Reprinted in _An English Garner,
+Critical Essays and Literary Fragments_, ed. J.C. Collins. New York,
+1903.
+
+Disraeli, I. Calamities and Quarrels of Authors. A New Edition, etc.
+12mo. London, n.d. Contains _Undue Severity of Criticism_.
+
+Gayley, C.M., and Scott, F.N. An Introduction to the Methods and
+Materials of Literary Criticism, etc. 12mo. Boston, 1899.
+
+Jennings, Henry J. Curiosities of Criticism. 12mo. London, 1881. See
+_Eclectic Magazine_, XCVII (420-423).
+
+Johnson, Charles F. Elements of Literary Criticism. 12mo. New York,
+1898.
+
+Mabie, Hamilton W. Essays in Literary Interpretation. 12mo. New York,
+1896. Contains _The Significance of Modern Criticism_.
+
+Matthews, William. The Great Conversers, and other Essays. 12mo.
+Chicago, 1874. Contains _Curiosities of Criticism_.
+
+Repplier, Agnes. Books and Men. 16mo. Boston, 1888. Contains
+_Curiosities of Criticism_.
+
+Robertson, John M. Essays toward a Critical Method. Sm. 8vo. London,
+1889. Contains _Science in Criticism_.
+
+Robertson, John M. New Essays toward a Critical Method. Sm. 8vo. London,
+1897.
+
+Sears, Lorenzo. Principles and Methods of Literary Criticism. 12mo. New
+York and London, 1898.
+
+Stevenson, E. Early Reviews of Great Writers (1786-1832): Selected and
+Edited with an Introduction. 12mo. London, n.d.
+
+Trent, W.P. The Authority of Criticism and other Essays. 12mo. New York,
+1899.
+
+Winchester, C.T. Some Principles of Literary Criticism. 12mo. New York,
+1899.
+
+Worsfold, W. Basil. The Principles of Criticism. An Introduction to the
+Study of Literature. New Edition. 8vo. New York, 1902.
+
+Wylie, Laura Johnson. Studies in the Evolution of English Criticism.
+16mo. Boston, 1894.
+
+
+Allen, Grant. The Decay of Criticism. In _Fortnightly Review_, XXXVII
+(339-351).
+
+Clarke, Helen A. The Value of Contemporary Judgment. In _Poet-Lore_, V
+(201-209).
+
+Critical Errors. In _Chamber's Journal_, XLII (164-166).
+
+Criticism Extraordinary. In _All the Year Round_, XXXIII (558-563).
+
+G.L.A. Some Curiosities of Criticism. In _Temple Bar_, LXXX (241-247).
+
+Howe, Herbert Crombie. The Contradictions of Literary Criticism. In
+_North American Review_, CLXXV (399-408).
+
+Hunt, T.W. Critics and Criticism. In _Modern Language Notes_, IV, p.
+161.
+
+
+
+
+EARLY REVIEWS OF ENGLISH POETS
+
+
+
+
+THOMAS GRAY
+
+
+ODES. _By Mr._ Gray. 4to. 1s. Dodsley.
+
+As this publication seems designed for those who have formed their taste
+by the models of antiquity, the generality of Readers cannot be supposed
+adequate Judges of its merit; nor will the Poet, it is presumed, be
+greatly disappointed if he finds them backward in commending a
+performance not entirely suited to their apprehensions. We cannot,
+however, without some regret behold those talents so capable of giving
+pleasure to all, exerted in efforts that, at best, can amuse only the
+few; we cannot behold this rising Poet seeking fame among the learned,
+without hinting to him the same advice that Isocrates used to give his
+Scholars, _Study the People_. This study it is that has conducted the
+great Masters of antiquity up to immortality. Pindar himself, of whom
+our modern Lyrist is an imitator, appears entirely guided by it. He
+adapted his works exactly to the dispositions of his countrymen.
+Irregular[,] enthusiastic, and quick in transition,--he wrote for a
+people inconstant, of warm imaginations and exquisite sensibility. He
+chose the most popular subjects, and all his allusions are to customs
+well known, in his day, to the meanest person.[F]
+
+His English Imitator wants those advantages. He speaks to a people not
+easily impressed with new ideas; extremely tenacious of the old; with
+difficulty warmed; and as slowly cooling again.--How unsuited then to
+our national character is that species of poetry which rises upon us
+with unexpected flights! Where we must hastily catch the thought, or it
+flies from us; and, in short, where the Reader must largely partake of
+the Poet's enthusiasm, in order to taste his beauties. To carry the
+parallel a little farther; the Greek Poet wrote in a language the most
+proper that can be imagined for this species of composition; lofty,
+harmonious, and never needing rhyme to heighten the numbers. But, for
+us, several unsuccessful experiments seem to prove that the English
+cannot have Odes in blank Verse; while, on the other hand, a natural
+imperfection attends those which are composed in irregular rhymes:--the
+similar sound often recurring where it is not expected, and not being
+found where it is, creates no small confusion to the Reader,--who, as we
+have not seldom observed, beginning in all the solemnity of poetic
+elocution, is by frequent disappointments of the rhyme, at last obliged
+to drawl out the uncomplying numbers into disagreeable prose.
+
+It is, by no means, our design to detract from the merit of our Author's
+present attempt: we would only intimate, that an English Poet,--one whom
+the Muse has _mark'd for her own_, could produce a more luxuriant bloom
+of flowers, by cultivating such as are natives of the soil, than by
+endeavouring to force the exotics of another climate: or, to speak
+without a metaphor, such a genius as Mr. Gray might give greater
+pleasure, and acquire a larger portion of fame, if, instead of being an
+imitator, he did justice to his talents, and ventured to be more an
+original. These two Odes, it must be confessed, breath[e] much of the
+spirit of Pindar, but then they have caught the seeming obscurity, the
+sudden transition, and hazardous epithet, of his mighty master; all
+which, though evidently intended for beauties, will, probably, be
+regarded as blemishes, by the generality of his Readers. In short, they
+are in some measure, a representation of what Pindar now appears to be,
+though perhaps, not what he appeared to the States of Greece, when they
+rivalled each other in his applause, and when Pan himself was seen
+dancing to his melody.
+
+In conformity to the antients, these Odes consist of the _Strophe_,
+_Antistrophe_, and _Epode_, which, in each Ode, are thrice repeated. The
+Strophes have a correspondent resemblance in their str[u]cture and
+numbers: and the Antistrophe and Epode also bear the same similitude.
+The Poet seems, in the first Ode particularly, to design the Epode as a
+complete air to the Strophe and Antistrophe, which have more the
+appearance of Recitative. There was a necessity for these divisions
+among the antients, for they served as directions to the dancer and
+musician; but we see no reason why they should be continued among the
+moderns; for, instead of assisting, they will but perplex the Musician,
+as our music requires a more frequent transition from the Air to the
+Recitative than could agree with the simplicity of the antients.
+
+The first of these Poems celebrates the Lyric Muse. It seems the most
+laboured performance of the two, but yet we think its merit is not equal
+to that of the second. It seems to want that regularity of plan upon
+which the second is founded; and though it abounds with images that
+strike, yet, unlike the second, it contains none that are affecting.
+
+In the second Antistrophe the Bard thus marks the progress of Poetry.
+
+    II. [2.]
+
+    In climes beyond the solar road,
+    Where shaggy forms o'er ice-built mountains roam,
+    The Muse has broke the twilight-gloom
+    To cheer the shivering natives dull abode
+    And oft beneath the od'rous shade
+    Of Chili's boundless forests laid,
+    She deigns to hear the savage youth repeat,
+    In loose numbers wildly sweet
+    Their feather-cinctured Chiefs, and dusky loves.
+    Her track, where'er the Goddess roves,
+    Glory pursue, and generous shame,
+    Th' unconquerable Mind, and Freedom's holy flame.
+
+There is great spirit in the irregularity of the numbers towards the
+conclusion of the foregoing stanza.
+
+[II, 3, and III, 2, of _The Progress of Poesy_ are quoted without
+comment.]
+
+The second 'Ode is founded on a tradition current in Wales, that Edward
+the first, when he compleated the conquest of that country, ordered all
+the Bards that fell into his hands to be put to death.' The Author seems
+to have taken the hint of this subject from the fifteenth Ode of the
+first book of Horace. Our Poet introduces the only surviving Bard of
+that country in concert with the spirits of his murdered brethren, as
+prophetically denouncing woes upon the Conqueror and his posterity. The
+circumstances of grief and horror in which the Bard is represented,
+those of terror in the preparation of the votive web, and the mystic
+obscurity with which the prophecies are delivered, will give as much
+pleasure to those who relish this species of composition, as anything
+that has hitherto appeared in our language, the Odes of Dryden himself
+not excepted.
+
+[I, 2, I, 3, part of II, 1, and the conclusion of _The Bard_ are
+quoted]--_The Monthly Review_.
+
+[Footnote F: The best Odes of Pindar are said to be those which have
+been destroyed by time; and even they were seldom recited among the
+Greeks, without the adventitious ornaments of music and dancing. Our
+Lyric Odes are seldom set off with these advantages, which, trifling as
+they seem, have alone given immortality to the works of Quinault.]
+
+
+
+
+OLIVER GOLDSMITH
+
+
+_The Traveller, or a Prospect of Society. A Poem_. _Inscribed to the
+Rev. Mr._ Henry Goldsmith. _By_ OLIVER GOLDSMITH, _M.B. 4to. Pr. 1s.
+6d_. Newbery.
+
+The author has, in an elegant dedication to his brother, a country
+clergyman, given the design of his poem:--'Without espousing the cause
+of any party, I have attempted to moderate the rage of all. I have
+endeavoured to shew, that there may be equal happiness in other states,
+though differently governed from our own; that each state has a peculiar
+principle of happiness; and that this principle in each state,
+particularly in our own, may be carried to a mischievous excess.'
+
+That he may illustrate and enforce this important position, the author
+places himself on a summit of the Alps, and, turning his eyes around, in
+all directions, upon the different regions that lie before him,
+compares, not merely their situation or policy, but those social and
+domestic manners which, after a very few deductions, make the sum total
+of human life.
+
+    'Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow,
+    Or by the lazy Scheld, or wandering Po;
+    Or onward, where the rude Carinthian boor
+    Against the houseless stranger shuts the door;
+    Or where Campania's plain forsaken lies,
+    A weary waste expanded to the skies.
+    Where'er I roam, whatever realms to see,
+    My heart untravell'd fond turns to thee;
+    Still to my brother turns with ceaseless pain,
+    And drags at each remove a lengthening chain.--
+      Even now, where Alpine solitudes ascend,
+    I sit me down a pensive hour to spend;
+    And, plac'd on high above the storm's career,
+    Look downward where an hundred realms appear;
+    Lakes, forests, cities, plains extended wide,
+    The pomp of kings, the shepherd's humbler pride.
+      When thus creation's charms around combine,
+    Amidst the store 'twere thankless to repine.
+    'Twere affectation all, and school-taught pride,
+    To spurn the splendid things by heaven supply'd.
+    Let school-taught pride dissemble all it can,
+    These little things are great to little man;
+    And wiser he, whose sympathetic mind
+    Exults in all the good of all mankind.'
+
+The author already appears, by his numbers, to be a versifier; and by
+his scenery, to be a poet; it therefore only remains that his sentiments
+discover him to be a just estimator of comparative happiness.
+
+The goods of life are either given by nature, or procured by ourselves.
+Nature has distributed her gifts in very different proportions, yet all
+her children are content; but the acquisitions of art are such as
+terminate in good or evil, as they are differently regulated or
+combined.
+
+    'Yet, where to find that happiest spot below,
+    Who can direct, when all pretend to know?
+    The shudd'ring tenant of the frigid zone
+    Boldly asserts that country for his own,
+    Extols the treasures of his stormy seas,
+    And live-long nights of revelry and ease;
+    The naked Negro, panting at the line,
+    Boasts of his golden sands and palmy wine,
+    Basks in the glare, or stems the tepid wave,
+    And thanks his Gods for all the good they gave.--
+      Nature, a mother kind alike, to all,
+    Still grants her bliss at Labour's earnest call;
+    And though rough rocks or gloomy summits frown,
+    These rocks, by custom, turn to beds of down.
+      From Art more various are the blessings sent;
+    Wealth, splendours, honor, liberty, content:
+    Yet these each other's power so strong contest,
+    That either seems destructive of the rest.
+    Hence every state, to one lov'd blessing prone,
+    Conforms and models life to that alone.
+    Each to the favourite happiness attends,
+    And spurns the plan that aims at other ends;
+    Till, carried to excess in each domain,
+    This favourite good begets peculiar pain.'
+
+This is the position which he conducts through Italy, Swisserland,
+France, Holland, and England; and which he endeavours to confirm by
+remarking the manners of every country.
+
+Having censured the degeneracy of the modern Italians, he proceeds thus:
+
+    'My soul turn from them, turn we to survey
+    Where rougher climes a nobler race display,
+    Where the bleak Swiss their stormy mansions tread,
+    And force a churlish soil for scanty bread;
+    No product here the barren hills afford,
+    But man and steel, the soldier and his sword.
+    No vernal blooms their torpid rocks array,
+    But winter lingering chills the lap of May;
+    No Zephyr fondly soothes the mountain's breast,
+    But meteors glare, and stormy glooms invest.
+    Yet still, even here, content can spread a charm,
+    Redress the clime, and all its rage disarm.
+    Though poor the peasant's hut, his feasts though small,
+    He sees his little lot, the lot of all;
+    See no contiguous palace rear its head
+    To shame the meanness of his humble shed;
+    No costly lord the sumptuous banquet deal
+    To make him loath his vegetable meal;
+    But calm, and bred in ignorance and toil,
+    Each wish contracting, fits him to the soil.'
+
+But having found that the rural life of a Swiss has its evils as well as
+comforts, he turns to France.
+
+    'To kinder skies, where gentler manners reign,
+    We turn; and France displays her bright domain.
+    Gay sprightly land of mirth and social ease,
+    Pleas'd with thyself, whom all the world can please.--
+    Theirs are those arts that mind to mind endear,
+    For honour forms the social temper here.--
+    From courts to camps, to cottages it strays,
+    And all are taught an avarice of praise;
+    They please, are pleas'd, they give to get esteem,
+    Till, seeming blest, they grow to what they seem.'
+
+Yet France has its evils:
+
+    'For praise too dearly lov'd, or warmly sought,
+    Enfeebles all internal strength of thought,
+    And the weak soul, within itself unblest,
+    Leans all for pleasure on another's breast.--
+    The mind still turns where shifting fashion draws,
+    Nor weighs the solid worth of self-applause.'
+
+Having then passed through Holland, he arrives in England, where,
+
+    'Stern o'er each bosom reason holds her state,
+    With daring aims, irregularly great,
+    I see the lords of human kind pass by,
+    Pride in their port, defiance in their eye,
+    Intent on high designs, a thoughtful band,
+    By forms unfashion'd, fresh from Nature's hand.'
+
+With the inconveniences that harrass [_sic_] the sons of freedom, this
+extract shall be concluded.
+
+    'That independence Britons prize too high,
+    Keeps man from man, and breaks the social tie;
+    See, though by circling deeps together held,
+    Minds combat minds, repelling and repell'd;
+    Ferments arise, imprison'd factions roar,
+    Represt ambition struggles round her shore,
+    Whilst, over-wrought, the general system feels
+    Its motions stopt, or phrenzy fires the wheels.
+      Nor this the worst. As social bonds decay,
+    As duty, love, and honour fail to sway,
+    Fictitious bonds, the bonds of wealth and law,
+    Still gather strength, and force unwilling awe.
+    Hence all obedience bows to these alone,
+    And talent sinks, and merit weeps unknown;
+    Till time may come, when, stript of all her charms,
+    That land of scholars, and that nurse of arms;
+    Where noble stems transmit the patriot flame,
+    And monarchs toil, and poets pant for fame;
+    One sink of level avarice shall lie,
+    And scholars, soldiers, kings unhonor'd die.'
+
+Such is the poem, 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 any thing equal.--_The Critical Review_.
+
+
+
+
+WILLIAM COWPER
+
+
+_Poems by William Cowper, of the Inner Temple, Esq._ _8vo. 5s._ Johnson.
+
+These Poems are written, as we learn from the title-page, by Mr. Cowper
+of the Inner Temple, who seems to be a man of a sober and religious turn
+of mind, with a benevolent heart, and a serious wish to inculcate the
+precepts of morality; he is not, however, possessed of any superior
+abilities, or powers of genius, requisite to so arduous an undertaking;
+his verses are, in general, weak and languid, and have neither novelty,
+spirit, or animation, to recommend them; that mediocrity so severely
+condemned by Horace,
+
+    Non Dii non homines, &c.
+
+pervades the whole; and, whilst the author avoids every thing that is
+ridiculous or contemptible, he, at the same time, never rises to any
+thing that we can commend or admire. He says what is incontrovertible,
+and what has already been said over and over, with much gravity, but
+says nothing new, sprightly, or entertaining; travelling on in a plain,
+level, flat road, with great composure, almost through the whole long,
+and rather tedious volume, which is little better than a dull sermon, in
+very indifferent verse, on Truth, the Progress of Error, Charity, and
+some other grave subjects. If this author had followed the advice given
+by Caraccioli,[G] and which he has chosen for one of the mottos
+prefixed to these Poems, he would have clothed his indisputable truths
+in some becoming _disguise_, and rendered his work much more agreeable.
+In its present state, we cannot compliment him on its shape or beauty;
+for, as this bard himself _sweetly_ sings,
+
+    'The clear harangue, and cold as it is clear,
+    Falls soporific on the listless ear.'
+
+In his learned dissertation on _Hope_, we meet with the following lines
+
+    [Quotes some fifty lines from _Hope_ beginning,
+      Build by whatever plan caprice decrees,
+      With what materials, on what ground you please, etc.]
+
+All this is very true; but there needs no ghost, nor author, nor poet,
+to tell us what we knew before, unless he could tell it to us in a new
+and better manner. Add to this, that many of our author's expressions
+are coarse, vulgar, and unpoetical; such as _parrying_, _pushing by_,
+_spitting abhorrence_, &c. The greatest part of Mr. Cowper's didactics
+is in the same strain. He attempts indeed sometimes to be lively,
+facetious, and satirical; but is seldom more successful in this, than in
+the serious and pathetic. In his poem on Conversation there are two or
+three faint attempts at humour; in one of them he tells us that
+
+    'A story in which native humour reigns
+    Is often useful, always entertains,
+    A graver fact enlisted on your side,
+    May furnish illustration, well applied;
+    But sedentary weavers of long tales,
+    Give me the fidgets and my patience fails.
+    'Tis the most asinine employ on earth,
+    To hear them tell of parentage and birth,
+    And echo conversations dull and dry,
+    Embellished with, _he said_, and _so said I_.
+    At ev'ry interview their route the same,
+    The repetition makes attention lame,
+    We bustle up with unsuccessful speed,
+    And in the saddest part cry--droll indeed!
+    The path of narrative with care pursue,
+    Still making probability your clue,
+    On all the vestiges of truth attend,
+    And let them guide you to a decent end.
+    Of all ambitions man may entertain,
+    The worst that can invade a sickly brain,
+    Is that which angles hourly for surprize,
+    And baits its hook with prodigies and lies.
+    Credulous infancy or age as weak
+    Are fittest auditors for such to seek,
+    Who to please others will themselves disgrace,
+    Yet please not, but affront you to your face.'
+
+In the passage above quoted, our readers will perceive that the wit is
+rather aukward, [_sic_] and the verses, especially the last, very
+prosaic.
+
+Toward the end of this volume are some little pieces of a lighter kind,
+which, after dragging through Mr. Cowper's long moral lectures, afforded
+us some relief. The fables of the Lily and the Rose, the Nightingale and
+Glow-worm, the Pine-apple and the Bee, with two or three others, are
+written with ease and spirit. It is a pity that our author had not
+confined himself altogether to this species of poetry, without entering
+into a system of ethics, for which his genius seems but ill
+adapted.--_The Critical Review_.
+
+[Footnote G: Nous sommes nés pour la vérité, et nous ne pouvons souffrir
+son abord. Les figures, les paraboles, les emblémes, sont toujours des
+ornements nécessaires pour qu'elle puisse s'annoncer: on veut, en la
+recevant, qu'elle soit _déguisée_.]
+
+
+
+
+ROBERT BURNS
+
+
+_Poems, chiefly in the Scottish Dialect_. _By_ ROBERT BURNS,
+_Kilmarnock_.
+
+When an author we know nothing of solicits our attention, we are but too
+apt to treat him with the same reluctant civility we show to a person
+who has come unbidden into company. Yet talents and address will
+gradually diminish the distance of our behaviour, and when the first
+unfavourable impression has worn off, the author may become a favourite,
+and the stranger a friend. The poems we have just announced may probably
+have to struggle with the pride of learning and the partiality of
+refinement; yet they are intitled to particular indulgence.
+
+Who are you, Mr. Burns? will some surly critic say. At what university
+have you been educated? what languages do you understand? what authors
+have you particularly studied? whether has Aristotle or Horace directed
+your taste? who has praised your poems, and under whose patronage are
+they published? In short, what qualifications intitle you to instruct or
+entertain us? To the questions of such a catechism, perhaps honest
+Robert Burns would make no satisfactory answers. 'My good Sir, he might
+say, I am a poor country man; I was bred up at the school of Kilmarnock;
+I understand no languages but my own; I have studied Allan Ramsay and
+Ferguson. My poems have been praised at many a fireside; and I ask no
+patronage for them, if they deserve none. I have not looked on mankind
+_through the spectacle of books_. An ounce of mother-wit, you know, is
+worth a pound of clergy; and Homer and Ossian, for any thing that I have
+heard, could neither write nor read.' The author is indeed a striking
+example of native genius bursting through the obscurity of poverty and
+the obstructions of laborious life. He is said to be a common ploughman;
+and when we consider him in this light, we cannot help regretting that
+wayward fate had not placed him in a more favoured situation. Those who
+view him with the severity of lettered criticism, and judge him by the
+fastidious rules of art, will discover that he has not the doric
+simplicity of Ramsay, nor the brilliant imagination of Ferguson; but to
+those who admire the exertions of untutored fancy, and are blind to many
+faults for the sake of numberless beauties, his poems will afford
+singular gratification. His observations on human characters are acute
+and sagacious, and his descriptions are lively and just. Of rustic
+pleasantry he has a rich fund; and some of his softer scenes are touched
+with inimitable delicacy. He seems to be a boon companion, and often
+startles us with a dash of libertinism, which will keep some readers at
+a distance. Some of his subjects are serious, but those of the humorous
+kind are the best. It is not meant, however, to enter into a minute
+investigation of his merits, as the copious extracts we have subjoined
+will enable our readers to judge for themselves. The Character Horace
+gives to Osellus is particularly applicable to him.
+
+    _Rusticus abnormis sapiens, crassaque Minerva._
+
+[Quotes _Address to the Deil_, from the _Epistle to a Brother Bard_,
+from _Description of a Sermon in the Fields_, and from
+_Hallowe'en_.]--_The Edinburgh Magazine_.
+
+
+_Poems, chiefly in the Scottish Dialect_. _By Robert Burns._ Printed at
+Kilmarnock.
+
+We have had occasion to examine a number of poetical productions,
+written by persons in the lower rank of life, and who had hardly
+received any education; but we do not recollect to have ever met with a
+more signal instance of true and uncultivated genius, than in the author
+of these Poems. His occupation is that of a common ploughman; and his
+life has hitherto been spent in struggling with poverty. But all the
+rigours of fortune have not been able to repress the frequent efforts of
+his lively and vigorous imagination. Some of these poems are of a
+serious cast; but the strain which seems most natural to the author, is
+the sportive and humorous. It is to be regretted, that the Scottish
+dialect, in which these poems are written, must obscure the native
+beauties with which they appear to abound, and renders the sense often
+unintelligible to an English reader. Should it, however, prove true,
+that the author has been taken under the patronage of a great lady in
+Scotland, and that a celebrated professor has interested himself in the
+cultivation of his talents, there is reason to hope, that his
+distinguished genius may yet be exerted in such a manner as to afford
+more general delight. In the meantime, we must admire the generous
+enthusiasm of his untutored muse; and bestow the tribute of just
+applause on one whose name will be transmitted to posterity with
+honour.--_The Critical Review_.
+
+
+
+
+WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
+
+
+_Descriptive Sketches_, in Verse. Taken during a Pedestrian Tour in the
+Italian, Grison, Swiss and Savoyard Alps. By W. WORDSWORTH, B.A. of St.
+John's, Cambridge. 4to. pp. 55. 3s. Johnson. 1793.
+
+More descriptive poetry! (See page 166, &c.) Have we not yet enough?
+Must eternal changes be rung on uplands and lowlands, and nodding
+forests, and brooding clouds, and cells, and dells, and dingles? Yes;
+more, and yet more: so it is decreed.
+
+Mr. Wordsworth begins his descriptive sketches with the following
+exordium:
+
+    'Were there, below, a spot of holy ground,
+    By Pain and her sad family _un_found,
+    Sure, Nature's God that spot to man had giv'n,
+    Where murmuring _rivers join_ the song of _ev'n_!
+    Where _falls_ the purple morning far and wide
+    _In flakes_ of light upon the mountain side;
+    Where summer suns in ocean sink to rest,
+    Or moonlight upland lifts her hoary breast;
+    Where Silence, on her night of wing, o'er-broods
+    Unfathom'd dells and undiscover'd woods;
+    Where rocks and groves the _power_ of waters _shakes_
+    In cataracts, or sleeps in quiet lakes.'
+
+May we ask, how it is that rivers join the song of ev'n? or, in plain
+prose, the evening! but, if they do, is it not true that they equally
+join the song of morning, noon, and night? The _purple morning falling
+in flakes_ of light is a bold figure: but we are told, it falls far and
+wide--Where?--On the mountain's _side_. We are sorry to see the purple
+morning confined so like a maniac in a straight waistcoat. What the
+night of wing of silence is, we are unable to comprehend: but the
+climax of the passage is, that, were there such a spot of holy ground as
+is here so sublimely described, _unfound_ by Pain and her sad family,
+Nature's God had surely given that spot to man, though its _woods_ were
+_undiscovered_.
+
+Let us proceed,
+
+    'But doubly pitying Nature loves to show'r
+    Soft on his _wounded heart_ her healing pow'r,
+    Who _plods_ o'er hills and vales his road _forlorn_,
+    Wooing her varying charms from eve to morn.
+    _No sad vacuities_ his heart _annoy_,
+    _Blows_ not a Zephyr but it _whispers joy_;
+    For him _lost_ flowers their _idle_ sweets _exhale_;
+    He _tastes_ the meanest _note_ that swells the gale;
+    For him sod-seats the cottage-door adorn,
+    And _peeps_ the far-off _spire_, his evening bourn!
+    Dear is the forest _frowning_ o'er his head,
+    And dear the green-sward to his _velvet tread_;
+    Moves there a _cloud_ o'er mid-day's flaming eye?
+    Upwards he looks--and calls it luxury;
+    Kind Nature's _charities_ his steps attend,
+    In every babbling brook he finds a friend.'
+
+Here we find that _doubly_ pitying Nature is very kind to the traveller,
+but that this traveller has a _wounded heart_ and _plods_ his road
+_forlorn_. In the next line but one we discover that--
+
+    'No _sad vacuities_ his heart _annoy_;
+    Blows not a Zephyr but it whispers _joy_.'
+
+The flowers, though they have lost themselves, or are lost, exhale their
+idle sweets for him; the _spire peeps_ for him; sod-seats, forests,
+clouds, nature's charities, and babbling brooks, all are to him luxury
+and friendship. He is the happiest of mortals, and plods, is forlorn,
+and has a wounded heart. How often shall we in vain advise those, who
+are so delighted with their own thoughts that they cannot forbear from
+putting them into rhyme, to examine those thoughts till they themselves
+understand them? No man will ever be a poet, till his mind be
+sufficiently powerful to sustain this labour.--_The Monthly Review_.
+
+
+_An Evening Walk_. An Epistle; in Verse. Addressed to a Young Lady, from
+the Lakes of the North of England. By W. Wordsworth, B.A. of St. John's,
+Cambridge. 4to. pp. 27. 2s. Johnson. 1793.
+
+In this Epistle, the subject and the manner of treating it vary but
+little from the former poem. We will quote four lines from a passage
+which the author very sorrowfully apologizes for having omitted:
+
+    'Return delights! with whom my road beg_un_,
+    When _Life-rear'd_ laughing _up her_ morning _sun_;
+    When Transport kiss'd away my April tear,
+    "Rocking as in a dream the tedious year."
+
+Life _rearing_ up the sun! Transport kissing away an _April_ tear and
+_rocking_ the year as in a dream! Would the cradle had been specified!
+Seriously, these are figures which no poetical license can justify. If
+they can possibly give pleasure, it must be to readers whose habits of
+thinking are totally different from ours. Mr. Wordsworth is a scholar,
+and, no doubt, when reading the works of others, a critic. There are
+passages in his poems which display imagination, and which afford hope
+for the future: but, if he can divest himself of all partiality, and
+will critically question every line that he has written, he will find
+many which, he must allow, call loudly for amendment.--_The Monthly
+Review_.
+
+
+_Lyrical Ballads, with a few other Poems_. _Small 8vo. 5s. Boards._
+Arch. 1798.
+
+The majority of these poems, we are informed in the advertisement, are
+to be considered as experiments.
+
+'They were written chiefly with a view to ascertain how far the language
+of conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to
+the purposes of poetic pleasure.' P. i.
+
+Of these experimental poems, the most important is the Idiot Boy, the
+story of which is simply this. Betty Foy's neighbour Susan Gale is
+indisposed; and no one can conveniently be sent for the doctor but
+Betty's idiot boy. She therefore puts him upon her poney, at eight
+o'clock in the evening, gives him proper directions, and returns to take
+care of her sick neighbour. Johnny is expected with the doctor by
+eleven; but the clock strikes eleven, and twelve, and one, without the
+appearance either of Johnny or the doctor. Betty's restless fears become
+insupportable; and she now leaves her friend to look for her idiot son.
+She goes to the doctor's house, but hears nothing of Johnny. About five
+o'clock, however, she finds him sitting quietly upon his feeding poney.
+As they go home they meet old Susan, whose apprehensions have cured her,
+and brought her out to seek them; and they all return merrily together.
+
+Upon this subject the author has written nearly five hundred lines. With
+what spirit the story is told, our extract will evince.
+
+[Quotes lines (322-401) of _The Idiot Boy_.]
+
+No tale less deserved the labour that appears to have been bestowed upon
+this. It resembles a Flemish picture in the worthlessness of its design
+and the excellence of its execution. From Flemish artists we are
+satisfied with such pieces: who would not have lamented, if Corregio or
+Rafaelle had wasted their talents in painting Dutch boors or the humours
+of a Flemish wake?
+
+The other ballads of this kind are as bald in story, and are not so
+highly embellished in narration. With that which is entitled the Thorn,
+we were altogether displeased. The advertisement says, it is not told in
+the person of the author, but in that of some loquacious narrator. The
+author should have recollected that he who personates tiresome
+loquacity, becomes tiresome himself. The story of a man who suffers the
+perpetual pain of cold, because an old woman prayed that he might never
+be warm, is perhaps a good story for a ballad, because it is a
+well-known tale: but is the author certain that it is '_well
+authenticated?_' and does not such an assertion promote the popular
+superstition of witchcraft?
+
+In a very different style of poetry, is the Rime of the Ancyent
+Marinere; a ballad (says the advertisement) 'professedly written in
+imitation of the _style_, as well as of the spirit of the elder poets.'
+We are tolerably conversant with the early English poets; and can
+discover no resemblance whatever, except in antiquated spelling and a
+few obsolete words. This piece appears to us perfectly original in style
+as well as in story. Many of the stanzas are laboriously beautiful; but
+in connection they are absurd or unintelligible. Our readers may
+exercise their ingenuity in attempting to unriddle what follows.
+
+    'The roaring wind! it roar'd far off,
+      It did not come anear;
+    But with its sound it shook the sails
+      That were so thin and sere.
+
+    The upper air bursts into life,
+      And a hundred fire-flags sheen
+    To and fro they are hurried about;
+    And to and fro, and in and out
+      The stars dance on between.
+
+    The coming wind doth roar more loud;
+      The sails do sigh, like sedge:
+    The rain pours down from one black cloud,
+      And the moon is at its edge.
+
+    Hark! hark! the thick black cloud is cleft,
+      And the moon is at its side:
+    Like waters shot from some high crag,
+    The lightning falls with never a jag
+      A river steep and wide.
+
+    The strong wind reach'd the ship: it roar'd
+      And dropp'd down, like a stone!
+    Beneath the lightning and the moon
+      The dead men gave a groan.' P. 27.
+
+We do not sufficiently understand the story to analyse it. It is a Dutch
+attempt at German sublimity. Genius has here been employed in producing
+a poem of little merit.
+
+With pleasure we turn to the serious pieces, the better part of the
+volume. The Foster-Mother's Tale is in the best style of dramatic
+narrative. The Dungeon, and the Lines upon the Yew-tree Seat, are
+beautiful. The Tale of the Female Vagrant is written in the stanza, not
+the style, of Spenser. We extract a part of this poem.
+
+[Quotes lines (91-180) of _The Female Vagrant_.]
+
+Admirable as this poem is, the author seems to discover still superior
+powers in the Lines written near Tintern Abbey. On reading this
+production, it is impossible not to lament that he should ever have
+condescended to write such pieces as the Last of the Flock, the Convict,
+and most of the ballads. In the whole range of English poetry, we
+scarcely recollect anything superior to a part of the following passage.
+
+[Quotes lines (66-112) of _Lines Written a few Miles above Tintern
+Abbey_.]
+
+The 'experiment,' we think, has failed, not because the language of
+conversation is little adapted to 'the purposes of poetic pleasure' but
+because it has been tried upon uninteresting subjects. Yet every piece
+discovers genius; and, ill as the author has frequently employed his
+talents, they certainly rank him with the best of living poets.--_The
+Critical Review_.
+
+
+_Poems, in Two Volumes_. _By_ WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, _Author of the Lyrical
+Ballads._ 8vo. pp. 320. London, 1807.
+
+This author is known to belong to a certain brotherhood of poets, who
+have haunted for some years about the Lakes of Cumberland; and is
+generally looked upon, we believe, as the purest model of the
+excellences and peculiarities of the school which they have been
+labouring to establish. Of the general merits of that school, we have
+had occasion to express our opinion pretty freely, in more places than
+one, and even to make some allusion to the former publications of the
+writer now before us. We are glad, however, to have found an opportunity
+of attending somewhat more particularly to his pretensions.
+
+The Lyrical Ballads were unquestionably popular; and, we have no
+hesitation in saying, deservedly popular; for in spite of their
+occasional vulgarity, affectation, and silliness, they were undoubtedly
+characterised by a strong spirit of originality, of pathos, and natural
+feeling; and recommended to all good minds by the clear impression which
+they bore of the amiable dispositions and virtuous principles of the
+author. By the help of these qualities, they were enabled, not only to
+recommend themselves to the indulgence of many judicious readers, but
+even to beget among a pretty numerous class of persons, a sort of
+admiration of the very defects by which they were attended. It was upon
+this account chiefly, that we thought it necessary to set ourselves
+against this alarming innovation. Childishness, conceit, and
+affectation, are not of themselves very popular or attractive; and
+though mere novelty has sometimes been found sufficient to give them a
+temporary currency, we should have had no fear of their prevailing to
+any dangerous extent, if they had been graced with no more seductive
+accompaniments. It was precisely because the perverseness and bad taste
+of this new school was combined with a great deal of genius and of
+laudable feeling, that we were afraid of their spreading and gaining
+ground among us, and that we entered into the discussion with a degree
+of zeal and animosity which some might think unreasonable toward
+authors, to whom so much merit had been conceded. There were times and
+moods indeed, in which we were led to suspect ourselves of unjustifiable
+severity, and to doubt, whether a sense of public duty had not carried
+us rather too far in reprobation of errors, that seemed to be atoned
+for, by excellences of no vulgar description. At other times, the
+magnitude of these errors--the disgusting absurdities into which they
+led their feebler admirers, and the derision and contempt which they
+drew from the more fastidious, even upon the merits with which they were
+associated, made us wonder more than ever at the perversity by which
+they were retained, and regret that we had not declared ourselves
+against them with still more formidable and decided hostility.
+
+In this temper of mind, we read the _annonce_ of Mr Wordsworth's
+publication with a good deal of interest and expectation, and opened his
+volumes with greater anxiety, than he or his admirers will probably give
+us credit for. We have been greatly disappointed certainly as to the
+quality of the poetry; but we doubt whether the publication has afforded
+so much satisfaction to any other of his readers:--it has freed us from
+all doubt or hesitation as to the justice of our former censures, and
+has brought the matter to a test, which we cannot help hoping may be
+convincing to the author himself.
+
+Mr Wordsworth, we think, has now brought the question, as to the merit
+of his new school of poetry, to a very fair and decisive issue. The
+volumes before us are much more strongly marked by all its peculiarities
+than any former publication of the fraternity. In our apprehension, they
+are, on this very account, infinitely less interesting or meritorious;
+but it belongs to the public, and not to us, to decide upon their merit,
+and we will confess, that so strong is our conviction of their obvious
+inferiority, and the grounds of it, that we are willing for once to
+wa[i]ve our right of appealing to posterity, and to take the judgment of
+the present generation of readers, and even of Mr Wordsworth's former
+admirers, as conclusive on this occasion. If these volumes, which have
+all the benefit of the author's former popularity, turn out to be nearly
+as popular as the lyrical ballads--if they sell nearly to the same
+extent--or are quoted and imitated among half as many individuals, we
+shall admit that Mr Wordsworth has come much nearer the truth in his
+judgment of what constitutes the charm of poetry, than we had previously
+imagined--and shall institute a more serious and respectful inquiry into
+his principles of composition than we have yet thought necessary. On the
+other hand,--if this little work, selected from the compositions of five
+maturer years, and written avowedly for the purpose of exalting a
+system, which has already excited a good deal of attention, should be
+generally rejected by those whose prepossessions were in its favour,
+there is room to hope, not only that the system itself will meet with no
+more encouragement, but even that the author will be persuaded to
+abandon a plan of writing, which defrauds his industry and talents of
+their natural reward.
+
+Putting ourselves thus upon our country, we certainly look for a verdict
+against this publication; and have little doubt indeed of the result,
+upon a fair consideration of the evidence contained in these
+volumes.--To accelerate that result, and to give a general view of the
+evidence, to those into whose hands the record may not have already
+fallen, we must now make a few observations and extracts.
+
+We shall not resume any of the particular discussions by which we
+formerly attempted to ascertain the value of the improvements which this
+new school had effected in poetry;[H] but shall lay the grounds of our
+opposition, for this time, a little more broadly. The end of poetry, we
+take it, is to please--and the name, we think, is strictly applicable to
+every metrical composition from which we receive pleasure, without any
+laborious exercise of the understanding. This pleasure, may, in general,
+be analyzed into three parts--that which we receive from the excitement
+of Passion or emotion--that which is derived from the play of
+Imagination, or the easy exercise of Reason--and that which depends on
+the character and qualities of the Diction. The two first are the vital
+and primary springs of poetical delight, and can scarcely require
+explanation to any one. The last has been alternately overrated and
+undervalued by the professors of the poetical art, and is in such low
+estimation with the author now before us and his associates, that it is
+necessary to say a few words in explanation of it.
+
+One great beauty of diction exists only for those who have some degree
+of scholarship or critical skill. This is what depends on the exquisite
+_propriety_ of the words employed, and the delicacy with which they are
+adapted to the meaning which is to be expressed. Many of the finest
+passages in Virgil and Pope derive their principal charm from the fine
+propriety of their diction. Another source of beauty, which extends
+only to the more instructed class of readers, is that which consists in
+the judicious or happy application of expressions which have been
+sanctified by the use of famous writers, or which bear the stamp of a
+simple or venerable antiquity. There are other beauties of diction,
+however, which are perceptible by all--the beauties of sweet sound and
+pleasant associations. The melody of words and verses is indifferent to
+no reader of poetry; but the chief recommendation of poetical language
+is certainly derived from those general associations, which give it a
+character of dignity or elegance, sublimity or tenderness. Every one
+knows that there are low and mean expressions, as well as lofty and
+grave ones; and that some words bear the impression of coarseness and
+vulgarity, as clearly as others do of refinement and affection. We do
+not mean, of course, to say anything in defence of the hackneyed
+common-places of ordinary versemen. Whatever might have been the
+original character of these unlucky phrases, they are now associated
+with nothing but ideas of schoolboy imbecility and vulgar affectation.
+But what we do maintain is, that much of the most popular poetry in the
+world owes its celebrity chiefly to the beauty of its diction; and that
+no poetry can be long or generally acceptable, the language of which is
+coarse, inelegant, or infantine.
+
+From this great source of pleasure, we think the readers of Mr
+Wordsworth are in a great measure cut off. His diction has no where any
+pretensions to elegance or dignity; and he has scarcely ever
+condescended to give the grace of correctness or melody to his
+versification. If it were merely slovenly and neglected, however, all
+this might be endured. Strong sense and powerful feeling will ennoble
+any expressions; or, at least, no one who is capable of estimating those
+higher merits, will be disposed to mark these little defects. But, in
+good truth, no man, now-a-days, composes verses for publication with a
+slovenly neglect of their language. It is a fine and laborious
+manufacture, which can scarcely ever be made in a hurry; and the faults
+which it has, may, for the most part, be set down to bad taste or
+incapacity, rather than to carelessness or oversight. With Mr Wordsworth
+and his friends, it is plain that their peculiarities of diction are
+things of choice, and not of accident. They write as they do, upon
+principle and system; and it evidently costs them much pains to keep
+_down_ to the standard which they have proposed to themselves. They are,
+to the full, as much mannerists, too, as the poetasters who ring changes
+on the common-places of magazine versification; and all the difference
+between them is, that they borrow their phrases from a different and a
+scantier _gradus ad Parnassum_. If they were, indeed, to discard all
+imitation and set phraseology, and to bring in no words merely for show
+or for metre,--as much, perhaps, might be gained in freedom and
+originality, as would infallibly be lost in allusion and authority; but,
+in point of fact, the new poets are just as great borrowers as the old;
+only that, instead of borrowing from the more popular passages of their
+illustrious predecessors, they have preferred furnishing themselves from
+vulgar ballads and plebeian nurseries.
+
+Their peculiarities of diction alone, are enough, perhaps, to render
+them ridiculous; but the author before us really seems anxious to court
+this literary martyrdom by a device still more infallible,--we mean,
+that of connecting his most lofty, tender, or impassioned conceptions,
+with objects and incidents, which the greater part of his readers will
+probably persist in thinking low, silly, or uninteresting. Whether this
+is done from affectation and conceit alone, or whether it may not
+arise, in some measure, from the self-illusion of a mind of
+extraordinary sensibility, habituated to solitary meditation, we cannot
+undertake to determine. It is possible enough, we allow, that the sight
+of a friend's garden-spade, or a sparrow's nest, or a man gathering
+leeches, might really have suggested to such a mind a train of powerful
+impressions and interesting reflections; but it is certain, that, to
+most minds, such associations will always appear forced, strained, and
+unnatural; and that the composition in which it is attempted to exhibit
+them, will always have the air of parody, or ludicrous and affected
+singularity. All the world laughs at Elegiac stanzas to a sucking-pig--a
+Hymn on Washing-day--Sonnets to one's grandmother--or Pindarics on
+gooseberry-pye; and yet, we are afraid, it will not be quite easy to
+convince Mr Wordsworth, that the same ridicule must infallibly attach to
+most of the pathetic pieces in these volumes. To satisfy our readers,
+however, as to the justice of this and our other anticipations, we shall
+proceed, without further preface, to lay before them a short view of
+their contents.
+
+The first is a kind of ode 'to the Daisy,'--very flat, feeble, and
+affected; and in a diction as artificial, and as much encumbered with
+heavy expletives, as the theme of an unpractised schoolboy. The two
+following stanzas will serve as a specimen.
+
+    'When soothed a while by milder airs,
+    Thee Winter in the garland wears
+    That thinly shades his few grey hairs;
+      _Spring cannot shun thee_;
+    Whole summer fields are thine by right;
+    And Autumn, melancholy Wight!
+    Doth in thy crimson head delight
+      When rains are on thee.
+    In shoals and bands, a morrice train,
+    Thou greet'st the Traveller in the lane;
+    If welcome once thou count'st it gain;
+      _Thou art not daunted_,
+    Nor car'st if thou be set at naught;
+    And oft alone in nooks remote
+    We meet thee, like a pleasant thought,
+      _When such are wanted_.' I. p. 2.
+
+The scope of the piece is to say, that the flower is found everywhere;
+and that it has suggested many pleasant thoughts to the author--some
+chime of fancy '_wrong or right_'--some feeling of devotion 'more or
+less'--and other elegancies of the same stamp. It ends with this
+unmeaning prophecy.
+
+    'Thou long the poet's praise shalt gain;
+    Thou wilt be more beloved by men
+    In times to come; thou not in vain
+      Art Nature's favourite.' I. 6.
+
+The next is called 'Louisa,' and begins in this dashing and affected
+manner.
+
+    'I met Louisa in the shade;
+    And, having seen that lovely maid,
+    _Why should I fear to say_
+    That she is ruddy, fleet, and _strong_;
+    _And down the rocks can leap_ along,
+    Like rivulets in May?' I. 7.
+
+Does Mr Wordsworth really imagine that this is at all more natural or
+engaging than the ditties of our common song writers?
+
+A little farther on we have another original piece, entitled, 'The
+Redbreast and the Butterfly,' of which our readers will probably be
+contented with the first stanza.
+
+    'Art thou the bird whom man loves best,
+    The pious bird with the scarlet breast,
+      Our little English Robin;
+    The bird that comes about our doors
+    When autumn winds are sobbing?
+    Art thou the Peter of Norway Boors?
+      Their Thomas in Finland,
+      And Russia far inland?
+    The bird, whom _by some name or other_
+    All men who know thee call their brother,
+    The darling of children and men?
+    Could Father Adam open his eyes,
+    And see this sight beneath the skies,
+    He'd wish to close them again.' I. 16.
+
+This, it must be confessed, is 'Silly Sooth' in good earnest. The three
+last [_sic_] lines seem to be downright raving.
+
+By and by, we have a piece of namby-pamby 'to the Small Celandine,'
+which we should almost have taken for a professed imitation of one of Mr
+Philip's prettyisms. Here is a page of it.
+
+    'Comfort have thou of thy merit,
+    Kindly, unassuming spirit!
+    Careless of thy neighbourhood,
+    Thou dost show thy pleasant face
+    On the moor, and in the wood,
+    In the lane;--there's not a place,
+    Howsoever mean it be,
+    But 'tis good enough for thee.
+    Ill befal the yellow flowers,
+    Children of the flaring hours!
+    Buttercups, that will be seen,
+    Whether we will see or no;
+    Others, too, of lofty mien;
+    They have done as worldlings do,
+    Taken praise that should be thine,
+    Little, humble, Celandine!' I. 25.
+
+After talking of its 'bright coronet,' the ditty is wound up with this
+piece of babyish absurdity.
+
+    'Thou art not beyond the moon,
+    But a thing "beneath our shoon;"
+    Let, as old Magellan did,
+    Others roam about the sea;
+    Build who will a pyramid;
+    Praise it is enough for me,
+    If there be but three or four
+    Who will love my little flower.' I. 30.
+
+After this come some more manly lines on 'The Character of the Happy
+Warrior,' and a chivalrous legend on 'The Horn of Egremont Castle,'
+which, without being very good, is very tolerable, and free from most of
+the author's habitual defects. Then follow some pretty, but professedly
+childish verses, on a kitten playing with the falling leaves. There is
+rather too much of Mr Ambrose Philips here and there in this piece also;
+but it is amiable and lively.
+
+Further on, we find an 'Ode to Duty,' in which the lofty vein is very
+unsuccessfully attempted. This is the concluding stanza.
+
+    'Stern lawgiver! yet thou dost wear
+    The Godhead's most benignant grace;
+    Nor know we anything so fair
+    As is the smile upon thy face;
+    Flowers laugh before thee on their beds;
+    And fragrance in thy footing treads;
+    Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong;
+    And the most ancient heavens through thee are fresh and strong.' I. 73.
+
+The two last [_sic_] lines seem to be utterly without meaning; at least
+we have no sort of conception in what sense _Duty_ can be said to keep
+the old skies _fresh_, and the stars from wrong.
+
+The next piece, entitled 'The Beggars,' may be taken, we fancy, as a
+touchstone of Mr Wordsworth's merit. There is something about it that
+convinces us it is a favourite of the author's; though to us, we will
+confess, it appears to be a very paragon of silliness and affectation.
+Our readers shall have the greater part of it. It begins thus.
+
+      'She had a tall man's height, or more;
+      No bonnet screen'd her from the heat;
+      A long drab-coloured cloak she wore,
+      A mantle reaching to her feet:
+      What other dress she had I could not know;
+    Only she wore a cap that was as white as snow.
+
+      'Before me begging did she stand,
+      Pouring out sorrows like a sea;
+      Grief after grief:--on English land
+      Such woes I knew could never be;
+      And yet a boon I gave her; for the creature
+    Was beautiful to see; a weed of glorious feature!' I. 77, 78.
+
+The poet, leaving this interesting person, falls in with two ragged boys
+at play, and 'like that woman's face as gold is like to gold.' Here is
+the conclusion of this memorable adventure.
+
+      'They bolted on me thus, and lo!
+      Each ready with a plaintive whine;
+      Said I, "Not half an hour ago
+      Your mother has had alms of mine."
+      "That cannot be," one answered, "She is dead."
+    "Nay but I gave her pence, and she will buy you bread."
+
+      "She has been dead, Sir, many a day."
+      "Sweet boys, you're telling me a lie";
+      "It was your mother, as I say--"
+      And in the twinkling of an eye,
+      "Come, come!" cried one; and, without more ado,
+    Off to some other play they both together flew.' I. 79.
+
+'Alice Fell' is a performance of the same order. The poet, driving into
+Durham in a postchaise, hears a sort of scream; and, calling to the
+post-boy to stop, finds a little girl crying on the back of the vehicle.
+
+    "My cloak!" the word was last and first,
+    And loud and bitterly she wept,
+    As if her very heart would burst;
+    And down from off the chaise she leapt.
+
+    "What ails you, child?" she sobb'd, "Look here!"
+    I saw it in the wheel entangled,
+    A weather beaten rag as e'er
+    From any garden scarecrow dangled.' I. 85, 86.
+
+They then extricate the torn garment, and the good-natured bard takes
+the child into the carriage along with him. The narrative proceeds--
+
+    "My child, in Durham do you dwell?"
+    She check'd herself in her distress,
+    And said, "My name is Alice Fell;
+    I'm fatherless and motherless.
+
+    And I to Durham, Sir, belong."
+    And then, as if the thought would choke
+    Her very heart, her grief grew strong;
+    And all was for her tatter'd cloak.
+
+    The chaise drove on; our journey's end
+    Was nigh; and, sitting by my side,
+    As if she'd lost her only friend
+    She wept, nor would be pacified.
+
+    Up to the tavern-door we post;
+    Of Alice and her grief I told;
+    And I gave money to the host,
+    To buy a new cloak for the old.
+
+    "And let it be of duffil grey,
+    As warm a cloak as man can sell!"
+    Proud creature was she the next day,
+    The little orphan, Alice Fell!' I. p. 87, 88.
+
+If the printing of such trash as this be not felt as an insult on the
+public taste, we are afraid it cannot be insulted.
+
+After this follows the longest and most elaborate poem in the volume,
+under the title of 'Resolution and Independence.' The poet, roving about
+on a common one fine morning, falls into pensive musings on the fate of
+the sons of song, which he sums up in this fine distich.
+
+    'We poets in our youth begin in gladness;
+    But thereof comes in the end despondency and madness.' I. p. 92.
+
+In the midst of his meditations--
+
+    'I saw a man before me unawares;
+    The oldest man he seemed that ever wore grey hairs.
+
+              ----------
+
+    Motionless as a cloud the old man stood;
+    That heareth not the loud winds when they call;
+    And moveth altogether, if it move at all.
+    At length, himself unsettling, he the pond
+    Stirred with his staff, and fixedly did look
+    Upon the muddy water, which he conn'd,
+    As if he had been reading in a book:
+    And now such fre[e]dom as I could I took;
+    And, drawing to his side, to him did say,
+    "This morning gives us promise of a glorious day."
+
+              ----------
+
+    "What kind of work is that which you pursue?
+    This is a lonesome place for one like you."
+    He answer'd me _with pleasure and surprise_;
+    And there was, while he spake, a fire about his eyes.
+    He told me _that he to this pond had come
+    To gather leeches_, being old and poor:
+    Employment hazardous and wearisome!
+    And he had many hardships to endure:
+    From pond to pond he roam'd, from moor to moor,
+    Housing, with God's good help, by choice or chance:
+    And in this way he gain'd an honest maintenance.' I. p. 92-95.
+
+Notwithstanding the distinctness of this answer, the poet, it seems, was
+so wrapped up in his own moody fancies, that he could not attend to it.
+
+    'And now, not knowing what the old man had said,
+    My question eagerly did I renew,
+    "How is it that you live, and what is it you do?"
+    He with a smile did then his words repeat;
+    And said, that, _gathering leeches_, far and wide
+    He travelled; stirring thus _about his feet_
+    The waters of the ponds where they abide.
+    "_Once I could meet with them on every side_;
+    But they have dwindled long by slow decay;
+    Yet still I persevere, and find them where I may." I. p. 96, 97.
+
+This very interesting account, which he is lucky enough at last to
+comprehend, fills the poet with comfort and admiration; and, quite glad
+to find the old man so cheerful, he resolves to take a lesson of
+contentedness from him; and the poem ends with this pious ejaculation--
+
+    "God," said I, "be my help and stay secure;
+    I'll think of the leech-gatherer on the lonely moor." I. p. 97.
+
+We defy the bitterest enemy of Mr Wordsworth to produce anything at all
+parallel to this from any collection of English poetry, or even from the
+specimens of his friend Mr Southey. The volume ends with some sonnets,
+in a very different measure, of which we shall say something by and by.
+
+The first poems in the second volume were written during a tour in
+Scotland. The first is a very dull one about Rob Roy; but the title that
+attracted us most was 'an Address to the Sons of _Burns_, after visiting
+their Father's Grave.' Never was anything, however, more miserable. This
+is one of the four stanzas.
+
+    'Strong bodied if ye be to bear
+    Intemperance with less harm, beware!
+    But if your father's wit ye share,
+      Then, then indeed,
+    Ye sons of Burns! for watchful care
+      There will be need.' II. p. 29.
+
+The next is a very tedious, affected performance, called 'the Yarrow
+Unvisited.' The drift of it is, that the poet refused to visit this
+celebrated stream, because he had 'a vision of his own' about it, which
+the reality might perhaps undo; and, for this no less fantastical
+reason--
+
+    "Should life be dull, and spirits low,
+    'Twill soothe us in our sorrow,
+    That earth has something yet to show,
+    The bonny holms of Yarrow!" II. p. 35.
+
+After this we come to some ineffable compositions which the poet has
+simply entitled, 'Moods of my own Mind.' One begins--
+
+    'O Nightingale! thou surely art
+    A creature of a fiery heart--
+    Thou sing'st as if the god of wine
+    Had help'd thee to a valentine.' II. p. 42.
+
+This is the whole of another--
+
+    'My heart leaps up when I behold
+      A rainbow in the sky:
+    So was it when my life began;
+    So is it now I am a man;
+    So be it when I shall grow old,
+      Or let me die!
+    The child is father of the man;
+    And I could wish my days to be
+    Bound each to each by natural piety.' II. p. 44.
+
+A third, 'on a Sparrow's Nest,' runs thus--
+
+    'Look, five blue eggs are gleaming there!
+    _Few visions have I seen more fair,_
+    _Nor many prospects of delight_
+    More pleasing than that simple sight.' II. p. 53.
+
+The charm of this fine prospect, however, was, that it reminded him of
+another nest which his sister Emmeline and he had visited in their
+childhood.
+
+    'She look'd at it as if she fear'd it;
+    Still wishing, dreading to be near it:
+    Such heart was in her, being then
+    A little prattler among men,' &c., &c. II. p. 54.
+
+We have then a rapturous mystical ode to the Cuckoo; in which the
+author, striving after force and originality, produces nothing but
+absurdity.
+
+    'O cuckoo! shall I call thee bird,
+    Or but a wandering voice?' II. p. 57.
+
+And then he says, that the said voice seemed to pass from hill to hill,
+'about and all about!'--Afterwards he assures us, it tells him 'in the
+vale of visionary hours,' and calls it a darling; but still insists,
+that it is
+
+    'No bird; but an invisible thing,
+    A voice,--a mystery.' II. p. 58.
+
+It is afterwards 'a hope;' and 'a love;' and, finally,
+
+    'O blessed _bird_! the earth we pace
+    Again appears to be
+    An unsubstantial, faery place,
+    That is fit home for thee!' II. p. 59.
+
+After this there is an address to a butterfly, whom he invites to visit
+him, in these simple strains--
+
+    'This plot of orchard-ground is ours;
+    My trees they are, my sister's flowers;
+    Stop here whenever you are weary.' II. p. 61.
+
+We come next to a long story of a 'Blind Highland Boy,' who lived near
+an arm of the sea, and had taken a most unnatural desire to venture on
+that perilous element. His mother did all she could to prevent him; but
+one morning, when the good woman was out of the way, he got into a
+vessel of his own, and pushed out from the shore.
+
+    'In such a vessel ne'er before
+    Did human creature leave the shore.' II. p. 72.
+
+And then we are told, that if the sea should get rough, 'a bee-hive
+would be ship as safe.' 'But say, what is it?' a poetical interlocutor
+is made to exclaim most naturally; and here followeth the answer, upon
+which all the pathos and interest of the story depend.
+
+    'A HOUSEHOLD TUB, like one of those
+    Which women use to wash their clothes!!' II. p. 72.
+
+This, it will be admitted, is carrying the matter as far as it will well
+go; nor is there anything,--down to the wiping of shoes, or the
+evisceration of chickens,--which may not be introduced in poetry, if
+this is tolerated. A boat is sent out and brings the boy ashore, who
+being tolerably frightened we suppose, promises to go to sea no more;
+and so the story ends.
+
+Then we have a poem, called 'the Green Linnet,' which opens with the
+poet's telling us;
+
+    'A whispering leaf is now my joy,
+    And then a bird will be the _toy_
+      That doth my fancy _tether_.' II. p. 79.
+
+and closes thus--
+
+    'While thus before my eyes he gleams,
+    A brother of the leaves he seems;
+    When in a moment forth _he teems_
+      His little song in gushes:
+    As if it pleas'd him to disdain
+    And mock the form which he did feign,
+    While he was dancing with the train
+      Of leaves among the bushes.' II. p. 81.
+
+The next is called 'Star Gazers.' A set of people peeping through a
+telescope, all seem to come away disappointed with the sight; whereupon
+thus sweetly moralizeth our poet.
+
+    'Yet, showman, where can lie the cause? Shall thy implement have blame,
+    A boaster, that when he is tried, fails, and is put to shame?
+    Or is it good as others are, and be their eyes in fault?
+    Their eyes, or minds? or, finally, is this resplendent vault?
+
+    Or, is it rather, that conceit rapacious is and strong,
+    And bounty never yields so much but it seems to do her wrong?
+    Or is it, that when human souls a journey long have had,
+    And are returned into themselves, they cannot but be sad?' II. p. 88.
+
+There are then some really sweet and amiable verses on a French lady,
+separated from her own children, fondling the baby of a neighbouring
+cottager;--after which we have this quintessence of unmeaningness,
+entitled, 'Foresight.'
+
+    'That is work which I am rueing--
+    Do as Charles and I are doing!
+    Strawberry-blossoms, one and all,
+    We must spare them--here are many:
+    Look at it--the flower is small,
+    Small and low, though fair as any:
+    Do not touch it! Summers two
+    I am older, Anne, than you.
+    Pull the primrose, sister Anne!
+    Pull as many as you can.
+
+    Primroses, the spring may love them--
+    Summer knows but little of them:
+    Violets, do what they will,
+    Wither'd on the ground must lie:
+    Daisies will be daisies still;
+    Daisies they must live and die:
+    Fill your lap, and fill your bosom,
+    Only spare the strawberry-blossom!' II. p. 115, 116.
+
+Afterwards come some stanzas about an echo repeating a cuckoo's voice;
+here is one for a sample--
+
+    'Whence the voice? from air or earth?
+    _This the cuckoo cannot tell_;
+    But a startling sound had birth,
+    _As the bird must know full well_.' II. p. 123.
+
+Then we have Elegiac stanzas 'to the Spade of a friend,' beginning--
+
+    'Spade! with which Wilkinson hath till'd his lands,'
+
+--but too dull to be quoted any further.
+
+After this there is a Minstrel's Song, on the Restoration of Lord
+Clifford the Shepherd, which is in a very different strain of poetry;
+and then the volume is wound up with an 'Ode,' with no other title but
+the motto, _Paulo majora canamus_. This is, beyond all doubt, the most
+illegible and unintelligible part of the publication. We can pretend to
+give no analysis or explanation of it;--our readers must make what they
+can of the following extracts.
+
+    '----But there's a tree, of many one,
+    A single field which I have look'd upon,
+    Both of them speak of something that is gone:
+          The pansy at my feet
+          Doth the same tale repeat:
+    Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
+    Where is it now, the glory and the dream?' II. 150.
+
+              ----------
+
+          O joy! that in our embers
+          Is something that doth live,
+          That nature yet remembers
+          What was so fugitive!
+    The thought of our past years in me doth breed
+    Perpetual benedictions: not indeed
+    For that which is most worthy to be blest:
+    Delight and liberty, the simple creed
+    Of childhood, whether fluttering or at rest,
+    With new-born hope forever in his breast:--
+          Not for these I raise
+        The song of thanks and praise;
+      But for those obstinate questionings
+      Of sense and outward things,
+      Fallings from us, vanishings;
+      Blank misgivings of a creature
+    Moving about in worlds not realiz'd,
+    High instincts, before which our mortal nature
+    Did tremble like a guilty thing surpriz'd:
+      But for those first affections,
+      Those shadowy recollections,
+          Which be they what they may,
+    Are yet the fountain light of all our day,
+    Are yet a master light of all our feeling
+          Uphold us, cherish us, and make
+    Our noisy years seem moments in the being
+    Of the eternal silence: truths that wake,
+          To perish never;
+    Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
+          Nor man nor boy,
+    Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
+    Can utterly abolish or destroy!
+        Hence, in a season of calm weather,
+          Though inland far we be,
+    Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
+          Which brought us hither,
+        Can in a moment travel thither,
+    And see the children sport upon the shore,
+    And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.' II. 154-6.
+
+We have thus gone through this publication, with a view to enable our
+readers to determine, whether the author of the verses which have now
+been exhibited, is entitled to claim the honours of an improver or
+restorer of our poetry, and to found a new school to supersede or
+new-model all our maxims on this subject. If we were to stop here, we do
+not think that Mr Wordsworth, or his admirers, would have any reason to
+complain; for what we have now quoted is undeniably the most peculiar
+and characteristic part of his publication, and must be defended and
+applauded if the merit or originality of his system is to be seriously
+maintained. In our own opinion, however, the demerit of that system
+cannot be fairly appreciated, until it be shown, that the author of the
+bad verses which we have already extracted, can write good verses when
+he pleases; and that, in point of fact, he does always write good
+verses, when, by any accident, he is led to abandon his system, and to
+transgress the laws of that school which he would fain establish on the
+ruin of all existing authority.
+
+The length to which our extracts and observations have already extended,
+necessarily restrains us within more narrow limits in this part of our
+citations; but it will not require much labour to find a pretty decided
+contrast to some of the passages we have already detailed. The song on
+the restoration of Lord Clifford is put into the mouth of an ancient
+minstrel of the family; and in composing it, the author was led,
+therefore, almost irresistibly to adopt the manner and phraseology that
+is understood to be connected with that sort of composition, and to
+throw aside his own babyish incidents and fantastical sensibilities. How
+he has succeeded, the reader will be able to judge from the few
+following extracts.
+
+[Quotes fifty-six lines of _Lord Clifford_.]
+
+All English writers of sonnets have imitated Milton; and, in this way,
+Mr Wordsworth, when he writes sonnets, escapes again from the trammels
+of his own unfortunate system; and the consequence is, that his sonnets
+are as much superior to the greater part of his other poems, as Milton's
+sonnets are superior to his.
+
+[Quotes the sonnets _On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic_,
+_London_, and _I griev'd for Buonaparte_.]
+
+When we look at these, and many still finer passages, in the writings of
+this author, it is impossible not to feel a mixtures of indignation and
+compassion, at that strange infatuation which has bound him up from the
+fair exercise of his talents, and withheld from the public the many
+excellent productions that would otherwise have taken the place of the
+trash now before us. Even in the worst of these productions, there are,
+no doubt, occasional little traits of delicate feeling and original
+fancy; but these are quite lost and obscured in the mass of childishness
+and insipidity with which they are incorporated; nor can any thing give
+us a more melancholy view of the debasing effects of this miserable
+theory, than that it has given ordinary men a right to wonder at the
+folly and presumption of a man gifted like Mr Wordsworth, and made him
+appear, in his second avowed publication, like a bad imitator of the
+worst of his former productions.
+
+We venture to hope, that there is now an end of this folly; and that,
+like other follies, it will be found to have cured itself by the
+extravagances resulting from its unbridled indulgence. In this point of
+view, the publication of the volumes before us may ultimately be of
+service to the good cause of literature. Many a generous rebel, it is
+said, has been reclaimed to his allegiance by the spectacle of lawless
+outrage and excess presented in the conduct of the insurgents; and we
+think there is every reason to hope, that the lamentable consequences
+which have resulted from Mr Wordsworth's open violation of the
+established laws of poetry, will operate as a wholesome warning to those
+who might otherwise have been seduced by his example, and be the means
+of restoring to that antient and venerable code its due honour and
+authority.--_The Edinburgh Review_.
+
+[Footnote H: See Vol. I. p. 63, &c.--Vol. VII. p. 1, &c.]
+
+
+
+
+SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
+
+
+_Christabel: Kubla Khan, a Vision. The Pains of Sleep_. By S.T.
+COLERIDGE, ESQ. London, Murray, 1816.
+
+The advertisement by which this work was announced to the publick,
+carried in its front a recommendation from Lord Byron,--who, it seems,
+has somewhere praised Christabel, as 'a wild and singularly original and
+beautiful poem.' Great as the noble bard's merits undoubtedly are in
+poetry, some of his latest _publications_ dispose us to distrust his
+authority, where the question is what ought to meet the public eye; and
+the works before us afford an additional proof, that his judgment on
+such matters is not absolutely to be relied on. Moreover, we are a
+little inclined to doubt the value of the praise which one poet lends
+another. It seems now-a-days to be the practice of that once irritable
+race to laud each other without bounds; and one can hardly avoid
+suspecting, that what is thus lavishly advanced may be laid out with a
+view to being repaid with interest. Mr Coleridge, however, must be
+judged by his own merits.
+
+It is remarked, by the writers upon the Bathos, that the true _profound_
+is surely known by one quality--its being wholly bottomless; insomuch,
+that when you think you have attained its utmost depth in the work of
+some of its great masters, another, or peradventure the same, astonishes
+you, immediately after, by a plunge so much more vigorous, as to outdo
+all his former outdoings. So it seems to be with the new school, or, as
+they may be termed, the wild or lawless poets. After we had been
+admiring their extravagance for many years, and marvelling at the ease
+and rapidity with which one exceeded another in the unmeaning or
+infantine, until not an idea was left in the rhyme--or in the insane,
+until we had reached something that seemed the untamed effusion of an
+author whose thoughts were rather more free than his actions--forth
+steps Mr Coleridge, like a giant refreshed with sleep, and as if to
+redeem his character after so long a silence, ('his poetic powers having
+been, he says, from 1808 till very lately, in a state of suspended
+animation,' p. v.) and breaks out in these precise words--
+
+    ''Tis the middle of night by the castle clock,
+    And the owls have awaken'd the crowing cock;
+    Tu ---- whit! ---- Tu ---- whoo!
+    And hark, again! the crowing cock,
+    How drowsily it crew.'
+    'Sir Leoline, the Baron rich,
+    Hath a toothless mastiff bitch;
+    From her kennel beneath the rock
+    She makes answer to the clock,
+    Four for the quarters, and twelve for the hour:
+    Ever and aye, moonshine or shower,
+    Sixteen short howls, not over loud;
+    Some say she sees my lady's shroud.'
+    'Is the night chilly and dark?
+    The night is chilly, but not dark.' p. 3, 4.
+
+It is probable that Lord Byron may have had this passage in his eye,
+when he called the poem 'wild' and 'original;' but how he discovered it
+to be 'beautiful,' is not quite so easy for us to imagine.
+
+Much of the art of the wild writers consists in sudden
+transitions--opening eagerly upon some topic, and then flying from it
+immediately. This indeed is known to the medical men, who not
+unfrequently have the care of them, as an unerring symptom. Accordingly,
+here we take leave of the Mastiff Bitch, and lose sight of her entirely,
+upon the entrance of another personage of a higher degree,
+
+    'The lovely Lady Christabel,
+    Whom her father loves so well'--
+
+And who, it seems, has been rambling about all night, having, the night
+before, had dreams about her lover, which 'made her moan and _leap_.'
+While kneeling, in the course of her rambles, at an old oak, she hears a
+noise on the other side of the stump, and going round, finds, to her
+great surprize, another fair damsel in white silk, but with her dress
+and hair in some disorder; at the mention of whom, the poet takes
+fright, not, as might be imagined, because of her disorder, but on
+account of her beauty and her fair attire--
+
+    'I guess, 'twas frightful there to see
+    A lady so richly clad as she--
+    Beautiful exceedingly!'
+
+Christabel naturally asks who she is, and is answered, at some length,
+that her name is Geraldine; that she was, on the morning before, seized
+by five warriors, who tied her on a white horse, and drove her on, they
+themselves following, also on white horses; and that they had rode all
+night. Her narrative now gets to be a little contradictory, which gives
+rise to unpleasant suspicions. She protests vehemently, and with oaths,
+that she has no idea who the men were; only that one of them, the
+tallest of the five, took her and placed her under the tree, and that
+they all went away, she knew not whither; but how long she had remained
+there she cannot tell--
+
+    'Nor do I know how long it is,
+    For I have lain in fits, I _wis_;'
+
+--although she had previously kept a pretty exact account of the time.
+The two ladies then go home together, after this satisfactory
+explanation, which appears to have conveyed to the intelligent mind of
+Lady C. every requisite information. They arrive at the castle, and pass
+the night in the same bed-room; not to disturb Sir Leoline, who, it
+seems, was poorly at the time, and, of course, must have been called up
+to speak to the chambermaids, and have the sheets aired, if Lady G. had
+had a room to herself. They do not get to their bed, however in the
+poem, quite so easily as we have carried them. They first cross the
+moat, and Lady C. 'took the key that fitted well,' and opened a little
+door, 'all in the middle of the gate.' Lady G. then sinks down 'belike
+through pain;' but it should seem more probably from laziness; for her
+fair companion having lifted her up, and carried her a little way, she
+then walks on 'as she were not in pain.' Then they cross the court--but
+we must give this in the poet's words, for he seems so pleased with
+them, that he inserts them twice over in the space of ten lines.
+
+    'So free from danger, free from fear,
+    They crossed the court--right glad they were.'
+
+Lady C. is desirous of a little conversation on the way, but Lady G.
+will not indulge her Ladyship, saying she is too much tired to speak. We
+now meet our old friend, the mastiff bitch, who is much too important a
+person to be slightly passed by--
+
+    'Outside her kennel, the mastiff old
+    Lay fast asleep, in moonshine cold.
+    The mastiff old did not awake,
+    Yet she an angry moan did make!
+    And what can ail the mastiff bitch?
+    Never till now she uttered yell
+    Beneath the eye of Christabel.
+    Perhaps it is the owlet's scritch:
+    For what can ail the mastiff bitch?'
+
+Whatever it may be that ails the bitch, the ladies pass forward, and
+take off their shoes, and tread softly all the way upstairs, as
+Christabel observes that her father is a bad sleeper. At last, however,
+they do arrive at the bed-room, and comfort themselves with a dram of
+some homemade liquor, which proves to be very old; for it was made by
+Lady C.'s mother; and when her new friend asks if she thinks the old
+lady will take her part, she answers, that this is out of the question,
+in as much as she happened to die in childbed of her. The mention of the
+old lady, however, gives occasion to the following pathetic
+couplet.--Christabel says,
+
+    'O mother dear, that thou wert here!
+    I would, said Geraldine, she were!'
+
+A very mysterious conversation next takes place between Lady Geraldine
+and the old gentlewoman's ghost, which proving extremely fatiguing to
+her, she again has recourse to the bottle--and with excellent effect, as
+appears by these lines.
+
+    'Again the wild-flower wine she drank;
+    Her fair large eyes 'gan glitter bright,
+    'And from the floor whereon she sank,
+    The lofty Lady stood upright:
+      She was most beautiful to see,
+      Like a Lady of a far countrée.'
+
+--From which, we may gather among other points, the exceeding great
+beauty of all women who live in a distant place, no matter where. The
+effects of the cordial speedily begin to appear; as no one, we imagine,
+will doubt, that to its influence must be ascribed the following
+speech--
+
+    'And thus the lofty lady spake--
+    All they, who live in the upper sky,
+    Do love you, holy Christabel!
+    And you love them--and for their sake
+    And for the good which me befel,
+    Even I in my degree will try,
+    Fair maiden, to requite you well.'
+
+Before going to bed, Lady G. kneels to pray, and desires her friend to
+undress, and lie down; which she does 'in her loveliness;' but being
+curious, she leans 'on her elbow,' and looks toward the fair
+devotee,--where she sees something which the poet does not think fit to
+tell us very explicitly.
+
+    'Her silken robe, and inner vest,
+    Dropt to her feet, and full in view,
+    Behold! her bosom and half her side--
+    A sight to dream of, not to tell!
+    And she is to sleep by Christabel.'
+
+She soon rises, however, from her knees; and as it was not a
+double-bedded room, she turns in to Lady Christabel, taking only 'two
+paces and a stride.' She then clasps her tight in her arms, and mutters
+a very dark spell, which we apprehend the poet manufactured by shaking
+words together at random; for it is impossible to fancy that he can
+annex any meaning whatever to it. This is the end of it.
+
+        'But vainly thou warrest,
+          For this is alone in
+        Thy power to declare,
+          That in the dim forest
+          Thou heard'st a low moaning,
+    And found'st a bright lady, surpassingly fair:
+    And didst bring her home with thee in love and in charity,
+    To shield her and shelter her from the damp air.'
+
+The consequence of this incantation is, that Lady Christabel has a
+strange dream--and when she awakes, her first exclamation is, 'Sure I
+have sinn'd'--'Now heaven be praised if all be well!' Being still
+perplexed with the remembrance of her 'too lively' dream--she then
+dresses herself, and modestly prays to be forgiven for 'her sins
+unknown.' The two companions now go to the Baron's parlour, and
+Geraldine tells her story to him. This, however, the poet judiciously
+leaves out, and only signifies that the Baron recognized in her the
+daughter of his old friend Sir Roland, with whom he had had a deadly
+quarrel. Now, however, he despatches his tame poet, or laureate, called
+Bard Bracy, to invite him and his family over, promising to forgive
+every thing, and even make an apology for what had passed. To understand
+what follows, we own, surpasses our comprehension. Mr Bracy, the poet,
+recounts a strange dream he has just had, of a dove being almost
+strangled by a snake; whereupon the Lady Geraldine falls a hissing, and
+her eyes grow small, like a serpent's,--or at least so they seem to her
+friend; who begs her father to 'send away that woman.' Upon this the
+Baron falls into a passion, as if he had discovered that his daughter
+had been seduced; at least, we can understand him in no other sense,
+though no hint of such a kind is given; but on the contrary, she is
+painted to the last moment as full of innocence and
+purity.--Nevertheless,
+
+    'His heart was cleft with pain and rage,
+    His cheeks they quiver'd, his eyes were wild,
+    Dishonour'd thus in his old age;
+    Dishonour'd by his only child;
+    And all his hospitality
+    To th' insulted daughter of his friend
+    By more than woman's jealousy,
+    Brought thus to a disgraceful end.--'
+
+Nothing further is said to explain the mystery; but there follows
+incontinently, what is termed '_The conclusion of Part the Second_.' And
+as we are pretty confident that Mr Coleridge holds this passage in the
+highest estimation; that he prizes it more than any other part of 'that
+wild, and singularly original and beautiful poem Christabel,' excepting
+always the two passages touching the 'toothless mastiff bitch;' we shall
+extract it for the amazement of our readers--premising our own frank
+avowal that we are wholly unable to divine the meaning of any portion of
+it.
+
+    'A little child, a limber elf,
+    Singing, dancing to itself,
+    A fairy thing with red round cheeks,
+    That always finds and never seeks;
+    Makes such a vision to the sight
+    As fills a father's eyes with light;
+    And pleasures flow in so thick and fast
+    Upon his heart, that he at last
+    Must needs express his love's excess
+    With words of unmeant bitterness.
+    Perhaps 'tis pretty to force together
+    Thoughts so all unlike each other;
+    To mutter and mock a broken charm,
+    To dally with wrong that does no harm
+    Perhaps 'tis tender too, and pretty,
+    At each wild word to feel within
+    A sweet recoil of love and pity.
+    And what if in a world of sin
+    (O sorrow and shame should this be true!)
+    Such giddiness of heart and brain
+    Comes seldom save from rage and pain,
+    So talks as it's most used to do.'
+
+Hence endeth the Second Part, and, in truth, the 'singular' poem itself;
+for the author has not yet written, or, as he phrases it, 'embodied in
+verse,' the 'three parts yet to come;'--though he trusts he shall be
+able to do so' in the course of the present year.'
+
+One word as to the metre of Christabel, or, as Mr Coleridge terms it,
+'_the_ Christabel'--happily enough; for indeed we doubt if the peculiar
+force of the definite article was ever more strongly exemplified. He
+says, that though the reader may fancy there prevails a great
+_irregularity_ in the metre, some lines being of four, others of twelve
+syllables, yet in reality it is quite regular; only that it is 'founded
+on a new principle, namely, that of counting in each line the accents,
+not the syllables.' We say nothing of the monstrous assurance of any man
+coming forward coolly at this time of day, and telling the readers of
+English poetry, whose ear has been tuned to the lays of Spenser, Milton,
+Dryden, and Pope, that he makes his metre 'on a new principle!' but we
+utterly deny the truth of the assertion, and defy him to show us _any_
+principle upon which his lines can be conceived to tally. We give two or
+three specimens to confound at once this miserable piece of coxcombry
+and shuffling. Let our 'wild, and singularly original and beautiful'
+author, show us how these lines agree either in number of accents or of
+feet.
+
+      'Ah wel-a-day!'
+      'For this is alone in--'
+    'And didst bring her home with thee in love and in charity'--
+      'I pray you drink this cordial wine'--
+      'Sir Leoline'--
+      'And found a bright lady surpassingly fair'--
+      'Tu--whit!----Tu--whoo!'
+
+_Kubla Khan_ is given to the public, it seems, 'at the request of a poet
+of great and deserved celebrity;'--but whether Lord Byron, the praiser
+of 'the Christabel,' or the Laureate, the praiser of Princes, we are not
+informed. As far as Mr Coleridge's 'own opinions are concerned,' it is
+published, 'not upon the ground of any _poetic_ merits,' but 'as a
+PSYCHOLOGICAL CURIOSITY!' In these opinions of the candid author, we
+entirely concur; but for this reason we hardly think it was necessary to
+give the minute detail which the Preface contains, of the circumstances
+attending its composition. Had the question regarded '_Paradise Lost_,'
+or '_Dryden's Ode_,' we could not have had a more particular account of
+the circumstances in which it was composed. It was in the year 1797, and
+in the summer season. Mr Coleridge was in bad health;--the particular
+disease is not given; but the careful reader will form his own
+conjectures. He had retired very prudently to a lonely farm-house; and
+whoever would see the place which gave birth to the 'psychological
+curiosity,' may find his way thither without a guide; for it is situated
+on the confines of Somerset and Devonshire, and on the Exmoor part of
+the boundary; and it is, moreover, between Porlock and Linton. In that
+farm-house, he had a slight indisposition, and had taken an anodyne,
+which threw him into a deep sleep in his chair (whether after dinner or
+not he omits to state), 'at the moment that he was reading a sentence in
+Purchas's Pilgrims,' relative to a palace of Kubla Khan. The effects of
+the anodyne, and the sentence together, were prodigious: They produced
+the 'curiosity' now before us; for, during his three-hours sleep, Mr
+Coleridge 'has the most vivid confidence that he could not have composed
+less than from two to three hundred lines.' On awaking, he 'instantly
+and eagerly' wrote down the verses here published; when he was (he says,
+'_unfortunately_') called out by a 'person on business from Porlock, and
+detained by him above an hour;' and when he returned the vision was
+gone. The lines here given smell strongly, it must be owned, of the
+anodyne; and, but that an under dose of a sedative produces contrary
+effects, we should inevitably have been lulled by them into
+forgetfulness of all things. Perhaps a dozen more such lines as the
+following would reduce the most irritable of critics to a state of
+inaction.
+
+        'A damsel with a dulcimer
+        In a vision once I saw:
+        It was an Abyssinian maid
+        And on her dulcimer she play'd,
+        Singing of Mount Abora.
+        Could I revive within me
+        Her symphony and song,
+        To such a deep delight 'twould win me,
+    That with music loud and long,
+    I would build that dome in air,
+    That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
+    And all who heard should see them there,
+    And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
+    His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
+    Weave a circle round him thrice,
+    And close your eyes with holy dread:
+    For he on honey-dew hath fed,' &c. &c.
+
+There is a good deal more altogether as exquisite--and in particular a
+fine description of a wood, 'ancient as the hills;' and 'folding sunny
+spots of _greenery_!' But we suppose this specimen will be sufficient.
+
+Persons in this poet's unhappy condition, generally feel the want of
+sleep as the worst of their evils; but there are instances, too, in the
+history of the disease, of sleep being attended with new agony, as if
+the waking thoughts, how wild and turbulent soever, had still been under
+some slight restraint, which sleep instantly removed. Mr Coleridge
+appears to have experienced this symptom, if we may judge from the title
+of his third poem, '_The Pains of Sleep_;' and, in truth, from its
+composition--which is mere raving, without any thing more affecting than
+a number of incoherent words, expressive of extravagance and
+incongruity.--We need give no specimen of it.
+
+Upon the whole, we look upon this publication as one of the most notable
+pieces of impertinence of which the press has lately been guilty; and
+one of the boldest experiments that has yet been made on the patience or
+understanding of the public. It is impossible, however, to dismiss it,
+without a remark or two. The other productions of the Lake School have
+generally exhibited talents thrown away upon subjects so mean, that no
+power of genius could ennoble them; or perverted and rendered useless by
+a false theory of poetical composition. But even in the worst of them,
+if we except the White Doe of Mr Wordsworth and some of the laureate
+odes, there were always some gleams of feeling or of fancy. But the
+thing now before us is utterly destitute of value. It exhibits from
+beginning to end not a ray of genius; and we defy any man to point out a
+passage of poetical merit in any of the three pieces which it contains,
+except, perhaps, the following lines in p. 32, and even these are not
+very brilliant; nor is the leading thought original--
+
+    'Alas! they had been friends in youth;
+    But whispering tongues can poison truth;
+    And constancy lives in realms above;
+    And life is thorny; and youth is vain;
+    And to be wroth with one we love,
+    Doth work like madness in the brain.'
+
+With this one exception, there is literally not one couplet in the
+publication before us which would be reckoned poetry, or even sense,
+were it found in the corner of a newspaper or upon the window of an inn.
+Must we then be doomed to hear such a mixture of raving and driv'ling,
+extolled as the work of a '_wild and original_' genius, simply because
+Mr Coleridge has now and then written fine verses, and a brother poet
+chooses, in his milder mood, to laud him from courtesy or from interest?
+And are such panegyrics to be echoed by the mean tools of a political
+faction, because they relate to one whose daily prose is understood to
+be dedicated to the support of all that courtiers think should be
+supported? If it be true that the author has thus earned the patronage
+of those liberal dispensers of bounty, we can have no objection that
+they should give him proper proofs of their gratitude; but we cannot
+help wishing, for his sake, as well as our own, that they would pay in
+solid pudding instead of empty praise; and adhere, at least in this
+instance, to the good old system of rewarding their champions with
+places and pensions, instead of puffing their bad poetry, and
+endeavouring to cram their nonsense down the throats of all the loyal
+and well affected.--_The Edinburgh Review_.
+
+
+
+
+ROBERT SOUTHEY
+
+
+_Madoc_, by ROBERT SOUTHEY. 4to. pp. 560. 2l. 2s. Boards. Printed at
+Edinburgh, for Longman and Co., London. 1805.
+
+It has fallen to the lot of this writer to puzzle our critical
+discernment more than once. In the _Annual Anthology_ we had reason to
+complain that it was difficult to distinguish his jocular from his
+serious poetry; and sometimes indeed to know his poetry from his prose.
+He has now contrived to manufacture a large quarto, which he has styled
+a poem, but of what description it is no easy matter to decide. The
+title of epic, which he indignantly disclaims, we might have been
+inclined to refuse his production, had it been claimed; and we suppose
+that Mr. Southey would not suffer it to be classed under the
+mock-heroic. The poem of Madoc is not didactic, nor elegiac, nor
+classical, in any respect. Neither is it _Macphersonic_, nor
+_Klopstockian_, nor _Darwinian_,--we beg pardon, we mean _Brookian_. To
+conclude, according to a phrase of the last century, which was applied
+to ladies of ambiguous character, _it is what it is_.--As Mr. Southey
+has set the rules of Aristotle at defiance in his preface, we hope that
+he will feel a due degree of gratitude for this appropriate definition
+of his work. It is an old saying, thoroughly descriptive of such an old
+song as this before us.
+
+Mr. Southey, however, has not disdained all ancient precedents in his
+poem, for he introduces it with this advertisement:
+
+    'Come, listen to a tale of times of old!
+    Come, for ye know me! I am he who sung
+    The maid of Arc; and I am he who framed
+    Of Thalaba the wild and wonderous song.
+    Come, listen to my lay, and ye shall hear
+    How Madoc from the shores of Britain spread
+    The adventurous sail, explored the ocean ways,
+    And quelled barbarian power, and overthrew
+    The bloody altars of idolatry,
+    And planted in its fanes triumphantly
+    The cross of Christ. Come, listen to my lay!'
+
+This _modest ostentation_ was certainly derived from the verses imputed
+to Virgil;
+
+    "Ille ego, qui quondam gracili modulatus avena
+    Carmen; et egressus sylvis, vicina coëgi
+    Ut quamvis avido parerent arva colono,
+    Gratum opus agricolis: at nunc horrentia Martis, &c."
+
+In the very first part of the poem, also, we find Mr. Southey pursuing
+the Horatian precept, "_prorumpere in medias res_;" for he commences
+with the _return_ of Madoc to his native country. It is true that, like
+the Messenger in Macklin's tragedy, he "goes but to return;" and the
+critic is tempted to say, with Martial, _toto carere possum_.--Thus the
+grand interest of the work, which ought to consist in exploring a new
+world, is destroyed at once, by the reader at his outset encountering
+the heroes returning "sound, wind and limb," to their native country. It
+may be said that Camœns has thrown a great part of Da Gama's Voyage
+into the form of a narrative: but he has also given much in description;
+enough, at least, to have justified Mr. Southey in commencing rather
+nearer the commencement of his tale.
+
+That he might withdraw himself entirely from the yoke of Aristotle, Mr.
+Southey has divided his poem into two parts, instead of giving it a
+beginning, a middle and an end. One of these parts is concisely
+entitled, 'Madoc in Wales;' the other, 'Madoc in Aztlan.' A _middle_
+might, however, have been easily found, by adding, _Madoc on
+Shipboard_.--The first of these Anti Peripatetic parts contains 18
+divisions; the second, 27 which include every incident, episode, &c.
+introduced into the poem. This arrangement gives it very much the
+appearance of a journal versified, and effectually precludes any
+imputation of luxuriance of fancy in the plot.
+
+Respecting the manners, Mr. Southey appears to have been more successful
+than in his choice of the story. He has adhered to history where he
+could discover any facts adapted to his purpose; and when history failed
+him, he has had recourse to probability. Yet we own that the
+nomenclature of his heroes has shocked what Mr. S. would call our
+prejudices. _Goervyl_ and _Ririd_ and _Rodri_ and _Llaian_ may have
+charms for Cambrian ears, but who can feel an interest in _Tezozomoc_,
+_Tlalala_, or _Ocelopan_? Or, should
+
+    ----'Tyneio, Merini,
+    Boda and Brenda and Aelgyvarch,
+    Gwynon and Celynin and Gwynodyl,' (p. 129.)
+    "Those rugged names to our like mouths grow sleek,
+    That would have made Quintilian stare and gasp[I],"
+
+how could we swallow _Yuhidthiton_, _Coanocotzin_, and, above all, the
+yawning jaw-dislocating _Ayayaca_?--These torturing words, particularly
+the latter, remind us so strongly of the odious cacophony of the Nurse
+and Child, that they really are not to be tolerated. Mr. Southey's
+defence (for he has partially anticipated this objection) is that the
+names are conformable to history or analogy, which we are not inclined
+to dispute: but it is not requisite to tread so closely in the traces of
+barbarity. Truth does not constitute the essence of poetry: but it is
+indispensably necessary that the lines should be agreeable to the ear,
+as well as to the sense. Sorry, indeed, we are to complain that Mr.
+Southey, in attempting a new method of writing,--in professing to set
+aside the old models, and to promote his own work to a distinguished
+place in the library,--has failed to interest our feelings, or to excite
+our admiration. The dull tenor of mediocrity, which characterizes his
+pages, is totally unsuitable to heroic poetry, regular or irregular.
+Instead of viewing him on a _fiery Pegasus_, and "snatching a grace
+beyond the reach of art," we behold the author mounted on a strange
+animal, something between a rough Welsh poney and a Peruvian sheep,
+whose utmost capriole only tends to land him in the mud. We may indeed
+safely compliment Mr. Southey, by assuring him that there is nothing in
+Homer, Virgil, or Milton, in any degree resembling the beauties of
+Madoc.
+
+Whether the expedition of Madoc, and the existence of a Welsh tribe in
+America, be historically true, it is not our present business to
+examine. It is obvious, however, that one great object of the poem, the
+destruction of the altars of idolatry, had failed; for it is not
+pretended that the supposed descendants of Madoc remained Christians.
+
+We shall now make some extracts from this poem, which will enable our
+readers to judge whether we have spoken too severely of Mr. Southey's
+labours.
+
+[Quotes 270 lines of _Madoc_ with interpolated comments.]
+
+If the perusal of these and the preceding verses should tempt any of our
+readers to purchase Mr. Southey's volume, we can warrant equal
+entertainment in all its other parts, and shall heartily wish the
+gentleman all happiness with his poet.--To us, there appears a thorough
+perversion of taste, in the conception and execution of the whole; and
+we are disgusted with the tameness of the verse, the vulgarity of the
+thoughts, and the barbarity of the manners. If this style of writing be
+continued, we may expect not only the actions of Vindomarus or
+Ariovistus to be celebrated, but we may perhaps see the history of the
+Cherokees, Choctaws, and Catabaws, versified in quarto. The name of
+Atakulla-kulla would not be inharmonious, compared with some of Mr.
+Southey's heroes. Indeed, a very interesting poem might be founded on
+the story of Pocahuntas, as it is detailed by Smith, in his History of
+the Settlement of Virginia; and if Mr. Southey should meditate another
+irruption into the territories of the Muse, we would recommend this
+subject to his attention.
+
+It must be remarked that this is a very handsome and elegantly printed
+book, with engraved title-pages, vignettes, &c. and had the poet
+equalled the printer, his work might have stood on the same shelf with
+those of our most admired writers.--_The Monthly Review_.
+
+[Footnote I: Milton.]
+
+
+
+
+CHARLES LAMB
+
+
+_Blank Verse_, by CHARLES LLOYD, and CHARLES LAMB. 12mo. 2s. 6d. Boards.
+Arch. 1798.
+
+Dr. Johnson, speaking of blank verse, seemed to have adopted the opinion
+of some great man,--we forget whom,--that it is only "_poetry to the
+eye_." On perusing the works of several modern bards of our own country,
+we have sometimes rather inclined to the same idea, but the recollection
+of Milton and Thomson presently banished it.
+
+We have more than once delivered our sentiments respecting the poetry of
+Mr. Charles Lloyd. To what we have formerly remarked, in general on this
+head, we have little to add on the present occasion; except that we
+begin to grow weary of his continued melancholy strains. Why is this
+ingenious writer so uncomfortably constant to the _mournful_ Muse? If he
+has any taste for variety, he has little to fear from _jealousy_ in the
+sacred sisterhood.--Then why not sometimes make his bow to THALIA?
+
+Mr. Lamb, the joint author of this little volume, seems to be very
+properly associated with his plaintive companion.--_The Monthly
+Review_.
+
+
+_Album Verses, with a few others_. By CHARLES LAMB. 12mo. pp. 150.
+London, 1830. Moxon.
+
+If any thing could prevent our laughing at the present collection of
+absurdities, it would be a lamentable conviction of the blinding and
+engrossing nature of vanity. We could forgive the folly of the original
+composition, but cannot but marvel at the egotism which has preserved,
+and the conceit which has published. What exaggerated notion must that
+man entertain of his talents, who believes their slightest efforts
+worthy of remembrance; one who keeps a copy of the verses he writes in
+young ladies' albums, the proverbial receptacles for trash! Here and
+there a sweet and natural thought intervenes; but the chief part is best
+characterized by that expressive though ungracious word "rubbish." And
+what could induce our author to trench on the masculine and vigorous
+Crabbe? did he think his powerful and dark outlines might with advantage
+be turned to "prettiness and favour?" But let our readers judge from the
+following specimens. The first is from the album of Mrs. Jane Towers.
+
+    "Conjecturing, I wander in the dark,
+    I know thee only sister to Charles Clarke!"
+
+Directions for a picture--
+
+    "You wished a picture, cheap, but good;
+    The colouring? decent; clear, not muddy;
+    To suit a poet's quiet study."
+
+The subject is a child--
+
+    "Thrusting his fingers in his ears,
+    Like Obstinate, that perverse funny one,
+    In honest parable of Bunyan."
+
+We were not aware of "Obstinate's" fun before.
+
+An epitaph:--
+
+    "On her bones the turf lie lightly,
+    And her rise again be brightly!
+    No dark stain be found upon her--
+    No, there will not, on mine honour--
+    Answer that at least I can."
+
+Or what is the merit of the ensuing epicedium?
+
+[Quotes 48 lines beginning:--
+
+    There's rich Kitty Wheatley,
+    With footing it featly, etc.]
+
+Mr. Lamb, in his dedication, says his motive for publishing is to
+benefit his publisher, by affording him an opportunity of shewing how he
+means to bring out works. We could have dispensed with the specimen;
+though it is but justice to remark on the neat manner in which the work
+is produced: the title-page is especially pretty.--_The Literary
+Gazette_.
+
+
+
+
+WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
+
+
+_Gebir; a Poem, in Seven Books_. 12mo. 74 pp. Rivingtons. 1798.
+
+How this Poem, which appears to issue from the same publishers as our
+own work, so long escaped our notice, we cannot say. Still less are we
+able to guess at the author, or his meaning. In a copy lately lent to
+us, as a matter we had overlooked, we observe the following very
+apposite quotation, inscribed on the title-page, by some unknown hand:
+
+    Some love the verse----
+    Which read, and read, you raise your eyes in doubt,
+    And gravely wonder what it is about.
+
+Among persons of that turn of mind, the author must look for the _ten_
+admirers who, as he says, would satisfy his ambition; but whether they
+could have the qualities of taste and genius, which he requires, is with
+us a matter of doubt. Turgid obscurity is the general character of the
+composition, with now and then a gleam of genuine poetry, irradiating
+the dark profound. The effect of the perusal is to give a kind of whirl
+to the brain, more like distraction than pleasure; and something
+analogous to the sensation produced, when the end of the finger is
+rubbed against the parchment of the tambourine.--_The British Critic_.
+
+
+_Gebir_; a Poem, in Seven Books. 8vo. pp. 74. 2s. 6d. Rivingtons. 1798.
+
+An unpractised author has attempted, in this poem, the difficult task of
+relating a romantic story in blank-verse. His performance betrays all
+the incorrectness and abruptness of inexperience, but it manifests
+occasionally some talent for description. He has fallen into the common
+error of those who aspire to the composition of blank-verse, by
+borrowing too many phrases and epithets from our incomparable Milton. We
+give the following extract, as affording a fair specimen:
+
+[Quotes about 60 lines from the beginning of the fifth and sixth books
+of _Gebir_.]
+
+We must observe that the story is told very obscurely, and should have
+been assisted by an _Argument_ in prose. Young writers are often
+astonished to find that passages, which seem very clear to their own
+heated imaginations, appear very dark to their readers.--The author of
+the poem before us may produce something worthy of more approbation, if
+he will labour hard, and delay for a few years the publication of his
+next performance.--_The Monthly Review_.
+
+
+
+
+SIR WALTER SCOTT
+
+
+_Marmion; a Tale of Flodden Field_. By WALTER SCOTT, Esq. 4to. pp. 500.
+Edinburgh and London, 1808.
+
+There is a kind of right of primogeniture among books, as well as among
+men; and it is difficult for an author, who has obtained great fame by a
+first publication, not to appear to fall off in a second--especially if
+his original success could be imputed, in any degree, to the novelty of
+his plan of composition. The public is always indulgent to untried
+talents; and is even apt to exaggerate a little the value of what it
+receives without any previous expectation. But, for this advance of
+kindness, it usually exacts a most usurious return in the end. When the
+poor author comes back, he is no longer received as a benefactor, but a
+debtor. In return for the credit it formerly gave him, the world now
+conceives that it has a just claim on him for excellence, and becomes
+impertinently scrupulous as to the quality of the coin in which it is to
+be paid.
+
+The just amount of this claim plainly cannot be for more than the rate
+of excellence which he had reached in his former production; but, in
+estimating this rate, various errors are perpetually committed, which
+increase the difficulties of the task which is thus imposed on him. In
+the _first_ place, the comparative amount of his past and present merits
+can only be ascertained by the uncertain standard of his reader's
+feelings; and these must always be less lively with regard to a second
+performance; which, with every other excellence of the first, must
+necessarily want the powerful recommendations of novelty and surprise,
+and consequently fall very far short of the effect produced by their
+strong coöperation. In the _second_ place, it may be observed, in
+general, that wherever our impression of any work is favourable on the
+whole, its excellence is constantly exaggerated, in those vague and
+habitual recollections which form the basis of subsequent comparisons.
+We readily drop from our memory the dull and bad passages, and carry
+along with us the remembrance of those only which had afforded us
+delight. Thus, when we take the merit of any favourite poem as a
+standard of comparison for some later production of the same author, we
+never take its true average merit, which is the only fair standard, but
+the merit of its most striking and memorable passages, which naturally
+stand forward in our recollection, and pass upon our hasty retrospect as
+just and characteristic specimens of the whole work; and this high and
+exaggerated standard we rigorously apply to the first, and perhaps the
+least interesting parts of the second performance. Finally, it deserves
+to be noticed, that where a first work, containing considerable
+blemishes, has been favourably received, the public always expects this
+indulgence to be repaid by an improvement that ought not to be always
+expected. If a second performance appear, therefore, with the same
+faults, they will no longer meet with the same toleration. Murmurs will
+be heard about indolence, presumption, and abuse of good nature; while
+the critics, and those who had gently hinted at the necessity of
+correction, will be more out of humour than the rest at this apparent
+neglect of their admonitions.
+
+For these, and for other reasons, we are inclined to suspect, that the
+success of the work now before us will be less brilliant than that of
+the author's former publication, though we are ourselves of opinion,
+that its intrinsic merits are nearly, if not altogether, equal; and
+that, if it had had the fortune to be the elder born, it would have
+inherited as fair a portion of renown as has fallen to the lot of its
+predecessor. It is a good deal longer, indeed, and somewhat more
+ambitious; and it is rather clearer that it has greater faults, than
+that it has greater beauties; though, for our own parts, we are inclined
+to believe in both propositions. It has more tedious and flat passages,
+and more ostentation of historical and antiquarian lore; but it has also
+greater richness and variety, both of character and incident; and if it
+has less sweetness and pathos in the softer passages, it has certainly
+more vehemence and force of colouring in the loftier and busier
+representations of action and emotion. The place of the prologuizing
+minstrel is but ill supplied, indeed, by the epistolary dissertations
+which are prefixed to each book of the present poem; and the ballad
+pieces and mere episodes which it contains, have less finish and
+poetical beauty; but there is more airiness and spirit in the lighter
+delineations; and the story, if not more skilfully conducted, is at
+least better complicated, and extended through a wider field of
+adventure. The characteristics of both, however, are evidently the
+same;--a broken narrative--a redundancy of minute description--bursts of
+unequal and energetic poetry--and a general tone of spirit and
+animation, unchecked by timidity or affectation, and unchastised by any
+great delicacy of taste, or elegance of fancy.
+
+But though we think this last romance of Mr Scott's about as good as the
+former, and allow that it affords great indications of poetical talent,
+we must remind our readers, that we never entertained much partiality
+for this sort of composition, and ventured on a former occasion to
+express our regret, that an author endowed with such talents should
+consume them in imitations of obsolete extravagance, and in the
+representation of manners and sentiments in which none of his readers
+can be supposed to take much interest, except the few who can judge of
+their exactness. To write a modern romance of chivalry, seems to be
+much such a fantasy as to build a modern abbey, or an English pagoda.
+For once, however, it may be excused as a pretty caprice of genius; but
+a second production of the same sort is entitled to less indulgence, and
+imposes a sort of duty to drive the author from so idle a task, by a
+fair exposition of the faults which are in a manner inseparable from its
+execution. To enable our readers to judge fairly of the present
+performance, we shall first present them with a brief abstract of the
+story; and then endeavour to point out what seems to be exceptionable,
+and what is praiseworthy, in the execution.
+
+[Here follows a detailed outline of the plot of _Marmion_.]
+
+Now, upon this narrative, we are led to observe, in the first place,
+that it forms a very scanty and narrow foundation for a poem of such
+length as is now before us. There is scarcely matter enough in the main
+story for a ballad of ordinary dimensions; and the present work is not
+so properly diversified with episodes and descriptions, as made up and
+composed of them. No long poem, however, can maintain its interest
+without a connected narrative. It should be a grand historical picture,
+in which all the personages are concerned in one great transaction, and
+not a mere gallery of detailed groups and portraits. When we accompany
+the poet in his career of adventure, it is not enough that he points out
+to us, as we go along, the beauties of the landscape, and the costumes
+of the inhabitants. The people must do something after they are
+described, and they must do it in concert, or in opposition to each
+other; while the landscape, with its castles and woods and defiles, must
+serve merely as the scene of their exploits, and the field of their
+conspiracies and contentions. There is too little connected incident in
+Marmion, and a great deal too much gratuitous description.
+
+In the second place, we object to the whole plan and conception of the
+fable, as turning mainly upon incidents unsuitable for poetical
+narrative, and brought out in the denouement in a very obscure,
+laborious, and imperfect manner. The events of an epic narrative should
+all be of a broad, clear, and palpable description; and the difficulties
+and embarrassments of the characters, of a nature to be easily
+comprehended and entered into by readers of all descriptions. Now, the
+leading incidents in this poem are of a very narrow and peculiar
+character, and are woven together into a petty intricacy and
+entanglement which puzzles the reader instead of interesting him, and
+fatigues instead of exciting his curiosity. The unaccountable conduct of
+Constance, in first ruining De Wilton in order to forward Marmion's suit
+with Clara, and then trying to poison Clara, because Marmion's suit
+seemed likely to succeed with her--but, above all, the paltry device of
+the forged letters, and the sealed packet given up by Constance at her
+condemnation, and handed over by the abbess to De Wilton and Lord Angus,
+are incidents not only unworthy of the dignity of poetry, but really
+incapable of being made subservient to its legitimate purposes. They are
+particularly unsuitable, too, to the age and character of the personages
+to whom they relate; and, instead of forming the instruments of knightly
+vengeance and redress, remind us of the machinery of a bad German novel,
+or of the disclosures which might be expected on the trial of a
+pettifogging attorney. The obscurity and intricacy which they
+communicate to the whole story, must be very painfully felt by every
+reader who tries to comprehend it; and is prodigiously increased by the
+very clumsy and inartificial manner in which the denouement is
+ultimately brought about by the author. Three several attempts are made
+by three several persons to beat into the head of the reader the
+evidence of De Wilton's innocence, and of Marmion's guilt; first, by
+Constance in her dying speech and confession; secondly, by the abbess in
+her conference with De Wilton; and, lastly, by this injured innocent
+himself, on disclosing himself to Clara in the castle of Lord Angus.
+After all, the precise nature of the plot and the detection is very
+imperfectly explained, and we will venture to say, is not fully
+understood by one half those who have fairly read through every word of
+the quarto now before us. We would object, on the same grounds, to the
+whole scenery of Constance's condemnation. The subterranean chamber,
+with its low arches, massive walls, and silent monks with smoky
+torches,--its old chandelier in an iron chain,--the stern abbots and
+haughty prioresses, with their flowing black dresses, and book of
+statutes laid on an iron table, are all images borrowed from the novels
+of Mrs Ratcliffe [_sic_] and her imitators. The public, we believe, has
+now supped full of this sort of horrors; or, if any effect is still to
+be produced by their exhibition, it may certainly be produced at too
+cheap a rate, to be worthy the ambition of a poet of original
+imagination.
+
+In the third place, we object to the extreme and monstrous improbability
+of almost all the incidents which go to the composition of this fable.
+We know very well that poetry does not describe what is ordinary; but
+the marvellous, in which it is privileged to indulge, is the marvellous
+of performance, and not of accident. One extraordinary rencontre or
+opportune coincidence may be permitted, perhaps, to bring the parties
+together, and wind up matters for the catastrophe; but a writer who gets
+through the whole business of his poem, by a series of lucky hits and
+incalculable chances, certainly manages matters in a very economical way
+for his judgment and invention, and will probably be found to have
+consulted his own ease, rather than the delight of his readers. Now,
+the whole story of Marmion seems to us to turn upon a tissue of such
+incredible accidents. In the first place, it was totally beyond all
+calculation, that Marmion and De Wilton should meet, by pure chance, at
+Norham, on the only night which either of them could spend in that
+fortress. In the next place, it is almost totally incredible that the
+former should not recognize his antient rival and antagonist, merely
+because he had assumed a palmer's habit, and lost a little flesh and
+colour in his travels. He appears unhooded, and walks and speaks before
+him; and, as near as we can guess, it could not be more than a year
+since they had entered the lists against each other. Constance, at her
+death, says she had lived but three years with Marmion; and, it was not
+till he tired of her, that he aspired to Clara, or laid plots against De
+Wilton. It is equally inconceivable that De Wilton should have taken
+upon himself the friendly office of a guide to his arch enemy, and
+discharged it quietly and faithfully, without seeking, or apparently
+thinking of any opportunity of disclosure or revenge. So far from
+meditating anything of the sort, he makes two several efforts to leave
+him, when it appears that his services are no longer indispensable. If
+his accidental meeting, and continued association with Marmion, be
+altogether unnatural, it must appear still more extraordinary, that he
+should afterwards meet with the Lady Clare, his adored mistress, and the
+Abbess of Whitby, who had in her pocket the written proofs of his
+innocence, in consequence of an occurrence equally accidental. These two
+ladies, the only two persons in the universe whom it was of any
+consequence to him to meet, are captured in their voyage from Holy Isle,
+and brought to Edinburgh, by the luckiest accident in the world, the
+very day that De Wilton and Marmion make their entry into it. Nay, the
+king, without knowing that they are at all of his acquaintance, happens
+to appoint them lodgings in the same stair-case, and to make them travel
+under his escort! We pass the night combat at Gifford, in which Marmion
+knows his opponent by moonlight, though he never could guess at him in
+sunshine; and all the inconsistencies of his dilatory wooing of Lady
+Clare. Those, and all the prodigies and miracles of the story, we can
+excuse, as within the privilege of poetry; but, the lucky chances we
+have already specified, are rather too much for our patience. A poet, we
+think, should never let his heroes contract such great debts to fortune;
+especially when a little exertion of his own might make them independent
+of her bounty. De Wilton might have been made to seek and watch his
+adversary, from some moody feeling of patient revenge; and it certainly
+would not have been difficult to discover motives which might have
+induced both Clara and the Abbess to follow and relieve him, without
+dragging them into his presence by the clumsy hands of a cruizer from
+Dunbar.
+
+In the _fourth_ place, we think we have reason to complain of Mr Scott
+for having made his figuring characters so entirely worthless, as to
+excite but little of our sympathy, and at the same time keeping his
+virtuous personages so completely in the back ground, that we are
+scarcely at all acquainted with them when the work is brought to a
+conclusion. Marmion is not only a villain, but a mean and sordid
+villain; and represented as such, without any visible motive, and at the
+evident expense of characteristic truth and consistency. His elopement
+with Constance, and his subsequent desertion of her, are knightly vices
+enough, we suppose; but then he would surely have been more interesting
+and natural, if he had deserted her for a brighter beauty, and not
+merely for a richer bride. This was very well for Mr Thomas Inkle, the
+young merchant of London; but for the valiant, haughty, and liberal Lord
+Marmion of Fontenaye and Lutterward, we do think it was quite
+unsuitable. Thus, too, it was very chivalrous and orderly perhaps, for
+him to hate De Wilton, and to seek to supplant him in his lady's love;
+but, to slip a bundle of forged letters into his bureau, was cowardly as
+well as malignant. Now, Marmion is not represented as a coward, nor as
+at all afraid of De Wilton; on the contrary, and it is certainly the
+most absurd part of the story, he fights him fairly and valiantly after
+all, and overcomes him by mere force of arms, as he might have done at
+the beginning, without having recourse to devices so unsuitable to his
+general character and habits of acting. By the way, we have great doubts
+whether a _convicted_ traitor, like De Wilton, whose guilt was
+established by written evidence under his own hand, was ever allowed to
+enter the lists, as a knight, against his accuser. At all events, we are
+positive, that an accuser, who was as ready and willing to fight as
+Marmion, could never have condescended to forge in support of his
+accusation; and that the author has greatly diminished our interest in
+the story, as well as needlessly violated the truth of character, by
+loading his hero with the guilt of this most revolting and improbable
+proceeding. The crimes of Constance are multiplied in like manner to
+such a degree, as both to destroy our interest in her fate, and to
+violate all probability. Her elopement was enough to bring on her doom;
+and we should have felt more for it, if it had appeared a little more
+unmerited. She is utterly debased, when she becomes the instrument of
+Marmion's murderous perfidy, and the assassin of her unwilling rival.
+
+De Wilton, again, is too much depressed throughout the poem. It is
+rather dangerous for a poet to chuse a hero who has been beaten in fair
+battle. The readers of romance do not like an unsuccessful warrior; but
+to be beaten in a judicial combat, and to have his arms reversed and
+tied on the gallows, is an adventure which can only be expiated by
+signal prowess and exemplary revenge, achieved against great odds, in
+full view of the reader. The unfortunate De Wilton, however, carries the
+stain upon him from one end of the poem to the other. He wanders up and
+down, a dishonoured fugitive, in the disguise of a palmer, through the
+five first books; and though he is knighted and mounted again in the
+last, yet we see nothing of his performances; nor is the author merciful
+enough to afford him one opportunity of redeeming his credit by an
+exploit of gallantry or skill. For the poor Lady Clare, she is a
+personage of still greater insipidity and insignificance. The author
+seems to have formed her upon the principle of Mr Pope's maxim, that
+women have no characters at all. We find her every where, where she has
+no business to be; neither saying nor doing any thing of the least
+consequence, but whimpering and sobbing over the Matrimony in her prayer
+book, like a great miss from a boarding school; and all this is the more
+inexcusable, as she is altogether a supernumerary person in the play,
+who should atone for her intrusion by some brilliancy or novelty of
+deportment. Matters would have gone on just as well, although she had
+been left behind at Whitby till after the battle of Flodden; and she is
+daggled about in the train, first of the Abbess and then of Lord
+Marmion, for no purpose, that we can see, but to afford the author an
+opportunity for two or three pages of indifferent description.
+
+Finally, we must object, both on critical and on national grounds, to
+the discrepancy between the title and the substance of the poem, and the
+neglect of Scotish feelings and Scotish character that is manifested
+throughout. Marmion is no more a tale of Flodden Field, than of Bosworth
+Field, or any other field in history. The story is quite independent of
+the national feuds of the sister kingdoms; and the battle of Flodden has
+no other connexion with it, than from being the conflict in which the
+hero loses his life. Flodden, however, is mentioned; and the
+preparations for Flodden, and the consequences of it, are repeatedly
+alluded to in the course of the composition. Yet we nowhere find any
+adequate expressions of those melancholy and patriotic sentiments which
+are still all over Scotland the accompaniment of those allusions and
+recollections. No picture is drawn of the national feelings before or
+after that fatal encounter; and the day that broke for ever the pride
+and the splendour of his country, is only commemorated by a Scotish poet
+as the period when an English warrior was beaten to the ground. There is
+scarcely one trait of true Scotish nationality or patriotism introduced
+into the whole poem; and Mr Scott's only expression of admiration or
+love for the beautiful country to which he belongs, is put, if we
+rightly remember, into the mouth of one of his Southern favourites.
+Independently of this, we think that too little pains is taken to
+distinguish the Scotish character and manners from the English, or to
+give expression to the general feeling of rivalry and mutual jealousy
+which at that time existed between the two countries.
+
+If there be any truth in what we have now said, it is evident that the
+merit of this poem cannot consist in the story. And yet it has very
+great merit, and various kinds of merit,--both in the picturesque
+representation of visible objects, in the delineation of manners and
+characters, and in the description of great and striking events. After
+having detained the reader so long with our own dull remarks, it will
+be refreshing to him to peruse a few specimens of Mr Scott's more
+enlivening strains.
+
+[Quotes over six hundred lines of _Marmion_ with brief comment.]
+
+The powerful poetry of these passages can receive no illustration from
+any praises or observations of ours. It is superior, in our
+apprehension, to all that this author has hitherto produced; and, with a
+few faults of diction, equal to any thing that has _ever_ been written
+upon similar subjects. Though we have extended our extracts to a very
+unusual length, in order to do justice to these fine conceptions, we
+have been obliged to leave out a great deal, which serves in the
+original to give beauty and effect to what we have actually cited. From
+the moment the author gets in sight of Flodden Field, indeed, to the end
+of the poem, there is no tame writing, and no intervention of ordinary
+passages. He does not once flag or grow tedious; and neither stops to
+describe dresses and ceremonies, nor to commemorate the harsh names of
+feudal barons from the Border. There is a flight of five or six hundred
+lines, in short, in which he never stoops his wing, nor wavers in his
+course; but carries the reader forward with a more rapid, sustained, and
+lofty movement, than any Epic bard that we can at present remember.
+
+From the contemplation of such distinguished excellence, it is painful
+to be obliged to turn to the defects and deformities which occur in the
+same composition. But this, though a less pleasing, is a still more
+indispensable part of our duty; and one, from the resolute discharge of
+which, much more beneficial consequences may be expected. In the work
+which contains the fine passages we have just quoted, and many of nearly
+equal beauty, there is such a proportion of tedious, hasty, and
+injudicious composition, as makes it questionable with us, whether it
+is entitled to go down to posterity as a work of classical merit, or
+whether the author will retain, with another generation, that high
+reputation which his genius certainly might make coeval with the
+language. These are the authors, after all, whose faults it is of most
+consequence to point out; and criticism performs her best and boldest
+office,--not when she tramples down the weed, or tears up the
+bramble,--but when she strips the strangling ivy from the oak, or cuts
+out the canker from the rose. The faults of the fable we have already
+noticed at sufficient length. Those of the execution we shall now
+endeavour to enumerate with greater brevity.
+
+And, in the _first_ place, we must beg leave to protest, in the name of
+a very numerous class of readers, against the insufferable number, and
+length and minuteness of those descriptions of antient dresses and
+manners, and buildings; and ceremonies, and local superstitions; with
+which the whole poem is overrun,--which render so many notes necessary,
+and are, after all, but imperfectly understood by those to whom
+chivalrous antiquity has not hitherto been an object of peculiar
+attention. We object to these, and to all such details, because they
+are, for the most part, without dignity or interest in themselves;
+because, in a modern author, they are evidently unnatural; and because
+they must always be strange, and, in a good degree, obscure and
+unintelligible to ordinary readers.
+
+When a great personage is to be introduced, it is right, perhaps, to
+give the reader some notion of his external appearance; and when a
+memorable event is to be narrated, it is natural to help the imagination
+by some picturesque representation of the scenes with which it is
+connected. Yet, even upon such occasions, it can seldom be advisable to
+present the reader with a full inventory of the hero's dress, from his
+shoebuckle to the plume in his cap, or to enumerate all the drawbridges,
+portcullisses, and diamond cut stones in the castle. Mr Scott, however,
+not only draws out almost all his pictures in these full dimensions, but
+frequently introduces those pieces of Flemish or Chinese painting to
+represent persons who are of no consequence, or places and events which
+are of no importance to the story. It would be endless to go through the
+poem for examples of this excess of minute description; we shall merely
+glance at the First Canto as a specimen. We pass the long description of
+Lord Marmion himself, with his mail of Milan steel; the blue ribbons on
+his horse's mane; and his blue velvet housings. We pass also the two
+gallant squires who ride behind him. But our patience is really
+exhausted, when we are forced to attend to the black stockings and blue
+jerkins of the inferior persons in the train, and to the whole process
+of turning out the guard with advanced arms on entering the castle.
+
+    'Four men-at-arms came _at their backs_,
+    With halberd, bill, and battle-axe:
+    They bore Lord Marmion's lance so strong,
+    And led his sumpter mules along,
+    And ambling palfrey, _when at need_
+    Him listed ease his battle-steed.
+    The last, and trustiest of the four,
+    On high his forky pennon bore;
+    Like swallow's tail, in shape and hue,
+    Flutter'd the streamer glossy blue,
+    Where, blazoned sable, as before,
+    The towering falcon seemed to soar.
+    Last, twenty yeomen, two and two,
+    In hosen black, and jerkins blue,
+    With falcons broider'd on each breast,
+    Attended on their lord's behest.
+    'Tis meet that I should tell you now,
+    How fairly armed, and ordered how,
+      The soldiers of the guard,
+    With musquet, pike, and morion,
+    To welcome noble Marmion,
+      Stood in the Castle-yard;
+    Minstrels and trumpeters were there,
+    The gunner held his _linstock yare_,
+      For welcome-shot prepared--
+
+    The guards their morrice pikes advanced,
+      The trumpets flourished brave,
+    The cannon from the ramparts glanced,
+      And thundering welcome gave.
+
+    Two pursuivants, whom tabards deck,
+    With silver scutcheon round their neck,
+      Stood on the steps of stone,
+    By which you reach the Donjon gate,
+    And there, with herald pomp and state,
+      They hailed Lord Marmion.
+    And he, their courtesy to requite,
+    Gave them a chain of twelve marks weight,
+      All as he lighted down.' p. 29-32.
+
+Sir Hugh the Heron then orders supper--
+
+    'Now broach ye a pipe of Malvoisie,
+    Bring pasties of the doe.'
+
+--And after the repast is concluded, they have some mulled wine, and
+drink good night very ceremoniously.
+
+    'Lord Marmion drank a fair good rest,
+    The Captain pledged his noble guest,
+    The cup went round among the rest.'
+
+In the morning, again, we are informed that they had prayers, and that
+knight and squire
+
+    ----'broke their fast
+    On rich substantial repast.'
+    'Then came the stirrup-cup in course,' &c., &c.
+
+And thus a whole Canto is filled up with the account of a visit and a
+supper, which lead to no consequences whatever, and are not attended
+with any circumstances which must not have occurred at every visit and
+supper among persons of the same rank at that period. Now, we are really
+at a loss to know, why the mere circumstance of a moderate antiquity
+should be supposed so far to ennoble those details, as to entitle them
+to a place in poetry, which certainly never could be claimed for a
+description of more modern adventures. Nobody, we believe, would be bold
+enough to introduce into a serious poem a description of the hussar
+boots and gold epaulets of a commander in chief, and much less to
+particularize the liveries and canes of his servants, or the order and
+array of a grand dinner, given even to the cabinet ministers. Yet these
+things are, in their own nature, fully as picturesque, and as
+interesting, as the ribbons at the mane of Lord Marmion's horse, or his
+supper and breakfast at the castle of Norham. We are glad, indeed, to
+find these little details in _old_ books, whether in prose or verse,
+because they are there authentic and valuable documents of the usages
+and modes of life of our ancestors; and we are thankful when we light
+upon this sort of information in an antient romance, which commonly
+contains matter much more tedious. Even there, however, we smile at the
+simplicity which could mistake such naked enumerations for poetical
+description; and reckon them as nearly on a level, in point of taste,
+with the theological disputations that are sometimes introduced in the
+same meritorious compositions. In a _modern_ romance, however, these
+details being no longer authentic, are of no value in point of
+information; and as the author has no claim to indulgence on the ground
+of simplicity, the smile which his predecessors excited is in some
+danger of being turned into a yawn. If he wishes sincerely to follow
+their example, he should describe the manners of his own time, and not
+of theirs. They painted from observation, and not from study; and the
+familiarity and _naïveté_ of their delineations, transcribed with a
+slovenly and hasty hand from what they saw daily before them, is as
+remote as possible from the elaborate pictures extracted by a modern
+imitator from black-letter books, and coloured, not from the life, but
+from learned theories, or at best from mouldy monkish illuminations, and
+mutilated fragments of painted glass.
+
+But the times of chivalry, it may be said, were more picturesque than
+the present times. They are better adapted to poetry; and everything
+that is associated with them has a certain hold on the imagination, and
+partakes of the interest of the period. We do not mean utterly to deny
+this; nor can we stop, at present, to assign exact limits to our assent:
+but this we will venture to observe, in general, that if it be true that
+the interest which we take in the contemplation of the chivalrous era,
+arises from the dangers and virtues by which it was distinguished,--from
+the constant hazards in which its warriors passed their days, and the
+mild and generous valour with which they met those hazards,--joined to
+the singular contrast which it presented between the ceremonious polish
+and gallantry of the nobles, and the brutish ignorance of the body of
+the people:--if these are, as we conceive they are, the sources of the
+charm which still operates in behalf of the days of knightly adventure,
+then it should follow, that nothing should interest us, by association
+with that age, but what serves naturally to bring before us those
+hazards and that valour, and gallantry, and aristocratical superiority.
+Any description, or any imitation of the exploits in which those
+qualities were signalized, will do this most effectually.
+Battles,--tournaments,--penances,--deliverance of damsels,--instalments
+of knights, &c.--and, intermixed with these, we must admit some
+description of arms, armorial bearings, castles, battlements, and
+chapels: but the least and lowest of the whole certainly is the
+description of servants' liveries, and of the peaceful operations of
+eating, drinking, and ordinary salutation. These have no sensible
+connexion with the qualities or peculiarities which have conferred
+certain poetical privileges on the manners of chivalry. They do not
+enter either necessarily or naturally into our conception of what is
+interesting in those manners; and, though protected, by their
+strangeness, from the ridicule which would infallibly attach to their
+modern equivalents, are substantially as unpoetic, and as little
+entitled to indulgence from impartial criticism.
+
+We would extend this censure to a larger proportion of the work before
+us than we now choose to mention--certainly to all the stupid monkish
+legends about St Hilda and St Cuthbert--to the ludicrous description of
+Lord Gifford's habiliments of divination--and to all the various scraps
+and fragments of antiquarian history and baronial biography, which are
+scattered profusely through the whole narrative. These we conceive to be
+put in purely for the sake of displaying the erudition of the author;
+and poetry, which has no other recommendation, but that the substance of
+it has been gleaned from rare or obscure books, has, in our estimation,
+the least of all possible recommendations. Mr Scott's great talents, and
+the novelty of the style in which his romances are written, have made
+even these defects acceptable to a considerable part of his readers. His
+genius, seconded by the omnipotence of fashion, has brought chivalry
+again into temporary favour; but he ought to know, that this is a taste
+too evidently unnatural to be long prevalent in the modern world. Fine
+ladies and gentlemen now talk, indeed, of donjons, keeps, tabards,
+scutcheons, tressures, caps of maintenance, portcullisses, wimples, and
+we know not what besides; just as they did, in the days of Dr Darwin's
+popularity, of gnomes, sylphs, oxygen, gossamer, polygynia, and
+polyandria. That fashion, however, passed rapidly away; and if it be now
+evident to all the world, that Dr Darwin obstructed the extension of his
+fame, and hastened the extinction of his brilliant reputation, by the
+pedantry and ostentatious learning of his poems, Mr Scott should take
+care that a different sort of pedantry does not produce the same
+effects. The world will never be long pleased with what it does not
+readily understand; and the poetry which is destined for immortality,
+should treat only of feelings and events which can be conceived and
+entered into by readers of all descriptions.
+
+What we have now mentioned is the cardinal fault of the work before us;
+but it has other faults, of too great magnitude to be passed altogether
+without notice. There is a debasing lowness and vulgarity in some
+passages, which we think must be offensive to every reader of delicacy,
+and which are not, for the most part, redeemed by any vigour or
+picturesque effect. The venison pasties, we think, are of this
+description; and this commemoration of Sir Hugh Heron's troopers, who
+
+    'Have drunk the monks of St Bothan's ale,
+    And driven the beeves of Lauderdale;
+    Harried the wives of Greenlaw's goods,
+    And given them light to set their hoods.' p. 41.
+
+The long account of Friar John, though not without merit, offends in the
+same sort; nor can we easily conceive, how any one could venture, in a
+serious poem, to speak of
+
+    ----'the wind that blows,
+    And _warms itself against his nose_.'
+
+The speeches of squire Blount, too, are a great deal too unpolished for
+a noble youth aspiring to knighthood. On two occasions, to specify no
+more, he addresses his brother squire in these cacophonous lines--
+
+    '_St Anton' fire thee!_ wilt thou stand
+    All day with bonnet in thy hand?'
+
+And,
+
+    '_Stint in thy prate_,' quoth Blount, '_thou'dst best_,
+    And listen to our Lord's behest.'
+
+Neither can we be brought to admire the simple dignity of Sir Hugh the
+Heron, who thus encourageth his nephew,
+
+    ----'_By my fay_,
+    Well hast thou spoke--say forth thy say.'
+
+There are other passages in which the flatness and tediousness of the
+narrative is relieved by no sort of beauty, nor elegance of diction, and
+which form an extraordinary contrast with the more animated and finished
+portions of the poem. We shall not afflict our readers with more than
+one specimen of this falling off. We select it from the Abbess's
+explanation to De Wilton.
+
+    'De Wilton and Lord Marmion wooed
+    Clara de Clare, of Gloster's blood;
+    (Idle it were of Whitby's dame,
+    To say of that same blood I came;)
+    And once, when jealous rage was high,
+    Lord Marmion said despiteously,
+    Wilton was traitor in his heart,
+    And had made league with Martin Swart,
+    When he came here on Simnel's part;
+    And only cowardice did restrain
+    His rebel aid on Stokefield's plain,--
+    And down he threw his glove:--the thing
+    Was tried, as wont, before the king;
+    Where frankly did De Wilton own,
+    That Swart in Guelders he had known;
+    And that between them then there went
+    Some scroll of courteous compliment.
+    For this he to his castle sent;
+    But when his messenger returned,
+    Judge how De Wilton's fury burned!
+    For in his packet there were laid
+    Letters that claimed disloyal aid,
+    And proved King Henry's cause betrayed.' p. 272-274.
+
+In some other places, Mr Scott's love of variety has betrayed him into
+strange imitations. This is evidently formed on the school of Sternhold
+and Hopkins.
+
+    'Of all the palaces so fair,
+      Built for the royal dwelling,
+    In Scotland, far beyond compare,
+      Linlithgow is excelling.'
+
+The following is a sort of mongrel between the same school, and the
+later one of Mr Wordsworth.
+
+    'And Bishop Gawin, as he rose,
+    Said--Wilton, grieve not for thy woes,
+      Disgrace, and trouble;
+    For He, who honour best bestows,
+      May give thee double.'
+
+There are many other blemishes, both of taste and of diction, which we
+had marked for reprehension, but now think it unnecessary to specify;
+and which, with some of those we have mentioned, we are willing to
+ascribe to the haste in which much of the poem seems evidently to have
+been composed. Mr Scott knows too well what is due to the public, to
+make any boast of the rapidity with which his works are written; but the
+dates and the extent of his successive publications show sufficiently
+how short a time could be devoted to each; and explain, though they do
+not apologize for, the many imperfections with which they have been
+suffered to appear. He who writes for immortality should not be sparing
+of time; and if it be true, that in every thing which has a principle of
+life, the period of gestation and growth bears some proportion to that
+of the whole future existence, the author now before us should tremble
+when he looks back on the miracles of his own facility.
+
+We have dwelt longer on the beauties and defects of this poem, than we
+are afraid will be agreeable either to the partial or the indifferent;
+not only because we look upon it as a misapplication, in some degree, of
+very extraordinary talents, but because we cannot help considering it as
+the foundation of a new school, which may hereafter occasion no little
+annoyance both to us and to the public. Mr Scott has hitherto filled the
+whole stage himself; and the very splendour of his success has probably
+operated, as yet, rather to deter, than to encourage, the herd of rivals
+and imitators: but if, by the help of the good parts of his poem, he
+succeeds in suborning the verdict of the public in favour of the bad
+parts also, and establishes an indiscriminate taste for chivalrous
+legends and romances in irregular rhime, he may depend upon having as
+many copyists as Mrs Radcliffe or Schiller, and upon becoming the
+founder of a new schism in the catholic poetical church, for which, in
+spite of all our exertions, there will probably be no cure, but in the
+extravagance of the last and lowest of its followers. It is for this
+reason that we conceive it to be our duty to make one strong effort to
+bring back the great apostle of the heresy to the wholesome creed of
+his instructors, and to stop the insurrection before it becomes
+desperate and senseless, by persuading the leader to return to his duty
+and allegiance. We admire Mr Scott's genius as much as any of those who
+may be misled by its perversion; and, like the curate and the barber in
+Don Quixote, lament the day when a gentleman of such endowments was
+corrupted by the wicked tales of knight-errantry and enchantment.
+
+We have left ourselves no room to say any thing of the epistolary
+effusions which are prefixed to each of the cantos. They certainly are
+not among the happiest productions of Mr Scott's muse. They want
+interest in the subjects, and finish in the execution. There is too much
+of them about the personal and private feelings and affairs of the
+author; and too much of the remainder about the most trite commonplaces
+of politics and poetry. There is a good deal of spirit, however, and a
+good deal of nature intermingled. There is a fine description of St
+Mary's loch, in that prefixed to the second canto; and a very pleasing
+representation of the author's early tastes and prejudices, in that
+prefixed to the third. The last, which is about Christmas, is the worst;
+though the first, containing a threnody on Nelson, Pitt, and Fox,
+exhibits a more remarkable failure. We are unwilling to quarrel with a
+poet on the score of politics; but the manner in which he has chosen to
+praise the last of these great men, is more likely, we conceive, to give
+offence to his admirers, than the most direct censure. The only deed for
+which he is praised, is for having broken off the negotiation for peace;
+and for this act of firmness, it is added, Heaven rewarded him with a
+share in the honoured grave of Pitt! It is then said, that his errors
+should be forgotten, and that he _died_ a Briton--a pretty plain
+insinuation, that, in the author's opinion, he did not live one; and
+just such an encomium as he himself pronounces over the grave of his
+villain hero Marmion. There was no need, surely, to pay compliments to
+ministers or princesses, either in the introduction or in the body of a
+romance of the 16th century. Yet we have a laboured lamentation over the
+Duke of Brunswick, in one of the epistles; and in the heart of the poem,
+a triumphant allusion to the siege of Copenhagen--the last exploit,
+certainly, of British valour, on which we should have expected a
+chivalrous poet to found his patriotic gratulations. We have no
+business, however, on this occasion, with the political creed of the
+author; and we notice these allusions to objects of temporary interest,
+chiefly as instances of bad taste, and additional proofs that the author
+does not always recollect, that a poet should address himself to more
+than one generation.--_The Edinburgh Review_.
+
+
+
+
+GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON
+
+
+_Hours of Idleness: A Series of Poems, Original and Translated_. By
+GEORGE GORDON, Lord Byron, a Minor. 8vo. pp. 200. Newark. 1807.
+
+The poesy of this young lord belongs to the class which neither gods nor
+men are said to permit. Indeed, we do not recollect to have seen a
+quantity of verse with so few deviations in either direction from that
+exact standard. His effusions are spread over a dead flat, and can no
+more get above or below the level, than if they were so much stagnant
+water. As an extenuation of this offence, the noble author is peculiarly
+forward in pleading minority. We have it in the title-page, and on the
+very back of the volume; it follows his name like a favourite part of
+his _style_. Much stress is laid upon it in the preface, and the poems
+are connected with this general statement of his case, by particular
+dates, substantiating the age at which each was written. Now, the law
+upon the point of minority, we hold to be perfectly clear. It is a plea
+available only to the defendant; no plaintiff can offer it as a
+supplementary ground of action. Thus, if any suit could be brought
+against Lord Byron, for the purpose of compelling him to put into court
+a certain quantity of poetry; and if judgment were given against him; it
+is highly probable that an exception would be taken, were he to deliver
+_for poetry_, the contents of this volume. To this he might plead
+_minority_; but as he now makes voluntary tender of the article, he hath
+no right to sue, on that ground, for the price in good current praise,
+should the goods be unmarketable. This is our view of the law on the
+point, and, we dare to say, so will it be ruled. Perhaps, however, in
+reality, all that he tells us about his youth, is rather with a view to
+increase our wonder, than to soften our censures. He possibly means to
+say, 'See how a minor can write! This poem was actually composed by a
+young man of eighteen, and this by one of only sixteen!'--But, alas, we
+all remember the poetry of Cowley at ten, and Pope at twelve; and so far
+from hearing, with any degree of surprise, that very poor verses were
+written by a youth from his leaving school to his leaving college,
+inclusive, we really believe this to be the most common of all
+occurrences; that it happens in the life of nine men in ten who are
+educated in England; and that the tenth man writes better verse than
+Lord Byron.
+
+His other plea of privilege, our author rather brings forward in order
+to wa[i]ve it. He certainly, however, does allude frequently to his
+family and ancestors--sometimes in poetry, sometimes in notes; and while
+giving up his claim on the score of rank, he takes care to remember us
+of Dr Johnson's saying, that when a nobleman appears as an author, his
+merit should be handsomely acknowledged. In truth, it is this
+consideration only, that induces us to give Lord Byron's poems a place
+in our review, beside our desire to counsel him, that he do forthwith
+abandon poetry, and turn his talents, which are considerable, and his
+opportunities, which are great, to better account.
+
+With this view, we must beg leave seriously to assure him, that the mere
+rhyming of the final syllable, even when accompanied by the presence of
+a certain number of feet,--nay, although (which does not always happen)
+those feet should scan regularly, and have been all counted accurately
+upon the fingers,--is not the whole art of poetry. We would entreat him
+to believe, that a certain portion of liveliness, somewhat of fancy, is
+necessary to constitute a poem; and that a poem in the present day, to
+be read, must contain at least one thought, either in a little degree
+different from the ideas of former writers, or differently expressed. We
+put it to his candour, whether there is any thing so deserving the name
+of poetry in verses like the following, written in 1806, and whether, if
+a youth of eighteen could say any thing so uninteresting to his
+ancestors, a youth of nineteen should publish it.
+
+    'Shades of heroes, farewell! your descendant, departing
+      From the seat of his ancestors, bids you, adieu!
+    Abroad, or at home, your remembrance imparting
+      New courage, he'll think upon glory, and you.
+
+    Though a tear dim his eye, at this sad separation,
+      'Tis nature, not fear, that excites his regret:
+    Far distant he goes, with the same emulation;
+      The fame of his fathers he ne'er can forget.
+
+    That fame, and that memory, still will he cherish,
+      He vows, that he ne'er will disgrace your renown;
+    Like you will he live, or like you will he perish;
+      When decay'd, may he mingle his dust with your own.' p. 3.
+
+Now we positively do assert, that there is nothing better than these
+stanzas in the whole compass of the noble minor's volume.
+
+Lord Byron should also have a care of attempting what the greatest poets
+have done before him, for comparisons (as he must have had occasion to
+see at his writing-master's) are odious.--Gray's Ode on Eton College,
+should really have kept out the ten hobbling stanzas 'on a distant view
+of the village and school of Harrow.'
+
+    'Where fancy, yet, joys to retrace the resemblance,
+      Of comrades, in friendship and mischief allied;
+    How welcome to me, your ne'er fading remembrance,
+      Which rests in the bosom, though hope is deny'd.' p. 4.
+
+In like manner the exquisite lines of Mr Rogers, '_On a Tear_,' might
+have warned the noble author off those premises, and spared us a whole
+dozen such stanzas as the following.
+
+        'Mild Charity's glow,
+        To us mortals below,
+    Shows the soul from barbarity clear;
+        Compassion will melt,
+        Where this virtue is felt,
+    And its dew is diffus'd in a Tear.
+
+        The man doom'd to sail,
+        With the blast of the gale,
+    Through billows Atlantic to steer,
+        As he bends o'er the wave,
+        Which may soon be his grave,
+    The green sparkles bright with a Tear.' p. 11.
+
+And so of instances in which former poets had failed. Thus, we do not
+think Lord Byron was made for translating, during his non-age, Adrian's
+Address to his Soul, when Pope succeeded so indifferently in the
+attempt. If our readers, however, are of another opinion, they may look
+at it.
+
+    'Ah! gentle, fleeting, wav'ring sprite,
+    Friend and associate of this clay!
+      To what unknown region borne,
+    Wilt thou now wing thy distant flight?
+    No more, with wonted humour gay,
+      But pallid, cheerless, and forlorn.' p. 72.
+
+However, be this as it may, we fear his translations and imitations are
+great favourites with Lord Byron. We have them of all kinds, from
+Anacreon to Ossian; and, viewing them as school exercises, they may
+pass. Only, why print them after they have had their day and served
+their turn? And why call the thing in p. 79 a translation, where _two_
+words (θελο λεγειν) of the original are expanded into four lines, and
+the other thing in p. 81, where μεσονυχτιοις ποθ' ὁ ραις, is rendered by
+means of six hobbling verses?--As to his Ossianic poesy, we are not very
+good judges, being, in truth, so moderately skilled in that species of
+composition, that we should, in all probability be criticizing some bit
+of the genuine Macpherson itself, were we to express our opinion of Lord
+Byron's rhapsodies. _If_, then, the following beginning of a 'Song of
+bards,' is by his Lordship, we venture to object to it, as far as we can
+comprehend it. 'What form rises on the roar of clouds, whose dark ghost
+gleams on the red stream of tempests? His voice rolls on the thunder;
+'tis Orla, the brown chief of Otihoma. He was,' &c. After detaining this
+'brown chief' some time, the bards conclude by giving him their advice
+to 'raise his fair locks;' then to 'spread them on the arch of the
+rainbow;' and 'to smile through the tears of the storm.' Of this kind of
+thing there are no less than _nine_ pages; and we can so far venture an
+opinion in their favour, that they look very like Macpherson; and we are
+positive they are pretty nearly as stupid and tiresome.
+
+It is a sort of privilege of poets to be egotists; but they should 'use
+it as not abusing it;' and particularly one who piques himself (though
+indeed at the ripe age of nineteen), of being 'an infant bard,'--('The
+artless Helicon I boast is youth;')--should either not know, or should
+seem not to know, so much about his own ancestry. Besides a poem above
+cited on the family seat of the Byrons, we have another of eleven pages,
+on the self-same subject, introduced with an apology, 'he certainly had
+no intention of inserting it;' but really, 'the particular request of
+some friends,' &c., &c. It concludes with five stanzas on himself, 'the
+last and youngest of a noble line.' There is a good deal also about his
+maternal ancestors, in a poem on Lachin-y-gair, a mountain where he
+spent part of his youth, and might have learned that _pibroch_ is not a
+bagpipe, any more than duet means a fiddle.
+
+As the author has dedicated so large a part of his volume to immortalize
+his employments at school and college, we cannot possibly dismiss it
+without presenting the reader with a specimen of these ingenious
+effusions. In an ode with a Greek motto, called Granta, we have the
+following magnificent stanzas.
+
+    'There, in apartments small and damp,
+      The candidate for college prizes,
+    Sits poring by the midnight lamp,
+      Goes late to bed, yet early rises.
+
+    Who reads false quantities in Sele,
+      Or puzzles o'er the deep triangle;
+    Depriv'd of many a wholesome meal,
+      In barbarous Latin doom'd to wrangle.
+
+    Renouncing every pleasing page,
+      From authors of historic use;
+    Preferring to the lettered sage,
+      The square of the hypothenuse.
+
+    Still harmless are these occupations,
+      That hurt none but the hapless student,
+    Compar'd with other recreations
+      Which bring together the imprudent.' p. 123, 124, 125.
+
+We are sorry to hear so bad an account of the college psalmody as is
+contained in the following Attic stanzas.
+
+    'Our choir would scarcely be excus'd.
+      Even as a band of new beginners;
+    All mercy, now, must be refus'd
+      To such a set of croaking sinners.
+
+    If David, when his toils were ended,
+      Had heard these blockheads sing before him
+    To us, his psalms had ne'er descended,
+      In furious mood, he would have tore 'em.' p. 126, 127.
+
+But whatever judgment may be passed on the poems of this noble minor, it
+seems we must take them as we find them, and be content; for they are
+the last we shall ever have from him. He is at best, he says, but an
+intruder into the groves of Parnassus; he never lived in a garret, like
+thorough-bred poets; and 'though he once roved a careless mountaineer in
+the Highlands of Scotland,' he has not of late enjoyed this advantage.
+Moreover, he expects no profit from his publication; and whether it
+succeeds or not 'it is highly improbable, from his situation and
+pursuits hereafter,' that he should again condescend to become an
+author. Therefore, let us take what we get and be thankful. What right
+have we poor devils to be nice? We are well off to have got so much from
+a man of this Lord's station, who does not live in a garret, but 'has
+the sway' of Newstead Abbey. Again we say, let us be thankful; and, with
+honest Sancho, bid God bless the giver, nor look the gift horse in the
+mouth.--_The Edinburgh Review_.
+
+
+_Childe Harolde's Pilgrimage. A Romaunt_. _By_ LORD BYRON. The Second
+Edition. London: Murray, Fleet Street. 1812. 8vo. pp. 300. Price 12s.
+
+If the object of poetry is to instruct by pleasing, then every poetical
+effort has a double claim upon the attention of the Christian observer.
+For we are anxious that the world should be instructed at all rates, and
+that they should be pleased where they innocently may. We are,
+therefore, by no means among those spectators who view the occasional
+ascent of a poetic luminary upon the horizon of literature, as a
+meteoric flash which has no relation to ourselves; but we feel instantly
+an eager desire to find its altitude, to take its bearings, to trace its
+course, and to calculate its influence upon surrounding bodies. When
+especially it is no more an "oaten reed" that is blown; or a "simple
+shepherd" who blows it; but when the song involves many high and solemn
+feelings, and a man of rank and notoriety strikes his golden harp, we
+feel, at once, that the increased influence of the song demands the more
+rigid scrutiny of the critic.
+
+Lord Byron is the author, beside the book before us, of a small volume
+of poems, which gave little promise, we think, of the present work; and
+of a satyrical poem, which, as far as temper is concerned, did give some
+promise of it. It had pleased more than one critic to treat his
+Lordship's first work in no very courtier-like manner; and especially
+the Lion of the north had let him feel the lashing of his angry tail.
+Not of a temperament to bear calmly even a "look that threatened him
+with insult," his Lordship seized the tomahawk of satire, mounted the
+fiery wings of his muse, and, like Bonaparte, spared neither rank, nor
+sex, nor age, but converted the republic of letters into one universal
+field of carnage. The volume called English Bards and Scotch Reviewers
+is, in short, to be considered, among other works, as one of those
+playful vessels which are said to have accompanied the Spanish armada,
+manned by executioners, and loaded with nothing but instruments of
+torture.
+
+This second work was of too sanguinary a complexion to beget a very
+pleasant impression upon the public mind; and all men, who wished well
+to peace, politeness and literature, joined in the pæan sung by the
+immediate victims of his Lordship's wrath, when he embarked to soften
+his manners, and, as it were, oil his tempers, amidst the gentler
+spirits of more southern climes. Travelling, indeed, through any climes,
+may be expected to exert this mitigating influence upon the mind. Nature
+is so truly gentle, or, to speak more justly, the God of nature displays
+so expansive a benevolence in all his works; so prodigally sheds his
+blessings "upon the evil and the good;" builds up so many exquisite
+fabrics to delight the eyes of his creatures; tinges the flowers with
+such colours, and fills the grove with such music; that anyone who
+becomes familiar with nature, can scarcely remain angry with man. With
+what mitigating touches the scenery of Europe has visited our author,
+remains to be seen. That he did not disarm it of its force by regarding
+it with a cold or contemptuous eye, he himself teaches us--
+
+    "Dear Nature is the kindest mother still,
+    Though always changing in her aspect mild;
+    From her bare bosom let me take my fill,
+    Her never-weaned, though not her favoured child.
+    O she is fairest in her features wild,
+    Where nothing polished dares pollute her path;
+    To me by day or night she ever smiled,
+    Though I have marked her when none other hath,
+    And sought her more and more, and loved her most in wrath." p. 79.
+
+Our author having re-landed upon his native shores, his first deed is to
+present to his country the work before us, as the fruits of his travels.
+It is a kind of poetical journal of journeys and voyages through Spain
+and Portugal, along the shores of the Mediterranean and Archipelago, and
+through the states of ancient Greece. When we speak of journal, we mean
+rather to designate the topics of the work than the manner of its
+execution; for it is highly poetical. Most contrary to the spirit of
+those less fanciful records, his Lordship sublimely discards all facts
+and histories; all incidents; A.M. and P.M.; and bad inns and worse
+winds; and battles and feasts. Seizing merely upon the picturesque
+features in every object and event before him, he paints and records
+them with such reflections, moral or immoral, as arise in his ardent
+mind.
+
+The "Childe Harolde" is the traveller; and as he is a mighty surly
+fellow, neither loves nor is loved by any one; "through sin's long
+labyrinth had run, nor made atonement when he did amiss;" as, moreover,
+he is licentious and sceptical; Lord Byron very naturally, and
+creditably to himself, sets out in his Preface with disclaiming any
+connection with this imaginary personage. It is somewhat singular,
+however, that most of the offensive reflections in the poem are made,
+not by the "Childe," but the poet.
+
+[Here follows a summary of the two cantos, with extensive quotations.]
+
+Having by these extracts endeavoured to put our readers in possession of
+some of the finest parts of this poem, and also of those passages which
+determine its moral complexion, we shall proceed to offer a few remarks
+upon its character and pretensions in both points of view.
+
+The poem is in the stanza of Spenser--a stanza of which we think it
+difficult to say whether the excellencies or defects are the greatest.
+The paramount advantage is the variety of tone and pause of which it
+admits. The great disadvantages are, the constraint of such complicated
+rhymes, and the long suspension of the sense, especially in the latter
+half of the stanza. The noblest conception and most brilliant diction
+must be sacrificed, if four words in one place, and three in another
+cannot be found rhyming to each other. And as to the suspension of the
+sense, we are persuaded that no man reads a single stanza without
+feeling a sort of strain upon the intellect and lungs--a kind of
+suffocation of mind and body, before he can either discover the
+lingering meaning, or pronounce the nine lines. To us, we confess that
+the rhyming couplets of Mr. Scott, sometimes deviating into alternate
+rhymes, are, on both accounts, infinitely preferable. One of the ends of
+poetry is to relax, and the artificial and elaborate stanza of Spenser
+costs us too much trouble, even in the reading, to accomplish this end.
+To effect this, the sense should come to us, instead of our going far
+and wide in quest of the sense. In our conception also, the heroic line
+of ten syllables, though favourable to the most dignified order of
+poetry, appears to limp when forced into the service of sonneteers: and
+poems in the metre before us, are, after all, little better than a
+string of sonnets; of which it is the constituent principle to be rather
+pretty than grand--rather tender than martial--rather conceited than
+wise--to keep the sense suspended for eight lines, and to discharge it
+with a point in the ninth. These observations are by no means designed
+to apply especially to the author--the extreme gravity of whose general
+manner and matter, in a measure covet the dignity of the heroic line.
+But it is this discordancy of measure and subject, together with the
+obviously laboured rhymes and the halting of the sense, which in
+general, we think, have shut out the Spenserian school from popular
+reading, and have caused a distinguished critic[J] to say, that the
+"Faiery Queen will not often be read through;" and that, although it
+maintains its place upon the shelf, it is seldom found on the table of
+the modern library.
+
+Whilst, however, Lord Byron participates in this defect of his great
+original, he is to be congratulated, as a poet, but alas! in his
+poetical character alone, on much happy deviation from him. In the first
+place, he has altogether washed his hands of allegory; a species of
+fiction open to a thousand objections. In the next place, he is
+infinitely more brief than his prototype. And in the third place, he
+philosophizes and moralizes (though not indeed in a very sound strain),
+as well as paints--provides food for the mind as well as the
+eye--kindles the feeling as well as gratifies the sense. Thus far, then,
+we are among the admirers of his Lordship. But it is to be lamented,
+that what was well conceived is, from the temperament of his mind, ill
+executed; that his philosophy is, strictly speaking, "only philosophy so
+called;" that the moral emotions he feels, and is likely to communicate,
+are of a character rather to offend and pollute the mind, than to sooth
+or to improve it. This defect, however, we fear, is to be charged, not
+upon the poet, but upon the man, at least upon his principles. But,
+whatever be the cause, the consequences are dreadful. Indeed, we do not
+hesitate to say, that the temperament of his mind is the ruin of his
+poem. We shall take the liberty, as we have intimated, of touching upon
+these defects as moral delinquincies, under another head; but for the
+present we wish to notice them merely as poetical errors.
+
+The legitimate object, then, of poetry, as we have said, is to
+_instruct_ by _pleasing_; and, cæteris paribus, that poem is the best
+which conveys the noblest lessons in the most attractive form. If, in
+reply to this, it is urged that the heathen poets, and especially Homer,
+taught no lesson to his readers; we answer, that he taught all the
+lessons which, in his own days, were deemed of highest importance to his
+country. The first object of philosophers and other teachers, in those
+days, was to make good soldiers, and therefore to condemn the vices
+which interfered with successful warfare. Now be it remembered, that the
+grand topic of the Iliad is the fatal influence of the wrath of kings on
+the success of armies. Its first words are ΜΗΝΙΝ αειδε. Besides this,
+the Iliad upholds the national mythology, or the only accredited
+religion; and by a bold fiction, bordering upon truth, displays in an
+Elysium and Tartarus, the eternal mansions of the good and bad, the
+strongest incentive to virtue and penalty to vice. Indeed, that both
+this and the Odyssey had a moral object, and that this object was
+recognized by the ancients, may be inferred from Horace, who says of
+Homer, in reference to the first poem:
+
+    "Qui, quid sit pulchrum, quid turpe, quid utile, quid non,
+    Plenius ac melius Chrysippo aut Crantore dicit."
+
+And as to the second:
+
+    "Rursum--quid virtus, et quid sapientia possit,
+    Utile proposuit nobis exemplar Ulyssem." Epist. I. 2.
+
+Many of the Odes of Horace had a patriotic subject--his Epistles and
+Satires, with those of Juvenal and Persius, were the sermons of the
+day. Virgil chiefly proposed to himself to exalt in his hero the
+character of a patriot, and, in his fictitious history, the dignity of
+his country. If the lessons they taught were of small importance or
+doubtful value, or if they often forget to "teach" in their ambition to
+"please," this is to be charged rather on the age than on the poet. They
+taught the best lessons they knew; and were satisfied to please only
+when they had nothing better to do. In modern times, it will not be
+questioned that the greatest poets have ever endeavoured to enshrine
+some moral or intellectual object in their verse. Milton calls Spenser
+"our sage serious Spenser, whom I dare be known to think a better
+teacher than Scotus or Aquinas." In like manner, the Absalom and
+Achitophel, the Hind and Panther of Dryden, the philosophic strain of
+Pope, the immortal page of Milton, and the half-inspired numbers of the
+Task, are all, in their various ways, attempts of poets to improve or
+reform the world. Every species of poetry, indeed, has received fresh
+lustre, and even taken a new place in Parnassian dignity, by a larger
+infusion of moral sentiment into its numbers. The ancient ballad has
+arisen to new dignity through the moral touches, we wish they had been
+less rare, of a Scott; and the stanza of Spenser has acquired new
+interest in the hands of Lord Byron, from the philosophical air which it
+wears. Numbers without morals are the man without "the glory." We
+sincerely wish that the moral tone of his Lordship's poem had been less
+liable to exception.
+
+His Lordship, we believe, is acquainted with ancient authors. Let him
+turn to Quinctilian, and he will find a whole chapter to prove that a
+great writer must be a good man. Let him go to Longinus, and he will
+read that a man who would write sublimely, "must spare no labour to
+educate his soul to grandeur, and impregnate it with great and generous
+ideas"--that "the faculties of the soul will then grow stupid, their
+spirit will be lost, and good sense and genius lie in ruins, when the
+care and study of man is engaged about the mortal, the worthless part of
+himself, and he has ceased to cultivate virtue, and polish his nobler
+part, his soul." Or, if poetical authority alone will satisfy a poet,
+let him learn from one of the finest of our modern poems:
+
+    "But of our souls the high-born loftier part,
+    Th' ethereal energies that touch the heart,
+    Conceptions ardent, laboring thought intense,
+    Creative fancy's wild magnificence,
+    And all the dread sublimities of song:
+    These, Virtue, these to thee alone belong:
+    Chill'd, by the breath of vice, their radiance dies,
+    And brightest burns when lighted at the skies:
+    Like vestal flames to purest bosoms given,
+    And kindled only by a ray from heaven."[K]
+
+That the object of poetry, however, is not simply to instruct, but to
+"instruct by _pleasing_," is too obvious to need a proof. However the
+original object of measure and rhythm may have been to graft truth on
+the memory, and associate it with music; they are perpetuated by the
+universal conviction that they delight the ear. Like the armour which
+adorns the modern hall, they were contrived for use, but are continued
+for ornament.
+
+Assuming this, then, to be a just definition of poetry, we repeat our
+assertion, that, in the work before us, the temperament of mind in the
+poet creates the grand defect of the poetry. If poetry should instruct,
+then he is a defective poet whose lessons rather revolt than improve the
+mind. If poetry should please, then he is a bad poet who offends the
+eye by calling up the most hideous images--who shews the world through a
+discoloured medium--who warms the heart by no generous feelings--who
+uniformly turns to us the worst side of men and things--who goes on his
+way grumbling, and labours hard to make his readers as peevish and
+wretched as himself. The tendency of the strain of Homer is to transform
+us for the moment into heroes; of Cowper, into saints; of Milton, into
+angels: but Lord Byron would almost degrade us into a Thersites or a
+Caliban; or lodge us, as fellow-grumblers, in the style of Diogenes, or
+any of his two or four-footed snarling or moody posterity. Now his
+Lordship, we trust, is accessible upon much higher grounds; but he will
+perceive that mere regard for his poetical reputation ought to induce
+him to change his manner. If, as Longinus instructs us, a man must feel
+sublimely to write sublimely, a poet must find pleasure in the objects
+of nature before him, if he hope to give pleasure to others. Let him
+remember, that not merely his conceptions, but his mind and character
+are to be imparted to us in his verse. He will, in a measure, "stamp an
+image of himself!" The fire with which we are to glow must issue from
+him. Till this change take place in him, then, he can be no great poet.
+It is Heraclitus who mourns in his pages, or Zeno who scolds, or Zoilus
+who lashes; but we look in vain for the poet, for the living fountain of
+our innocent pleasures, for the artificer of our literary delight, for
+the hand which, as by enchantment, snatches us from the little cares of
+life, whirls us into the boundless regions of imagination, "exhausting"
+one "world," and imagining others, to supply pictures which may refresh
+and charm the mind.[L] Lord Byron shews us man and nature, like the
+phantasmagoria, _in shade_; whereas, in poetry at least, we desire to
+see them illuminated by all the friendly rays which a benevolent
+imagination can impart.
+
+We have hitherto confined ourselves to an examination of the influence
+of the principles and temper of this work upon its literary pretensions;
+but his Lordship will forgive us if we now put off the mere critic for a
+moment, and address him in that graver character which we assume to
+ourselves in the title of our work. In truth, we are deeply affected by
+the spectacle his poem presents to us. As the minor poems at the
+conclusion of the work breathe the same spirit, suggest the same doubts,
+and employ the same language with the "Childe Harold" we are compelled
+to recognise the author in the hero whom he has painted. In fact, the
+disclaimer, already noticed in the Preface, seems merely like one of
+those veils worn to draw attention to the face rather than to baffle it:
+and in the work before us we are forced to recognise a character, which,
+since Rousseau gave his Confessions to the public, has scarcely ever, we
+think, darkened the horizon of letters. The reader of the "Confessions"
+is dismayed to find a man frankly avowing the most disgraceful vices;
+abandoning them, not upon principle, but merely because they have ceased
+to gratify; prepared to return to them if they promise to reward him
+better; without natural affection, neither loving, nor beloved by any;
+without peace, without hope, "without God in the world." When we search
+into the mysterious cause of this autobiographical phenomenon, we at
+once discover that Rousseau's immeasurable vanity betrayed him into a
+belief, that even his vices would vanish in the blaze of his
+excellencies; and that the world would worship him, as idolaters do
+their mishapen gods, in spite of their ugliness. The confessions of
+Lord Byron, we regret to say, bear something of an analogy to those of
+the philosopher of Geneva. Are they, then, to be traced to the _same
+source_? He plainly is far from indifferent to the opinion of
+by-standers: can he, then, conceive that this peep into the window of
+his breast must not revolt every virtuous eye? Can he boldly proclaim
+his violations of decency and of sobriety; his common contempt for all
+modifications of religion; his monstrous belief in the universal rest or
+annihilation of man in a future state; and forget that he is one of
+those who
+
+    "Play such tricks before high heaven,
+    As make the angels weep;"
+
+as offend against all moral taste; as attempt to shake the very pillars
+of domestic happiness and of public security?
+
+It is, however, a matter of congratulation, that his Lordship, in common
+with the republican Confessor, has not revealed his creed without very
+honestly displaying the influence of this creed upon his own mind. We
+should not, indeed, have credited a man of his sentiments, had he
+assured us he was happy: happiness takes no root in such soils. But it
+is still better to have his own testimony to the unmixed misery of
+licentiousness and unbelief. It is almost comforting to be told, if we
+dared to draw comfort out of the well of another man's miseries, that
+
+    "Though gay companions o'er the bowl
+      Dispel awhile the sense of ill;
+    Though pleasure fires the maddening soul,
+      The heart--the heart is lonely still."
+
+It is consolatory also to contrast the peace and triumph of the dying
+Christian, with the awful uncertainty, or rather the sullen despair,
+which breathe in these verses.
+
+    "'Aye--but to die and go'--alas,
+      Where all have gone, and all must go;
+    To be the nothing that I was,
+      Ere born to life and living woe.
+
+    "Count o'er the joys thine hours have seen,
+      Count o'er thy days from anguish free;
+    And know, whatever thou hast been,
+      'Tis something better not to be."
+
+Nor can religion be more powerfully recommended than by the following
+avowal of an apostle of the opposite system.
+
+    "No, for myself, so dark my fate
+      Through every turn of life has been,
+    Man and the world I so much hate,
+      I care not when I quit the scene."
+
+But whilst, for the benefit of others, we thus avail ourselves of the
+antidote supplied by his Lordship to his own poison, we would wish also
+that he might feel the efficacy of it himself. Could we hope that so
+humble a work as this would reach the lofty sphere in which he moves, we
+would solemnly say to him: "You are wretched, but will nothing make you
+happy? You hate all men; will nothing warm you with new feelings? You
+are (as you say) hated by all; will nothing make you an object of
+affection? Suppose yourself the victim of some disease, which resisted
+many ordinary applications; but that all who used one medicine uniformly
+pronounced themselves cured:--would it be worthy of a philosopher not
+merely to neglect the remedy, but to traduce it? Such, however, my Lord,
+is the fatuity of your own conduct as to the religion of Christ.
+Thousands, as wretched as yourself, have found 'a Comforter' in Him;
+thousands, having stepped into these waters, have been healed of their
+disease; thousands, touching the hem of His garment, have found 'virtue
+go out of it.' Beggared then of every other resource, try this.
+'Acquaint yourself with God, and be at peace.'" His Lordship may
+designate this language by that expressive monosyllable, cant; and may
+possibly, before long, hunt us down, as a sort of mad March hare, with
+the blood-hounds of his angry muse. But we hope better things of him. We
+assure him, that, whatever may be true of others, we do not "hate him."
+As Christians, even he who professes to be unchristian is dear to us. We
+regard the waste of his fine talents, and the laboured suppression and
+apparent extinction of his better feelings, with the deepest
+commiseration and sorrow. We long to see him escape from the black cloud
+which, by what may fairly be called his "black art," he has conjured up
+around himself. We hope to know him as a future buttress of his shaken
+country, and as a friend of his yet "unknown God." Should this change,
+by the mercy of God, take place, what pangs would many passages of his
+present work cost him! Happy should we be, could we persuade him, in the
+bare anticipation of such a change, even now to contrive for his future
+happiness, by expunging sentiments that would then so much embitter it.
+Should he never change; yet, such an act would prove, that, at least, he
+meditated no cruel invasion upon the joys of others. Even Rousseau
+taught his child religion, as a delusion essential to happiness. The
+philosophic Tully also, if a belief in futurity were an error, deemed it
+one with which it was impossible to part. Let the author then, at all
+events, leave us in unmolested possession of our supposed privileges.
+_He_ plainly knows no noble or "royal way" to happiness. _We_ find in
+religion a bark that rides the waves in every storm; a sun that never
+goes down; a living fountain of waters. Religion is suffered to change
+its aspect and influence according to the eye and faith of the
+examiner. Like one side of the pillar of the wilderness, it may merely
+darken and perplex his Lordship's path: to millions it is like the
+opposite side of that pillar to the Israelites, the symbol of Deity; the
+pillar of hallowed flame, which lights and guides, and cheers them as
+they toil onward through the pilgrimage of life. Could we hear any voice
+proclaim of him, as of one reclaimed from as inveterate, though more
+honest, prejudices, "behold, he prayeth;" we should hope that here also
+the scales would drop from the eyes, and his Lordship become an eloquent
+defender and promulgator of the religion which he now scorns.--_The
+Christian Observer_.
+
+[Footnote J: Hume.]
+
+[Footnote K: Grant's Restoration of Learning in the East.]
+
+[Footnote L: We cannot resist the temptation of saying, that in this
+highest department of the poet's art, we know of no living poet who will
+bear a comparison with Mr. Southey.]
+
+
+
+
+PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
+
+
+_Alastor_; or, The Spirit of Solitude; and other Poems. By Percy Bysshe
+Shelley. Crown 8vo. pp. 101. Baldwin, and Co. 1816.
+
+We must candidly own that these poems are beyond our comprehension; and
+we did not obtain a clue to their sublime obscurity, till an address to
+Mr. Wordsworth explained in what school the author had formed his taste.
+We perceive, through the "darkness visible" in which Mr. Shelley veils
+his subject, some beautiful imagery and poetical expressions: but he
+appears to be a poet "whose eye, in a fine phrenzy rolling," seeks only
+such objects as are "above this visible diurnal sphere;" and therefore
+we entreat him, for the sake of his reviewers as well as of his other
+readers, (if he has any,) to subjoin to his next publication an _ordo_,
+a glossary, and copious notes, illustrative of his allusions and
+explanatory of his meaning.--_The Monthly Review_.
+
+
+_The Cenci. A Tragedy, in Five Acts_. By PERCY BYSSHE SHELL[E]Y. Italy.
+1819. pp. 104.
+
+There has lately arisen a new-fangled style of poetry, facetiously
+yclept the Cockney School, that it would really be worth any one's while
+to enter as a candidate. The qualifications are so easy, that he need
+never doubt the chance of his success, for he has only to knock, and it
+shall be opened unto him. The principal requisites for admission, in a
+literary point of view, are as follows. First, an inordinate share of
+affectation and conceit, with a few occasional good things sprinkled,
+like green spots of verdure in a wilderness, with a "parcâ quod satis
+est manu." Secondly, a prodigious quantity of assurance, that neither
+God nor man can daunt, founded on the honest principle of "who is like
+unto me?" and lastly, a contempt for all institutions, moral and divine,
+with secret yearnings for aught that is degrading to human nature, or
+revolting to decency. These qualifications ensured, a regular initiation
+into the Cockney mysteries follows as a matter of course, and the novice
+enlists himself under their banners, proud of his newly-acquired honors,
+and starched up to the very throat in all the prim stiffness of his
+intellect. A few symptoms of this literary malady appeared as early as
+the year 1795, but it then assumed the guise of simplicity and pathos.
+It was a poetical Lord Fanny. It wept its pretty self to death by
+murmuring brooks, and rippling cascades, it heaved delicious sighs over
+sentimental lambs, and love-lorn sheep, apostrophized donkies in the
+innocence of primæval nature; sung tender songs to tender nightingales;
+went to bed without a candle, that it might gaze on the chubby faces of
+the stars; discoursed sweet nothings to all who would listen to its
+nonsense; and displayed (_horrendum dictu_) the acute profundity of its
+grief in ponderous folios and spiral duodecimos. The literary world,
+little suspecting the dangerous consequences of this distressing malady,
+suffered it to germinate in silence; and not until they became
+thoroughly convinced that the disorder was of an epidemical nature, did
+they start from their long continued lethargy. But it was then too late!
+The evil was incurable; it branched out into the most vigorous
+ramifications, and following the scriptural admonition, "Increase and
+multiply," disseminated its poetry and its prose throughout a great part
+of England. As a dog, when once completely mad, is never satisfied until
+he has bitten half a dozen more, so the Cockney professors, in laudable
+zeal for the propagation of their creed, were never at rest until they
+had spread their own doctrines around them. They stood on the house tops
+and preached, 'till of a verity they were black in the face with the
+heating quality of their arguments; they stationed themselves by the bye
+roads and hedges, to discuss the beauties of the country; they looked
+out from their garrett [_sic_] windows in Grub-street, and exclaimed,
+"_O! rus, quando ego te aspiciam_;" and gave such afflicting tokens of
+insanity, that the different reviewers and satirists of the day kindly
+laced them in the strait jackets of their criticism. "But all this
+availeth _us_ nothing," exclaimed the critics, "so long as _we_ see
+Mordecai the Jew sitting at the gate of the Temple; that is to say, as
+long as there is one Cockney pericranium left unscalped by the tomahawks
+of our satire." But notwithstanding the strenuous exertions of all those
+whose brains have not been cast in the mould of this new species of
+intellectual dandyism, the evil has been daily and even hourly
+increasing; and so prodigious is the progressive ratio of its march,
+that the _worthy_ Society for the Suppression of Vice should be called
+upon to eradicate it. It now no longer masks its real intentions under
+affected purity of sentiment; its countenance has recently acquired a
+considerable addition of brass, the glitter of which has often been
+mistaken for sterling coin, and incest, adultery, murder, blasphemy, are
+among other favorite topics of its discussion. It seems to delight in an
+utter perversion of all moral, intellectual, and religious qualities. It
+gluts over the monstrous deformities of nature; finds gratification in
+proportion to the magnitude of the crime it extolls; and sees no virtue
+but in vice; no sin, but in true feeling. Like poor Tom, in Lear, whom
+the foul fiend has possessed for many a day, it will run through
+ditches, through quagmires, and through bogs, to see a man stand on his
+head for the exact space of half an hour. Ask the reason of this raging
+appetite for eccentricity, the answer is, such a thing is out of the
+beaten track of manhood, _ergo_, it is praiseworthy.
+
+Among the professors of the Cockney school, Mr. Percy Bysshe Shell[e]y
+is one of the most conspicuous. With more fervid imagination and
+splendid talents than nine-tenths of the community, he yet prostitutes
+those talents by the utter degradation to which he unequivocally
+consigns them. His Rosalind and Helen, his Revolt of Islam, and his
+Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude, while they possess beauties of a
+superior order, are lamentably deficient in morality and religion. The
+doctrines they inculcate are of the most evil tendency; the characters
+they depict are of the most horrible description; but in the midst of
+these disgraceful passages, there are beauties of such exquisite, such
+redeeming qualities, that we adore while we pity--we admire while we
+execrate--and are tempted to exclaim with the last of the Romans, "Oh!
+what a fall is _here_, my countrymen." In the modern Eclogue of Rosalind
+and Helen in particular, there is a pensive sadness, a delicious
+melancholy, nurst in the purest, the deepest recesses of the heart, and
+springing up like a fountain in the desert, that pervades the poem, and
+forms its principal attraction. The rich yet delicate imagery that is
+every where scattered over it, is like the glowing splendor of the
+setting sun, when he retires to rest, amid the blessings of exulting
+nature. It is the balmy breath of the summer breeze, the twilight's last
+and holiest sigh. In the dramatic poem before us, the interest is of a
+different nature; it is dark--wild, and unearthly. The characters that
+appear in it are of no mortal stamp; they are dæmons in human guise,
+inscrutable in their actions, subtle in their revenge. Each has his
+smile of awful meaning--his purport of hellish tendency. The tempest
+that rages in his bosom is irrepressible but by death. The phrenzied
+groan that diseased imagination extorts from his perverted soul, is as
+the thunder-clap that reverberates amid the cloud-capt summits of the
+Alps. It is the storm that convulses all nature--that lays bare the face
+of heaven, and gives transient glimpses of destruction yet to be. Then
+in the midst of all these accumulated horrors comes the gentle Beatrice,
+
+    "Who in the gentleness of thy sweet youth
+    Hast never trodden on a worm, or bruised
+    A living flower, but thou hast pitied it
+    With needless tears." Page 50.
+
+She walks in the light of innocence; in the unclouded sunshine of
+loveliness and modesty; but her felicity is transient as the calm that
+precedes the tempest; and in the very whispers of her virtue, you hear
+the indistinct muttering of the distant thunder. She is conceived in
+the true master spirit of genius; and in the very instant of her
+parricide, comes home to our imagination fresh in the spring time of
+innocence--hallowed in the deepest recesses of melancholy. But
+notwithstanding all these transcendant qualities, there are numerous
+passages that warrant our introductory observations respecting the
+Cockney school, and plunge "full fathom five," into the profoundest
+depths of the Bathos. While, therefore, we do justice to the abilities
+of the author, we shall bestow a passing smile or two on his unfortunate
+Cockney propensities.
+
+The following are the principal incidents of the play. Count Cenci, the
+_dæmon_ of the piece, delighted with the intelligence of the death of
+two of his sons, recounts at a large assembly, specially invited for the
+purpose, the circumstances of the dreadful transaction. Lucretia, his
+wife, Beatrice, his daughter, and the other guests, are of course
+startled at his transports; but when they hear his awful imprecations,
+
+    "Oh, thou bright wine whose purple splendor leaps
+    And bubbles gaily in this golden bowl
+    Under the lamp light, as my spirits do,
+    To hear the death of my accursed sons!
+    Could I believe thou wert their mingled blood,
+    Then would I taste thee like a sacrament,
+    And pledge with thee the mighty Devil in Hell,
+    Who, if a father's curses, as men say,
+    Climb with swift wings after their children's souls,
+    And drag them from the very throne of Heaven,
+    Now triumphs in my triumph!--But thou art
+    Superfluous; I have drunken deep of joy
+    And I will taste no other wine tonight--"
+
+their horror induces them to leave the room. Beatrice, in the meantime,
+who has been rating her parent for his cruelty, is subjected to every
+species of insult; and he sends her to her own apartment, with the
+hellish intention of prostituting her innocence, and contaminating, as
+he pithily expresses it, "both body and soul." The second act introduces
+us to a tête-a-tête between Bernardo (another of Cenci's sons) and
+Lucretia; when their conference is suddenly broken off, by the abrupt
+entrance of Beatrice, who has escaped from the pursuit of the Count. She
+recapitulates the injuries she has received from her father, the most
+atrocious of which appear to be, that he has given them all "ditch
+water" to drink, and "buffalos" to eat. But before we proceed further,
+we have a word or two respecting this same ditch water, and buffalo's
+flesh, which we shall mention, as a piece of advice to the author. It is
+well known, we believe, in a case of lunacy, that the first thing
+considered is, whether the patient has done any thing sufficiently
+foolish, to induce his relatives to apply for a statute against him: now
+any malicious, evil-minded person, were he so disposed, might make
+successful application to the court against the luckless author of the
+_Cenci, a tragedy in five acts_. Upon which the judge with all the
+solemnity suitable to so melancholy a circumstance as the decay of the
+mental faculties, would ask for proofs of the defendant's lunacy; upon
+which the plaintiff would produce the affecting episode of the ditch
+water and buffalo flesh; upon which the judge would shake his head, and
+acknowledge the insanity; upon which the defendant would be incarcerated
+in Bedlam.
+
+To return from this digression, we are next introduced to Giacomo,
+another of Cenci's hopeful progeny, who, like the rest, has a dreadful
+tale to unfold of his father's cruelty towards him. Orsino, the favored
+lover of Beatrice, enters at the moment of his irritation; and by the
+most artful pleading ultimately incites him to the murder of his
+father, in which he is to be joined by the rest of the family. The plot,
+after one unlucky attempt, succeeds; and at the moment of its
+accomplishment, is discovered by a messenger, who is despatched to the
+lonely castle of Petrella (one of the Count's family residences), with a
+summons of attendance from the Pope. We need hardly say that the
+criminals are condemned; and not even the lovely Beatrice is able to
+escape the punishment of the law. The agitation she experiences after
+the commission of the incest, is powerfully descriptive.
+
+              "How comes this hair undone?
+    Its wandering strings must be what blind me so,
+    And yet I tied it fast.--O, horrible!
+    The pavement sinks under my feet! The walls
+    Spin round! I see a woman weeping there,
+    And standing calm and motionless, whilst I
+    Slide giddily as the world reels--My God!
+    The beautiful blue heaven is flecked with blood!
+    The sunshine on the floor is black! The air
+    Is changed to vapours such as the dead breathe
+    In charnel pits! Pah! I am choaked! There creeps
+    A clinging, black, contaminating mist
+    About me--'tis substantial, heavy, thick,
+    I cannot pluck it from me, for it glues
+    My fingers and my limbs to one another,
+    And eats into my sinews, and dissolves
+    My flesh to a pollution, poisoning
+    The subtle, pure, and inmost spirit of life!"
+
+At first she concludes that she is mad; but then pathetically checks
+herself by saying, "No, I am dead." Lucretia naturally enough inquires
+into the cause of her disquietude, and but too soon discovers, by the
+broken hints of the victim, the source of her mental agitation.
+Terrified at their defenceless state, they then mutually conspire with
+Orsino against the Count; and Beatrice proposes to way-lay him (a plot,
+however, which fails) in a _deep and dark ravine_, as he journeys to
+Petrella.
+
+              "But I remember
+    Two miles on this side of the fort, the road
+    Crosses a deep ravine; 'tis rough and narrow,
+    And winds with short turns down the precipice;
+    And in its depth there is a mighty rock,
+    Which has, from unimaginable years,
+    Sustained itself with terror and with toil
+    Over a gulph, and with the agony
+    With which it clings seems slowly coming down;
+    Even as a wretched soul hour after hour,
+    Clings to the mass of life; yet clinging, leans;
+    And leaning, makes more dark the dread abyss
+    In which it fears to fall: beneath this crag
+    Huge as despair, as if in weariness,
+    The melancholy mountain yawns--below,
+    You hear but see not an impetuous torrent
+    Raging among the caverns, and a bridge
+    Crosses the chasm; and high above there grow,
+    With intersecting trunks, from crag to crag,
+    Cedars, and yews, and pines; whose tangled hair
+    Is matted in one solid roof of shade
+    By the dark ivy's twine. At noon day here
+    'Tis twilight, and at sunset blackest night."
+
+Giacomo, meanwhile, who was privy to the transaction, awaits the arrival
+of Orsino, with intelligence of the murder, in a state of the most
+fearful torture and suspence.
+
+          "Tis midnight, and Orsino comes not yet.
+              (_Thunder, and the sound of a storm._)
+    What! can the everlasting elements
+    Feel with a worm like man? If so, the shaft
+    Of mercy-winged lightning would not fall
+    On stones and trees. My wife and children sleep:
+    They are now living in unmeaning dreams:
+    But I must wake, still doubting if that deed
+    Be just which was most necessary. O,
+    Thou unreplenished lamp! whose narrow fire
+    Is shaken by the wind, and on whose edge
+    Devouring darkness hovers! Thou small flame,
+    Which, as a dying pulse rises and falls,
+    Still flickerest up and down, how very soon,
+    Did I not feed thee, thou wouldst fail and be
+    As thou hadst never been! So wastes and sinks
+    Even now, perhaps, the life that kindled mine:
+    But that no power can fill with vital oil
+    That broken lamp of flesh. Ha! 'tis the blood
+    Which fed these veins that ebbs till all is cold:
+    It is the form that moulded mine that sinks
+    Into the white and yellow spasms of death:
+    It is the soul by which mine was arrayed
+    In God's immortal likeness which now stands
+    Naked before Heaven's judgment seat!
+                        (_a bell strikes_)
+                    One! Two!
+    The hours crawl on; and when my hairs are white
+    My son will then perhaps be waiting thus.
+    Tortured between just hate and vain remorse;
+    Chiding the tardy messenger of news
+    Like those which I expect. I almost wish
+    He be not dead, although my wrongs are great;
+    Yet--'tis Orsino's step."
+
+We envy not the feelings of any one who can read the curses that Cenci
+invokes on his daughter, when she refuses to repeat her guilt, without
+the strongest disgust, notwithstanding the intense vigor of the
+imprecations
+
+      "_Cen._ (_Kneeling_) God!
+    Hear me! If this most specious mass of flesh,
+    Which thou hast made my daughter; this my blood,
+    This particle of my divided being;
+    Or rather, this my bane and my disease,
+    Whose sight infects and poisons me; this devil
+    Which sprung from me as from a hell, was meant
+    To aught good use; if her bright loveliness
+    Was kindled to illumine this dark world;
+    If nursed by thy selectest dew of love
+    Such virtues blossom in her as should make
+    The peace of life, I pray thee for my sake
+    As thou the common God and Father art
+    Of her, and me, and all; reverse that doom!
+    Earth, in the name of God, let her food be
+    Poison, until she be encrusted round
+    With leprous stains! Heaven, rain upon her head
+    The blistering drops of the Maremma's dew,
+    Till she be speckled like a toad; parch up
+    Those love-enkindled lips, warp those fine limbs
+    To loathed lameness! All beholding sun,
+    Strike in thine envy those life darting eyes
+    With thine own blinding beams!
+      _Lucr._ Peace! Peace!
+    For thine own sake unsay those dreadful words.
+    When high God grants he punishes such prayers.
+      _Cen._ (_Leaping up, and throwing his right hand toward Heaven_)
+    He does his will, I mine! This in addition,
+    That if she have a child--
+      _Lucr._ Horrible thought!
+      _Cen._ That if she ever have a child; and thou,
+    Quick Nature! I adjure thee by thy God,
+    That thou be fruitful in her, and encrease
+    And multiply, fulfilling his command,
+    And my deep imprecation! May it be
+    A hideous likeness of herself, that as
+    From a distorting mirror, she may see
+    Her image mixed with what she most abhors,
+    Smiling upon her from her nursing breast.
+    And that the child may from its infancy
+    Grow, day by day, more wicked and deformed,
+    Turning her mother's love to misery:
+    And that both she and it may live until
+    It shall repay her care and pain with hate,
+    Or what may else be more unnatural.
+    So he may hunt her thro' the clamorous scoffs
+    Of the loud world to a dishonoured grave.
+    Shall I revoke this curse? Go, bid her come,
+    Before my words are chronicled in Heaven.
+                              (_Exit_ LUCRETIA.)
+    I do not feel as if I were a man,
+    But like a fiend appointed to chastise
+    The offences of some unremembered world.
+    My blood is running up and down my veins;
+    A fearful pleasure makes it prick and tingle:
+    I feel a giddy sickness of strange awe;
+    My heart is beating with an expectation
+    Of horrid joy."
+
+_Ohé! jam satis est!!_--The _minutiæ_ of this _affectionate_ parent's
+curses forcibly remind us of the equally minute excommunication so
+admirably recorded in Tristram Shandy. But Sterne has the start of him;
+for though Percy Bysshe Shell[e]y, Esquire, has contrived to include in
+the imprecations of Cenci, the eyes, head, lips, and limbs of his
+daughter, the other has anticipated his measures, in formally and
+specifically anathematizing the lights, lungs, liver, and _all odd
+joints_, without excepting even the great toe of his victim.--To proceed
+in our review; the dying expostulations of poor Beatrice, are beautiful
+and affecting, though occasionally tinged with the Cockney style of
+burlesque; for instance, Bernado asks, when they tear him from the
+embraces of his sister,
+
+    "Would ye divide body from soul?"
+
+On which the judge sturdily replies--"That is the headsman's business."
+The idea of approaching execution paralyses the soul of Beatrice, and
+she thus frantically expresses her horror.
+
+      "_Beatr._ (_Wildly_) Oh,
+    My God! Can it be possible I have
+    To die so suddenly? So young to go
+    Under the obscure, cold, rotting, wormy ground!
+    To be nailed down into a narrow place;
+    To see no more sweet sunshine; hear no more
+    Blithe voice of living thing; muse not again
+    Upon familiar thoughts, sad, yet thus lost.
+    How fearful! to be nothing! Or to be--
+    What? O, where am I? Let me not go mad!
+    Sweet Heaven, forgive weak thoughts! If there should be
+    No God, no Heaven, no Earth in the void world;
+    The wide, grey, lampless, deep, unpeopled world!
+    If all things then should be--my father's spirit
+    His eye, his voice, his touch surrounding me;
+    The atmosphere and breath of my dead life!
+    If sometimes, as a shape more like himself,
+    Even the form which tortured me on earth,
+    Masked in grey hairs and wrinkles, he should come
+    And wind me in his hellish arms, and fix
+    His eyes on mine, and drag me down, down, down!"
+
+The author, in his preface, observes that he has committed only one
+plagiarism in his play. But with all the triumph of vanity, we here
+stoutly convict him of having wilfully, maliciously and despitefully
+stolen, the pleasing idea of the repetition of "down, down, down," from
+the equally pathetic and instructive ditty of "up, up, up," in Tom
+Thumb; the exordium or prolegomena to which floweth _sweetly_ and
+_poetically_ thus:--
+
+    "Here we go up, up, up,
+    And here we go _down, down, down_!"
+
+In taking leave of Mr. Shelley, we have a few observations to whisper in
+his ear. That he has the seedlings of poetry in his composition no one
+can deny, after the perusal of many of our extracts; that he employs
+them worthily, is more than can be advanced. His style, though disgraced
+by occasional puerilities, and simpering affectations, is in general
+bold, vigorous, and manly; but the disgraceful fault to which we object
+in his writings, is the scorn he every where evinces for all that is
+moral or religious. If he must be skeptical--if he must be lax in his
+human codes of excellence, let him be so; but in God's name let him not
+publish his principles, and cram them down the throats of others.
+Existence in its present state is heavy enough; and if we take away the
+idea of eternal happiness, however visionary it may appear to some, who
+or what is to recompence us for the loss we have sustained? Will
+scepticism lighten the bed of death?--Will vice soothe the pillow of
+declining age? If so! let us all be sceptics, let us all be vicious; but
+until their admirable efficacy is proved, let us jog on the beaten
+course of life, neither influenced by the scoff of infidelity, nor
+fascinated by the dazzling but flimsy garb of licentiousness and
+immorality.--_The London Magazine_.
+
+
+ADONAIS. _An Elegy, on the Death of Mr. John Keats_. By P.B. Shelley.
+
+We have already given some of our columns to this writer's merits, and
+we will not now repeat our convictions of his incurable absurdity. On
+the last occasion of our alluding to him, we were compelled to notice
+his horrid licentiousness and profaneness, his fearful offences to all
+the maxims that honorable minds are in the habit of respecting, and his
+plain defiance of Christianity. On the present occasion we are not met
+by so continued and regular a determination of insult, though there are
+atrocities to be found in the poem quite enough to make us caution our
+readers against its pages. Adonais is an elegy after _the manner of
+Moschus_, on a foolish young man, who, after writing some volumes of
+very weak, and, in the greater part, of very indecent poetry, died some
+time since of a consumption: the breaking down of an infirm constitution
+having, in all probability, been accelerated by the discarding his neck
+cloth, a practice of the cockney poets, who look upon it as essential to
+genius, inasmuch as neither Michael Angelo, Raphael or Tasso are
+supposed to have worn those antispiritual incumbrances. In short, as the
+vigour of Sampson lay in his hair, the secret of talent with these
+persons lies in the neck; and what aspirations can be expected from a
+mind enveloped in muslin. Keats caught cold in training for a genius,
+and, after a lingering illness, died, to the great loss of the
+Independents of South America, whom he had intended to visit with an
+English epic poem, for the purpose of exciting them to liberty. But
+death, even the death of the radically presumptuous profligate, is a
+serious thing; and as we believe that Keats was made presumptuous
+chiefly by the treacherous puffing of his cockney fellow gossips, and
+profligate in his poems merely to make them saleable, we regret that he
+did not live long enough to acquire common sense, and abjure the
+pestilent and perfidious gang who betrayed his weakness to the grave,
+and are now panegyrising his memory into contempt. For what is the
+praise of cockneys but disgrace, or what honourable inscription can be
+placed over the dead by the hands of notorious libellers, exiled
+adulterers, and avowed atheists.
+
+Adonais, an Elegy, is the form in which Mr. Shelley puts forth his woes.
+We give a verse at random, premising that there is no story in the
+elegy, and that it consists of fifty-five stanzas, which are, to our
+seeming, altogether unconnected, interjectional, and nonsensical. We
+give one that we think among the more comprehensible. An address to
+Urania:--
+
+      "Most musical of mourners, weep anew!
+      Not all to that bright station dared to climb;
+    And _happier they their happiness who knew_,
+      Whose _tapers yet burn thro' that night of time
+    In which suns perish'd_; Others more sublime,
+      Struck by the _envious_ wroth of man or GOD!!
+    _Have sunk extinct in their refulgent prime_;
+      And some yet live," &c.----
+
+Now what is the meaning of this, or of any sentence of it, except indeed
+that horrid blasphemy which attributes crime to the Great Author of all
+virtue! The rest is mere empty absurdity. If it were worth our while to
+dilate on the folly of the production, we might find examples of every
+species of the ridiculous within those few pages.
+
+Mr. Shelley summons all kinds of visions round the grave of this young
+man, who, if he has now any feeling of the earth, must shrink with
+shame and disgust from the touch of the hand that could have written
+that impious sentence. These he classifies under names, the greater
+number as new we believe to poetry as strange to common sense. Those
+are--
+
+                  ----"Desires and _Adorations_
+      Winged _Persuasions_ and veiled Destinies,
+    _Splendours_, and _Glooms_, and glimmering _Incarnations_
+      Of hopes and fears and twilight Phantasies,
+    And Sorrow with her family of _Sighs_,
+      And Pleasure, _blind with tears_! led by the _gleam_
+    Of her own _dying_ SMILE instead of eyes!!"
+
+Let our readers try to imagine these weepers, and close with "_blind_
+Pleasure led," by what? "by the _light_ of _her own dying
+smile_--instead of _eyes_!!!"
+
+We give some specimens of Mr. S.'s
+
+                _Nonsense--pastoral._
+      "_Lost Echo_ sits amid the _voiceless mountains_,[M]
+      And feeds her grief with his remember'd lay,
+    _And will no more reply_ to winds and fountains."
+                _Nonsense--physical._
+    --"for whose disdain she (Echo) pin'd away
+    Into a _shadow_ of all _sounds_!"
+                _Nonsense--vermicular._
+    "Flowers springing from the corpse
+    ----------------------illumine death
+    And _mock_ the _merry_ worm that wakes beneath."
+                _Nonsense--pathetic._
+      "Alas! that all we lov'd of him should be
+      But for our grief, as if it had not been,
+    And _grief itself be mortal_! WOE IS ME!"
+                _Nonsense--nondescript._
+      "In the death chamber for a moment Death,
+    _Blush'd to annihilation_!"
+                _Nonsense--personal._
+    "A pardlike spirit, beautiful and swift--
+      A love in _desolation mask'd_;--a Power
+    Girt _round with weakness_;--it can scarce _uplift_
+    The _weight_ of the _superincumbent hour_!"
+
+We have some idea that this fragment of character is intended for Mr.
+Shelley himself. It closes with a passage of memorable and ferocious
+blasphemy:--
+
+      ---------------"He with a sudden hand
+    Made bare his branded and ensanguin'd brow,
+    Which was like Cain's or CHRIST'S!!!"
+
+What can be said to the wretched person capable of this daring
+profanation. The name of the first murderer--the accurst of God--brought
+into the same aspect image with that of the Saviour of the World! We are
+scarcely satisfied that even to quote such passages may not be criminal.
+The subject is too repulsive for us to proceed even in expressing our
+disgust for the general folly that makes the Poem as miserable in point
+of authorship, as in point of principle. We know that among a certain
+class this outrage and this inanity meet with some attempt at
+palliation, under the idea that frenzy holds the pen. That any man who
+insults the common order of society, and denies the being of God, is
+essentially mad we never doubted. But for the madness, that retains
+enough of rationality to be wilfully mischievous, we can have no more
+lenity than for the appetites of a wild beast. The poetry of the work is
+_contemptible_--a mere collection of bloated words heaped on each other
+without order, harmony, or meaning; the refuse of a schoolboy's
+common-place book, full of the vulgarisms of pastoral poetry, yellow
+gems and blue stars, bright Phoebus and rosy-fingered Aurora; and of
+this stuff is Keats's wretched Elegy compiled.
+
+We might add instances of like incomprehensible folly from every stanza.
+A heart _keeping_, a mute _sleep_, and death _feeding_ on a mute
+_voice_, occur in one verse (page 8); Spring in despair "throws down her
+_kindling_ buds as if she Autumn were," a thing we never knew Autumn do
+with buds of any sort, the kindling kind being unknown to our botany; a
+_green lizard_ is like an _unimprisoned flame_, _waking_ out of its
+_trance_ (page 13). In the same page the _leprous corpse_ touched by the
+tender spirit of Spring, so as to exhale itself in flowers, is compared
+to "_incarnations of the stars, when splendour is changed to
+fragrance_!!!" Urania (page 15) _wounds_ the "invisible palms" of her
+tender feet by treading on human hearts as she journeys to see the
+corpse. Page 22, somebody is asked to "clasp with panting soul the
+pendulous earth," an image which, we take it, exceeds that of
+Shakespeare, to "put a girdle about it in forty minutes."
+
+It is so far a fortunate thing that this piece of impious and utter
+absurdity can have little circulation in Britain. The copy in our hands
+is one of some score sent to the Author's intimates from Pisa, where it
+has been printed in a quarto form "with the types of Didot," and two
+learned Epigraphs from Plato and Moschus. Solemn as the subject is, (for
+in truth we must grieve for the early death of any youth of literary
+ambition,) it is hardly possible to help laughing at the mock solemnity
+with which Shelley charges the Quarterly Review for having murdered his
+friend with--a critique![N] If criticism killed the disciples of that
+school, Shelley would not have been alive to write an Elegy on
+another:--but the whole is most farcical from a pen which on other
+occasions, has treated of the soul, the body, life and death agreeably
+to the opinions, the principles, and the practice of Percy Bysshe
+Shelley.--_The Literary Gazette_.
+
+[Footnote M: Though there is _no Echo_ and the mountains are
+_voiceless_, the woodmen, nevertheless, in the last line of this verse
+hear "a drear murmur between their Songs!!"]
+
+[Footnote N: This would have done excellently for a coroner's inquest
+like that on _Honey_, which lasted _thirty_ days, and was facetiously
+called the "Honey-moon."]
+
+
+
+
+JOHN KEATS
+
+
+_Endymion: A Poetic Romance_. By John Keats. London. 1818. pp. 207.
+
+Reviewers have been sometimes accused of not reading the works which
+they affected to criticise. On the present occasion we shall anticipate
+the author's complaint, and honestly confess that we have not read his
+work. Not that we have been wanting in our duty--far from it--indeed, we
+have made efforts almost as superhuman as the story itself appears to
+be, to get through it; but with the fullest stretch of our perseverance,
+we are forced to confess that we have not been able to struggle beyond
+the first of the four books of which this Poetic Romance consists. We
+should extremely lament this want of energy, or whatever it may be, on
+our parts, were it not for one consolation--namely, that we are no
+better acquainted with the meaning of the book through which we have so
+painfully toiled, than we are with that of the three which we have not
+looked into.
+
+It is not that Mr. Keats, (if that be his real name, for we almost doubt
+that any man in his senses would put his real name to such a rhapsody,)
+it is not, we say, that the author has not powers of language, rays of
+fancy, and gleams of genius--he has all these; but he is unhappily a
+disciple of the new school of what has been somewhere called Cockney
+poetry; which may be defined to consist of the most incongruous ideas in
+the most uncouth language.
+
+Of this school, Mr. Leigh Hunt, as we observed in a former Number,
+aspires to be the hierophant. Our readers will recollect the pleasant
+recipes for harmonious and sublime poetry which he gave us in his
+preface to 'Rimini,' and the still more facetious instances of his
+harmony and sublimity in the verses themselves; and they will recollect
+above all the contempt of Pope, Johnson, and such like poetasters and
+pseudo-critics, which so forcibly contrasted itself with Mr. Leigh
+Hunt's self-complacent approbation of
+
+    --'all the things itself had wrote,
+    Of special merit though of little note.'
+
+This author is a copyist of Mr. Hunt; but he is more unintelligible,
+almost as rugged, twice as diffuse, and ten times more tiresome and
+absurd than his prototype, who, though he impudently presumed to seat
+himself in the chair of criticism, and to measure his own poetry by his
+own standard, yet generally had a meaning. But Mr. Keats has advanced no
+dogmas which he was bound to support by examples; his nonsense therefore
+is quite gratuitous; he writes it for its own sake, and, being bitten by
+Mr. Leigh Hunt's insane criticism, more than rivals the insanity of his
+poetry.
+
+Mr. Keats's preface hints that his poem was produced under peculiar
+circumstances.
+
+     'Knowing within myself (he says) the manner in which this Poem has
+     been produced, it is not without a feeling of regret that I make it
+     public.--What manner I mean, will be _quite clear_ to the reader,
+     who must soon perceive great inexperience, immaturity, and every
+     error denoting a feverish attempt, rather than a deed
+     accomplished.'--_Preface_, p. vii.
+
+We humbly beg his pardon, but this does not appear to us to be _quite so
+clear_--we really do not know what he means--but the next passage is
+more intelligible.
+
+     'The two first books, and indeed the two last, I feel sensible are
+     not of such completion as to warrant their passing the
+     press.'--_Preface_, p. vii.
+
+Thus 'the two first books' are, even in his own judgment, unfit to
+appear, and 'the two last' are, it seems, in the same condition--and as
+two and two make four, and as that is the whole number of books, we have
+a clear and, we believe, a very just estimate of the entire work.
+
+Mr. Keats, however, deprecates criticism on this 'immature and feverish
+work' in terms which are themselves sufficiently feverish; and we
+confess that we should have abstained from inflicting upon him any of
+the tortures of the '_fierce hell_' of criticism, which terrify his
+imagination, if he had not begged to be spared in order that he might
+write more; if we had not observed in him a certain degree of talent
+which deserves to be put in the right way, or which, at least, ought to
+be warned of the wrong; and if, finally, he had not told us that he is
+of an age and temper which imperiously require mental discipline.
+
+Of the story we have been able to make out but little; it seems to be
+mythological, and probably relates to the loves of Diana and Endymion;
+but of this, as the scope of the work has altogether escaped us, we
+cannot speak with any degree of certainty; and must therefore content
+ourselves with giving some instances of its diction and
+versification:--and here again we are perplexed and puzzled.--At first
+it appeared to us, that Mr. Keats had been amusing himself and wearying
+his readers with an immeasurable game at _bouts-rimés_; but, if we
+recollect rightly, it is an indispensable condition at this play, that
+the rhymes when filled up shall have a meaning; and our author, as we
+have already hinted, has no meaning. He seems to us to write a line at
+random, and then he follows not the thought excited by this line, but
+that suggested by the _rhyme_ with which it concludes. There is hardly
+a complete couplet enclosing a complete idea in the whole book. He
+wanders from one subject to another, from the association, not of the
+ideas but of sounds, and the work is composed of hemistichs which, it is
+quite evident, have forced themselves upon the author by the mere force
+of the catchwords on which they turn.
+
+We shall select, not as the most striking instance, but as that least
+liable to suspicion, a passage from the opening of the poem.
+
+    ----'Such the sun, the moon,
+    Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon
+    For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
+    With the green world they live in; and clear rills
+    That for themselves a cooling covert make
+    'Gainst the hot season; the mid forest brake,
+    Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
+    And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
+    We have imagined for the mighty dead; &c. &c.'--pp. 3, 4.
+
+Here it is clear that the word, and not the idea, _moon_ produces the
+simple sheep and their shady _boon_, and that 'the _dooms_ of the mighty
+dead' would never have intruded themselves but for the '_fair musk-rose
+blooms_.'
+
+Again.
+
+    'For 'twas the morn: Apollo's upward fire
+    Made every eastern cloud a silvery pyre
+    Of brightness so unsullied, that therein
+    A melancholy spirit well might win
+    Oblivion, and melt out his essence fine
+    Into the winds: rain-scented eglantine
+    Gave temperate sweets to that well-wooing sun;
+    The lark was lost in him; cold springs had run
+    To warm their chilliest bubbles in the grass;
+    Man's voice was on the mountains; and the mass
+    Of nature's lives and wonders puls'd tenfold,
+    To feel this sun-rise and its glories old.'--p. 8.
+
+Here Apollo's _fire_ produces a _pyre_, a silvery pyre of clouds,
+_wherein_ a spirit may _win_ oblivion and melt his essence _fine_, and
+scented _eglantine_ gives sweets to the _sun_, and cold springs had
+_run_ into the _grass_, and then the pulse of the _mass_ pulsed
+_tenfold_ to feel the glories _old_ of the new-born day, &c.
+
+One example more.
+
+    'Be still the unimaginable lodge
+    For solitary thinkings; such as dodge
+    Conception to the very bourne of heaven,
+    Then leave the naked brain: be still the leaven,
+    That spreading in this dull and clodded earth
+    Gives it a touch ethereal--a new birth.'--p. 17.
+
+_Lodge, dodge_--_heaven, leaven_--_earth, birth_; such, in six words, is
+the sum and substance of six lines.
+
+We come now to the author's taste in versification. He cannot indeed
+write a sentence, but perhaps he may be able to spin a line. Let us see.
+The following are specimens of his prosodial notions of our English
+heroic metre.
+
+    'Dear as the temple's self, so does the moon,
+    The passion poesy, glories infinite.'--p. 4.
+
+    'So plenteously all weed-hidden roots.'--p. 6.
+
+    'Of some strange history, potent to send.'--p. 18.
+
+    'Before the deep intoxication.'--p. 27.
+
+    'Her scarf into a fluttering pavilion.'--p. 33.
+
+    'The stubborn canvass for my voyage prepared--.'--p. 39.
+
+    '"Endymion! the cave is secreter
+    Than the isle of Delos. Echo hence shall stir
+    No sighs but sigh-warm kisses, or light noise
+    Of thy combing hand, the while it travelling cloys
+    And trembles through my labyrinthine hair."'--p. 48.
+
+By this time our readers must be pretty well satisfied as to the meaning
+of his sentences and the structure of his lines: we now present them
+with some of the new words with which, in imitation of Mr. Leigh Hunt,
+he adorns our language.
+
+We are told that 'turtles _passion_ their voices,' (p. 15); that 'an
+arbour was _nested_,' (p. 23); and a lady's locks '_gordian'd_ up,' (p.
+32); and to supply the place of the nouns thus verbalized Mr. Keats,
+with great fecundity, spawns new ones; such as 'men-slugs and human
+_serpentry_,' (p. 41); the '_honey-feel_ of bliss,' (p. 45); 'wives
+prepare _needments_,' (p. 13)--and so forth.
+
+Then he has formed new verbs by the process of cutting off their natural
+tails, the adverbs, and affixing them to their foreheads; thus, 'the
+wine out-sparkled,' (p. 10); the 'multitude up-followed,' (p. 11); and
+'night up-took,' (p. 29). 'The wind up-blows,' (p. 32); and the 'hours
+are down-sunken,' (p. 36.)
+
+But if he sinks some adverbs in the verbs, he compensates the language
+with adverbs and adjectives which he separates from the parent stock.
+Thus, a lady 'whispers _pantingly_ and close,' makes '_hushing_ signs,'
+and steers her skiff into a '_ripply_ cove,' (p. 23); a shower falls
+'_refreshfully_,' (45); and a vulture has a '_spreaded_ tail,' (p. 44.)
+
+But enough of Mr. Leigh Hunt and his simple neophyte.--If any one should
+be bold enough to purchase this 'Poetic Romance,' and so much more
+patient, than ourselves, as to get beyond the first book, and so much
+more fortunate as to find a meaning, we entreat him to make us
+acquainted with his success; we shall then return to the task which we
+now abandon in despair, and endeavour to make all due amends to Mr.
+Keats and to our readers.--_The Quarterly Review_.
+
+
+COCKNEY SCHOOL OF POETRY.
+
+No[.] IV.
+
+    ------------------------------OF KEATS,
+    THE MUSES' SON OF PROMISE, AND WHAT FEATS
+    HE YET MAY DO, &C.
+
+CORNELIUS WEBB.
+
+Of all the manias of this mad age, the most incurable as well as the
+most common, seems to be no other than the _Metromanie_. The just
+celebrity of Robert Burns and Miss Baillie has had the melancholy effect
+of turning the heads of we know not how many farm-servants and unmarried
+ladies; our very footmen compose tragedies, and there is scarcely a
+superannuated governess in the island that does not leave a roll of
+lyrics behind her in her band-box. To witness the disease of any human
+understanding, however feeble, is distressing; but the spectacle of an
+able mind reduced to a state of insanity is of course ten times more
+afflicting. It is with such sorrow as this that we have contemplated the
+case of Mr John Keats. This young man appears to have received from
+nature talents of an excellent, perhaps even of a superior
+order--talents which, devoted to the purposes of any useful profession,
+must have rendered him a respectable, if not an eminent citizen. His
+friends, we understand, destined him to the career of medicine, and he
+was bound apprentice some years ago to a worthy apothecary in town. But
+all has been undone by a sudden attack of the malady to which we have
+alluded. Whether Mr John had been sent home with a diuretic or composing
+draught to some patient far gone in the poetical mania, we have not
+heard. This much is certain, that he has caught the infection, and that
+thoroughly. For some time we were in hopes, that he might get off with a
+violent fit or two; but of late the symptoms are terrible. The phrenzy
+of the "Poems" was bad enough in its way; but it did not alarm us half
+so seriously as the calm, settled, imperturbable, drivelling idiocy of
+"Endymion." We hope, however, that in so young a person, and with a
+constitution originally so good, even now the disease is not utterly
+incurable. Time, firm treatment, and rational restraint, do much for
+many apparently hopeless invalids; and if Mr Keats should happen, at
+some interval of reason, to cast his eye upon our pages, he may perhaps
+be convinced of the existence of his malady, which, in such cases, is
+often all that is necessary to put the patient in a fair way of being
+cured.
+
+The readers of the Examiner newspaper were informed, some time ago, by a
+solemn paragraph, in Mr Hunt's best style, of the appearance of two new
+stars of glorious magnitude and splendour in the poetical horizon of the
+land of Cockaigne. One of these turned out, by and by, to be no other
+than Mr John Keats. This precocious adulation confirmed the wavering
+apprentice in his desire to quit the gallipots, and at the same time
+excited in his too susceptible mind a fatal admiration for the character
+and talents of the most worthless and affected of all the versifiers of
+our time. One of his first productions was the following sonnet,
+"_written on the day when Mr Leigh Hunt left prison_." It will be
+recollected, that the cause of Hunt's confinement was a series of libels
+against his sovereign, and that its fruit was the odious and incestuous
+"Story of Rimini."
+
+    "What though, for shewing truth to flattered state,
+    _Kind Hunt_ was shut in prison, yet has he,
+    In his immortal spirit been as free
+    As the sky-searching lark and as elate.
+    Minion of grandeur! think you he did wait?
+    Think you he nought but prison walls did see,
+    Till, so unwilling, thou unturn'dst the key?
+    Ah, no! far happier, nobler was his fate!
+    _In Spenser's halls!_ he strayed, and bowers fair,
+    Culling enchanted flowers; and he flew
+    _With daring Milton!_ through the fields of air;
+    To regions of his own his genius true
+    Took happy flights. Who shall his fame impair
+    When thou art dead, and all thy wretched crew?"
+
+The absurdity of the thought in this sonnet is, however, if possible,
+surpassed in another, "_addressed to Haydon_" the painter, that clever,
+but most affected artist, who as little resembles Raphael in genius as
+he does in person, notwithstanding the foppery of having his hair curled
+over his shoulders in the old Italian fashion. In this exquisite piece
+it will be observed, that Mr Keats classes together WORDSWORTH, HUNT,
+and HAYDON, as the three greatest spirits of the age, and that he
+alludes to himself, and some others of the rising brood of Cockneys, as
+likely to attain hereafter an equally honourable elevation. Wordsworth
+and Hunt! what a juxta-position! The purest, the loftiest, and, we do
+not fear to say it, the most classical of living English poets, joined
+together in the same compliment with the meanest, the filthiest, and the
+most vulgar of Cockney poetasters. No wonder that he who could be guilty
+of this should class Haydon with Raphael, and himself with Spencer
+[_sic_].
+
+    "Great spirits now on earth are sojourning;
+    He of the cloud, the cataract, the lake,
+    Who on Helvellyn's summit, wide awake,
+    Catches his freshness from Archangel's wing:
+    _He of the rose, the violet, the spring,
+    The social smile, the chain for Freedom's sake_:
+    And lo!--whose steadfastness would never take
+    A meaner sound than Raphael's whispering.
+    And other spirits there are standing apart
+    Upon the forehead of the age to come;
+    These, these will give the world another heart,
+    And other pulses. _Hear ye not the hum
+    Of mighty workings?----
+    Listen awhile ye nations, and be dumb._"
+
+The nations are to listen and be dumb! and why, good Johnny Keats?
+because Leigh Hunt is editor of the Examiner, and Haydon has painted the
+judgment of Solomon, and you and Cornelius Webb, and a few more city
+sparks, are pleased to look upon yourselves as so many future
+Shakespeares and Miltons! The world has really some reason to look to
+its foundations! Here is a _tempestas in matulâ_ with a vengeance. At
+the period when these sonnets were published Mr Keats had no hesitation
+in saying that he looked on himself as "_not yet_ a glorious denizen of
+the wide heaven of poetry," but he had many fine soothing visions of
+coming greatness, and many rare plans of study to prepare him for it.
+The following we think is very pretty raving.
+
+              "Why so sad a moan?
+    Life is the rose's hope while yet unblown;
+    The reading of an ever-changing tale;
+    The light uplifting of a maiden's veil;
+    A pigeon tumbling in clear summer air;
+    A laughing school-boy, without grief or care,
+    Riding the springing branches of an elm.
+
+    "O for ten years, that I may overwhelm
+    Myself in poesy; so I may do the deed
+    That my own soul has to itself decreed.
+    Then will I pass the countries that I see
+    In long perspective, and continually
+    Taste their pure fountains. First the realm I'll pass
+    Of Flora, and old Pan: sleep in the grass,
+    Feed on apples red, and strawberries,
+    And choose each pleasure that my fancy sees.
+    Catch the white-handed nymphs in shady places,
+    To woo sweet kisses from averted faces,--
+    Play with their fingers, touch their shoulders white
+    Into a pretty shrinking with a bite
+    As hard as lips can make it: till agreed,
+    A lovely tale of human life we'll read.
+    And one will teach a tame dove how it best
+    May fan the cool air gently o'er my rest;
+    Another, bending o'er her nimble tread,
+    Will set a green robe floating round her head,
+    And still will dance with ever varied ease,
+    Smiling upon the flowers and the trees:
+    Another will entice me on, and on
+    Through almond blossoms and rich cinnamon;
+    Till in the bosom of a leafy world
+    We rest in silence, like two gems upcurl'd
+    In the recesses of a pearly shell."
+
+Having cooled a little from this "fine passion," our youthful poet
+passes very naturally into a long strain of foaming abuse against a
+certain class of English Poets, whom, with Pope at their head, it is
+much the fashion with the ignorant unsettled pretenders of the present
+time to undervalue. Begging these gentlemens' pardon, although Pope was
+not a poet of the same high order with some who are now living, yet, to
+deny his genius, is just about as absurd as to dispute that of
+Wordsworth, or to believe in that of Hunt. Above all things, it is most
+pitiably ridiculous to hear men, of whom their country will always have
+reason to be proud, reviled by uneducated and flimsy striplings, who are
+not capable of understanding either their merits, or those of any other
+_men of power_--fanciful dreaming tea-drinkers, who, without logic
+enough to analyze a single idea, or imagination enough to form one
+original image, or learning enough to distinguish between the written
+language of Englishmen and the spoken jargon of Cockneys, presume to
+talk with contempt of some of the most exquisite spirits the world ever
+produced, merely because they did not happen to exert their faculties in
+laborious affected descriptions of flowers seen in window-pots, or
+cascades heard at Vauxhall; in short, because they chose to be wits,
+philosophers, patriots, and poets, rather than to found the Cockney
+school of versification, morality and politics, a century before its
+time. After blaspheming himself into a fury against Boileau, &c. Mr
+Keats comforts himself and his readers with a view of the present more
+promising aspect of affairs; above all, with the ripened glories of the
+poet of Rimini. Addressing the manes of the departed chiefs of English
+poetry, he informs them, in the following clear and touching manner, of
+the existence of "him of the Rose," &c.
+
+              "From a thick brake,
+    Nested and quiet in a valley mild,
+    Bubbles a pipe; fine sounds are floating wild
+    About the earth. Happy are ye and glad."
+
+From this he diverges into a view of "things in general." We smile when
+we think to ourselves how little most of our readers will understand of
+what follows.
+
+    "Yet I rejoice: a myrtle fairer than
+    E'er grew in Paphos, from the bitter weeds
+    Lifts its sweet head into the air, and feeds
+    A silent space with ever sprouting green.
+    All tenderest birds there find a pleasant screen,
+    Creep through the shade with jaunty fluttering,
+    Nibble the little cupped flowers and sing.
+    Then let us clear away the choaking _thorns_
+    From round its gentle stem; let the young _fawns_,
+    Yeaned in after times, when we are flown,
+    Find a fresh sward beneath it, overgrown
+    With simple flowers: let there nothing be
+    More boisterous than a lover's bended knee;
+    Nought more ungentle than the placid look
+    Of one who leans upon a closed book;
+    Nought more untranquil than the grassy slopes
+    Between two hills. All hail delightful hopes!
+    As she was wont, th' imagination
+    Into most lovely labyrinths will be gone,
+    And they shall be accounted poet kings
+    Who simply tell the most heart-easing things.
+    O may these joys be ripe before I die.
+    Will not some say that I presumptuously
+    Have spoken? that from hastening disgrace
+    'Twere better far to hide my foolish face?
+    That whining boyhood should with reverence bow
+    Ere the dreadful thunderbolt could reach? How!
+    If I do hide myself, it sure shall be
+    In the very fane, the light of poesy."
+
+From some verses addressed to various amiable individuals of the other
+sex, it appears, notwithstanding all this gossamer-work, that Johnny's
+affections are not entirely confined to objects purely etherial. Take,
+by way of specimen, the following prurient and vulgar lines, evidently
+meant for some young lady east of Temple-bar.
+
+              "Add too, the sweetness
+    Of thy honied voice; the neatness
+    Of thine ankle lightly turn'd:
+    With those beauties, scarce discern'd,
+    Kept with such sweet privacy,
+    That they seldom meet the eye
+    Of the little loves that fly
+    Round about with eager pry.
+    Saving when, with freshening lave,
+    Thou dipp'st them in the taintless wave;
+    Like twin water lilies, born
+    In the coolness of the morn
+    O, if thou hadst breathed then,
+    Now the Muses had been ten.
+    Couldst thou wish for lineage _higher_
+    Than twin sister of _Thalia_?
+    At last for ever, evermore,
+    Will I call the Graces four."
+
+Who will dispute that our poet, to use his own phrase (and rhyme),
+
+    "Can mingle music fit for the soft _ear_
+    Of Lady _Cytherea_."
+
+So much for the opening bud; now for the expanded flower. It is time to
+pass from the juvenile "Poems," to the mature and elaborate "Endymion, a
+Poetic Romance." The old story of the moon falling in love with a
+shepherd, so prettily told by a Roman Classic, and so exquisitely
+enlarged and adorned by one of the most elegant of German poets, has
+been seized upon by Mr John Keats, to be done with as might seem good
+unto the sickly fancy of one who never read a single line either of Ovid
+or of Wieland. If the quantity, not the quality, of the verses dedicated
+to the story is to be taken into account, there can be no doubt that Mr
+John Keats may now claim Endymion entirely to himself. To say the truth,
+we do not suppose either the Latin or the German poet would be very
+anxious to dispute about the property of the hero of the "Poetic
+Romance." Mr Keats has thoroughly appropriated the character, if not the
+name. His Endymion is not a Greek shepherd, loved by a Grecian goddess;
+he is merely a young Cockney rhymester, dreaming a phantastic dream at
+the full of the moon. Costume, were it worth while to notice such a
+trifle, is violated in every page of this goodly octavo. From his
+prototype Hunt, John Keats has acquired a sort of vague idea, that the
+Greeks were a most tasteful people, and that no mythology can be so
+finely adapted for the purposes of poetry as theirs. It is amusing to
+see what a hand the two Cockneys make of this mythology; the one
+confesses that he never read the Greek Tragedians, and the other knows
+Homer only from Chapman; and both of them write about Apollo, Pan,
+Nymphs, Muses, and Mysteries, as might be expected from persons of their
+education. We shall not, however, enlarge at present upon this subject,
+as we mean to dedicate an entire paper to the classical attainments and
+attempts of the Cockney poets. As for Mr Keats' "Endymion," it has just
+as much to do with Greece as it has with "old Tartary the fierce;" no
+man, whose mind has ever been imbued with the smallest knowledge or
+feeling of classical poetry or classical history, could have stooped to
+profane and vulgarise every association in the manner which has been
+adopted by this "son of promise." Before giving any extracts, we must
+inform our readers, that this romance is meant to be written in English
+heroic rhyme. To those who have read any of Hunt's poems, this hint
+might indeed be needless. Mr Keats has adopted the loose, nerveless
+versification, and the Cockney rhymes of the poet of Rimini; but in
+fairness to that gentleman, we must add, that the defects of the system
+are tenfold more conspicuous in his disciple's work than in his own. Mr
+Hunt is a small poet, but he is a clever man. Mr Keats is a still
+smaller poet, and he is only a boy of pretty abilities, which he has
+done everything in his power to spoil.
+
+[Quotes almost two hundred lines of _Endymion_ with brief interpolated
+comment.]
+
+And now, good-morrow to "the Muses' son of Promise;" as for "the feats
+he yet may do," as we do not pretend to say, like himself, "Muse of my
+native land am I inspired," we shall adhere to the safe old rule of
+_pauca verba_. We venture to make one small prophecy, that his
+bookseller will not a second time venture £50 upon any thing he can
+write. It is a better and a wiser thing to be a starved apothecary than
+a starved poet; so back to the shop Mr John, back to "plasters, pills,
+and ointment boxes," &c. But, for Heaven's sake, young Sangrado, be a
+little more sparing of extenuatives and soporifics in your practice than
+you have been in your poetry.
+
+Z.
+
+--_Blackwood's Magazine_.
+
+
+
+
+ALFRED LORD TENNYSON
+
+
+_Timbuctoo: a Poem, which obtained the Chancellor's Medal at the
+Cambridge Commencement_, _by A. Tennyson, of Trinity College,
+Cambridge._
+
+We have accustomed ourselves to think, perhaps without any good reason,
+that poetry was likely to perish among us for a considerable period
+after the great generation of poets which is now passing away. The age
+seems determined to contradict us, and that in the most decided manner,
+for it has put forth poetry by a young man, and that where we should
+least expect it, namely, in a prize-poem. These productions have often
+been ingenious and elegant, but we have never before seen one of them
+which indicated really first-rate poetical genius, and which would have
+done honour to any man that ever wrote. Such, we do not hesitate to
+affirm, is the little work before us; and the examiners seem to have
+felt about it like ourselves, for they have assigned the prize to its
+author, though the measure in which he writes was never before (we
+believe) thus selected for honour. We extract a few lines to justify our
+admiration.
+
+[Quotes fifty lines beginning:--
+
+    "A curve of whitening, flashing, ebbing light!
+    A rustling of white wings! the bright descent," etc.]
+
+How many men have lived for a century who could equal this?--_The
+Athenæum_.
+
+
+_Poems by Alfred Tennyson_. pp. 163. London. 12mo. 1833.
+
+This is, as some of his marginal notes intimate, Mr. Tennyson's second
+appearance. By some strange chance we have never seen his first
+publication, which, if it at all resembles its younge[r] brother, must
+be by this time so popular that any notice of it on our part would seem
+idle and presumptuous; but we gladly seize this opportunity of repairing
+an unintentional neglect, and of introducing to the admiration of our
+more sequestered readers a new prodigy of genius--another and a brighter
+star of that galaxy or _milky way_ of poetry of which the lamented Keats
+was the harbinger; and let us take this occasion to sing our palinode on
+the subject of 'Endymion.' We certainly did not[O] discover in that poem
+the same degree of merit that its more clear-sighted and prophetic
+admirers did. We did not foresee the unbounded popularity which has
+carried it through we know not how many editions; which has placed it on
+every table; and, what is still more unequivocal, familiarized it in
+every mouth. All this splendour of fame, however, though we had not the
+sagacity to anticipate, we have the candour to acknowledge: and we
+request that the publisher of the new and beautiful edition of Keats's
+works now in the press, with graphic illustrations by Calcott and
+Turner, will do us the favour and the justice to notice our conversion
+in his prolegomena.
+
+Warned by our former mishap, wiser by experience, and improved, as we
+hope, in taste, we have to offer Mr. Tennyson our tribute of unmingled
+approbation, and it is very agreeable to us, as well as to our readers,
+that our present task will be little more than the selection, for their
+delight, of a few specimens of Mr. Tennyson's singular genius, and the
+venturing to point out, now and then, the peculiar brilliancy of some of
+the gems that irradiate his poetical crown.
+
+A prefatory sonnet opens to the reader the aspirations of the young
+author, in which, after the manner of sundry poets, ancient and modern,
+he expresses his own peculiar character, by wishing himself to be
+something that he is not. The amorous Catullus aspired to be a sparrow;
+the tuneful and convivial Anacreon (for we totally reject the
+supposition that attributes the Ἐιθε λύρη χαλη γενοιμην to Alcæus)
+wished to be a lyre and a great drinking cup; a crowd of more modern
+sentimentalists have desired to approach their mistresses as flowers,
+tunicks, sandals, birds, breezes, and butterflies;--all poor conceits of
+narrow-minded poetasters! Mr. Tennyson (though he, too, would, as far as
+his true love is concerned, not unwillingly 'be an earring,' 'a girdle,'
+and 'a necklace,' p. 45) in the more serious and solemn exordium of his
+works ambitions a bolder metamorphosis--he wishes to be--_a river_!
+
+SONNET.
+
+    'Mine be the strength of spirit fierce and free,
+    Like some broad river rushing down _alone_'--
+
+rivers that travel in company are too common for his taste--
+
+    'With the self-same impulse wherewith he was thrown'--
+
+a beautiful and harmonious line--
+
+    'From his loud fount upon the echoing lea:--
+    Which, with _increasing_ might, doth _forward flee_'--
+
+Every word of this line is valuable--the natural progress of human
+ambition is here strongly characterized--two lines ago he would have
+been satisfied with the _self-same_ impulse--but now he must have
+_increasing_ might; and indeed he would require all his might to
+accomplish his object of _fleeing forward_, that is, going backwards and
+forwards at the same time. Perhaps he uses the word _flee_ for _flow_;
+which latter he could not well employ in _this_ place, it being, as we
+shall see, essentially necessary to rhyme to _Mexico_ towards the end of
+the sonnet--as an equivalent to _flow_ he has, therefore, with great
+taste and ingenuity, hit on the combination of _forward flee_--
+
+    ------------'doth forward flee
+    By town, and tower, and hill, and cape, and isle,
+    And in the middle of the green _salt_ sea
+    Keeps his blue waters fresh for many a mile.'
+
+A noble wish, beautifully expressed, that he may not be confounded with
+the deluge of ordinary poets, but, amidst their discoloured and briny
+ocean, still preserve his own bright tints and sweet savor. He may be at
+ease on this point--he never can be mistaken for any one else. We have
+but too late become acquainted with him, yet we assure ourselves that if
+a thousand anonymous specimens were presented to us, we should
+unerringly distinguish his by the total absence of any particle of
+_salt_. But again, his thoughts take another turn, and he reverts to the
+insatiability of human ambition:--we have seen him just now content to
+be a river, but as he _flees forward_, his desires expand into
+sublimity, and he wishes to become the great Gulfstream of the Atlantic.
+
+    'Mine be the power which ever to its sway
+    Will win _the wise at once_--
+
+We, for once, are wise, and he has won _us_--
+
+    'Will win the wise at once; and by degrees
+    May into uncongenial spirits flow,
+    Even as the great gulphstream of Flori_da_
+    Floats far away into the Northern seas
+    The lavish growths of southern Mexi_co_!'--p. 1.
+
+And so concludes the sonnet.
+
+The next piece is a kind of testamentary paper, addressed 'To ----,' a
+friend, we presume, containing his wishes as to what his friend should
+do for him when he (the poet) shall be dead--not, as we shall see, that
+he quite thinks that such a poet can die outright.
+
+    'Shake hands, my friend, across the brink
+      Of that deep grave to which I go.
+    Shake hands once more; I cannot sink
+      So far--far down, but I shall know
+      Thy voice, and answer from below!'
+
+Horace said 'non omnis moriar,' meaning that his fame should
+survive--Mr. Tennyson is still more vivacious, 'non _omnino_
+moriar,'--'I will not die at all; my body shall be as immortal as my
+verse, and however _low I may go_, I warrant you I shall keep all my
+wits about me,--therefore'
+
+    'When, in the darkness over me,
+      The four-handed mole shall scrape,
+    Plant thou no dusky cypress tree,
+      Nor wreath thy cap with doleful crape,
+      But pledge me in the flowing grape.'
+
+Observe how all ages become present to the mind of a great poet; and
+admire how naturally he combines the funeral cypress of classical
+antiquity with the crape hat-band of the modern undertaker.
+
+He proceeds:--
+
+    'And when the sappy field and wood
+      Grow green beneath the _showery gray_,
+    And rugged barks begin to bud,
+      And through damp holts, newflushed with May,
+      Ring sudden _laughters_ of the jay!'
+
+Laughter, the philosophers tell us, is a peculiar attribute of man--but
+as Shakespeare found 'tongues in trees and sermons in stones,' this true
+poet endows all nature not merely with human sensibilities but with
+human functions--the jay _laughs_, and we find, indeed, a little further
+on, that the woodpecker _laughs_ also; but to mark the distinction
+between their merriment and that of men, both jays and woodpeckers laugh
+upon melancholy occasions. We are glad, moreover, to observe, that Mr.
+Tennyson is prepared for, and therefore will not be disturbed by, human
+laughter, if any silly reader should catch the infection from the
+woodpeckers and the jays.
+
+    'Then let wise Nature work her will,
+      And on my clay her darnels grow,
+    Come only when the days are still,
+      And at my head-stone whisper low,
+      And tell me'--
+
+Now, what would an ordinary bard wish to be told under such
+circumstances?--why, perhaps, how his sweetheart was, or his child, or
+his family, or how the Reform Bill worked, or whether the last edition
+of his poems had been sold--_papæ_! our genuine poet's first wish is
+
+    'And tell me--_if the woodbines blow_!'
+
+When, indeed, he shall have been thus satisfied as to the _woodbines_,
+(of the blowing of which in their due season he may, we think, feel
+pretty secure,) he turns a passing thought to his friend--and another to
+his mother--
+
+    'If _thou_ art blest, my _mother's_ smile
+    Undimmed'--
+
+but such inquiries, short as they are, seem too common-place, and he
+immediately glides back into his curiosity as to the state of the
+weather and the forwardness of the spring--
+
+    'If thou art blessed--my mother's smile
+    Undimmed--_if bees are on the wing_?'
+
+No, we believe the whole circle of poetry does not furnish such another
+instance of enthusiasm for the sights and sounds of the vernal
+season!--The sorrows of a bereaved mother rank _after_ the blossoms of
+the _woodbine_, and just before the hummings of the _bee_; and this is
+_all_ that he has any curiosity about; for he proceeds:--
+
+    'Then cease, my friend, a little while
+    That I may'--
+
+'send my love to my mother,' or 'give you some hints about bees, which I
+have picked up from Aristæus, in the Elysian Fields,' or 'tell you how I
+am situated as to my own personal comforts in the world below'?--oh no--
+
+    'That I may--hear the _throstle sing_
+    His bridal song--the boast of spring.
+
+    Sweet as the noise, in parchèd plains,
+      Of bubbling wells that fret the stones,
+    (_If any sense in me remains_)
+      Thy words will be--thy cheerful tones
+      As welcome to--my _crumbling bones_!'--p. 4.
+
+'_If any sense in me remains!_'--This doubt is inconsistent with the
+opening stanza of the piece, and, in fact, too modest; we take upon
+ourselves to re-assure Mr. Tennyson, that, even after he shall be dead
+and buried, as much '_sense_' will still remain as he has now the good
+fortune to possess.
+
+We have quoted these first two poems in _extenso_, to obviate any
+suspicion of our having made a partial or delusive selection. We cannot
+afford space--we wish we could--for an equally minute examination of the
+rest of the volume, but we shall make a few extracts to show--what we
+solemnly affirm--that every page teems with beauties hardly less
+surprising.
+
+_The Lady of Shalott_ is a poem in four parts, the story of which we
+decline to maim by such an analysis as we could give, but it opens
+thus--
+
+    'On either side the river lie
+    Long fields of barley and of rye,
+    That clothe the wold and _meet the sky_--
+    And _through_ the field the road runs _by_.'
+
+The Lady of Shalott was, it seems, a spinster who had, under some
+unnamed penalty, a certain web to weave.
+
+    'Underneath the bearded barley,
+    The reaper, reaping late and early,
+    Hears her ever chanting cheerly,
+    Like an angel singing clearly....
+
+    'No time has she for sport or play,
+    A charmèd web she weaves alway;
+    A curse is on her if she stay
+    Her weaving either night or day....
+
+    'She knows not'--
+
+Poor lady, nor we either--
+
+    'She knows not what that curse may be,
+    Therefore she weaveth steadily;
+    Therefore no other care has she
+              The Lady of Shalott.'
+
+A knight, however, happens to ride past her window, coming
+
+              ----'from Camelot;[P]
+    From the bank, and _from_ the _river_,
+    He flashed _into_ the crystal _mirror_--
+    "Tirra lirra, tirra _lirra_," (_lirrar_?)
+                Sang Sir Launcelot.'--p. 15.
+
+The lady stepped to the window to look at the stranger, and forgot for
+an instant her web:--the curse fell on her, and she died; why, how, and
+wherefore, the following stanzas will clearly and pathetically
+explain:--
+
+    'A long drawn carol, mournful, holy,
+    She chanted loudly, chanted lowly,
+    Till her eyes were darkened _wholly_,
+    And her smooth face sharpened _slowly_,
+            Turned to towered Camelot.
+    For ere she reached upon the tide
+    The first house on the water side,
+    Singing in her song she died,
+            The Lady of Shalott!
+    Knight and burgher, lord and dame,
+    To the plankèd wharfage came;
+    Below _the stern_ they read her name,
+            The Lady of Shalott.'--p. 19.
+
+We pass by two--what shall we call them?--tales, or odes, or sketches,
+entitled 'Mariana in the South' and 'Eleänore,' of which we fear we
+could make no intelligible extract, so curiously are they run together
+into one dreamy tissue--to a little novel in rhyme, called 'The Miller's
+Daughter.' Millers' daughters, poor things, have been so generally
+betrayed by their sweethearts, that it is refreshing to find that Mr.
+Tennyson has united himself to _his_ miller's daughter in lawful
+wedlock, and the poem is a history of his courtship and wedding. He
+begins with a sketch of his own birth, parentage, and personal
+appearance--
+
+    'My father's mansion, mounted high,
+      Looked down upon the village-spire;
+    I was a long and listless boy,
+      And son and heir unto the Squire.'
+
+But the son and heir of Squire Tennyson often descended from the
+'mansion mounted high;' and
+
+    'I met in all the close green ways,
+      While walking with my line and rod,'
+
+A metonymy for 'rod and line'--
+
+    'The wealthy miller's mealy face,
+      Like the _moon in an ivytod_.
+
+    'He looked so jolly and so good--
+      While fishing in the mill-dam water,
+    I laughed to see him as he stood,
+      And dreamt not of the miller's daughter.'--p. 33.
+
+He, however, soon saw, and, need we add, loved the miller's daughter,
+whose countenance, we presume, bore no great resemblance either to the
+'mealy face' of the miller, or 'the moon in an ivy-tod;' and we think
+our readers will be delighted at the way in which the impassioned
+husband relates to his wife how his fancy mingled enthusiasm for rural
+sights and sounds, with a prospect of the less romantic scene of her
+father's occupation.
+
+    'How dear to me in youth, my love,
+      Was everything about the mill;
+    The black, the silent pool above,
+      The pool beneath that ne'er stood still;
+
+    The meal-sacks on the whitened floor,
+      The dark round of the dripping wheel,
+    _The very air about the door,
+      Made misty with the floating meal!_'--p. 36.
+
+The accumulation of tender images in the following lines appears not
+less wonderful:--
+
+    'Remember you that pleasant day
+      When, after roving in the woods,
+    ('Twas April then) I came and lay
+      Beneath those _gummy_ chestnut-buds?
+
+    'A water-rat from off the bank
+      Plunged in the stream. With idle care,
+    Downlooking through the sedges rank,
+      I saw your troubled image there.
+
+    'If you remember, you had set,
+      Upon the narrow casement-edge,
+    A _long green box_ of mignonette
+      And you were leaning on the ledge.'
+
+The poet's truth to Nature in his 'gummy' chestnut-buds, and to Art in
+the 'long green box' of mignonette--and that masterful touch of likening
+the first intrusion of love into the virgin bosom of the Miller's
+daughter to the plunging of a water-rat into the mill-dam--these are
+beauties which, we do not fear to say, equal anything even in Keats.
+
+We pass by several songs, sonnets, and small pieces, all of singular
+merit, to arrive at a class, we may call them, of three poems derived
+from mythological sources--Œnone, the Hesperides, and the
+Lotos-eaters. But though the subjects are derived from classical
+antiquity, Mr. Tennyson treats them with so much originality that he
+makes them exclusively his own. Œnone, deserted by
+
+    'Beautiful Paris, evilhearted Paris,'
+
+sings a kind of dying soliloquy addressed to Mount Ida, in a formula
+which is _sixteen_ times repeated in this short poem.
+
+    'Dear mother Ida, hearken ere I die.'
+
+She tells her 'dear mother Ida,' that when evilhearted Paris was about
+to judge between the three goddesses, he hid her (Œnone) behind a
+rock, whence she had a full view of the _naked_ beauties of the rivals,
+which broke her heart.
+
+    '_Dear mother Ida, hearken ere I die_:--
+    It was the deep mid noon: one silvery cloud
+    Had _lost his way_ among the pined hills:
+    They came--_all three_--the Olympian goddesses.
+    Naked they came--
+
+        *    *    *    *    *    *
+
+    How beautiful they were! too beautiful
+    To look upon; but Paris was to me
+    _More lovelier_ than all the world beside.
+    _O mother Ida, hearken ere I die._'--p. 56.
+
+In the place where we have indicated a pause, follows a description,
+long, rich, and luscious--Of the three naked goddesses? Fye for
+shame--no--of the 'lily flower violet-eyed,' and the 'singing pine,' and
+the 'overwandering ivy and vine,' and 'festoons,' and 'gnarlèd boughs,'
+and 'tree tops,' and 'berries,' and 'flowers,' and all the _inanimate_
+beauties of the scene. It would be unjust to the _ingenuus pudor_ of the
+author not to observe the art with which he has veiled this ticklish
+interview behind such luxuriant trellis-work, and it is obvious that it
+is for our special sakes he has entered into these local details,
+because if there was one thing which 'mother Ida' knew better than
+another, it must have been her own bushes and brakes. We then have in
+detail the tempting speeches of, first--
+
+              'The imperial Olympian,
+    With archèd eyebrow smiling sovranly,
+    Full-eyèd Here;'
+
+secondly of Pallas--
+
+              'Her clear and barèd limbs
+    O'er-thwarted with the brazen-headed spear,'
+
+and thirdly--
+
+              'Idalian Aphrodite ocean-born,
+    Fresh as the foam, new-bathed in Paphian _wells_--'
+
+for one dip, or even three dips in one well, would not have been enough
+on such an occasion--and her succinct and prevailing promise of--
+
+    'The fairest and most loving _wife_ in Greece;'--
+
+upon evil-hearted Paris's catching at which prize, the tender and chaste
+Œnone exclaims her indignation, that she herself should not be
+considered fair enough, since only yesterday her charms had struck awe
+into--
+
+              'A wild and wanton pard,
+    Eyed like the evening-star, with playful tail--'
+
+and proceeds in this anti-Martineau rapture--
+
+              '_Most_ loving is _she_?'
+    'Ah me! my mountain shepherd, that my arms
+    Were wound about thee, and my hot lips prest
+    Close--close to thine in that quick-falling dew
+    Of _fruitful_ kisses ...
+    Dear mother Ida! hearken ere I die!--p. 62.
+
+After such reiterated assurances that she was about to die on the spot,
+it appears that Œnone thought better of it, and the poem concludes
+with her taking the wiser course of going to town to consult her swain's
+sister, Cassandra--whose advice, we presume, prevailed upon her to live,
+as we can, from other sources, assure our readers she did to a good old
+age.
+
+In the 'Hesperides' our author, with great judgment, rejects the common
+fable, which attributes to Hercules the slaying of the dragon and the
+plunder of the golden fruit. Nay, he supposes them to have existed to a
+comparatively recent period--namely, the voyage of Hanno, on the coarse
+canvas of whose log-book Mr. Tennyson has judiciously embroidered the
+Hesperian romance. The poem opens with a geographical description of the
+neighbourhood, which must be very clear and satisfactory to the English
+reader; indeed, it leaves far behind in accuracy of topography and
+melody of rhythm the heroics of Dionysius _Periegetes_.
+
+    'The north wind fall'n, in the new-starrèd night.'
+
+Here we must pause to observe a new species of _metabolé_ with which Mr.
+Tennyson has enriched our language. He suppresses the E in _fallen_,
+where it is usually written and where it must be pronounced, and
+transfers it to the word _new-starrèd_, where it would not be
+pronounced if he did not take due care to superfix a _grave_ accent.
+This use of the grave accent is, as our readers may have already
+perceived, so habitual with Mr. Tennyson, and is so obvious an
+improvement, that we really wonder how the language has hitherto done
+without it. We are tempted to suggest, that if analogy to the accented
+languages is to be thought of, it is rather the acute ([´]) than the
+grave ([`]) which should be employed on such occasions; but we speak
+with profound diffidence; and as Mr. Tennyson is the inventor of the
+system, we shall bow with respect to whatever his final determination
+may be.
+
+    'The north wind fall'n, in the new-starrèd night
+    Zidonian Hanno, voyaging beyond
+    The hoary promontory of Soloë,
+    Past Thymiaterion in calmèd bays.'
+
+We must here note specially the musical flow of this last line, which is
+the more creditable to Mr. Tennyson, because it was before the tuneless
+names of this very neighbourhood that the learned continuator of
+Dionysius retreated in despair--
+
+    ----επωνυμίας νυν ἔλλαχεν ἄλλας
+    Αἰθίοπων γαίν, δυσφωνους ουδ' επιήρονς
+    Μουσαις ὄυνεκα τασδ' ἐγω ουκ αγορευσομ' απασας.
+
+but Mr. Tennyson is bolder and happier--
+
+    'Past Thymiaterion in calmèd bays,
+    Between the southern and the western Horn,
+    Heard neither'--
+
+We pause for a moment to consider what a sea-captain might have expected
+to hear, by night, in the Atlantic ocean--he heard
+
+    --'neither the warbling of the _nightingale_
+    Nor melody o' the Libyan lotusflute,'
+
+but he did hear the three daughters of Hesper singing the following
+song:--
+
+    'The golden apple, the golden apple, the hallowèd fruit,
+    Guard it well, guard it warily,
+    Singing airily,
+    Standing about the charmèd root,
+    Round about all is mute'--
+
+_mute_, though they sung so loud as to be heard some leagues out at
+sea--
+
+      ----'all is mute
+    As the snow-field on mountain peaks,
+    As the sand-field at the mountain foot.
+    Crocodiles in briny creeks
+    Sleep, and stir not: all is mute.'
+
+How admirably do these lines describe the peculiarities of this charmèd
+neighbourhood--fields of snow, so talkative when they happen to lie at
+the foot of the mountain, are quite out of breath when they get to the
+top, and the sand, so noisy on the summit of a hill, is dumb at its
+foot. The very crocodiles, too, are _mute_--not dumb but _mute_. The
+'red-combèd dragon curl'd' is next introduced--
+
+    'Look to him, father, lest he wink, and the golden apple be stolen
+        away,
+    For his ancient heart is drunk with overwatchings night and day,
+    Sing away, sing aloud evermore, in the wind, without stop.'
+
+The north wind, it appears, has by this time awaked again--
+
+    'Lest his scalèd eyelid drop,
+    For he is older than the world'--
+
+older than the _hills_, besides not rhyming to 'curl'd,' would hardly
+have been a sufficiently venerable phrase for this most harmonious of
+lyrics. It proceeds--
+
+    'If ye sing not, if ye make false measure,
+    We shall lose eternal pleasure,
+    Worth eternal want of rest.
+    Laugh not loudly: watch the treasure
+    Of the wisdom of the west.
+    In _a corner_ wisdom whispers. Five and three
+    (_Let it not be preached abroad_) make an awful mystery.'--p. 102.
+
+This recipe for keeping a secret, by singing it so loud as to be heard
+for miles, is almost the only point, in all Mr. Tennyson's poems, in
+which we can trace the remotest approach to anything like what other men
+have written, but it certainly does remind us of the 'chorus of
+conspirators' in the Rovers.
+
+Hanno, however, who understood no language but Punic--(the Hesperides
+sang, we presume, either in Greek or in English)--appears to have kept
+on his way without taking any notice of the song, for the poem
+concludes,--
+
+    'The apple of gold hangs over the sea,
+    Five links, a gold chain, are we,
+    Hesper, the Dragon, and sisters three;
+    Daughters three,
+    Bound about
+    All around about
+    The gnarlèd bole of the charmèd tree,
+    The golden apple, the golden apple, the hallowèd fruit,
+    Guard it well, guard it warily,
+    Watch it warily,
+    Singing airily
+    Standing about the charmèd root.'--p. 107.
+
+We hardly think that, if Hanno had translated it into Punic, the song
+would have been more intelligible.
+
+The 'Lotuseaters'--a kind of classical opium-eaters--are Ulysses and his
+crew. They land on the 'charmèd island,' and 'eat of the charmèd root,'
+and then they sing--
+
+    'Long enough the winedark wave our weary bark did carry.
+    This is lovelier and sweeter,
+    Men of Ithaca, this is meeter,
+    In the hollow rosy vale to tarry,
+    Like a dreamy Lotuseater--a delicious Lotuseater!
+    We will eat the Lotus, sweet
+    As the yellow honeycomb;
+    In the valley some, and some
+    On the ancient heights divine,
+    And no more roam,
+    On the loud hoar foam,
+    To the melancholy home,
+    At the limits of the brine,
+    The little isle of Ithaca, beneath the day's decline.'--p. 116.
+
+Our readers will, we think, agree that this is admirably characteristic,
+and that the singers of this song must have made pretty free with the
+intoxicating fruit. How they got home you must read in Homer:--Mr.
+Tennyson--himself, we presume, a dreamy lotus-eater, a delicious
+lotus-eater--leaves them in full song.
+
+Next comes another class of poems,--Visions. The first is the 'Palace of
+Art,' or a fine house, in which the poet _dreams_ that he sees a very
+fine collection of well-known pictures. An ordinary versifier would, no
+doubt, have followed the old routine, and dully described himself as
+walking into the Louvre, or Buckingham Palace, and there seeing certain
+masterpieces of painting:--a true poet dreams it. We have not room to
+hang many of these _chefs-d'œuvre_, but for a few we must find
+space.--'The Madonna'--
+
+    'The maid mother by a crucifix,
+      In yellow pastures sunny warm,
+    Beneath branch work of costly sardonyx
+      Sat smiling--_babe in arm_.'--p. 72.
+
+The use of the latter, apparently, colloquial phrase is a deep stroke of
+art. The form of expression is always used to express an habitual and
+characteristic action. A knight is described '_lance in rest_'--a
+dragoon, '_sword in hand_'--so, as the idea of the Virgin is inseparably
+connected with her child, Mr. Tennyson reverently describes her
+conventional position--'_babe in arm_.'
+
+His gallery of illustrious portraits is thus admirably arranged:--The
+Madonna--Ganymede--St. Cecilia--Europa--Deep-haired
+Milton--Shakspeare--Grim Dante--Michael Angelo--Luther--Lord
+Bacon--Cervantes--Calderon--King David--'the Halicarnassëan' (_quaere_,
+which of them?)--Alfred, (not Alfred Tennyson, though no doubt in any
+other man's gallery _he_ would have a place) and finally--
+
+    'Isaïah, with fierce Ezekiel,
+      Swarth Moses by the Coptic sea,
+    Plato, _Petrarca_, Livy, and Raphaël,
+      And eastern Confutzee!'
+
+We can hardly suspect the very original mind of Mr. Tennyson to have
+harboured any recollections of that celebrated Doric idyll, 'The groves
+of Blarney,' but certainly there is a strong likeness between Mr.
+Tennyson's list of pictures and the Blarney collection of statutes--
+
+    'Statues growing that noble place in,
+      All heathen goddesses most rare,
+    Homer, Plutarch, and Nebuchadnezzar,
+      All standing naked in the open air!'
+
+In this poem we first observed a stroke of art (repeated afterwards)
+which we think very ingenious. No one who has ever written verse but
+must have felt the pain of erasing some happy line, some striking
+stanza, which, however excellent in itself, did not exactly suit the
+place for which it was destined. How curiously does an author mould and
+remould the plastic verse in order to fit in the favourite thought; and
+when he finds that he cannot introduce it, as Corporal Trim says, _any
+how_, with what reluctance does he at last reject the intractable, but
+still cherished offspring of his brain! Mr. Tennyson manages this
+delicate matter in a new and better way; he says, with great candour and
+simplicity, 'If this poem were not already too long, _I should have
+added_ the following stanzas,' and _then he adds them_, (p. 84;)--or,
+'the following lines are manifestly superfluous, as a part of the text,
+but they may be allowed to stand as a separate poem,' (p. 121,) _which
+they do_;--or, 'I intended to have added something on statuary, but I
+found it very difficult;'--(he had, moreover, as we have seen, been
+anticipated in this line by the Blarney poet)--'but I have finished the
+statues of _Elijah_ and _Olympias_--judge whether I have succeeded,' (p.
+73)--and then we have these two statues. This is certainly the most
+ingenious device that has ever come under our observation, for
+reconciling the rigour of criticism with the indulgence of parental
+partiality. It is economical too, and to the reader profitable, as by
+these means
+
+    'We lose no drop of the immortal man.'
+
+The other vision is 'A Dream of Fair Women,' in which the heroines of
+all ages--some, indeed, that belong to the times of 'heathen goddesses
+most rare'--pass before his view. We have not time to notice them all,
+but the second, whom we take to be Iphigenia, touches the heart with a
+stroke of nature more powerful than even the veil that the Grecian
+painter threw over the head of her father.
+
+      ----'dimly I could descry
+    The stern blackbearded kings with wolfish eyes,
+      Watching to see me die.
+
+    The tall masts quivered as they lay afloat;
+      The temples, and the people, and the shore;
+    One drew a sharp knife through my tender throat--
+      Slowly,--and _nothing more_!'
+
+What touching simplicity--what pathetic resignation--he cut my
+throat--'_nothing more_!' One might indeed ask, 'what _more_' she would
+have?
+
+But we must hasten on; and to tranquillize the reader's mind after this
+last affecting scene, shall notice the only two pieces of a lighter
+strain which the volume affords. The first is elegant and playful; it is
+a description of the author's study, which he affectionately calls his
+_Darling Room_.
+
+    'O darling room, my heart's delight;
+    Dear room, the apple of my sight;
+    With thy two couches, soft and white,
+    There is no room so exquis_ite_;
+    No little room so warm and bright,
+    Wherein to read, wherein to write.'
+
+We entreat our readers to note how, even in this little trifle, the
+singular taste and genius of Mr. Tennyson break forth. In such a dear
+_little_ room a narrow-minded scribbler would have been content with
+_one_ sofa, and that one he would probably have covered with black
+mohair, or red cloth, or a good striped chintz; how infinitely more
+characteristic is white dimity!--'tis as it were a type of the purity of
+the poet's mind. He proceeds--
+
+    'For I the Nonnenwerth have seen,
+    And Oberwinter's vineyards green,
+    Musical Lurlei; and between
+    The hills to Bingen I have been,
+    Bingen in Darmstadt, where the _Rhene_
+    Curves toward Mentz, a woody scene.
+
+    'Yet never did there meet my sight,
+    In any town, to left or right,
+    A little room so exquis_ite_,
+    With _two_ such couches soft and white;
+    Nor any room so warm and bright,
+    Wherein to read, wherein to write.'--p. 153.
+
+A common poet would have said that he had been in London or in Paris--in
+the loveliest villa on the banks of the Thames, or the most gorgeous
+chateau on the Loire--that he has reclined in Madame de Staël's boudoir,
+and mused in Mr. Roger's comfortable study; but the _darling room_ of
+the poet of nature (which we must suppose to be endued with sensibility,
+or he would not have addressed it) would not be flattered with such
+common-place comparisons;--no, no, but it is something to have it said
+that there is no such room in the ruins of the Drachenfels, in the
+vineyard of Oberwinter, or even in the rapids of the _Rhene_, under the
+Lurleyberg. We have ourselves visited all these celebrated spots, and
+can testify in corroboration of Mr. Tennyson, that we did not see in any
+of them anything like _this little room so exquis_ITE.
+
+The second of the lighter pieces, and the last with which we shall
+delight our readers, is a severe retaliation on the editor of the
+Edinburgh Magazine, who, it seems, had not treated the first volume of
+Mr. Tennyson with the same respect that we have, we trust, evinced for
+the second.
+
+      'To CHRISTOPHER NORTH.
+    You did late review my lays,
+      Crusty Christopher;
+    You did mingle blame and praise
+      Rusty Christopher.
+
+    When I learnt from whom it came
+    I forgave you all the blame,
+      Musty Christopher;
+    I could _not_ forgive the praise,
+      Fusty Christopher.'--p. 153.
+
+Was there ever anything so genteelly turned--so terse--so sharp--and the
+point so stinging and _so true_?
+
+    'I could not forgive the _praise_,
+      Fusty Christopher!'
+
+This leads us to observe on a phenomenon which we have frequently seen,
+but never been able to explain. It has been occasionally our painful lot
+to excite the displeasure of authors whom we have reviewed, and who have
+vented their dissatisfaction, some in prose, some in verse, and some in
+what we could not distinctly say whether it was verse or prose; but we
+have invariably found that the common formula of retort was that adopted
+by Mr. Tennyson against his northern critic, namely, that the author
+would always
+
+      --Forgive us all the _blame_,
+    But could _not_ forgive the _praise_.
+
+Now this seems very surprising. It has sometimes, though we regret to
+say rarely, happened, that, as in the present instance, we have been
+able to deal out unqualified praise, but never found that the dose in
+this case disagreed with the most squeamish stomach; on the contrary,
+the patient has always seemed exceedingly comfortable after he had
+swallowed it. He has been known to take the 'Review' home and keep his
+wife from a ball, and his children from bed, till he could administer it
+to them, by reading the article aloud. He has even been heard to
+recommend the 'Review' to his acquaintance at the clubs, as the best
+number which has yet appeared, and one, who happened to be an M.P. as
+well as an author, gave a _conditional_ order, that in case his last
+work should be favourably noticed, a dozen copies should be sent down by
+the mail to the borough of ----. But, on the other hand, when it has
+happened that the general course of our criticism has been unfavourable,
+if by accident we happened to introduce the smallest spice of _praise_,
+the patient immediately fell into paroxysms--declaring that the part
+which we foolishly thought might offend him had, on the contrary, given
+him pleasure--positive pleasure, but _that_ which he could not possibly
+either forget or forgive, was the grain of praise, be it ever so small,
+which we had dropped in, and for which, and _not for our censure_, he
+felt constrained, in honour and conscience, to visit us with his extreme
+indignation. Can any reader or writer inform us how it is that praise in
+the wholesale is so very agreeable to the very same stomach that rejects
+it with disgust and loathing, when it is scantily administered; and
+above all, can they tell us why it is, that the indignation and nausea
+should be in the exact inverse ratio to the quantity of the ingredient?
+These effects, of which we could quote several cases much more violent
+than Mr. Tennyson's, puzzle us exceedingly; but a learned friend, whom
+we have consulted, has, though he could not account for the phenomenon,
+pointed out what he thought an analogous case. It is related of Mr.
+Alderman Faulkner, of convivial memory, that one night when he expected
+his guests to sit late and try the strength of his claret and his head,
+he took the precaution of placing in his wine-glass a strawberry, which
+his doctor, he said, had recommended to him on account of its cooling
+qualities: on the faith of this specific, he drank even more deeply,
+and, as might be expected, was carried away at an earlier period and in
+rather a worse state, than was usual with him. When some of his friends
+condoled with him next day, and attributed his misfortune to six bottles
+of claret which he had imbibed, the Alderman was extremely
+indignant--'the claret,' he said, 'was sound, and never could do any man
+any harm--his discomfiture was altogether caused by that damned single
+strawberry' which he had kept all night at the bottom of his
+glass.--_The Quarterly Review_.
+
+[Footnote O: See Quarterly Review, vol. XIX, p. 204.]
+
+[Footnote P: The same Camelot, in Somersetshire, we presume, which is
+alluded to by Kent in 'King Lear'--
+
+    'Goose! if I had thee upon Sarum plain,
+    I'd drive thee cackling home to Camelot.'
+]
+
+
+_The Princess; a Medley_. By Alfred Tennyson. Moxon.
+
+That we are behind most even of our heaviest and slowest contemporaries
+in the notice of this volume, is a fact for which we cannot
+satisfactorily account to ourselves, and can therefore hardly hope to be
+able to make a valid excuse to our readers. The truth is, that whenever
+we turned to it we became, like the needle between positive and negative
+electric poles, so attracted and repelled, that we vibrated too much to
+settle to any fixed condition. Vacillation prevented criticism, and we
+had to try the experiment again and again before we could arrive at the
+necessary equipose to indicate the right direction of taste and opinion.
+We will now, however, note our variations, and leave them to the public
+judgment.
+
+The first lines of the prologue were repulsive, as a specimen of the
+poorest Wordsworth manner and style--
+
+    "Sir Walter Vivian all a summer's day
+    Gave his broad lawns until the set of sun
+    Up to his people: thither flock'd at noon
+    His tenants, wife and child, and thither half
+    The neighbouring borough with their Institute
+    Of which he was the patron. I was there
+    From college, visiting the son,--the son
+    A Walter too,--with others of our set."
+
+The "wife and child" of the tenants is hardly intelligible; and the
+"set" is but a dubious expression. Nor can we clearly comprehend the
+next line and a half--
+
+    "And me that morning Walter show'd the house,
+    Greek, set with busts:"
+
+Does this mean that Sir Walter Vivian inhabited a Greek house, and that
+the college "set" were guests in that dwelling "set with busts"? To say
+the least, this is inelegant, and the affectations proceed--
+
+                        "From vases in the hall
+    _Flowers of all heavens, and lovelier than their names_,
+    Grew side by side."
+
+Persons conversant with the botanical names of flowers will hardly be
+able to realize (as the Yankees have it) the idea of their loveliness;
+the loveliness of Hippuris, Dolichos, Syngenesia, Cheiranthus,
+Artocarpus, Arum dracunculus, Ampelopsis hederaca, Hexandria, Monogynea,
+and the rest.
+
+A good description of the demi-scientific sports of the Institute
+follows; but the house company and inmates retire to a ruined abbey:--
+
+              "High-arch'd and ivy-claspt,
+    Of finest Gothic, lighter than a fire."
+
+This is a curious jumble in company, two lights of altogether a
+different nature; but the party get into a rattling conversation, in
+which the noisy babble of the College Cubs is satirically characterized:
+we
+
+                                          "Told
+    Of college: he had climb'd across the spikes,
+    And he had squeez'd himself betwixt the bars,
+    And he had breathed the Proctor's dogs; and one
+    Discuss'd his tutor, rough to common men
+    But honeying at the whisper of a lord;
+    And one the Master, as a rogue in grain
+    Veneer'd with sanctimonious theory."
+
+The dialogue happily takes a turn, and the task of writing the
+_Princess_ is assigned to the author, as one of the tales in the
+Decameron of Boccaccio. A neighbouring princess of the south (so the
+story runs as the prince tells it) is in childhood betrothed to a like
+childish prince of the north:--
+
+                  "She to me
+    Was proxy-wedded with a _bootless calf_ [?]
+    At eight years old."
+
+Both grew up, the prince, all imaginative, filling his mind with
+pictures of her perfections; but she turning a female reformer of the
+Wolstencroft [_sic_] school, resolved never to wed till woman was raised
+to an equality with men, and establishing a strange female colony and
+college to carry this vast design into effect. In consequence of this
+her father is obliged to violate the contract, and his indignant father
+prepares for war to enforce it. The prince, with two companions, flies
+to the south, to try what he can do for himself; and in the disguise of
+ladies they obtain admission to the guarded precincts of the new
+Amazonian league. He, meanwhile, sings sweetly of his mistress--
+
+    "And still I wore her picture by my heart,
+    And one dark tress; and all around them both
+    Sweet thoughts would swarm as bees about their queen."
+
+And of his friend--
+
+                    "My other heart,
+    My shadow, my half-self, for still we moved
+    Together, kin as horse's ear and eye."
+
+His evasion is also finely told--
+
+      "But when the council broke, I rose and past
+    Through the wild woods that hang about the town;
+    Found a still place, and pluck'd her likeness out:
+    Laid it on flowers, and watch'd it lying bathed
+    In the green gleam of dewy-tassell'd trees:
+    What were those fancies? wherefore break her troth?
+    Proud look'd the lips: but while I meditated
+    A wind arose and rush'd upon the South,
+    And shook the songs, the whispers, and the shrieks
+    Of the wild woods together; and a Voice
+    Went with it 'Follow, follow, thou shalt win!'"
+
+Almost in juxtaposition with these beauties, we find one of the
+disagreeable blots, so offensive to good taste, which disfigure the
+poem. The travellers are interrogating the host of an inn close to the
+liberties where the princess holds her petticoated sway:--
+
+                      "And at the last--
+    The summer of the vine in all his veins--
+    'No doubt that we might make it worth his while.
+    For him, he reverenced his liege-lady there;
+    He always made a point to post with mares;
+    His daughter and his housemaid were the boys.
+    The land, he understood, for miles about
+    Was till'd by women; all the swine were sows,
+    And all the dogs'"--
+
+This is too bad, even for medley; but proceed we into the interior of
+the grand and luxurious feminine institution, where their sex is
+speedily discovered, but for certain reasons concealed by the
+discoverers. Lectures on the past and what might be done to accomplish
+female equality, and description of the boundaries, the dwelling place,
+and the dwellers therein, fill many a page of mingled excellence and
+defects. Here is a sample of both in half a dozen lines:--
+
+                          "We saw
+    The Lady Blanche's daughter where she stood,
+    Melissa, with her hand upon the lock,
+    A rosy blonde, and in a college gown
+    _That clad her like an April daffodilly_
+    (Her mother's colour) with her lips apart,
+    And all her thoughts as fair within her eyes,
+    _As bottom agates seem to wave and float
+    In crystal currents of clear morning seas_."
+
+Curious contradictions in mere terms, also occasionally occur. Thus, of
+a frightened girl, we are told that--
+
+                              "_Light_
+    As flies the _shadow_ of a bird she fled."
+
+Events move on. The prince reasons as a man in a colloquy with the
+princess, and speaks of the delights of maternal affections, and she
+replies--
+
+              "We are not talk'd to thus:
+    Yet will we say for children, would they grew
+    Like field-flowers everywhere! we like them well:
+    But children die; and let me tell you, girl,
+    Howe'er you babble, great deeds cannot die:
+    They with the sun and moon renew their light
+    Forever, blessing those that look on them:
+    Children--that men may pluck them from our hearts,
+    Kill us with pity, break us with ourselves--
+    O--children--there is nothing upon earth
+    More miserable than she that has a son
+    And sees him err:"
+
+A song on "The days that are no more," seems to us to be too laboured,
+nor is the other lyric introduced, "The Swallow," much more to our
+satisfaction. It is a mixture of prettinesses: the first four triplets
+run thus, ending in a poetic beauty--
+
+    "O Swallow, Swallow, flying, flying South,
+    Fly to her, and fall upon her gilded eaves,
+    And tell her, tell her what I tell to thee.
+
+    "O tell her, Swallow, thou that knowest each,
+    That bright and fierce and fickle is the South,
+    And _dark_ and true and tender is the North.
+
+    "O Swallow, Swallow, if I could follow, and light
+    Upon her lattice, I would pipe and trill,
+    And _cheep and twitter twenty million loves_.
+
+    "O were I thou that she might take me in,
+    And lay me on her bosom, _and her heart
+    Would rock the snowy cradle till I died_."
+
+The prince saves the princess from being drowned, when the secret
+explodes like a roll of gun cotton, and a grand turmoil ensues. The
+rival kings approach to confines in battle array, and the princess
+resumes the declaration of war:--
+
+                              "A tide of fierce
+    Invective seem'd to wait behind her lips,
+    As waits a river level with the dam
+    Ready to burst and flood the world with foam:
+    And so she would have spoken, but there rose
+    A hubbub in the court of half the maids
+    Gather'd together; from the illumin'd hall
+    Long lanes of splendour slanted o'er a press
+    Of snowy shoulders, thick as herded ewes,
+    And rainbow robes, and gems and gemlike eyes,
+    And gold and golden heads; they to and fro
+    Fluctuated, as flowers in storm, some red, same pale,
+    All open-mouth'd, all gazing to the light,
+    Some crying there was an army in the land,
+    And some that men were in the very walls,
+    And some they cared not; till a clamour grew
+    As of a new-world Babel, woman-built,
+    And worse-confounded: high above them stood
+    The placid marble Muses, looking peace."
+
+She denounces the perils outside and in--
+
+                                    "I dare
+    All these male thunderbolts: what is it ye fear?
+    Peace! there are those to avenge us and they come:
+    If not,--myself were like enough, O girls,
+    To unfurl the maiden banner of our rights,
+    And clad in iron burst the ranks of war,
+    Or, falling, protomartyr of our cause,
+    Die: yet I blame ye not so much for fear;
+    Six thousand years of fear have made ye that
+    From which I would redeem ye: but for those
+    That stir this hubbub--you and you--I know
+    Your faces there in the crowd--to-morrow morn
+    We meet to elect new tutors; then shall they
+    That love their voices more than duty, learn
+    With whom they deal, dismiss'd in shame to live
+    No wiser than their mothers, household stuff,
+    Live chattels, mincers of each other's fame,
+    Full of weak poison, turnspits for the clown,
+    The drunkard's football, laughing-stocks of Time,
+    Whose brains are in their hands and in their heels,
+    But fit to flaunt, to dress, to dance, to thrum,
+    To tramp, to scream, to burnish, and to scour
+    For ever slaves at home and fools abroad."
+
+Ay, just as Shakspere hath it--
+
+    "To suckle fools and chronicle small beer."
+
+The hero also meets the shock, at least in poetic grace:--
+
+                        "Upon my spirits
+    Settled a gentle cloud of melancholy,
+    Which I shook off, for I was young, and one
+    To whom the shadow of all mischance but came
+    As night to him that sitting on a hill
+    Sees the midsummer, midnight, Norway sun,
+    Set into sunrise."
+
+It is agreed to decide the contest by a combat of fifty on each
+side--the one led by the prince, and the other by Arac, the brother of
+the princess. And clad in "harness"--
+
+              "Issued in the sun that now
+    Leapt from the dewy shoulders of the Earth,
+    And hit the northern hills."
+
+To the fight--
+
+    "Then rode we with the old king across the lawns
+    Beneath huge trees, a thousand rings of Spring
+    In every bole, a song on every spray
+    Of birds that piped their Valentines."
+
+The prince and his companions are defeated; and he, wounded almost to
+the death, is consigned at her own request to be nursed by the
+princess:--
+
+    "So was their sanctuary violated,
+    So their fair college turn'd to hospital;
+    At first with all confusion; by and by
+    Sweet order lived again with other laws;
+    A kindlier influence reign'd; and everywhere
+    Low voices with the ministering hand
+    Hung round the sick."
+
+The result may be foreseen--
+
+    "From all a closer interest flourish'd up.
+    Tenderness touch by touch, and last, to these,
+    Love, like an Alpine harebell hung with tears
+    By some cold morning glacier; frail at first
+    And feeble, all unconscious of itself,
+    But such as gather'd colour day by day."
+
+And the agreement is filled up:--
+
+                "Dear, but let us type them now
+    In our lives, and this proud watchword rest
+    Of equal; seeing either sex alone
+    Is half itself, and in true marriage lies
+    Nor equal, nor unequal: each fulfils
+    Defect in each, and always thought in thought,
+    Purpose in purpose, will in will, they grow,
+    The single pure and perfect animal,
+    The two-cell'd heart beating with one full stroke
+    Life"
+
+              "O we will walk this world,
+    Yoked in all exercise of noble end,
+    And so through those dark gates across the wild
+    That no man knows. Indeed I love thee; come,
+    Yield thyself up; my hopes and thine are one;
+    Accomplish thou my manhood and thyself
+    Lay thy sweet hands in mine and trust to me."
+
+Who will question the true poetry of this production, or who will deny
+the imperfections, (mostly of affectation, though some of tastelessness)
+which obscure it? Who will wonder at our confessed wavering when they
+have read this course of alternate power, occasionally extravagant, and
+feebleness as in the long account of the _emeute_? Of the extravagant,
+the description of the princess, on receiving the declaration of war, is
+an example:--
+
+                    "She read, till over brow
+    And cheek and bosom brake the wrathful bloom
+    As of some fire against a stormy cloud,
+    When the wild peasant rights himself, and the rick
+    Flames, and his anger reddens in the heavens."
+
+The heroine, it must be acknowledged, is much of the virago throughout,
+and the prince rather of the softest; but the tale could not be
+otherwise told. We add four examples--two to be admired, and two to be
+contemned, in the fulfilment of our critique.
+
+    "For was, and is, and will be, are but is,"
+
+is a noble line; and the following, on the promised restoration of a
+child to its mother, is very touching--
+
+    "Again she veiled her brows, and prone she sank, and so
+    Like tender things that being caught feign death,
+    Spoke not, nor stirr'd."
+
+Not so the burlesque eight daughters of the plough, the brawny ministers
+of the princess' executive, and their usage of a herald. They were--
+
+    "Eight daughters of the plough, stronger than men,
+    Huge women blowzed with health, and wind, and rain
+    And labour. Each was like a Druid rock;
+    Or like a spire of land that stands apart
+    Cleft from the main, and clang'd about with mews."
+
+And they--
+
+    "Came sallying through the gates, and caught his hair,
+    And so belabour'd him on rib and cheek
+    They made him wild."
+
+Nor the following--
+
+    "When the man wants weight the woman takes it up,
+    And topples down the scales; but this is fixt
+    As are the roots of earth and base of all.
+    Man for the field and woman for the hearth;
+    Man for the sword and for the needle she;
+    Man with the head and woman with the heart;
+    Man to command and woman to obey;
+    All else confusion. Look to it; the gray mare
+    Is ill to live with, when her whinny shrills
+    From tile to scullery, and her small goodman
+    Shrinks in his arm-chair while the fires of Hell
+    Mix with his hearth; but take and break her, you!
+    She's yet a colt. Well groom'd and strongly curb'd
+    She might not rank with those detestable
+    That to the hireling leave their babe, and brawl
+    Their rights or wrongs like potherbs in the street.
+    They say she's comely; there's the fairer chance:
+    _I_ like her none the less for rating at her!
+    Besides, the woman wed is not as we,
+    But suffers change of frame. A lusty brace
+    Of twins may weed her of her folly. Boy,
+    The bearing and the training of a child
+    Is woman's wisdom."
+
+--_The Literary Gazette_.
+
+
+
+
+ROBERT BROWNING
+
+
+_Paracelsus_. By Robert Browning.
+
+There is talent in this dramatic poem, (in which is attempted a picture
+of the mind of this celebrated character,) but it is dreamy and obscure.
+Writers would do well to remember, (by way of example,) that though it
+is not difficult to imitate the mysticism and vagueness of Shelley, we
+love him and have taken him to our hearts as a poet, not _because_ of
+these characteristics--but _in spite_ of them.--_The Athenæum_.
+
+
+_Sordello_. By Robert Browning. London: Moxon. 1840.
+
+The scene of this poem is laid in Italy, when the Ghibelline and Guelph
+factions were in hottest contest. The author's style is rather peculiar,
+there being affectations of language and invertions of thought, and
+other causes of obscurity in the course of the story which detract from
+the pleasure of perusing it. But after all, we are much mistaken if Mr.
+Browning does not prove himself a poet of a right stamp,--original,
+vigorous, and finely inspired. He appears to us to possess a true sense
+of the dignity and sacredness of the poet's kingdom; and his imagination
+wings its way with a boldness, freedom and scope, as if he felt himself
+at home in that sphere, and was resolved to put his allegiance to the
+test.--_The Monthly Review_.
+
+
+_Men and Women_. By Robert Browning. Two Volumes. Chapman and Hall.
+
+It is really high time that this sort of thing should, if possible, be
+stopped. Here is another book of madness and mysticism--another
+melancholy specimen of power wantonly wasted, and talent deliberately
+perverted--another act of self-prostration before that demon of bad
+taste who now seems to hold in absolute possession the fashionable
+masters of our ideal literature. It is a strong case for the
+correctional justice of criticism, which has too long abdicated its
+proper functions. The Della Crusca of Sentimentalism perished under the
+_Baviad_--is there to be no future Gifford for the Della Crusca of
+Transcendentalism? The thing has really grown to a lamentable head
+amongst us. The contagion has affected not only our sciolists and our
+versifiers, but those whom, in the absence of a mightier race, we must
+be content to accept as the poets of our age. Here is Robert Browning,
+for instance--no one can doubt that he is capable of better things--no
+one, while deploring the obscurities that deface the _Paracelsus_ and
+the _Dramatic Lyrics_, can deny the less questionable qualities which
+characterized those remarkable poems--but can any of his devotees be
+found to uphold his present elaborate experiment on the patience of the
+public? Take any of his worshippers you please--let him be "well up" in
+the transcendental poets of the day--take him fresh from Alexander
+Smith, or Alfred Tennyson's _Maud_, or the _Mystic_ of Bailey--and we
+will engage to find him at least ten passages in the first ten pages of
+_Men and Women_, some of which, even after profound study, he will not
+be able to construe at all, and not one of which he will be able to
+read off at sight. Let us take one or two selections at random from the
+first volume, and try. What, for instance, is the meaning of these four
+stanzas from the poem entitled "By the Fireside"?--
+
+    My perfect wife, my Leonor,
+      Oh, heart my own, oh, eyes, mine too,
+    Whom else could I dare look backward for,
+      With whom beside should I dare pursue
+    The path grey heads abhor?
+
+    For it leads to a crag's sheer edge with them;
+      Youth, flowery all the way, there stops--
+    Not they; age threatens and they contemn,
+      Till they reach the gulf wherein youth drops,
+    One inch from our life's safe hem!
+
+    With me, youth led--I will speak now,
+      No longer watch you as you sit
+    Reading by fire-light, that great brow
+      And the spirit-small hand propping it
+    Mutely--my heart knows how--
+
+    When, if I think but deep enough,
+      You are wont to answer, prompt as rhyme;
+    And you, too, find without a rebuff
+      The response your soul seeks many a time
+    Piercing its fine flesh-stuff--
+
+We really should think highly of the powers of any interpreter who could
+"pierce" the obscurity of such "stuff" as this. One extract more and we
+have done. A gold medal in the department of Hermeneutical Science to
+the ingenious individual, who, after any length of study, can succeed in
+unriddling this tremendous passage from "Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha,"
+the organist:--
+
+    First you deliver your phrase
+      --Nothing propound, that I see,
+    Fit in itself for much blame or much praise--
+      Answered no less, where no answer needs be:
+    Off start the Two on their ways!
+
+    Straight must a Third interpose,
+      Volunteer needlessly help--
+    In strikes a Fourth, a Fifth thrusts in his nose,
+      So the cry's open, the kennel's a-yelp,
+    Argument's hot to the close!
+
+    One disertates, he is candid--
+      Two must dicept,--has distinguished!
+    Three helps the couple, if ever yet man did:
+      Four protests, Five makes a dart at the thing wished--
+    Back to One, goes the case bandied!
+
+    One says his say with a difference--
+      More of expounding, explaining!
+    All now is wrangle, abuse, and vociferance--
+      Now there's a truce, all's subdued, self-restraining--
+    Five, though, stands out all the stiffer hence.
+
+    One is incisive, corrosive--
+      Two retorts, nettled, curt, crepitant--
+    Three makes rejoinder, expansive, explosive--
+      Four overbears them all, strident and strepitant--
+    Five ... O Danaides, O Sieve!
+
+    Now, they ply axes and crowbars--
+      Now they prick pins at a tissue
+    Fine as a skein of the casuist Escobar's
+      Worked on the bone of a lie. To what issue?
+    Where is our gain at the Two-bars?
+
+    _Est fuga, volvitur rota!_
+      On we drift. Where looms the dim port?
+    One, Two, Three, Four, Five, contribute their quota--
+      Something is gained, if one caught but the import--
+    Show it us, Hugues of Saxe-Gotha!
+
+    What [with] affirming, denying,
+      Holding, risposting, subjoining,
+    All's like ... it's like ... for an instance I'm trying ...
+      There! See our roof, its gilt moulding and groining
+    Under those spider-webs lying?
+
+    So your fugue broadens and thickens,
+      Greatens and deepens and lengthens,
+    Till one exclaims--"But where's music, the dickens?
+      Blot ye the gold, while your spider-web strengthens,
+    Blacked to the stoutest of tickens?"
+
+Do our readers exclaim, "But where's poetry--the dickens--in all this
+rigmarole?" We confess we can find none--we can find nothing but a set
+purpose to be obscure, and an idiot captivity to the jingle of
+Hudibrastic rhyme. This idle weakness really appears to be at the bottom
+of half the daring nonsense in this most daringly nonsensical book.
+Hudibras Butler told us long ago that "rhyme the rudder is of verses;"
+and when, as in his case, or in that of Ingoldsby Barham, or
+Whims-and-Oddities Hood, the rudder guides the good ship into tracks of
+fun and fancy she might otherwise have missed, we are grateful to the
+double-endings, not on their own account, but for what they have led us
+to. But Mr. Browning is the mere thrall of his own rudder, and is
+constantly being steered by it into whirlpools of the most raging
+absurdity. This morbid passion for double rhymes, which is observable
+more or less throughout the book, reaches its climax in a long copy of
+verses on the "Old Pictures of Florence," which, with every disposition
+to be tolerant of the frailties of genius, we cannot hesitate to
+pronounce a masterpiece of absurdity. Let the lovers of the Hudibrastic
+admire these _tours de force_:--
+
+    Not that I expect the great Bigordi
+      Nor Sandro to hear me, chivalric, bellicose;
+    Nor wronged Lippino--and not a word I
+      Say of a scrap of Fra Angelico's.
+    But you are too fine, Taddeo Gaddi,
+      So grant me a taste of your intonaco--
+    Some Jerome that seeks the heaven with a sad eye?
+      No churlish saint, Lorenzo Monaco?
+
+        *    *    *    *    *    *    *
+
+    Margheritone of Arezzo,
+      With the grave-clothes garb and swaddling barret,
+    (Why purse up mouth and beak in a pet so,
+      You bald, saturnine, poll-clawed parrot?)
+    No poor glimmering Crucifixion,
+      Where in the foreground kneels the donor?
+    If such remain, as is my conviction,
+      The hoarding does you but little honour.
+
+The conclusion of this poem rises to a climax:--
+
+    How shall we prologuise, how shall we perorate,
+      Say fit things upon art and history--
+    Set truth at blood-heat and the false at zero rate,
+      Make of the want of the age no mystery!
+    Contrast the fructuous and sterile eras,
+      Show, monarchy its uncouth cub licks
+    Out of the bear's shape to the chimæra's--
+      Pure Art's birth being still the republic's!
+
+    Then one shall propose (in a speech, curt Tuscan,
+      Sober, expurgate, spare of an "_issimo_,")
+    Ending our half-told tale of Cambuscan,
+      Turning the Bell-tower's altaltissimo.
+    And fine as the beak of a young beccaccia
+      The Campanile, the Duomo's fit ally,
+    Soars up in gold its full fifty braccia,
+      Completing Florence, as Florence, Italy.
+
+How really deplorable is all this! On what theory of art can it possibly
+be defended? In all the fine arts alike--poetry, painting, sculpture,
+music--the master works have this in common, that they please in the
+highest degree the most cultivated, and to the widest extent the less
+cultivated. _Lear_ and the _Divine Comedy_ exhaust the thinking of the
+profoundest student, yet subdue to hushed and breathless attention the
+illiterate minds that know not what study means. The "Last Judgment,"
+the "Transfiguration," the "Niobe," and the "Dying Gladiator" excite
+alike the intelligent rapture of artists, and the unintelligent
+admiration of those to whom art and its principles are a sealed book.
+Handel's _Israel in Egypt_--the wonder of the scientific musician in his
+closet--yet sways to and fro, like a mighty wind upon the waters, the
+hearts of assembled thousands at an Exeter Hall oratorio. To take an
+instance more striking still, Beethoven, the sublime, the rugged, the
+austere, is also, as even Mons. Jullien could tell us, fast becoming a
+popular favourite. Now why is this? Simply because these master minds,
+under the divine teaching of genius, have known how to clothe their
+works in a beauty of form incorporate with their very essence--a beauty
+of form which has an elective affinity with the highest instincts of
+universal humanity. And it is on this beauty of form, this exquisite
+perfection of style, that the Baileys and the Brownings would have us
+believe that they set small account, that they purposely and scornfully
+trample. We do not believe it. We believe that it is only because they
+are half-gifted that they are but half-intelligible. Their mysticism is
+weakness--weakness writhing itself into contortions that it may ape the
+muscles of strength. Artistic genius, in its higher degrees, necessarily
+involves the power of beautiful self-expression. It is but a weak and
+watery sun that allows the fogs to hang heavy between the objects on
+which it shines and the eyes it would enlighten; the true day-star
+chases the mists at once, and shows us the world at a glance.
+
+Our main object has been to protest against what we feel to be the false
+teachings of a perverted school of art; and we have used this book of
+Mr. Browning's chiefly as a means of showing the extravagant lengths of
+absurdity to which the tenets of that school can lead a man of admitted
+powers. We should regret, however in the pursuit of this object to
+inflict injustice on Mr. Browning. This last book of his, like most of
+its predecessors, contains some undeniable beauties--subtle thoughts,
+graceful fancies, and occasionally a strain of music, which only makes
+the chaos of surrounding discords jar more harshly on the ear. The
+dramatic scenes "In a Balcony" are finely conceived and vigorously
+written; "Bishop Blougram's Apology," and "Cleon," are well worth
+reading and thinking over; and there is a certain grace and beauty in
+several of the minor poems. That which, on the whole, has pleased us
+most--really, perhaps, because we could read it off-hand--is "The Statue
+and the Bust," of which we give the opening stanzas:--
+
+[Quotes fourteen stanzas of _The Statue and the Bust_.]
+
+Why should a man, who, with so little apparent labour, can write
+naturally and well, take so much apparent labour to write affectedly and
+ill? There can be but one of two solutions. Either he goes wrong from
+want of knowledge, in which case it is clear that he wants the highest
+intuitions of genius; or he sins against knowledge, in which case he
+must have been misled by the false promptings of a morbid vanity, eager
+for that applause of fools which always waits on quackery, and which is
+never refused to extravagance when tricked out in the guise of
+originality. It is difficult, from the internal evidence supplied by
+his works, to know which of these two theories to adopt. Frequently the
+conclusion is almost irresistible, that Mr. Browning's mysticism must be
+of _malice prepense_: on the whole, however, we are inclined to clear
+his honesty at the expense of his powers, and to conclude that he is
+obscure, not so much because he has the vanity to be thought original,
+as because he lacks sufficient genius to make himself clear.--_The
+Saturday Review_.
+
+
+
+
+NOTES
+
+
+THOMAS GRAY
+
+When Gray's _Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard_ appeared in 1751,
+the _Monthly Rev._, IV, p. 309, gave it the following curious
+notice:--"The excellence of this little piece amply compensates for its
+want of quantity." The immediate success and popularity of the _Elegy_
+established Gray's poetical reputation; hence his _Odes_ (1757) were
+received and criticized as the work of a poet of whom something entirely
+different was expected. The thin quarto volume containing _The Progress
+of Poesy_ and _The Bard_ (entitled merely Ode I and Ode II in that
+edition) was printed for Dodsley by Horace Walpole at Strawberry Hill,
+and was published on August 8, 1757. Within a fortnight Gray wrote to
+Thomas Warton that the poems were not at all popular, the great
+objection being their obscurity; a week later he wrote to Hurd:--"Even
+my friends tell me they [the Odes] do not succeed ... in short, I have
+heard nobody but a player [Garrick] and a doctor of divinity [Warburton]
+that profess their esteem for them." For further comment, see Gray's
+_Works_, ed. Gosse, II, pp. 321-328.
+
+Our review, which is reprinted from _Monthly Rev._, XVII (239-243)
+(September, 1757), was written by Oliver Goldsmith, and is included in
+most of the collected editions of his works. Although it was practically
+wrung from Goldsmith while he was the unwilling thrall of Griffiths, it
+is a noteworthy piece of criticism for its time--certainly far superior
+to the general standard of the _Monthly Review_. While recognizing the
+scholarly merit of the poet's work, Goldsmith showed clearly why the
+Odes could not become popular. A more favorable notice of the volume
+appeared in the _Critical Rev._, IV, p. 167.
+
+In reprinting this review, the long quotations from both odes have been
+omitted. This precedent is followed in all cases where the quotations
+are of inordinate length, or are offered merely as "specimens" without
+specific criticism. No useful end would be served in reprinting numerous
+pages of classic extracts that are readily accessible to every student.
+All omissions are, of course, properly indicated.
+
+1. _Quinault_. Philippe Quinault (1635-1688), a popular French dramatist
+and librettist.
+
+2. _Mark'd for her own_. An allusion to the line in the Epitaph appended
+to the _Elegy_: "And Melancholy marked him for her own."
+
+
+OLIVER GOLDSMITH
+
+Goldsmith's _Traveller_ (1764) was begun as early as 1755--before he had
+expressed what Professor Dowden calls his "qualified enthusiasm" and
+"official admiration" for Gray's _Odes_. In criticizing Gray, he quoted
+Isocrates' advice--_Study the people_--and properly bore that precept in
+mind while he was shaping his own verses. The _Odes_ and the _Traveller_
+are respectively characteristic utterances of their authors--of the
+academic recluse, and of the warm-hearted lover of humanity.
+
+The review, quoted from the _Critical Rev._, XVIII (458-462) (December,
+1764), is from the pen of Dr. Samuel Johnson. Apart from its
+distinguished authorship and the strong words of commendation in the
+final sentence, it possesses slight interest as literary criticism. It
+is, in fact, little more than a brief summary of the poem, enriched by a
+few well-chosen illustrative extracts. The fact that Johnson contributed
+nine or ten lines to the poem (see Boswell, ed. Hill, I, p. 441, n. 1,
+and II, p. 6) may account partly for the character of the review.
+Johnson's quotations from the poem are not continuous and show several
+variations from authoritative texts.
+
+
+WILLIAM COWPER
+
+Cowper stands almost alone among English poets as an instance of late
+manifestation of poetic power. He was over fifty years of age when he
+offered his first volume of _Poems_ (1782) to the public. This
+collection, which included _Table-Talk_ and other didactic poems,
+appeared at the beginning of the most prosaic age in the history of
+modern English literature; yet the critics did not find it sufficiently
+striking in quality to differentiate it from the level of contemporary
+verse, or to forecast the success of _The Task_ and _John Gilpin's Ride_
+three years later.
+
+The notice in the _Critical Rev._, LIII (287-290), appeared in April,
+1782. While the same poems are but slightly esteemed to-day, it must be
+recognized that the attitude of the reviewer was severe for his time.
+The age had grown accustomed to large draughts of moralizing and
+didacticism in verse, and the quality of Cowper's contribution was
+assuredly above the average. The _Monthly Rev._, LXVII, p. 262, gave the
+_Poems_ a much more favorable reception.
+
+10. _Non Dii, non homines, etc._ Properly, _non homines, non di_,
+Horace, _Ars Poetica_, l. 373.
+
+10. _Caraccioli_. _Jouissance de soi-même_ (ed. 1762), cap. xii.
+
+11. _There needs no ghost, etc._ See _Hamlet_, I, 5. 110.
+
+
+ROBERT BURNS
+
+The Kilmarnock edition (1786) of Burns' _Poems_ was published during the
+most eventful period of the poet's life; the almost universally kind
+reception accorded to this volume was the one source of consolation amid
+many sorrows and distractions. Two reviews have been selected to
+illustrate both the Scottish and English attitude toward the newly
+discovered "ploughman-poet." The _Edinburgh Magazine_, IV (284-288), in
+October, 1786, gave Burns a welcome that was hearty and sincere; though
+we may smile to-day at the information that he has neither the "doric
+simplicity" of Ramsay, nor the "brilliant imagination" of Ferguson.
+Besides the poems mentioned in brackets, the magazine published further
+extracts from Burns in subsequent numbers. The _Critical Review_, LXIII
+(387-388), gave the volume a belated notice in May, 1787, exceeding even
+the Scotch magazine in its generous appreciation. With the generally
+accepted fact in mind that all of Burns' enduring work is in the
+Scottish dialect, and that his English poems are comparatively inferior,
+it is interesting to note the _Critical Review's_ regret that the
+dialect must "obscure the native beauties" and be often unintelligible
+to English readers. The same sentiment was expressed by the _Monthly
+Review_, LXXV, p. 439, in the critique reprinted (without its curious
+anglified version of _The Cotter's Saturday Night_) in Stevenson's
+_Early Reviews_.
+
+There is perhaps no other English poet whose fame was so suddenly and
+securely established as Burns'. At no time since the appearance of the
+Kilmarnock volume has the worth of his lyrical achievement been
+seriously questioned. The _Reliques_ of Burns, edited by Dr. Cromek in
+1808, were reviewed by Walter Scott in the first number of the
+_Quarterly Review_, and by Jeffrey in the corresponding number of the
+_Edinburgh_. Both articles are valuable to the student of Burns, but
+their great length made their inclusion in the present volume
+impracticable.
+
+14. _Rusticus abnormis sapiens, etc._ Horace, Sat. II, l. 3.
+
+15. _A great lady ... and celebrated professor_. Evidently Mrs. Dunlop
+and Professor Dugald Stewart, who both took great interest in Burns
+after the appearance of the Kilmarnock volume.
+
+
+WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
+
+The thin quartos containing _An Evening Walk_ and _Descriptive Sketches_
+were published by Wordsworth in 1793. The former was practically a
+school-composition in verse, written between 1787-89 and dedicated to
+his sister; the latter was composed in France during 1791-92 and was
+revised shortly before publication. The dedication was addressed to the
+Rev. Robert Jones, fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, who was
+Wordsworth's companion during the pedestrian tour in the Alps. Though
+_An Evening Walk_ was published first, the _Monthly Review_, XII, n.s.
+(216-218), in October, 1793, noticed both in the same issue and
+naturally gave precedence to the longer poem. Specific allusions in the
+text necessitate the same order in the present reprint.
+
+The impatience of the reviewer at the prospect of "more descriptive
+poetry" was due to the fact that many such productions had recently been
+noticed by the _Monthly_, and that the volumes then under consideration
+evidently belonged to the broad stream of mediocre verse that had been
+flowing soberly along almost since the days of Thomson. These first
+attempts smacked so decidedly of the older manner that we cannot censure
+the critic for failing to foresee that Wordsworth was destined to
+glorify the "poetry of nature," and to rescue it from the rut of
+listless and soporific topographical description. Both poems, in the
+definitive text, are readable, and exhibit here and there a glimmer of
+the poet's future greatness; yet it must be borne in mind that
+Wordsworth was continually tinkering at his verse, to the subsequent
+despair of conscientious variorum editors, and that most of the
+absurdities and infelicities in his first editions disappeared under the
+correcting influence of his sarcastic critics and his own maturing
+taste.
+
+A collation of the accepted text with the _Monthly Review's_ quotations
+will repay the student; thus, the twelve opening lines quoted by the
+reviewer are represented by eight lines in Professor Knight's edition,
+and only four of these correspond to the original text. The reviewer
+confined his remarks to the first thirty lines of the poem and very
+properly neglected the rest. He followed, with moderate success, the
+method of quotation with interpolated sarcasm and badinage--a method
+that was afterwards effectively pursued by the early Edinburgh Reviewers
+and the Blackwood coterie. There are few examples of that style in the
+eighteenth century reviews, but some noteworthy specimens of a later
+period--_e.g._, the _Edinburgh Review_ on Coleridge's _Christabel_ and
+the _Quarterly_ on Tennyson's _Poems_--are reprinted in this volume.
+
+The review of _An Evening Walk_ is simply an appended paragraph to the
+previous article. Wordsworth evidently appreciated the advice conveyed
+in the reviewer's final sentence and found many of the lines that
+"called loudly for amendment." More favorable notices of both poems will
+be found in _Critical Review_, VIII, pp. 347 and 472.
+
+
+_Lyrical Ballads_
+
+The _Lyrical Ballads_ by Wordsworth and Coleridge were published
+anonymously early in September, 1798--a few days before the joint
+authors sailed for Germany. Coleridge's contributions were _The Rime of
+the Ancient Mariner_, _The Foster-Mother's Tale_, _The Nightingale_, and
+_The Dungeon_; the remaining nineteen poems were by Wordsworth. As the
+publication of this volume has been accepted by most critics as the
+first fruit of the new romantic spirit and the virtual beginning of
+modern English poetry, the reception accorded to the _Lyrical Ballads_
+becomes a matter of prime importance. It is well known that the effort
+was a failure at first and that the apparent triumph of romanticism did
+not occur until the publication of Scott's _Lay of the Last Minstrel_
+(1805); but a contemporary blindness to the beauty of two of the finest
+poems in English literature cannot be permitted to figure in the
+critics' dispassionate investigation of causes and influences.
+
+There were four interesting reviews of the first edition of the _Lyrical
+Ballads_, namely, (1) _Critical Rev._, XXIV, n.s. (197-204), in October,
+1798, which is reprinted here; (2) _Analytical Rev._, XXVIII (583-587),
+in December, 1798; (3) _Monthly Rev._, XXIX, n.s. (202-210), in May,
+1799, reprinted in Stevenson's _Early Reviews_; (4) _British Critic_,
+XIV (364-369) in October, 1799.
+
+The article in the _Critical Review_ was written by Robert Southey under
+conditions most favorable for such a malicious procedure. The publisher,
+his friend Cottle, had transferred the copyright of the _Lyrical
+Ballads_ to Arch, a London publisher, within two weeks of the appearance
+of the volume, giving as a shallow excuse the "heavy sale" of the book.
+Both Wordsworth and Coleridge were in Germany. Southey had quarreled
+with Coleridge, and was probably jealous of the latter's extravagant
+praise of Wordsworth. He accordingly seized the opportunity to assail
+the work without injuring Cottle's interests or entailing the immediate
+displeasure of the travelling bards.
+
+He covered his tracks to some extent by referring several times to "the
+author," although the joint authorship was well known to him. While
+severe in most of his strictures on Wordsworth, Southey reserved his
+special malice for _The Ancient Mariner_. He called it "a Dutch attempt
+at German sublimity"; and in a letter written to William Taylor on
+September 5, 1798--probably while he was writing his discreditable
+critique--he characterized the poem as "the clumsiest attempt at German
+sublimity I ever saw." Southey's responsibility for the article became
+known to Cottle, who communicated the fact to the poets on their return
+a year later. Wordsworth declared that "if Southey could not
+conscientiously have spoken differently of the volume, he ought to have
+declined the task of reviewing it." Coleridge indited an epigram, _To a
+Critic_, and let the matter drop. Shortly afterwards he showed his
+renewed good-will by aiding Southey in preparing the second _Annual
+Anthology_ (1800).
+
+The subsequent reviews of the _Lyrical Ballads_ adopted the tone of the
+_Critical_ (then recognized as the leading review) and internal evidence
+shows that they did not hesitate to borrow ideas from Southey's article.
+The _Analytical Review_ also saw German extravagances in _The Ancient
+Mariner_; the _Monthly_ borrowed Southey's figure of the Italian and
+Flemish painters, and called _The Ancient Mariner_ "the strangest story
+of a cock and bull that we ever saw on paper ... a rhapsody of
+unintelligible wildness and incoherence." The belated review in the
+_British Critic_ was probably written by Coleridge's friend, Rev.
+Francis Wrangham, and was somewhat more appreciative than the rest. For
+further details, consult Mr. Thomas Hutchinson's reprint (1898) of the
+_Lyrical Ballads_, pp. (xiii-xxviii). Despite the unfavorable reviews,
+the Ballads reached a fourth edition in 1805 (besides an American
+edition in 1802), thus achieving the popularity alluded to by Jeffrey at
+the beginning of our next review.
+
+
+_Poems_ (1807)
+
+Wordsworth's fourth publication, the _Poems_ (1807), included most of
+the pieces written after the first appearance of the _Lyrical Ballads_.
+It was likewise his first venture subsequent to the founding of the
+_Edinburgh Review_. Jeffrey had assailed the theories of the "Lake
+Poets" (and, incidentally, coined that unfortunate term) in the first
+number of the _Review_, in an article on Southey's _Thalaba_, and three
+years later (1805), in criticizing _Madoc_, he again expressed his views
+on the subject. Now came the first opportunity to deal with the
+recognized leader of the "Lakers"--the poet whose work most clearly
+illustrated the poetic theories that Jeffrey deemed pernicious.
+
+The article here reprinted from the _Edinburgh Rev._, XI (214-231), of
+October, 1807, and Jeffrey's review of _The Excursion_, in _ibid._, XXIV
+(1-30), are perhaps the two most important critiques of their kind. No
+student of Wordsworth's theory of poetry, as set forth in his various
+prefaces, can afford to ignore either of these interesting discussions
+of the subject. (For details, see A.J. George's edition of the
+_Prefaces_ of Wordsworth, Gates' _Selections_ from Jeffrey, Beers'
+_Nineteenth Century Romanticism_, Hutchinson's edition of _Lyrical
+Ballads_, etc.) It was undoubtedly true that Jeffrey, although an able
+critic, failed to grasp the real significance of the new poetic
+movement, and to appreciate the influence wrought by the doctrines of
+the Lake Poets on modern conceptions of poetry. Yet he was far from
+wrong in many of his criticisms of Wordsworth. While deprecating the
+latter's theories, it is clear that Jeffrey regarded him as a poet of
+great power who was being led astray by his perverse practice. The
+popular conception of Jeffrey as a hectoring and blatant opponent of
+Wordsworth is not substantiated by the review. The impartial reader must
+agree with Jeffrey at many points, and if he will take the trouble to
+collate Jeffrey's quotations with the revised text of Wordsworth, he
+will learn that the poet did not disdain to take an occasional
+suggestion for the improvement of his verse.
+
+We recognize Wordsworth to-day as the most unequal of English poets.
+There is little that is common to the inspired bard of _Tintern Abbey_,
+the _Immortality Ode_ and the nobler _Sonnets_, and the unsophisticated
+scribe of _Peter Bell_ and _The Idiot Boy_. Like Browning, he wrote too
+much to write well at all times, and if both poets were capable of the
+sublimest flights, they likewise descended to unimagined depths; but the
+fault of Wordsworth was perhaps the greater, because his bathos was the
+result of a deliberate and persistent attempt to enrich English poetry
+with prosaically versified incidents drawn at length from homely rural
+life.
+
+
+SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
+
+The first part of Coleridge's _Christabel_ was written in 1797 during
+the brief period of inspiration that also gave us _The Ancient Mariner_
+and _Kubla Khan_--in short, that small group of exquisite poems which in
+themselves suffice to place Coleridge in the front rank of English
+poets. The second part was written in 1800, after the author's return
+from Germany. The fragment circulated widely in manuscript among
+literary men, bewitched Scott and Byron into imitating its fascinating
+rhythms, and, at Byron's suggestion, was finally published by Murray in
+1816 with _Kubla Khan_ and _The Pains of Sleep_. It is probable that the
+high esteem in which these poems were held by Coleridge's literary
+friends led him to expect a favorable reception at the hands of the
+critics; hence his keen disappointment at the general tone of their
+sarcastic analysis and their protests against the absurdity and
+obscurity of the poems. The principal critiques on _Christabel_
+were:--(1) _Edinburgh Rev._, XXVII (58-67), which is here reprinted; (2)
+_Monthly Rev._, LXXXII, n.s. (22-25), reprinted in Stevenson's _Early
+Reviews_; (3) _The Literary Panorama_, IV, n.s. (561-565); and (4)
+_Anti-Jacobin Rev._, L (632-636).
+
+It is evident that Coleridge was eminently successful in the gentle art
+of making enemies. We have seen that Southey's attack on the _Lyrical
+Ballads_ was a direct result of his ill-will toward Coleridge; the
+outrageous article in the _Edinburgh Review_ was written by William
+Hazlitt under similar inspiration, and was followed by abusive papers in
+_The Examiner_ (1816, p. 743, and 1817, p. 236). There was no
+justification for Hazlitt, and none has been attempted by his
+biographers. Judged by its intrinsic merits, the Edinburgh article is
+one of the most absurd reviews ever written by a critic of recognized
+ability. Hazlitt followed the method of outlining the story by quotation
+with interspersed sarcasm and ironical criticism. As a coarse boor might
+crumple a delicate and beautifully wrought fabric to prove that it has
+not the wearing qualities of a blacksmith's apron, Hazlitt seized upon
+the ethereal story of _Christabel_, with its wealth of mediæval and
+romantic imagery, and held up to ridicule the incidents that did not
+conform to modern English conceptions of life. It requires no great art
+to produce such a critique; the same method was applied to _Christabel_
+with hardly less success by the anonymous hack of the _Anti-Jacobin_.
+Whatever may have been Hazlitt's motives, we cannot understand how a
+critic of his unquestioned ability could quote with ridicule some of the
+very finest lines of _Kubla Khan_, and expect his readers to concur with
+his opinion. The lack of taste was more apparent because he quoted, with
+qualified praise, six lines of no extraordinary merit from _Christabel_
+and insisted, that with this one exception, there was not a couplet in
+the whole poem that achieved the standard of a newspaper poetry-corner
+or the effusions scratched by peripatetic bards on inn-windows. An
+interesting discussion between Mr. Thomas Hutchinson and Col. Prideaux
+concerning Hazlitt's responsibility for this and other critiques on
+Coleridge in the _Edinburgh Review_ will be found in _Notes and Queries_
+(Ninth Series), X, pp. 388, 429; XI, 170, 269.
+
+The other reviews of _Christabel_ were all unfavorable. Most extravagant
+was the utterance of the _Monthly Magazine_, XLVI, p. 407, in 1818, when
+it declared that the "poem of Christabel is only fit for the inmates of
+Bedlam. We are not acquainted in the history of literature with so great
+an insult offered to the public understanding as the publication of that
+r[h]apsody of delirium."
+
+Hazlitt's primitive remarks on the metre of _Christabel_ are of little
+interest. Coleridge was, of course, wrong in stating that his metre was
+founded on a new principle. The irregularly four-stressed line occurs in
+Spenser's _Shepherd's Calender_ and can be traced back through the
+halting tetrameters of Skelton. Coleridge himself alludes to this fact
+in his note to his poem _The Raven_, and elsewhere.
+
+Coleridge's earlier poetical publications were received with commonplace
+critiques usually mildly favorable. For reviews of his _Poems_ (1796)
+see _Monthly Rev._, XX, n.s., p. 194; _Analytical Rev._, XXIII, p. 610;
+_British Critic_, VII, p. 549; and _Critical Rev._, XVII, n.s., p. 209;
+the second edition of _Poems_ (1797) is noticed in _Critical Rev._,
+XXIII, n.s., p. 266; for _Lyrical Ballads_, see under Wordsworth; for
+the successful play _Remorse_ (1813), see _Monthly Rev._, LXXI, n.s., p.
+82, and _Quarterly Rev._, XI, p. 177.
+
+
+ROBERT SOUTHEY
+
+_Madoc_, a ponderous quarto of over five hundred pages and issued at two
+guineas, was published by Southey in 1805 as the second of that
+long-forgotten series of interminable epics including _Thalaba_, _The
+Curse of Kehama_, and _Roderick, Last of the Goths_. These huge unformed
+productions were not poems, but metrical tales, written in a kind of
+verse that could have flowed indefinitely from the author's pen. In
+short, Southey was not a poet, and the whole bulk of his efforts in
+verse, with but one or two exceptions, seems destined to oblivion. As
+poet-laureate for thirty years and the associate of Wordsworth and
+Coleridge in the "Lake School," Southey will, however, remain a figure
+of some importance in the history of English poetry.
+
+The review of _Madoc_ reprinted from the _Monthly Rev._, XLVIII
+(113-122) for October, 1805, was written in the old style then fast
+giving way to the sprightlier methods of the _Edinburgh_. Here we find a
+style abounding in literary allusions and classical quotations, and
+evincing a generally patronizing attitude toward the author under
+discussion. Most readers will agree with the sentiments expressed by the
+reviewer, who succeeded in making his article interesting without
+descending to the depths of buffoonery. No apology is necessary for the
+excision of the reviewer's unreasonably long extracts from the poem.
+_Madoc_ was also reviewed at great length in the _Edinburgh Review_ by
+Francis Jeffrey.
+
+61. _Ille ego, qui quondam, etc._ The lines usually prefixed to the
+_Æneid_.
+
+61. _Prorumpere in medias res_. Cf. Horace, _Ars Poetica_, l. 148.
+
+61. _Macklin's Tragedy_. _Henry VII_ (1746), his only tragedy, and a
+failure.
+
+61. _Toto carere possum_. Cf. Martial, _Epig._ XI, 56.
+
+61. _Camoëns_. The author of the Portuguese _Lusiad_ (1572) which
+narrates the adventures of Vasco da Gama.
+
+62. _Milton_. Quoted from Sonnet XI.--_On the Detraction which followed
+upon my writing certain Treatises_.
+
+63. _Snatching a grace, etc._ Pope's _Essay on Criticism_, l. 153.
+
+
+CHARLES LAMB
+
+Most of Lamb's earlier poetical productions appeared in conjunction with
+the work of other poets. Four of his sonnets were printed with
+Coleridge's _Poems on Various Subjects_ (1796), and he was more fully
+represented in _Poems by S.T. Coleridge. Second Edition_. _To which are
+now added Poems by Charles Lamb and Charles Lloyd_ (1797). In the
+following year appeared _Blank Verse_, by Charles Lloyd and Charles
+Lamb. For new and interesting material concerning the three poets, see
+E.V. Lucas' _Charles Lamb and the Lloyds_ (1899). Lloyd (1775-1839)
+wrote melancholy verses and a sentimental, epistolary novel _Edmund
+Oliver_, but nothing of permanent value. However, in 1798, he was almost
+as well known as Coleridge, and was hailed in some quarters as a
+promising poet.
+
+The _Monthly Rev._, XXVII, n.s. (104-105), in September, 1798, published
+the critique of _Blank Verse_ which is here reprinted. Its principal
+interest lies in the scant attention shown to Lamb, although the volume
+contained his best poem--the tender _Old Familiar Faces_. Dr. Johnson's
+characterization of blank-verse as "poetry to the eye" will be found at
+the end of his _Life of Milton_ as a quotation from "an ingenious
+critic."
+
+Lamb's drama, _John Woodvil_ (1802), written in imitation of later
+Elizabethan models, was a failure. It was unfavorably noticed in the
+_Monthly Rev._, XL, n.s., p. 442 and at greater length in the _Edinburgh
+Rev._, II, p. 90 ff.
+
+Many years later (1830) Lamb prepared his collection of _Album-Verses_
+at the request of his friend Edward Moxon, who had achieved some fame as
+a poet and was enabled (by the generous aid of Samuel Rogers) to begin
+his more lucrative career as a publisher. Three years after the
+appearance of _Album-Verses_, he married Lamb's adopted daughter, Emma
+Isola. The _Album-Verses_, like most of their kind, were a collection of
+small value; the _Literary Gazette_, 1830 (441-442), consequently lost
+no time in assailing them. The _Athenæum_, 1830, p. 435, at that time
+the bitter rival of the _Gazette_, published a more favorable review,
+and a few weeks later (p. 491) printed Southey's verses, _To Charles
+Lamb, on the Reviewal of his Album-Verses in the Literary Gazette_,
+together with a sharp commentary on the methods of the _Gazette_.
+Several times during that year the _Athenæum_ assailed the system of
+private puffery which was followed by the _Gazette_ and eventually
+caused its downfall. There is a reply to the _Athenæum_ in the _Literary
+Gazette_, 1833, p. 772.
+
+
+WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
+
+Landor was twenty-three when he published _Gebir_ anonymously in
+1798--the year of the _Lyrical Ballads_--and he lived until 1864. The
+nine decades of his life covered an important period of literature. He
+was nine years old when the great Johnson died, yet he lived to see the
+best poetic achievements of Tennyson, Browning, and Arnold. However, he
+did not live to see _Gebir_ a popular poem. Southey gave it a favorable
+welcome in the _Critical Review_, and became a life-long admirer of
+Landor; but our brief notices reprinted from the _Monthly Rev._, XXXI,
+n.s., p. 206, and _British Critic_, XV, p. 190 of February, 1800,
+represent more nearly the popular verdict. Both reviewers complain of
+the obscurity of the poem, which, it will be remembered, had been
+originally written in Latin, then translated and abridged.
+Notwithstanding the fact that Landor declared himself amply repaid by
+the praise of a few appreciative readers, he prepared a violent and
+scornful reply to the _Monthly Review_, and would have published it but
+for the sensible dissuasion of a friend. Some interesting extracts from
+the letter are printed in Forster's _Life of Landor_, pp. (76-85). He
+protested especially against the imputed plagiarisms from Milton and
+gave ample evidence of the pugnacious spirit that brought him into
+difficulties several times during his life. See also the _Imaginary
+Conversation_ between Archdeacon Hare and Walter Landor, wherein the
+reception of _Gebir_ is discussed and Southey's poetry is praised at the
+expense of Wordsworth's. Landor's first publication, the _Poems_ (1795)
+was noticed in the _Monthly Rev._, XXI, n.s., p. 253.
+
+
+SIR WALTER SCOTT
+
+The successful series of metrical tales which Scott inaugurated with the
+_Lay of the Last Minstrel_ (1805) had for its second member the more
+elaborate _Marmion_ (1808). From the first, Scott's poems and romances
+were favorably received by the reviews and usually noticed at great
+length. There was always a story to outline and choice passages to
+quote. As suggested in the Preface, these pæans of praise are of
+comparatively little interest to the student, and need hardly be cited
+here in detail.
+
+The critique of _Marmion_, written by Jeffrey for the _Edinburgh Rev._,
+XII (1-35), had the place of honor in the number for April, 1808. It was
+chosen for the present reprints partly as a fitting example of Jeffrey's
+fearlessness in expressing his opinions, and partly for its historic
+interest as the article that contributed to Scott's rupture with the
+Edinburghers and to his successful founding of a Tory rival in the
+_Quarterly Review_. Although the article has here been abridged to about
+half of its original length by the omission of six hundred quoted lines
+and a synopsis of the poem, it is still the longest of these reprints.
+Jeffrey evidently felt that a detailed account of the story was
+necessary in order to justify his strictures on the plot.
+
+An author of those days could afford to ignore the decisions of the
+critical monthlies, but the brilliant criticism and incisive diction of
+the _Edinburgh Review_ carried weight and exerted far-reaching
+influence. Jeffrey's article was practically the only dissonant note in
+the chorus of praise that greeted _Marmion_, and Scott probably resented
+the critic's attitude. Lockhart, in his admirable chapter on the
+publication of _Marmion_, admits that "Jeffrey acquitted himself on this
+occasion in a manner highly creditable to his courageous sense of duty."
+The April number of the _Edinburgh_ appeared shortly before a particular
+day on which Jeffrey had engaged to dine with Scott. Fearing that under
+the circumstances he might be an unwelcome guest, he sent the following
+tactful note with the copy which was forwarded to the poet:--
+
+"Dear Scott,--If I did not give you credit for more magnanimity than any
+other of your irritable tribe, I should scarcely venture to put this
+into your hands. As it is, I do it with no little solicitude, and
+earnestly hope that it will make no difference in the friendship which
+has hitherto subsisted between us. I have spoken of your poem exactly as
+I think, and though I cannot reasonably suppose that you will be pleased
+with everything I have said, it would mortify me very severely to
+believe I had given you pain. If you have any amity left for me, you
+will not delay very long to tell me so. In the meantime, I am very
+sincerely yours, F. Jeffrey."
+
+There was but one course open to Scott; accordingly to Lockhart, "he
+assured Mr. Jeffrey that the article had not disturbed his digestion,
+though he hoped neither his booksellers nor the public would agree with
+the opinions it expressed, and begged he would come to dinner at the
+hour previously appointed. Mr. Jeffrey appeared accordingly, and was
+received by his host with the frankest cordiality, but had the
+mortification to observe that the mistress of the house, though
+perfectly polite, was not quite so easy with him as usual. She, too,
+behaved herself with exemplary civility during the dinner, but could not
+help saying, in her broken English, when her guest was departing, 'Well,
+good night, Mr. Jeffrey. Dey tell me you have abused Scott in de Review,
+and I hope Mr. Constable has paid _you_ very well for writing it.'"
+
+Jeffrey's article apparently had little influence on the sale of
+_Marmion_, which reached eight editions (25,000 copies) in three years.
+In October, 1808, the _Edinburgh Review_ published an appreciative
+review of Scott's edition of Dryden, and afterwards received with favor
+the later poems and the principal Waverley Novels.
+
+78. _Mr. Thomas Inkle_. The story of Inkle and Yarico was related by
+Steele in no. 11 of the _Spectator_. It was afterwards dramatized (1787)
+by George Colman.
+
+
+LORD BYRON
+
+The twentieth number of the _Edinburgh Review_ contained Jeffrey's long
+article on Wordsworth's _Poems_ (1807); the twenty-second contained his
+review of Scott's _Marmion_; and the twenty-first (January, 1808)
+contained a still more famous critique, long attributed to Jeffrey--the
+review of Byron's _Hours of Idleness_ (1807). It is reprinted from
+_Edinburgh Rev._, XI (285-289) in Stevenson's _Early Reviews_ and forms
+Appendix II of R.E. Prothero's edition of Byron's _Letters and
+Journals_. We know definitely that the article was written by Henry
+Brougham. (See Prothero, op. cit., II, p. 397, and Sir M.E. Grant Duff's
+_Notes from a Diary_, II, p. 189.)
+
+It is hardly within the province of literary criticism to deal with
+hypothetical conditions in authors' lives; but it is at least a matter
+of some interest to conjecture whether Byron would have become a great
+poet if this stinging review had not been published. It is evident that
+the _Hours of Idleness_ gave few signs of promise, and the poet, fully
+intent upon a political career, himself expressed his intention of
+abandoning the muse. Many an educated Englishman has published such a
+volume of _Juvenilia_ and sinned no more. But a nature like Byron's
+could not overlook the effrontery of the _Edinburgh Review_. The
+proud-spirited poet was evidently far more incensed by the patronizing
+tone of the article than by its strictures: what could be more galling
+than the reiterated references to the "noble minor," or the withering
+contempt that characterized a particular poem as "the thing in page 79"?
+Many years later, Byron wrote to Shelley:--"I recollect the effect on me
+of the _Edinburgh_ on my first poem; it was rage, and resistance, and
+redress--but not despondency nor despair." (Prothero, V, p. 267.)
+
+There was method in Byron's "rage and resistance and redress." For more
+than a year he labored upon a satire which he had begun even before the
+appearance of the _Edinburgh_ article. (See letter of October 26, 1807,
+in _Letters_, ed. Prothero, I, p. 147.) In the spring of 1809, _English
+Bards and Scotch Reviewers_ was given anonymously to the world. The
+publication of this vigorous satire virtually decided Byron's career.
+Not only did he abuse Jeffrey, whom he believed responsible for the
+offending critique, but he flung defiance in the face of almost all his
+literary contemporaries. The authorship of the satire was soon apparent,
+and in a flippant note to the second edition, Byron became still more
+abusive toward Jeffrey and his "dirty pack," and declared that he was
+ready to give satisfaction to all who sought it. A few years later he
+regretted his rashness in assailing the authors of his time. He also
+learned of the injustice done to Jeffrey and had ample reason to feel
+embarrassed by the tone of the eight reviews of his poems that Jeffrey
+did write for the _Edinburgh_. (See the list in Prothero, II, p. 248.)
+In _Don Juan_ (canto X, xvi), he made the following retraction:--
+
+    "And all our little feuds, at least all _mine_,
+      Dear Jeffrey, once my most redoubted foe
+    (As far as rhyme and criticism combine
+      To make such puppets of us things below),
+    Are over. Here's a health to 'Auld Lang Syne!'
+      I do not know you, and may never know
+    Your face--but you have acted, on the whole,
+    Most nobly; and I own it from my soul."
+
+The other reviews of _Hours of Idleness_ are of little interest. The
+_Monthly_ and the _Critical_ both praised the book; the _Literary
+Panorama_, III, p. 273, said the author was no imbecile, but an
+incautious writer.
+
+98. θελο λεγειν,--Anacreon, Ode I. (θέλο λέγειν Ἀτρείδας, κ. τ. λ.)
+
+98. μεσονυκτιοις, ποθ' ὁραις,--Anacreon, Ode III. (μεσονυκτίοις ποθ'
+ὥραις, κ. τ. λ.)
+
+100. _Sancho_,--Sancho Panza in _Don Quixote_. The proverb is of ancient
+origin. See French, Latin, Italian and Spanish forms in Brewer's
+_Dictionary of Phrase and Fable_.
+
+
+_Childe Harold_
+
+Shortly after the appearance of the second edition of _English Bards and
+Scotch Reviewers_, Byron left England and travelled through the East, at
+the same time leisurely composing the first two cantos of _Childe
+Harold's Pilgrimage_. Their publication in 1812 placed him at the head
+of the popular poets of the day. Henceforth the reviews gave extensive
+notices to all his productions. (For references, see J.P. Anderson's
+bibliography appended to Hon. Roden Noel's _Life of Byron_.) _Childe
+Harold_ was reviewed in the _Edinburgh Rev._, XIX (466-477), by Jeffrey;
+in the _Quarterly_, VII (180-200), by George Ellis; in the _British
+Review_, III (275-302); and _Eclectic Review_, XV (630-641).
+
+The article here reprinted from the _Christian Observer_, XI (376-386),
+of June, 1812, is of special interest as an early protest from
+conservative, religious circles against the immoral and irreverent tone
+of Byron's poetry. As literary criticism, it is almost worthless, in
+spite of the elaborate allusions and quotations with which the
+critic--evidently a survivor of the old school--has interlarded his
+remarks. Little can be said in defense of an article which insists that
+the chief end of poetry is to be agreeably didactic and which (in 1812)
+cites Southey as the greatest of living poets. However, it probably
+represents the attitude of a large number of worthy people of the time,
+who recognized that Byron had genius, and wished to see him exercise his
+powers with due regard for the proprieties of civilized life. As
+Byron's offences grew more flagrant in his later poems, the criticisms
+in the conservative reviews became more vehement. For Byron's
+controversy with the _British Review_, which he facetiously dubbed "my
+grandmother's review" in _Don Juan_, see Prothero, IV, pp. (346-347),
+and Appendix VII. The ninth Appendix to the same volume is Byron's
+caustic reply to the brutal review of _Don Juan_ in _Blackwood's
+Magazine_, V, p. 512 ff.
+
+101. _Lion of the north_, Francis Jeffrey. The usual agnomen of Gustavus
+Adolphus. Cf. Walter Scott, the "Wizard of the North."
+
+105. _Faiery Queen will not often be read through_. Hume's _History of
+England_, Appendix III.
+
+106. _Qui, quid sit pulchrum_, etc. Horace, Epis. II (3-4).
+
+106. _Rursum--quid virtus_, etc. Horace, Epis. II (17-18).
+
+107. _Our sage serious Spenser, etc._ Milton's _Areopagitica_, _Works_,
+ed. Mitford, IV, p. 412.
+
+107. _Quinctilian_. See Quintilian, Book XII, Chap. I.
+
+107. _Longinus_. _On the Sublime_, IX, XIII, etc.
+
+108. _Restoration of Learning in the East_. A Cambridge prize poem
+(1805) by Charles Grant, Lord Glenelg (1778-1866).
+
+109. _Thersites_. See Shakespeare's _Troilus and Cressida_.
+
+109. _Caliban_. See Shakespeare's _The Tempest_.
+
+109. _Heraclitus_. The "weeping philosopher" (circa 500 B.C.).
+
+109. _Zeno_. The founder (342-270 B.C.) of the Stoic School.
+
+109. _Zoilus_. The ancient grammarian who assailed the works of Homer.
+The epithet Homeromastix is sometimes applied to him.
+
+113. _The philosophic Tully, etc._ See the concluding paragraph of
+Cicero's _De Senectute_.
+
+
+PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
+
+It is doubtful whether any other poet was so widely and so continuously
+assailed in the reviews as Shelley. Circumstances have made certain
+critiques on Byron, Keats, and others more widely known, but nowhere
+else do we find the persistent stream of abuse that followed in the wake
+of Shelley's publications. The _Blackwood_ articles were usually most
+scathing, and those of the _Literary Gazette_ were not far behind.
+Fortunately, the poet spent most of his time in Italy and thus remained
+in ignorance of the great majority of these spiteful attacks in the
+less important periodicals.
+
+_Alastor_, which appeared in 1816, attracted comparatively little
+attention. The tone of the brief notice reprinted from the _Monthly
+Rev._, LXXIX, n.s., p. 433, shows that the poet was as yet unknown to
+the critics. _Blackwood's Magazine_, VI (148-154), gave a longer and, on
+the whole, more favorable account of the poem. In the same year, Leigh
+Hunt published his _Story of Rimini_, most noteworthy for its graceful
+rhythmical structure in the unrestricted couplets of Chaucer. This
+departure from the polished heroics of Pope, which were ill-adapted to
+narrative subjects in spite of his successful translation of Homer, was
+hailed with delight by the younger poets. Shelley imitated the measure
+in his _Julian_ and _Maddalo_, and Keats did likewise in _Lamia_ and
+_Endymion_. Hunt was soon recognized by the critics as the leader of a
+group of liberals whom they conveniently classified as the Cockney
+School. Shelley's ill-treatment at the hands of the reviewers dates from
+his association with this coterie. His _Revolt of Islam_ (1818) was
+assailed by John Taylor Coleridge in the _Quarterly Review_, XXI
+(460-471). _The Cenci_ was condemned as a horrible literary monstrosity
+by the scandalized critics of the _Monthly Rev._, XCIV, n.s. (161-168);
+the _Literary Gazette_, 1820 (209-10); and the _New Monthly Magazine_,
+XIII (550-553). The review here reprinted from the _London Mag._, I
+(401-405), is comparatively mild in its censure.
+
+One would naturally suppose that the death of Keats would have ensured
+at least a respectful consideration for Shelley's lament, _Adonais_
+(1821); but the callous critics were by no means abashed. The outrageous
+article in the _Literary Gazette_ of December 8, 1821, pp. (772-773), is
+one of the unpardonable errors of literary criticism; but it sinks into
+insignificance beside the brutal, unquotable review which _Blackwood's
+Magazine_ permitted to appear in its pages. In the same year Shelley's
+youthful poetical indiscretion, _Queen Mab_, which he himself called
+"villainous trash," was published under circumstances beyond his
+control, and forthwith the readers of the _Literary Gazette_ were
+regaled with ten columns of foul abuse from the pen of a critic who
+declared that he was driven almost speechless by the sentiments
+expressed in the poem. Well could the heartless reviewer of _Adonais_
+write:--"If criticism killed the disciples of that [the Cockney]
+school, Shelley would not have been alive to write an elegy on another."
+
+115. _Eye in a fine phrenzy rolling_. Shakespeare's _Midsummer-Night's
+Dream_, V, 1, 12.
+
+115. _Above this visible diurnal sphere_. Milton's _Paradise Lost_, Book
+VII, 22.
+
+116. _Parcâ quod satis est manu_. Horace, _Odes_, III, 16, 24.
+
+116. _Lord Fanny_. A nickname bestowed upon Lord Hervey, an effeminate
+noble of the time of George II.
+
+117. _O! rus, quando ego te aspiciam_. Horace, _Satires_, II, 6, 60.
+
+117. _Mordecai_. See Book of _Esther_, V, 13.
+
+118. _Last of the Romans_. Mark Antony in Shakespeare's _Julius Cæsar_,
+III, 2, 194.
+
+120. _Full fathom five_. Shakespeare's _The Tempest_, I, 2, 396.
+
+126. _Ohé! jam satis est_. Horace, _Satires_, I, 5, 12-13.
+
+126. _Tristram Shandy_. The excommunication is in vol. III, chap. XI.
+
+133. _Put a girdle_, etc. See Shakespeare's _Midsummer-Night's Dream_,
+II, 1, 175.
+
+
+JOHN KEATS
+
+The history of English poetry offers no more interesting case between
+poet and critic than that of John Keats. The imputed influence of a
+savage critique in hastening the death of the poet has given the
+_Quarterly Review_ an unenviable notoriety which clings in spite of the
+efforts of scholars to establish the truth. To many students, Keats,
+_Endymion_, and _Quarterly_ are practically connotative terms; and this
+is a direct result of the righteous but misguided indignation of
+Shelley--misguided because his information was incomplete and the more
+guilty party escaped, thus inflicting upon the _Quarterly_ the brunt of
+the opprobrium of which far more than half should be accredited to
+_Blackwood's Magazine_.
+
+_Endymion_ was published in April, 1818. One of the publishers (Taylor
+and Hessey) requested Gifford, then editor of the _Quarterly Review_, to
+treat the poem with indulgence. This indiscreet move probably actuated
+Gifford to provide a severe critique; at any rate, in the belated April
+number of the _Quarterly_, XIX (204-208), which was not issued until
+September, appeared the famous review. A persistent error, which has
+crept into W.M. Rossetti's _Life of Keats_, into Anderson's
+bibliography, and even into the article on Gifford in the _Dictionary of
+National Biography_, attributes this article to Gifford himself; but it
+is known to be the work of John Wilson Croker. (See the article on
+Croker in _Dict. Nat. Biog._ From the article on John Murray (_ibid._)
+we learn that Gifford was not wholly responsible for a single article in
+the _Quarterly_.)
+
+Meanwhile, _Blackwood's Magazine_, III (519-524) had made _Endymion_ the
+text of its fourth infamous tirade against the Cockney School of Poetry.
+The signature "Z" was appended to all the articles, but the critic's
+identity has not yet been discovered. Leigh Hunt thought it was Walter
+Scott, Haydon suspected the actor Terry, but it is more probable that
+the honor belongs to John Gibson Lockhart. One account attributes the
+entire series to Lockhart; another attributes the series to Wilson, but
+holds Lockhart responsible for the _Endymion_ article. Mr. Andrew Lang,
+in his _Life and Letters of Lockhart_, dismissed the matter by saying
+that he did not know who wrote the article.
+
+The _Quarterly_ critique was reprinted in Stevenson's _Early Reviews_,
+in Rossetti's _Life of Keats_, in Buxton Forman's edition of Keats'
+_Poetical Works_ (Appendix V) and elsewhere. From a critical point of
+view, it is, as Forman terms it, a "curiously unimportant production."
+The student will at once question its power to cause distress in the
+mind of the poet; as for malignant severity, there are several reviews
+among the present reprints that put the brief _Quarterly_ article to
+shame. When we turn to what Swinburne calls the "obscener insolence" of
+the _Blackwood_ article, we find an unrestrained torrent of abuse
+against both Hunt and Keats that amply justified Landor's subsequent
+allusions to the _Blackguard's Magazine_. The _Quarterly_ critique was
+captious and ill-tempered; but the _Blackwood_ article was a personal
+insult.
+
+It is impossible to consider in detail the vexed question of the
+influence which these reviews had upon Keats. In Mr. W.M. Rossetti's
+_Life of Keats_, pp. (83-106) there is a full discussion of the evidence
+on the subject. Within a few months after the appearance of the
+articles, Keats wrote:--"Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on
+the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic
+of his own works. My own domestic criticism has given me pain without
+comparison beyond what _Blackwood_ or _The Quarterly_ could possibly
+inflict." Some weeks later he wrote that the _Quarterly_ article had
+only served to make him more prominent among bookmen. After some time
+he expressed himself less confidently and deprecated the growing power
+of the reviews, but there is no evidence that he fretted over the
+critiques. Haydon tells us that Keats was morbid and silent for hours at
+a time; but it is quite likely that the consciousness of his physical
+affliction--hereditary consumption--was oppressing his mind. His death
+occurred on February 23, 1821--about two and a half years after the
+appearance of the _Endymion_ critiques.
+
+Shelley had gone to Italy before the reviews were published. He heard of
+the _Quarterly_ article, but knew nothing of _Blackwood's_ while writing
+_Adonais_; hence in both poem and preface, the former review is charged
+with having caused Keats' death. Shelley declared that Keats' agitation
+over the review ended in the rupture of a blood vessel in the lungs with
+an ensuing rapid consumption. These statements, which Shelley must have
+had indirectly, have not been substantiated. We are forced to the
+conclusion now generally accepted--that Keats, although sensitive to
+personal ridicule, was superior to the stings of review criticism and
+that the distressing events of the last year of his life were sufficient
+to assure the early triumph of the inherent and unconquerable disease.
+
+141. _Miss Baillie_. Joanna Baillie (1762-1851) authoress of numerous
+forgotten plays and poems which enjoyed great popularity in their day.
+
+142. _Land of Cockaigne_. Here means London, and refers specifically to
+the Cockney poets. An old French poem on the _Land of Cockaigne_
+described it as an ideal land of luxury and ease. The best authorities
+do not accept Cockney as a derivative form. The Cockney School was
+composed of Londoners of the middle-class, supposedly ill-bred and
+imperfectly educated. The critics took special delight in dwelling upon
+the humble origin of the Cockneys, their lack of university training,
+and especially their dependence on translations for their knowledge of
+the classics.
+
+142. _When Leigh Hunt left prison_. Hunt had been imprisoned for libel
+on the Prince Regent (1812).
+
+146. _Vauxhall_. The Gardens were a favorite resort for Londoners early
+in the eighteenth century and remained popular for a long time. See
+Thackeray's _Vanity Fair_ (chap. VI). The implication in the present
+passage is that the Cockney poet gets his ideas of nature from the
+immediate vicinity of London.
+
+147. _East of Temple-bar_. That is, living in the City of London.
+
+150. _Young Sangrado_. An allusion to Doctor Sangrado, in Le Sage's _Gil
+Blas_ (1715).
+
+
+ALFRED LORD TENNYSON
+
+Tennyson's first poetical efforts, which appeared in _Poems by Two
+Brothers_ (1827) attracted little critical attention. His prize-poem,
+_Timbuctoo_ (1829) received the interesting notice here reprinted from
+the _Athenæum_ (p. 456) of July 22, 1829. _Timbuctoo_ was printed in the
+_Cambridge Chronicle_ (July 10, 1829); in the _Prolusiones Academicæ_
+(1829); and several times in _Cambridge Prize-Poems_. The use of heroic
+metre in prize-poems was traditional; hence the award was an enviable
+tribute to the blank-verse of _Timbuctoo_.
+
+Tennyson's success was emphasized by the remarkable series of reviews
+that greeted his earliest volumes of poems. The _Poems, chiefly Lyrical_
+(1830) were welcomed by Sir John Bowring in the _Westminster Review_, by
+Leigh Hunt in the _Tatler_, by Arthur Hallam in the _Englishman's
+Magazine_, and by John Wilson in _Blackwood's Magazine_. The _Poems_
+(1833) were reviewed by W.J. Fox in the _Monthly Repository_, and by
+John Stuart Mill in the _Westminster Review_. This array of names was
+indeed a tribute to the poet; but the unfavorable review, was, as usual,
+most significant. The article written by Lockhart for the _Quarterly
+Rev._, XLIX (81-97), has been characterized as "silly and brutal," but
+it was neither. Tennyson's fame is secure; we can at least be just to
+his early reviewer. It is true that the poet winced under the lash and
+that ten years elapsed before his next volume of collected poems
+appeared; but Canon Ainger is surely in error when he holds the
+_Quarterly Review_ mainly responsible for this long silence. The rich
+measure of praise elsewhere bestowed upon the volume would leave us no
+alternative but the conclusion that Tennyson was childish enough to
+maintain his silence for a decade because Lockhart took liberties with
+his poems instead of joining the chorus of adulation. We know that there
+were other and stronger reasons for Tennyson's silence and we also know
+that the effect of Lockhart's article was decidedly salutary. When the
+next collection of _Poems_ (1842) did appear, the shorter pieces
+ridiculed by Lockhart were omitted, and the derided passages in the
+longer poems were altered.
+
+We may, without conscientious scruples, take Mr. Andrew Lang's advice,
+and enjoy a laugh over Lockhart's performance. Its mock appreciations
+are, perhaps, far-fetched at times; but there are enough effective
+passages to give zest to the article. It has been said in all
+seriousness that Lockhart failed to appreciate the beauty of most of
+Tennyson's lines, and that he confined his remarks to the most
+assailable passages. Surely, when a critic undertakes to write a
+mock-appreciation, he will not quote the best verses, to the detriment
+of his plan. The poet must see to it that his volume does not contain
+enough absurdities to form a sufficient basis for such an article. There
+is a striking contrast to the humor of Lockhart in the little-known
+review of the same volume by the _Literary Gazette_, 1833, pp.
+(772-774). The latter seized upon some crudities that had escaped the
+_Quarterly's_ notice, and, with characteristic brutality, decided that
+the poet was insane and needed a low diet and a cell.
+
+Although the reception accorded to _Poems_ (1842) was generally
+favorable, the publication of _The Princess_ in 1847 afforded the
+critics another opportunity to lament Tennyson's inequalities. The
+spirit of the review of _The Princess_ here reprinted from the _Literary
+Gazette_ of August 8, 1848, is practically identical with that of the
+_Athenæum_ on January 6, 1848, but specifies more clearly the critic's
+objections to the medley. It is noteworthy that Lord Tennyson made
+extensive changes in subsequent editions of _The Princess_, but left
+unaltered all of the passages to which the _Literary Gazette_ took
+exception. The beautiful threnody _In Memoriam_ (1850) and Tennyson's
+elevation to the laureateship in the same year established his position
+as the leading poet of the time; but the appearance of _Maud_ in 1856
+proved to be a temporary check to his popularity. A few personal friends
+admired it and praised its fine lyrics; but as a dramatic narrative it
+failed to please the reviews. The most interesting of the critiques
+(unfortunately too long to be reprinted here) appeared in _Blackwood's
+Magazine_, XLI (311-321), of September, 1855,--a forcible, well-written
+article, which, incidentally, shows how much the magazine had improved
+in respectability since the days of the lampooners of Byron, Shelley,
+and Keats. The authorship of the article has not been disclosed, but we
+know that W.E. Aytoun asked permission of the proprietor to review
+Tennyson's _Maud_. (See Mrs. Oliphant's _William Blackwood and his
+Sons_.) The publication of the _Idylls of the King_ (1859), turned the
+tide more strongly than before in Tennyson's favor, and subsequent
+fault-finding on the part of the critics was confined largely to his
+dramas.
+
+153. _Catullus_. See Catullus, II and III--(_Passer, deliciæ meæ
+puellæ_, and _Lugete, O Veneres Cupidinesque_).
+
+153. Είθε λύρη, κ. τ. λ. Usually found in the remains of Alcæus. Thomas
+Moore translates it with his _Odes of Anacreon_ (LXXVII), beginning
+"Would that I were a tuneful lyre," etc. Lockhart proceeds to ridicule
+Tennyson for wishing to be a river, which is not what the quoted lines
+state. Nor does Tennyson "ambition a bolder metamorphosis" than his
+predecessors. Anacreon (Ode XXII) wishes to be a stream, as well as a
+mirror, a robe, a pair of sandals and sundry other articles. See Moore's
+interesting note.
+
+155. _Non omnis moriar_. Horace, _Odes_, III, 30, 6.
+
+156. _Tongues in trees_, etc. Shakespeare's _As You Like It_, II, 1, 17.
+
+157. _Aristæus_. A minor Grecian divinity, worshipped as the first to
+introduce the culture of bees.
+
+164. _Dionysius Periegetes_. Author of περιήγησις τῆς γῆς, a description
+of the earth in hexameters, usually published with the scholia of
+Eustathius and the Latin paraphrases of Avienus and Priscian. For the
+account of Æthiopia, see also Pausanias, I, 33, 4.
+
+167. _The Rovers_. _The Rovers_ was a parody on the German drama of the
+day, published in the _Anti-Jacobin_ (1798) and written by Frere,
+Canning and others. It is reprinted in Charles Edmund's _Poetry of the
+Anti-Jacobin_. The chorus of conspirators is at the end of Act IV.
+
+169. _The Groves of Blarney_. An old Irish song. A version may be seen
+in the _Antiquary_, I, p. 199. The quotation by Lockhart differs
+somewhat from the corresponding stanza of the cited version.
+
+170. _Corporal Trim_. In Sterne's _Tristram Shandy_.
+
+173. _Christopher North_. John Wilson, of _Blackwood's Magazine_.
+
+
+ROBERT BROWNING
+
+The reviews of Browning's poems are singularly uninteresting from a
+historical standpoint. There is usually a protest against the obscurity
+of the poetry and a plea that the author should make better use of his
+manifest genius. For details concerning these reviews, see the
+bibliography of Browning in Nicoll and Wise's _Literary Anecdotes of the
+Nineteenth Century_. The list there given is extensive, but does not
+include several of the reviews mentioned below.
+
+The early poems were so abstruse that the critics were unable to make
+sport of them as they did in the case of Wordsworth, Byron, Tennyson,
+and the rest; and when Browning finally deigned to write within range of
+the average human intellect, that particular style of reviewing had lost
+favor. His earliest publication, _Pauline_ (1832) was well received by
+W.J. Fox in _Monthly Repository_, and in the _Athenæum_. _Tait's
+Edinburgh Magazine_ called it a "piece of pure bewilderment." See also
+the brief notice in the _Literary Gazette_, 1833, p. 183. _Paracelsus_
+(1835) had a similar experience; the reprint from the _Athenæum_, 1835,
+p. 640, is fairly characteristic of the rest, among which are the
+articles in the _Monthly Repository_, 1835, p. 716; the _Christian
+Remembrancer_, XX, p. 346, and the reviews written by John Forster for
+the _Examiner_, 1835, p. 563, and the _New Monthly Magazine_, XLVI
+(289-308).
+
+Neither the favorable review of _Sordello_ (1840) in the _Monthly Rev._,
+1840, II, p. 149, nor the partly appreciative article in the _Athenæum_,
+1840, p. 431, seems to warrant the well-known anecdotes relating the
+difficulties of Douglas Jerrold and Tennyson in attempting to understand
+that poem. The _Athenæum_ gave the poet sound advice, especially in
+regard to the intentional obscurity of his meaning. That this admonition
+was futile may be gathered from the _Saturday Review's_ article (I, p.
+69) on _Men and Women_ (1855) published fifteen years after _Sordello_.
+The critic reverted to the earlier style, and produced one of the most
+readable reviews of Browning. Whatever may be the final verdict yet to
+be passed upon Browning's poetic achievement, the fact remains that the
+contemporary reviews from first to last deplored in his work a
+deliberate obscurity which was wholly unwarranted and which precluded
+the universal appeal that is essential to a poet's greatness.
+
+189. _Della Crusca of Sentimentalism_. Robert Merry (1755-1798) under
+the name Della Crusca became the leader of a set of poetasters who
+flourished during the poetic dearth at the end of the eighteenth century
+and poured forth their rubbish until William Gifford exposed their
+follies in his satires _The Baviad_ (1794) and _The Mæviad_ (1795).
+
+189. _Alexander Smith_. A Scotch poet (1830-1867).
+
+189. _Mystic of Bailey_. Philip James Bailey (1816-1902), best known as
+the author of _Festus_, published _The Mystic_ in 1855.
+
+192. _Hudibras Butler, etc._ Samuel Butler, author of _Hudibras_
+(1663-78); Richard H. Barham, author of the _Ingoldsby Legends_ (1840);
+and Thomas Hood, author of _Whims and Oddities_ (1826-27). These poets
+are cited by the reviewer for their skill with unusual metres and
+difficult rhymes.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+_Academy_, xlii-xliii
+
+_Account of English Dramatic Poets_, xv
+
+_Adonais_, by Shelley, reviewed, 129-134; 214, 217
+
+_Advice to Young Reviewer_, xxiii
+
+Ainsworth, Harrison, xlv
+
+Akenside, Mark, xvi
+
+_Alastor_, by Shelley, reviewed, 115
+
+_Album Verses_, by Lamb, reviewed, 66-67
+
+Alford, Dean, xxxv
+
+Allingham, William, l
+
+_All the Year Round_, l
+
+_Analytical Review_, xxii
+
+_Anti-Jacobin Review_, xxiii
+
+Appleton, Dr. Charles, xlii
+
+Arber, Prof. Edward, xiii
+
+Arnold, Matthew, xxxii, xxxvi, xlii
+
+_Athenæum_, xxxviii-xl, liv;
+  on Tennyson's _Timbuctoo_, 151;
+  on Browning's _Paracelsus_, 187
+
+_Athenian Mercury_, xiv
+
+_Atlas_, xl
+
+Austin, Mr. Alfred, xxxvi
+
+
+Bagehot, Walter, xxxii, xxxiv
+
+Barrow, Sir John, xxviii
+
+_Battle of the Reviews_, xx-xxi
+
+Bayle, Pierre, xiii
+
+_Bee_, xvi
+
+Behn, Mrs. Aphra, xv
+
+Beloe, William, xxiii
+
+Bentham, Jeremy, xxxi
+
+_Bentley's Miscellany_, l
+
+Bibliography, lvi-lix
+
+_Bibliotheca Literaria_, xvi
+
+_Bibliothèque Ancienne et Moderne_, xvi
+
+_Bibliothèque Angloise_, xv
+
+_Bibliothèque Choisée_, xvi
+
+Blackwood, John, xlvii
+
+Blackwood, William, xlv
+
+_Blackwood's Magazine_, xlv-xlvii;
+  on Keats' _Endymion_, 141-150; 216
+
+_Blank Verse_, by Lamb and Lloyd, reviewed, 65
+
+Blount, Sir Thomas Pope, xiv
+
+_Bookman_, xxxvii
+
+Bower, Archibald, xvi
+
+_British and Foreign Review_, xxxii
+
+_British Critic_, xxiii;
+  on Landor's _Gebir_, 68
+
+_British Librarian_, xvi
+
+_British Magazine_, xxii, xlv
+
+_British Review_, xxxii, 213
+
+Brougham, Henry, xxiv, xxvi-xxvii, xxx, 210
+
+Browning, Robert, _Paracelsus_ rev. in _Athenæum_, 187;
+  _Sordello_ rev. in _Monthly Rev._, 188;
+  _Men and Women_ rev. in _Saturday Rev._, 189-196; 220-222
+
+Buckingham, James Silk, xxxviii
+
+Budgell, Eustace, xvi
+
+Bulwer, Edward, xxx, xlv
+
+Bunting, Mr. Percy, xxxvi
+
+Burns, Robert, _Poems_ rev. in _Edinburgh Mag._, 13-14;
+  in _Critical Rev._, 15; 199-200
+
+Byron, Lord, 47, 48;
+  _Hours of Idleness_ rev. in _Edinburgh Rev._, 94-100;
+  _Childe Harold_ rev. in _Christian Observer_, 101-114; 210-213
+
+
+Campbell, Thomas, xlv
+
+Carlyle, Thomas, xxx, xlv, xlix
+
+Cave, Edward, xliv
+
+_Cenci_, by Shelley, reviewed, 116-128, 214
+
+_Censura Celebrium Authorum_, xiv
+
+_Censura Temporum_, xv
+
+_Childe Harold_, by Byron, reviewed, 101-114; 212-213
+
+_Christabel_, by Coleridge, reviewed, 47-59
+
+_Christian Observer_, xxxiii;
+  on Byron's _Childe Harold_, 101-114
+
+_Christian Remembrancer_, xxxii
+
+Christie, Jonathan Henry, xlviii
+
+Cleghorn, James, xlvi
+
+Cobbett, William, xxxvii
+
+Cockney School, _Blackwood's Mag._ on, 141-150; 216-217
+
+Colburn, Henry, xxxvii, xlv
+
+Coleridge, John Taylor, xxix
+
+Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, xlvi;
+  _Christabel_ rev. in _Edinburgh Rev._, 47-59; 201-202, 204-206
+
+Collins, Mr. John Churton, li
+
+Colvin, Mr. Sidney, xlii, liv
+
+_Compleat Library_, xiv
+
+Conder, Josiah, xxxii
+
+_Contemporary Review_, xxxv
+
+Cook, John D., xli
+
+Copleston, Edward, xxiii
+
+_Cornhill Magazine_, l
+
+Cotton, Mr. James S., xliii
+
+Courthope, Mr. W.J., xxxvi
+
+Courtney, Mr. W.L., xxxv
+
+Cowper, William, _Poems_ rev. in _Critical Rev._, 10-12; 198-199
+
+_Critic_, xxxvii
+
+_Critical Review_, xviii-xxi, xxiii, xxv, xxxiii;
+  on Goldsmith's _Traveller_, 5-9;
+  on Cowper's _Poems_, 10-12;
+  on Burn's _Poems_, 15;
+  on _Lyrical Ballads_, 20-23
+
+Croker, John Wilson, xxviii
+
+
+Dennis, John, xv
+
+DeQuincey, Thomas, xlviii
+
+_De Re Poetica_, xiv
+
+_Descriptive Sketches_, by Wordsworth, reviewed, 16-18
+
+Dickens, Charles, l, liv
+
+Dilke, Charles W., xxxix
+
+Dixon, William H., xxxix
+
+Doble, Mr. C.E., xliii
+
+Dowden, Prof. Edward, xxxiv
+
+_Dublin Review_, xxxii
+
+_Dublin University Magazine_, l
+
+D'Urfey, Thomas, xv
+
+
+_Eclectic Review_, xxxii
+
+_Edinburgh Magazine_, xliv;
+  on Burns' _Poems_, 13-14
+
+_Edinburgh Review_, xxiv-xxvii, xxix-xxxi, xlvi, liv;
+  on Wordsworth's _Poems_, 24-46;
+  on Coleridge's _Christabel_, 47-59;
+  on Scott's _Marmion_, 70-93;
+  on Byron's _Hours of Idleness_, 94-100; 209-211
+
+Eliot, George, xxxiv, xlvii
+
+Elliott, Hon. A.R.D., xxxi
+
+Elwin, Whitwell, xxix
+
+Empson, William, xxx
+
+_Endymion_, by Keats, rev. in _Quarterly Rev._, 135-140;
+  rev. in _Blackwood's Mag._, 141-150; 215-218
+
+_English Review_, xxii, xxxii
+
+Escott, Mr. T.H.S., xxxv
+
+_Evening Walk_, by Wordsworth, reviewed, 19
+
+_Examiner_, xxxvii
+
+
+Fonblanque, Albany, xxxvii
+
+_Foreign Quarterly Review_, xxxii
+
+_Foreign Review_, xxxii
+
+Forster, John, xxxvii
+
+_Fortnightly Review_, xxxiii-xxxv
+
+Fox, W.J., xxxiii
+
+_Fraser's Magazine_, xlix-l
+
+Froude, James A., l
+
+
+_Gebir_, by Landor, rev. in _British Critic_, 68;
+  rev. in _Monthly Rev._, 69; 208
+
+_Gentleman's Journal_, xv, xliv
+
+_Gentleman's Magazine_, xv, xliv
+
+Gifford, William, xxvii, xxviii
+
+Goldsmith, Oliver, xviii, xxi, xxii, xlv;
+  _The Traveller_ rev. in _Critical Rev._, 5-9, 197, 198
+
+Grant, Charles, 108
+
+Gray, Thomas, _Odes_ rev. in _Monthly Rev._, 1-4; 197-198
+
+Green, John Richards, xxiii
+
+Griffiths, Ralph, xvii, xviii, xx
+
+
+Hallam, Henry, xxx
+
+Hamilton, Sir William, xxx
+
+Harris, Mr. Frank, xxxv, xli
+
+Harwood, Mr. Philip, xli
+
+Hazlitt, William, 204-205
+
+Hervey, Thomas K., xxxix
+
+Hind, Mr. C. Lewis, xliii
+
+_Historia Literaria_, xvi
+
+_History of Learning_, xiv
+
+_History of the Works of the Learned_, xv, xvi
+
+Hodge, Mr. Harold, xli
+
+Hood, Thomas, xlviii
+
+Hook, Theodore, xlv
+
+Horne, Richard Hengist, xxxiii
+
+Horner, Francis, xxiv, xxv
+
+_Hours of Idleness_, by Byron, reviewed, 94-100; 210-212
+
+_Household Words_, l
+
+Hume, David, 105
+
+Hunt, Leigh, xxxiii, xxxvii, 135, 136, 142
+
+Hutton, Richard Holt, xxxii, xl
+
+
+Introduction, xiii-lv
+
+
+Jebb, Samuel, xvi
+
+Jeffrey, Francis, xxiv-xxvi, xxix, xlviii, 203, 206, 209-210
+
+Jerdan, William, xxxvii, xxxix
+
+Johnson, Samuel, xxi, xxii, 198
+
+_Journal des Savans_, xiii, xiv, xxi
+
+
+Keats, John, _Endymion_, reviewed in _Quarterly Rev._, 135-140;
+  in _Blackwood's Mag._, 141-150; 152, 215-218
+
+Kenrick, William, xx, xxi, xxii
+
+Kingsley, Charles, l
+
+Knowles, Mr. James, xxxv, xxxvi
+
+
+Lamb, Charles, xlviii;
+  _Blank Verse_ rev. in _Monthly Rev._, 65;
+  _Album-Verses_ rev. in _Literary Gazette_, 66-67; 207-208
+
+Landor, Walter Savage, _Gebir_ rev. in _British Critic_, 68;
+  in _Monthly Rev._, 69; 208
+
+Langbaine, Gerald, xv
+
+Le Clerc, Daniel, xvi
+
+Le Clerc, Jean, xiv, xvi
+
+Lewes, George Henry, xxxiv
+
+Lewis, Sir George Cornewall, xxx
+
+_Literary Chronicle_, xxxviii
+
+_Literary Gazette_, xxxvii-xxxix;
+  on Lamb's _Album-Verses_, 66-67;
+  on Shelley's _Adonais_, 129-134;
+  on Tennyson's _The Princess_, 176-186; 207-208
+
+_Literary Journal_, xvi
+
+_Literary Magazine_, xvi, xxii
+
+Lloyd, Charles, _Blank Verse_, rev. in _Monthly Rev._, 65
+
+Lloyd, H.E., xxxvii
+
+Lockhart, John Gibson, xxii, xxxi, 216, 218-219
+
+_London Magazine_, xliv, xlvii-xlviii;
+  on Shelley's _Cenci_, 116-128
+
+_London Quarterly Review_, xxxii
+
+_London Review_, xxii, xxxi
+
+_Longman's Magazine_, l
+
+Lowth, Bishop, xvi
+
+_Lyrical Ballads_, by Wordsworth, reviewed, 20-23; 201-203
+
+
+Macaulay, Thomas Babington, xxix-xxx
+
+MacColl, Mr. Norman, xxxix
+
+Maclise, Daniel, xlix
+
+_Macmillan's Magazine_, l
+
+Macpherson, William, xxix
+
+_Madoc_, by Southey, reviewed, 60-64; 206-207
+
+_Marmion_, by Scott, reviewed, 70-93; 208-210
+
+Martin, Sir Theodore, l
+
+Martineau, James, xxxii
+
+Maty, Paul Henry, xxii
+
+Maurice, Frederick D., xxxviii
+
+Maxse, Mr. Louis J., xxxvi
+
+Melbourne, Lord, xxx
+
+_Memoirs for the Ingenious_, xiv
+
+_Memoirs of Literature_, xv
+
+_Memoires Littéraires_, xv
+
+_Men and Women_, by Browning, reviewed 189-196, 221
+
+_Mercurius Librarius_, xiii
+
+Meredith, Mr. George, xxxiv
+
+_Metropolitan_, l
+
+Mill, John Stuart, xxx, xxxi
+
+Minto, William, xxxvii
+
+_Miscellaneous Letters_, xiv
+
+_Monthly Censor_, xxxiii
+
+_Monthly Chronicle_, xxxiii
+
+_Monthly Magazine_, xlv
+
+_Monthly Miscellany_, xv
+
+_Monthly Repository_, xxxiii
+
+_Monthly Review_, xvii-xxi, xxv, xxxiii;
+  on Gray's _Odes_, 1-4;
+  on Wordsworth's _Descriptive Sketches_, 16-18;
+  on Wordsworth's _Evening Walk_, 19;
+  on Southey's _Madoc_, 60-64;
+  on Lamb's _Blank Verse_, 65;
+  on Landor's _Gebir_, 69;
+  on Shelley's _Alastor_, 115;
+  on Browning's _Sordello_, 188
+
+Moore, Thomas, xlviii
+
+Morley, Mr. John, xxxiv
+
+Motteux, Peter Anthony, xv, xliv
+
+Moxon, Edward, 207
+
+Murray, John, xxvii
+
+_Museum_, xvi
+
+
+Napier, Macvey, xxix
+
+Nares, Robert, xxxiii
+
+_National Review_ (quar.), xxxii;
+  (mon.), xxxvi
+
+_New Memoirs of Literature_, xvi
+
+_New Monthly Magazine_, xxxvii, xlv
+
+_New Review_, xxii
+
+Nicolas, Sir N.H., xxxii
+
+_Nineteenth Century_, xxxvi
+
+_North British Review_, xxxii
+
+_Nouvelles de la République des Lettres_, xiii
+
+
+Oldys, William, xvi
+
+Oliphant, Mrs. M.O.W., xlvii
+
+
+_Paracelsus_, by Browning, reviewed, 187
+
+Parkes, Samuel, xiv
+
+Pater, Walter, xlii, xliii
+
+Phillips, Sir Richard, xlv
+
+Phillips, Mr. Stephen, liv
+
+Pollock, Mr. W.H., xli
+
+_Porcupine's Gazette_, xxxvii
+
+Pratt, Josiah, xxxiii
+
+_Present State of the Republic of Letters_, xvi
+
+_Princess_, by Tennyson, reviewed, 176-186
+
+Pringle, Thomas, xlvi
+
+Prothero, Mr. George, xxix
+
+Prothero, Mr. Rowland, xxix
+
+
+_Quarterly Review_, xxvii-xxix, liv;
+  on Keats' _Endymion_, 135-140;
+  on Tennyson's _Poems_, 152-175; 215-217
+
+_Quarterly Theological Review_, xxiii
+
+Quintilian, 107
+
+
+Reeve, Henry, xxx
+
+Reid, Andrew, xvi
+
+Rendall, Mr. Vernon, xxxix
+
+_Retrospective Review_, xxxii
+
+_Revue des Deux Mondes_, xxxiii
+
+Ridpath, George, xv
+
+Rintoul, Robert S., xl
+
+Roche, M. de la, xv, xvi
+
+Roscoe, Mr. E.S., xxxi
+
+Roscoe, William C., xxxii
+
+Ross, Miss, xxxvii
+
+_Royal Magazine_, xliv
+
+Russell, Lord John, xxx
+
+
+Salisbury, Lord, xli
+
+Sallo, Denis de, xiii
+
+_Saturday Review_, xli, liv;
+  on Browning's _Men and Women_, 189-196
+
+_Scots Magazine_, xliv
+
+Scott, John, xlvii
+
+Scott, Sir Walter, xxvii;
+  _Marmion_ rev. in _Edinburgh Rev._, 70-93; 208-210
+
+Shelley, Percy Bysshe, _Alastor_ rev. in _Monthly Rev._, 115;
+  _Cenci_ rev. in _London Mag._, 116-128;
+  _Adonais_ rev. in _Literary Gazette_, 129-134, 213-215
+
+Shore, Mr. W. Teignmouth, xliii
+
+Smith, Sydney, xxiv, xxvi
+
+Smith, Sir William, xxix
+
+Smollett, Tobias xviii, xx, xlv
+
+_Sordello_, by Browning, reviewed, 188
+
+Southern, Henry, xxxi, xxxii
+
+Southey, Robert, xxviii;
+  _Madoc_ rev. in _Monthly Rev._, 60-64; 109, 202, 206-207
+
+_Spectator_, xl-xli
+
+Stebbing, Henry, xxxviii
+
+Stephen, (Sir) Leslie, xxxiv
+
+Sterling, John, xxxviii
+
+Strachey, Mr. J. St. L., xl
+
+Swinburne, Mr. A.C., xxxiv, liv
+
+Symonds, J.A., xxxiv
+
+Symons, Mr. Arthur, liv
+
+
+_Tait's Edinburgh Magazine_, l
+
+Taylor, William, xlv
+
+_Temple Bar_, l
+
+Tennyson, Alfred, (Lord), xxxvi;
+  _Timbuctoo_ rev. in _Athenæum_, 151;
+  _Poems_ rev. in _Quarterly Rev._, 152-175;
+  _The Princess_ rev. in _Literary Gazette_, 176-186; 218-220
+
+Thackeray, W.M., xxx, xlix, l
+
+_Theatrum Poetarum_, xv
+
+_Timbuctoo_, by Tennyson, reviewed, 151
+
+Townsend, Meredith, xl
+
+_Traveller_, by Goldsmith, reviewed, 5-9
+
+
+_Universal Historical Bibliothèque_, xiv
+
+_Universal Magazine_, xliv
+
+_Universal Mercury_, xiv
+
+
+Walpole, Horace, xvi, xx
+
+Warton, J. and T., xvi
+
+Watkins, Dr., xlv
+
+Watts, Alaric A., xlv, xlviii
+
+_Weekly Memorial_, xiv
+
+_Weekly Register_, xxxvii
+
+_Westminster Review_, xxxi-xxxii
+
+Wilson, John, xlvi
+
+Wordsworth, William, _Descriptive Sketches_ rev. in _Monthly Rev._, 16-18;
+  _Evening Walk_ rev. in _ibid._, 19;
+  _Lyrical Ballads_ rev. in _Critical Rev._, 20-23;
+  _Poems_ rev. in _Edinburgh Rev._, 24-46; 200-204
+
+_Works of the Learned_, xiv
+
+
+_Young Student's Library_, xiv
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Early Reviews of English Poets, by John Louis Haney
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EARLY REVIEWS OF ENGLISH POETS ***
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+Project Gutenberg's Early Reviews of English Poets, by John Louis Haney
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Early Reviews of English Poets
+
+Author: John Louis Haney
+
+Release Date: July 6, 2006 [EBook #18766]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EARLY REVIEWS OF ENGLISH POETS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Starner, Taavi Kalju and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+EARLY REVIEWS
+
+OF
+
+ENGLISH POETS
+
+
+EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION
+
+BY
+
+JOHN LOUIS HANEY, PH.D.
+
+_Assistant Professor of English and History, Central High School,
+Philadelphia; Research Fellow in English, University of Pennsylvania_
+
+
+PHILADELPHIA
+THE EGERTON PRESS
+1904
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1904
+BY JOHN LOUIS HANEY
+
+
+PRESS OF
+THE NEW ERA PRINTING COMPANY,
+LANCASTER, PA.
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+MY FRIEND AND TEACHER
+
+PROFESSOR FELIX E. SCHELLING
+
+OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+"Among the amusing and instructive books that remain to be written, one
+of the most piquant would be a history of the criticism with which the
+most celebrated literary productions have been greeted on their first
+appearance before the world." It is quite possible that when Dr. William
+Matthews began his essay on _Curiosities of Criticism_ with these words,
+he failed to grasp the full significance of that future undertaking. Mr.
+Churton Collins recently declared that "a very amusing and edifying
+record might be compiled partly out of a selection of the various
+verdicts passed contemporaneously by reviews on particular works, and
+partly out of comparisons of the subsequent fortunes of works with their
+fortunes while submitted to this censorship." Both critics recognize the
+fact that such a volume would be entertaining and instructive; but, from
+another point of view, it would also be a somewhat doleful book. Even a
+reader of meagre imagination and rude sensibilities could not peruse
+such a volume without picturing in his mind the anguish and the
+heart-ache which those bitter and often vicious attacks inflicted upon
+the unfortunate victims whose works were being assailed.
+
+Authors (particularly sensitive poets) have been at all times the sport
+and plaything of the critics. Mrs. Oliphant, in her _Literary History of
+England_, said with much truth: "There are few things so amusing as to
+read a really 'slashing article'--except perhaps to write it. It is
+infinitely easier and gayer work than a well-weighed and serious
+criticism, and will always be more popular. The lively and brilliant
+examples of the art which dwell in the mind of the reader are
+invariably of this class." Thus it happens that we remember the witty
+onslaughts of the reviewers, and often ignore the fact that certain
+witticisms drove Byron, for example, into a frenzy of anger that called
+forth the most vigorous satire of the century; and others so completely
+unnerved Shelley that he felt tempted to write no more; and still others
+were so unanimously hostile in tone that Coleridge thought the whole
+detested tribe of critics was in league against his literary success.
+There were, of course, such admirable personalities as Wordsworth's--for
+the most part indifferent to the strongest torrent of abuse; and clever
+craftsmen like Tennyson, who, although hurt, read the criticisms and
+profited by them; but, on the other hand, there are still well-informed
+readers who believe that the _Quarterly Review_ at least hastened the
+death of poor Keats.
+
+It has been suggested that such a volume of the "choice crudities of
+criticism" as is here proposed would likewise fulfill the desirable
+purpose of avenging the author upon his ancient enemy, the critic, by
+showing how absurd the latter's utterances often are, and what a
+veritable farrago of folly those collected utterances can make. We may
+rest assured that however much hostile criticism may have pained an
+author, it has never inflicted a permanent injury upon a good book. If
+there appear to be works that have been thus more or less obscured, the
+fault will probably be found not in the critic but in the works
+themselves. According to this agreeable theory, which we would all fain
+believe, the triumph of the ignorant or malevolent critic cannot endure;
+sooner or later the author's merit will be recognized and he will come
+into his own.
+
+The present volume does not attempt to fulfill the conditions suggested
+by Dr. Matthews and Mr. Collins. A history of contemporary criticism of
+famous authors would be a more ambitious undertaking, necessitating an
+extensive apparatus of notes and references. It seeks merely to gather a
+number of interesting anomalies of criticism--reviews of famous poems
+and famous poets differing more or less from the modern consensus of
+opinion concerning those poems and their authors. Although most of the
+chosen reviews are unfavorable, several others have been selected to
+afford evidence of an early appreciation of certain poets. A few
+unexpectedly favorable notices, such as the _Monthly Review's_ critique
+of Browning's _Sordello_, are printed because they appear to be unique.
+The chief criterion in selecting these reviews (apart from the effort to
+represent most of the periodicals and the principal poets between Gray
+and Browning) has been that of interest to the modern reader. In most
+cases, criticisms of a writer's earlier works were preferred as more
+likely to be spontaneous and uninfluenced by his growing literary
+reputation. Thus the volume does not attempt to trace the development of
+English critical methods, nor to supply a hand-book of representative
+English criticism; it offers merely a selection of bygone but readable
+reviews--what the critics thought, or, in some cases, pretended to
+think, of works of poets whom we have since held in honorable esteem.
+The short notices and the well-known longer reviews are printed entire;
+but considerations of space and interest necessitated excisions in a few
+cases, all of which are, of course, properly indicated. The spelling and
+punctuation of the original texts have been carefully followed.
+
+The history of English critical journals has not yet been adequately
+written. The following introduction offers a rapid survey of the
+subject, compiled principally from the sources indicated in the
+bibliographical list. I am indebted to Professor Felix E. Schelling of
+the University of Pennsylvania, and to Dr. Robert Ellis Thompson and
+Professor Albert H. Smyth of the Philadelphia Central High School for
+many suggestions that have been of value in writing the introduction.
+Dr. Edward Z. Davis examined at my request certain pamphlets in the
+British Museum that threw additional light upon the history of the early
+reviews. Dr. A.S.W. Rosenbach and Professor J.H. Moffatt read the proofs
+of the introduction and notes respectively, and suggested several
+noteworthy improvements.
+
+J.L.H.
+
+CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL,
+PHILADELPHIA.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+Preface                                                       vii
+Introduction                                                 xiii
+Bibliography                                                  lvi
+
+REVIEWS
+
+GRAY       Odes (_Monthly Review_)                              1
+GOLDSMITH  The Traveller (_Critical Review_)                    5
+COWPER     Poems, 1782 (_Critical Review_)                     10
+BURNS      Poems, 1786 (_Edinburgh Magazine_)                  13
+           Poems, 1786 (_Critical Review_)                     15
+WORDSWORTH Descriptive Sketches (_Monthly Review_)             16
+           An Evening Walk (_Monthly Review_)                  19
+           Lyrical Ballads (_Critical Review_)                 20
+           Poems, 1807 (_Edinburgh Review_)                    24
+COLERIDGE  Christabel (_Edinburgh Review_)                     47
+SOUTHEY    Madoc (_Monthly Review_)                            60
+LAMB       Blank Verse (_Monthly Review_)                      65
+           Album Verses (_Literary Gazette_)                   66
+LANDOR     Gebir (_British Critic_)                            68
+           Gebir (_Monthly Review_)                            69
+SCOTT      Marmion (_Edinburgh Review_)                        70
+BYRON      Hours of Idleness (_Edinburgh Review_)              94
+           Childe Harold (_Christian Observer_)               101
+SHELLEY    Alastor (_Monthly Review_)                         115
+           The Cenci (_London Magazine_)                      116
+           Adonais (_Literary Gazette_)                       129
+KEATS      Endymion (_Quarterly Review_)                      135
+           Endymion (_Blackwood's Magazine_)                  141
+TENNYSON   Timbuctoo (_Athen�um_)                             151
+           Poems, 1833 (_Quarterly Review_)                   152
+           The Princess (_Literary Gazette_)                  176
+BROWNING   Paracelsus (_Athen�um_)                            187
+           Sordello (_Monthly Review_)                        188
+           Men and Women (_Saturday Review_)                  189
+
+Notes                                                         197
+Index                                                         223
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+To the modern reader, with an abundance of periodicals of all sorts and
+upon all subjects at hand, it seems hardly possible that this wealth of
+ephemeral literature was virtually developed within the past two
+centuries. It offers such a rational means for the dissemination of the
+latest scientific and literary news that the mind undeceived by facts
+would naturally place the origin of the periodical near the invention of
+printing itself. Apart from certain sporadic manifestations of what is
+termed, by courtesy, periodical literature, the real beginning of that
+important department of letters was in the innumerable _Mercurii_ that
+flourished in London after the outbreak of the Civil War. Although the
+_British Museum Catalogue_ presents a long list of these curious
+messengers and news-carriers, the only one that could be of interest in
+the present connection is the _Mercurius Librarius; or a Catalogue of
+Books Printed and Published at London_[A] (1668-70), the contents of
+which simply fulfilled the promise of its title.
+
+Literary journals in England were, however, not a native development,
+but were copied, like the fashions and artistic norms of that period,
+from the French. The famous and long-lived _Journal des S�avans_ was
+begun at Paris in 1665 by M. Denis de Sallo, who has been called, since
+the time of Voltaire, the "inventor" of literary journals. In 1684
+Pierre Bayle began at Amsterdam the publication of _Nouvelles de la
+R�publique des Lettres_, which continued under various hands until
+1718. These French periodicals were the acknowledged inspiration for
+similar ventures in England, beginning in 1682 with the _Weekly Memorial
+for the Ingenious: or an Account of Books lately set forth in Several
+Languages, with some other Curious Novelties relating to Arts and
+Sciences_. The preface stated the intention of the publishers to notice
+foreign as well as domestic works, and to transcribe the "curious
+novelties" from the _Journal des S�avans_. Fifty weekly numbers appeared
+(1682-83), consisting principally of translations of the best articles
+in the French journal.
+
+A few years later (1686), the Genevan theologian, Jean Le Clerc, then a
+resident of London, established the _Universal Historical Biblioth�que;
+or, an Account of most of the Considerable Books printed in All
+Languages_, which was continued by various hands until 1693 in a series
+of twenty-five quarto volumes. Contemporary with this review was a
+number of similar publications which had for the most part a brief
+existence. Among them was the _Athenian Mercury_, published on Tuesdays
+and Saturdays (1691-1696), the _History of Learning_, which appeared for
+a short time in 1691 and again in 1694; _Works of the Learned_
+(1691-92); the _Young Student's Library_ (1692) and its continuation,
+the _Compleat Library_ (1692-94); _Memoirs for the Ingenious_ (1693);
+the _Universal Mercury_ (1694) and _Miscellaneous Letters, etc._
+(1694-96). Samuel Parkes includes among the reviews of this period Sir
+Thomas Pope Blount's remarkable _Censura Celebrium Authorum_ (1690).
+That popular bibliographical dictionary of criticism (reprinted 1694,
+1710 and 1718) is only remembered now for its omission of Shakespeare,
+Spenser, Jonson and Milton from its list of "celebrated authors."
+Neither that volume nor the same author's _De Re Poetica_ (1694) finds a
+proper place in a list of periodicals. They should be grouped with such
+works as Phillips' _Theatrum Poetarum_ (1675) and Langbaine's _Account
+of the English Dramatic Poets_ (1691) among the more deliberate attempts
+at literary criticism.
+
+Between 1692-94 appeared the _Gentleman's Journal; or, the Monthly
+Miscellany. Consisting of News, History, Philosophy, Poetry, Music,
+Translations, etc._ This noteworthy paper, edited by Peter Anthony
+Motteux while he was translating Rabelais, included among its
+contributors Aphra Behn, Oldmixon, Dennis, D'Urfey and others. In many
+ways it anticipated the plan of the _Gentleman's Magazine_ (1731), which
+has usually been accorded the honor of priority among English literary
+magazines. The _History of the Works of the Learned; or, an Impartial
+Account of Books lately printed in all Parts of Europe_ was begun in
+1699 and succumbed after the publication of its thirteenth volume
+(1711). Among its editors was George Ridpath, who was afterwards
+immortalized in Pope's _Dunciad_. The careers of the _Monthly
+Miscellany_ (1707-09) and _Censura Temporum_ (1709-10) were brief. About
+the same time an extensive series of periodicals was begun by a Huguenot
+refugee, Michael De la Roche, who fled to England after the revocation
+of the Edict of Nantes and became an Episcopalian. After several years
+of hack-work for the booksellers, he published (1710) the first numbers
+of his _Memoirs of Literature, containing a Weekly Account of the State
+of Learning at Home and Abroad_, which he continued until 1714 and for a
+few months in 1717. In the latter year he began at Amsterdam his
+_Biblioth�que Angloise_ (1717-27), continued by his _Memoires
+Litt�raires de la Grande Bretagne_ (1720-1724) after the editorship of
+the former had been placed in other hands on account of his pronounced
+anti-Calvinistic views. At Amsterdam, Daniel Le Clerc, a brother of the
+Jean Le Clerc already mentioned, published his _Biblioth�que Chois�e_
+(1703-14) and his _Biblioth�que Ancienne et Moderne_ (1714-28). Both of
+these periodicals suggested numerous ideas to De la Roche, who returned
+to London and conducted the _New Memoirs of Literature_ (1725-27). His
+last venture was a _Literary Journal, or a Continuation of the Memoirs
+of Literature_, which lasted about a year.
+
+Contemporary with De la Roche, Samuel Jebb conducted _Bibliotheca
+Literaria_ (1722-24), dealing with "inscriptions, medals, dissertations,
+etc." In 1728 Andrew Reid began the _Present State of the Republick of
+Letters_, which reached its eighteenth volume in 1736. It was then
+incorporated with the _Literary Magazine; or the History of the Works of
+the Learned_ (1735-36) and the joint periodical was henceforth published
+as a _History of the Works of the Learned_ until 1743. Other less
+extensive literary journals of the same period were Archibald Bower's
+_Historia Literaria_ (1730-34); the _Bee; or, Universal Weekly Pamphlet_
+(1733-35), edited by Addison's cousin, Eustace Budgell; the _British
+Librarian, exhibiting a Compendious Review or Abstract of our most
+Scarce, Useful and Valuable Books, etc._, published anonymously by the
+antiquarian William Oldys, from January to June, 1737, and much esteemed
+by modern bibliophiles as a pioneer and a curiosity of its kind; a
+_Literary Journal_ (1744-49) published at Dublin; and, finally, the
+_Museum; or the Literary and Historical Register_. This interesting
+periodical printed essays, poems and reviews by such contributors as
+Spence, Horace Walpole, the brothers Warton, Akenside, Lowth and others.
+It was published fortnightly from March, 1746 to September, 1747, making
+three octavo volumes.
+
+The periodicals enumerated thus far can hardly be regarded as literary
+in the modern acceptation of the term; they were, for the most part,
+ponderous, learned and scientific in character, and, with the exception
+of the _Gentleman's Journal_ and Dodsley's _Museum_, rarely ventured
+into the domain of _belles-lettres_. An occasional erudite dissertation
+on classical poetry or on the French canons of taste suggested a
+literary intent, but the bulk of the journals was supplied by articles
+on natural history, curious experiments, physiological treatises and
+historical essays. During the latter half of the eighteenth century
+theological and political writings, and accounts of travels in distant
+lands became the staple offering of the reviews.
+
+A new era in the history of English periodicals was marked by the
+publication, on May 1, 1749, of the first number of the _Monthly
+Review_, destined to continue through ninety-six years of varying
+fortune and to reach its 249th volume. It bore the subtitle: _A
+Periodical Work giving an Account, with Proper Abstracts of, and
+Extracts from, the New Books, Pamphlets, etc., as they come out. By
+Several Hands._ The publisher was Ralph Griffiths, who continued to
+manage the review until his death in 1803. It seems remarkable that this
+periodical which set the norm for half a century should have appeared
+not only without preface or advertisement, but likewise without
+patronage or support of any kind. From the first it reviewed poetry,
+fiction and drama as well as the customary classes of applied
+literature, and thus appealed primarily to the public rather than, like
+most of its predecessors, to the learned. Its politics were Whig and its
+theology Non-conformist. Griffiths was not successful at first, but
+determined to achieve popularity by enlisting Ruffhead, Kippis,
+Langhorne and several other minor writers on his critical staff. In
+1757 Oliver Goldsmith became one of those unfortunate hacks as a result
+of his well-known agreement with Griffiths to serve as an
+assistant-editor in exchange for his board, lodging and "an adequate
+salary." About a score of miscellaneous reviews from Goldsmith's
+pen--including critiques of Home's _Douglas_, Burke's _On the Sublime
+and the Beautiful_, Smollett's _History of England_ and Gray's
+_Odes_--appeared in the _Monthly Review_ during 1757-58. The contract
+with Griffiths was soon broken, probably on account of incompatibility
+of temper. Goldsmith declared that he had been over-worked and badly
+treated; but it is quite likely that his idleness and irregular habits
+contributed largely to the misunderstanding.
+
+Meanwhile, a Tory rival and a champion of the Established Church had
+appeared on the field. A printer named Archibald Hamilton projected the
+_Critical Review: or, Annals of Literature. By a Society of Gentlemen_,
+which began to appear in February, 1756, under the editorship of Tobias
+Smollett and extended to a total of 144 volumes when it ceased
+publication in 1817. Its articles were of a high order for the time and
+the new review soon became popular. The open rivalry between the reviews
+was fostered by an exchange of editorial compliments. Griffiths
+published a statement that the _Monthly_ was not written by "physicians
+without practice, authors without learning, men without decency,
+gentlemen without manners, and critics without judgment." Smollett
+retorted that "the _Critical Review_ is not written by a parcel of
+obscure hirelings, under the restraint of a bookseller and his wife, who
+presume to revise, alter and amend the articles occasionally. The
+principal writers in the _Critical Review_ are unconnected with
+booksellers, unawed by old women, and independent of each other." Such
+literary encounters did not fail to stimulate public interest in both
+reviews and to add materially to their circulation.
+
+When the first volume of the _Critical Review_ was complete, the
+"Society of Gentlemen" enriched it with an ornate, self-congratulatory
+Preface in which they said of themselves:
+
+     "However they may have erred in judgment, they have declared their
+     thoughts without prejudice, fear, or affectation; and strove to
+     forget the author's person, while his works fell under their
+     consideration. They have treated simple dulness as the object of
+     mirth or compassion, according to the nature of its appearance.
+     Petulance and self-conceit they have corrected with more severe
+     strictures; and though they have given no quarter to insolence,
+     scurrility and sedition, they will venture to affirm, that no
+     production of merit has been defrauded of its due share of
+     applause. On the contrary, they have cherished with commendation,
+     the very faintest bloom of genius, even when vapid and unformed, in
+     hopes of its being warmed into flavour, and afterwards producing
+     agreeable fruit by dint of proper care and culture; and never,
+     without reluctance disapproved, even of a bad writer, who had the
+     least title to indulgence. The judicious reader will perceive that
+     their aim has been to exhibit a succinct plan of every performance;
+     to point out the most striking beauties and glaring defects; to
+     illustrate their remarks with proper quotations; and to convey
+     these remarks in such a manner, as might best conduce to the
+     entertainment of the public."
+
+Moreover, these high ideals were entertained under the most unfavorable
+circumstances. By the time the second volume was complete, the editors
+took pleasure in announcing that in spite of "open assault and private
+assassination," "published reproach and printed letters of abuse,
+distributed like poisoned arrows in the dark," yea, in spite of the
+"breath of secret calumny" and the "loud blasts of obloquy," the
+_Critical Review_ was more strongly entrenched than before.
+
+There was more than mere rhodomontade in these words. Not only did open
+rivalry exist between the two reviews, but they were both made the
+subject of violent attacks by authors whose productions had been
+condemned on their pages. John Brine (1755), John Shebbeare (1757),
+Horace Walpole (1759), William Kenrick (1759), James Grainger (1759) and
+Joseph Reed (1759) are the earliest of the many writers who issued
+pamphlets in reply to articles in the reviews. In 1759 Smollett was
+tried at the King's Bench for aspersions upon the character of Admiral
+Sir Charles Knowles published in the _Critical Review_. He was declared
+guilty, fined �100, and sentenced to three months' imprisonment. Yet in
+spite of such difficulties, the _Critical Review_ continued to find
+favor among its readers. The articles written by its "Society of
+Gentlemen" were on the whole far more interesting in subject and
+treatment than the work of Griffiths' unfortunate hacks; but the
+_Monthly_ was also prospering, as in 1761 a fourth share in that review
+was sold for more than �755.
+
+In 1760 appeared a curious anonymous satire entitled _The Battle of the
+Reviews_, which presented, upon the model of Swift's spirited account of
+the contest between ancient and modern learning, a fantastic description
+of the open warfare between the two reviews. After a formal declaration
+of hostilities both sides marshal their forces for the struggle. The
+"noble patron" of the _Monthly_ is but slightly disguised as the Right
+Honourable Rehoboam Gruffy, Esq. His associates Sir Imp Brazen, Mynheer
+Tanaquil Limmonad, Martin Problem, and others were probably recognized
+by contemporary readers. To oppose this array the _Critical_ summons a
+force that contains only two names of distinction, Sampson MacJackson
+and Sawney MacSmallhead (_i.e._, Smollett). The ensuing battle, which is
+described at great length, results in a victory for the _Critical
+Review_, and the banishment of Squire Gruffy to the land of the
+Hottentots.
+
+Dr. Johnson's well-known characterization of the two reviews was quite
+just. On the occasion of his memorable interview (1767) with George III,
+Johnson gave the King information concerning the _Journal des Savans_
+and said of the two English reviews that "the _Monthly Review_ was done
+with most care; the _Critical_ upon the best principles; adding that the
+authors of the _Monthly Review_ were enemies to the Church." Some years
+later Johnson said of the reviews:
+
+     "I think them very impartial: I do not know an instance of
+     partiality.... The Monthly Reviewers are not Deists; but they are
+     Christians with as little Christianity as may be; and are for
+     pulling down all establishments. The Critical Reviewers are for
+     supporting the constitution both in church and state. The Critical
+     Reviewers, I believe, often review without reading the books
+     through; but lay hold of a topick and write chiefly from their own
+     minds. The Monthly Reviewers are duller men and are glad to read
+     the books through."
+
+Goldsmith's successor on the _Monthly_ staff was the notorious libeller
+and "superlative scoundrel," Dr. William Kenrick, who signalized his
+advent (November, 1759) by writing an outrageous attack upon Goldsmith's
+_Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe_. His
+utterances were so thoroughly unjustified that Griffiths, who had scant
+reason for praising poor Oliver, made an indirect apology for his
+unworthy minion by a favorable though brief review (June, 1762) of _The
+Citizen of the World_. During 1759 the _Critical Review_ published a
+number of Goldsmith's articles which probably enabled the impecunious
+author to effect his removal from the garret in Salisbury Square to the
+famous lodgings in Green Arbour Court. After March, 1760, we find no
+record of his association with either review, although he afterwards
+wrote for the _British Magazine_ and others.
+
+During the latter half of the century several reviews appeared and
+flourished for a time without serious damage to their well-established
+rivals. The _Literary Magazine; or Universal Review_ (1756-58) is
+memorable for Johnson's co�peration and a half-dozen articles by
+Goldsmith. Boswell tells us that Johnson wrote for the magazine until
+the fifteenth number and "that he never gave better proofs of the force,
+acuteness and vivacity of his mind, than in this miscellany, whether we
+consider his original essays, or his reviews of the works of others."
+The _London Review of English and Foreign Literature_ (1775-80) was
+conducted by the infamous Kenrick and others who faithfully maintained
+the editor's well-recognized policy of vicious onslaught and personal
+abuse. Paul Henry Maty, an assistant-librarian of the British Museum,
+conducted for five years a _New Review_ (1782-86), often called _Maty's
+Review_, and dealing principally with learned works. It apparently
+enjoyed some authority, but both Walpole and Gibbon spoke unfavorably of
+Maty's critical pretensions. _The English Review; or, an Abstract of
+English and Foreign Literature_ (1783-96), extended to twenty-eight
+volumes modelled upon the plan of the older periodicals. In 1796 it was
+incorporated with the _Analytical Review_ (1788) and survived under the
+latter title until 1799. The _Analytical Review_ deprecated the
+self-sufficient attitude of contemporary criticism and advocated
+extensive quotations from the works under consideration so that readers
+might be able to judge for themselves. It likewise hinted at the tacit
+understanding then existing between certain authors, publishers and
+reviews for their mutual advantage, but which was arousing a growing
+feeling of distrust on the part of the public. The _British Critic_
+(1793-1843) was edited by William Beloe and Robert Nares as the organ of
+the High Church Party. This "dull mass of orthodoxy" concerned itself
+extensively with literary reviews; but its articles were best known for
+their lack of interest and authority. The foibles of the _British
+Critic_ were satirized in Bishop Copleston's _Advice to a Young
+Reviewer_ (1807) with an appended mock critique of Milton's _L'Allegro_.
+In 1826 it was united with the _Quarterly Theological Review_ and
+continued until 1843.
+
+_The Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine; or, Monthly Political and
+Literary Censor_ (1799-1821) played a strenuous r�le in the troublous
+times of the Napoleonic wars. It continued the policy of the
+_Anti-Jacobin, or Weekly Examiner_ (1797-98) conducted with such marked
+vigor by William Gifford, but it numbered among its contributors none of
+the brilliant men whose witty verses for the weekly paper are still read
+in the popular _Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin_. The _Review_ was conducted
+by John Richards Green, better known as John Gifford. Its articles were
+at times sensational in character, viciously abusing writers of known or
+suspected republican sentiments. From its pages could be culled a new
+series of "Beauties of the Anti-Jacobin" which for sheer vituperation
+and relentless abuse would be without a rival among such anthologies.
+
+At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the principal reviews in
+course of publication were the _Monthly_, the _Critical_, the _British
+Critic_, and the _Anti-Jacobin_. The latter was pre�minently vulgar in
+its appeal, the _Critical_ had lost its former prestige, and the other
+two had never risen above a level of mediocrity. There was more than a
+lurking suspicion that these periodicals were, to a certain extent,
+booksellers' organs, quite unreliable on account of the partial and
+biassed criticisms which they offered the dissatisfied public. The time
+was evidently ripe for a new departure in literary reviews--for the
+establishment of a trustworthy critical journal, conducted by capable
+editors and printing readable notices of important books. People were
+quite willing to have an unfortunate author assailed and flayed for
+their entertainment; but they did not care to be deceived by laudatory
+criticisms that were inspired by the publisher's name instead of the
+intrinsic merits of the work itself.
+
+Such was the state of affairs when Francis Jeffrey, Henry Brougham and
+Sydney Smith launched the _Edinburgh Review_ in 1802, choosing a name
+that had been borne in 1755-56 by a short-lived semi-annual review.
+There were several significant facts associated with the new enterprise.
+It was the first important literary periodical to be published beyond
+the metropolis. It was the first review to appear quarterly--an interval
+that most contemporary journalists would have condemned as too long for
+a successful review. Moreover, it was conducted upon an entirely
+different principle than any previous review; by restricting its
+attention to the most important works of each quarter, it gave extensive
+critiques of only a few books in each number and thus avoided the
+multitude of perfunctory notices that had made previous reviews so
+dreary and unreadable.
+
+The idea of founding the _Edinburgh Review_ was apparently suggested by
+Sydney Smith in March, 1802. Jeffrey and Francis Horner were his
+immediate associates; but during the period of preparation Henry
+Brougham, Dr. Thomas Brown, Dr. John Thomson and others became
+interested. After some delay, the first number appeared on October 10,
+1802, containing among its twenty-nine articles three by Brougham, five
+by Horner, six by Jeffrey and nine by Smith. Although there was a
+slight feeling of disappointment over the mild political tone of the new
+review, its success was immediate. The edition of 750 copies was
+speedily disposed of, and within a month a second edition of equal size
+was printed. There was no regular editor at first, although the
+publication of the first three numbers was practically superintended by
+Smith. Afterwards Jeffrey became editor at a salary of �300. He had
+previously written some articles (including a critique of Southey's
+_Thalaba_) for the _Monthly Review_ and was pessimistic enough to
+anticipate an early failure for the new venture. However, at the time he
+assumed control (July, 1803) the circulation was 2500, and within five
+years it reached 8,000 or 9,000 copies. Jeffrey's articles were
+recognized and much admired; but the success of the _Edinburgh_ was due
+to its independent tone and general excellence rather than to the
+individual contributions of its editor. Its prosperity enabled the
+publishers to offer the contributors attractive remuneration for their
+articles, thus assuring the co�peration of specialists and of the most
+capable men of letters of the day. At the outset, ten guineas per sheet
+were paid; later sixteen became the minimum, and the average ranged from
+twenty to twenty-five guineas. When we recall that the _Critical Review_
+paid two, and the _Monthly Review_ sometimes four guineas per sheet, we
+can readily understand the distinctly higher standard of the _Edinburgh
+Review_.
+
+Horner left Scotland for London in 1803 to embark upon a political
+career. During the next six years occasional articles from his pen--less
+than a score in all--appeared in the review. Smith and Brougham likewise
+left Edinburgh in 1803 and 1805 respectively; but they ably supported
+Jeffrey by sending numerous contributions for many years. During the
+first quarter-century of the review's existence, this trio, with the
+co�peration of Sir James Mackintosh and a few others, constituted the
+mainstay of its success. Jeffrey's remarkable critical faculty was
+displayed to best advantage in the wide range of articles (two hundred
+in number) which he wrote during his editorship. It is true that his
+otherwise sound judgment was unable to grasp the significance of the new
+poetic movement of his day, and that his best remembered efforts are the
+diatribes against the Lake Poets. Hence, in the eyes of the modern
+literary dilettante, he figures as a misguided, domineering Zoilus whose
+mission in life was to heap ridicule upon the poetical efforts of
+Wordsworth, Coleridge and the lesser disciples of romanticism.
+
+There are in the early volumes of the _Edinburgh_ no more conspicuous
+qualities than that air of vivacity and graceful wit, so thoroughly
+characteristic of Sydney Smith. The reader who turns to those early
+numbers may be disappointed in the literary quality of the average
+article, for he will instinctively and unfairly make comparison with
+more recent standards, instead of considering the immeasurably inferior
+conditions that had previously prevailed; but we may safely assert that
+the majority of Smith's articles can be read with interest to-day. He
+was sufficiently sedate and serious when occasion demanded; yet at all
+times he delighted in the display of his native and sparkling humor.
+Although most of his important articles have been collected, far too
+much of his work lies buried in that securest of literary
+sepulchres--the back numbers of a critical review.
+
+Henry Brougham at first wrote the scientific articles for the
+_Edinburgh_. Soon his ability to deal with a wide range of subjects was
+recognized and he proved the most versatile of the early reviewers. In
+the first twenty numbers are eighty articles from his pen. A story that
+does not admit of verification attributes to Brougham a whole number of
+the _Edinburgh_, including an article on lithotomy and another on
+Chinese music. Later he became especially distinguished for his
+political articles, and remained a contributor long after Jeffrey and
+Smith had withdrawn. A comparatively small portion of his _Edinburgh_
+articles was reprinted (1856) in three volumes.
+
+Although the young men who guided the early fortunes of the review were
+Whigs, the _Edinburgh_ was not (as is generally believed) founded as a
+Whig organ. In fact, the political complexion of their articles was so
+subdued that even stalwart Tories like Walter Scott did not refrain from
+contributing to its pages. Scott's _Marmion_ was somewhat sharply
+reviewed by Jeffrey in April, 1808, and in the following October
+appeared the article by Jeffrey and Brougham upon Don Pedro Cevallos'
+_French Usurpation of Spain_. The pronounced Whiggism of that critique
+led to an open rupture with the Tory contributors. Scott, who was no
+longer on the best terms with Constable, the publisher of the
+_Edinburgh_, declared that henceforth he could neither receive nor read
+the review. He proposed to John Murray--then of Fleet Street--the
+founding of a Tory quarterly in London as a rival to the northern review
+that had thus far enjoyed undisputed possession of the field, because it
+afforded "the only valuable literary criticism which can be met with."
+Murray, who had already entertained the idea of establishing such a
+review, naturally welcomed the prospect of so powerful an ally. Like a
+good Tory, Scott felt that the "flashy and bold character of the
+_Edinburgh's_ politics was likely to produce an indelible impression
+upon the youth of the country." He ascertained that William Gifford,
+formerly editor of the _Anti-Jacobin_ newspaper, was willing to take
+charge of the new review, which Scott desired to be not exclusively nor
+principally political, but a "periodical work of criticism conducted
+with equal talent, but upon sounder principle than that which had gained
+so high a station in the world of letters."
+
+In February, 1809, appeared the first number of the _Quarterly Review_.
+Three of its articles were by Scott, who continued to contribute for
+some time and whose advice was frequently sought by both editor and
+publisher. Canning, Ellis, and others who had written for the then
+defunct _Anti-Jacobin_ became interested in the _Quarterly_; but the
+principal contributors for many years were Robert Southey, John Wilson
+Croker and Sir John Barrow. This trio contributed an aggregate of almost
+five hundred articles to the _Quarterly_. In spite of its high standard,
+the new venture was a financial failure for at least the first two
+years; later, especially in the days of Tory triumph after the overthrow
+of Napoleon, the _Quarterly_ flourished beyond all expectation.
+Gifford's salary as editor was raised from the original �200 to �900;
+for many years Southey was paid �100 for each article. Gifford was
+distinctly an editor of the old school, with well-defined ideas of his
+official privilege of altering contributed articles to suit himself--a
+weakness that likewise afflicted Francis Jeffrey. While it appears that
+Gifford wrote practically nothing for the review and that the savage
+_Endymion_ article so persistently attributed to him was really the work
+of Croker, he was an excellent manager and conducted the literary
+affairs of the _Quarterly_ with considerable skill. His lack of system
+and of business qualifications, however, resulted in the frequently
+irregular appearance of the early numbers.
+
+On account of his failing health, Gifford resigned the editorship of the
+_Quarterly_ in 1824, and was succeeded by John Taylor Coleridge, whose
+brief and unimportant administration served merely to fill the gap until
+an efficient successor for Gifford could be found. The choice fell upon
+Scott's son-in-law, John Gibson Lockhart, who, from 1825 to 1853, proved
+to be a most capable editor. The subsequent history of the review under
+Whitwell Elwin (1853-1860), William Macpherson (1860-1867), Sir William
+Smith (1867-1893), Mr. Rowland Prothero (1894-1899) and the latter's
+brother, Mr. George Prothero, the present editor, naturally lies beyond
+the purposes of this introduction.
+
+The period of Lockhart's editorship of the _Quarterly_ was likewise the
+golden epoch of the _Edinburgh_. Sydney Smith's contributions ceased
+about 1828. In the following year Jeffrey was elected Dean of the
+Faculty of Advocates. He felt that the tenure of his new dignity
+demanded the relinquishment of the editorship of an independent literary
+and political review; accordingly, after editing the ninety-eighth
+number of the _Edinburgh_, he retired in favor of Macvey Napier, who had
+been a contributor since 1805. Napier conducted the review with great
+success from 1829 until his death in 1847. His policy was to prefer
+shorter articles than those printed when he assumed control. At first,
+each number contained from fifteen to twenty-five articles; but the
+growing length and importance of the political contributions had reduced
+the average to ten. The return to the original policy naturally resulted
+in a greater variety of purely literary articles.
+
+Macaulay had begun his association with the _Edinburgh_ by his
+remarkable essay on _Milton_ in 1825--a bold, striking piece of
+criticism, full of the fire of youth, which established his literary
+reputation and gave a renewed impetus to the already prosperous review.
+During Napier's editorship he contributed his essays on _Croker's
+Boswell_, _Hampden_, _Burleigh_, _Horace Walpole_, _Lord Chatham_,
+_Bacon_, _Clive_, _Hastings_ and many others. Napier experienced some
+difficulty in steering a middle course for the review between Lord
+Brougham, who sought to use its pages to further his own political
+ambitions, and Macaulay, who vigorously denounced the procedure. The
+_Edinburgh_ was no longer conspicuous among its numerous contemporaries;
+but the literary quality was much higher than at first. Among the other
+famous contributors of this period were Carlyle, John Stuart Mill,
+Thackeray, Bulwer, Hallam, Sir William Hamilton and many others. This
+was undoubtedly the greatest period in the history of the review. Its
+power in Whig politics is shown by the fact that Lord Melbourne and Lord
+John Russell sought to make it the organ of the government.
+
+Napier's successor in 1847 was William Empson, who had contributed to
+the _Edinburgh_ since 1823 and who held the editorship until his demise
+in 1852. Next followed Sir George Cornewall Lewis, who, however,
+resigned in 1855 to become Chancellor of the Exchequer in Lord
+Palmerston's cabinet. During his r�gime he wrote less than a score of
+articles for the review. His immediate successor was the late Henry
+Reeve, whose forty years of faithful service until his death in 1895
+brings the review practically to our own day. When Reeve began his
+duties by editing No. 206 (April, 1855) Lord Brougham was the only
+survivor of the contributors to the original number. In 1857, when a
+discussion arose between editor and publisher concerning the
+denunciatory attitude assumed by the review toward Lord Palmerston's
+ministry, Reeve drew up a list of his contributors at that time,
+including Bishop (afterwards Archbishop) Tait, George Grote, John
+Forster, M. Guizot, the Duke of Argyll, Rev. Canon Moseley, George S.
+Venables, Richard Monckton Milnes and a score of others--most of them
+"names of the highest honour and the most consistent adherence to
+Liberal principles." Within the four decades that followed, the
+personnel of the review has made another almost complete change. A new
+group of contributors, under the editorship of Hon. Arthur R.D. Elliot,
+is now striving to maintain the standards of old "blue and yellow." A
+caustic note in the (1890) Annual Index of _Review of Reviews_ said of
+the _Edinburgh_:
+
+     "It has long since subsided into a respectable exponent of high and
+     dry Whiggery, which in these later days has undergone a further
+     degeneration or evolution into Unionism.... Audacity, wit,
+     unconventionality, enthusiasm--all these qualities have long since
+     evaporated, and with them has disappeared the political influence
+     of the _Edinburgh_."
+
+The two great rivals which are now reaching their centenary[B] are still
+the most prominent, in fact the only well-known literary quarterlies of
+England. During their life-time many quarterlies have risen, flourished
+for a time and perished. The _Westminster Review_, founded 1824, by
+Jeremy Bentham, appeared under the editorship of Sir John Bowring and
+Henry Southern. As the avowed organ of the Radicals it lost no time in
+assailing (principally through the vigorous pens of James Mill and John
+Stuart Mill) both the _Edinburgh_ and the _Quarterly_. In 1836 Sir
+William Molesworth's recently established _London Review_ was united
+with the _Westminster_, and, after several changes of joint title,
+continued since 1851 as the _Westminster Review_. Since 1887 it has been
+published as a monthly of Liberal policy and "high-class philosophy."
+The _Dublin Review_ (London, 1836) still continues quarterly as a Roman
+Catholic organ; similarly the _London Quarterly Review_, a Wesleyan
+organ, has been published since 1853. Of the quarterlies now defunct, it
+will suffice to mention the dissenting _Eclectic Review_ (1805-68) owned
+and edited for a time by Josiah Conder; the _British Review_ (1811-25);
+the _Christian Remembrancer_ (1819-68), which was a monthly during its
+early history; the _Retrospective Review_ (1820-26, 1853-54) conducted
+by Henry Southern and afterwards Sir Nicholas Harris Nicolas as a
+critical review for old and curious books; the _English Review_
+(1844-53); and the _North British Review_ (1844-71), published at
+Edinburgh. The impulse toward the study of continental literature during
+the third decade of the century gave rise to the _Foreign Quarterly
+Review_ (1827-46); the _Foreign Review and Continental Miscellany_
+(1828-30) and the _British and Foreign Review_ (1835-44), continued as
+the _British Quarterly Review_ (1845-86).
+
+A most determined effort to rival the older quarterlies resulted in the
+_National Review_, founded in 1855 by Walter Bagehot and Richard Holt
+Hutton. Its articles were exhaustive, well-written and thoroughly
+characteristic of their class. In addition to the excellent work of both
+editors, there were contributions by James Martineau, Matthew Arnold,
+and Hutton's brother-in-law, William Caldwell Roscoe. Yet, in spite of
+the high standards maintained until the end, the _National_ ceased
+publication in 1864. The many failures in this class of periodicals seem
+to indicate quite clearly that the spirit of the age no longer favors a
+quarterly. For our energetic and progressive era such an interval is too
+long. The confirmed admirer of the elaborate essays of the _Edinburgh_
+and the _Quarterly_ will continue to welcome their bulky numbers; but
+the average reader is strongly prejudiced in favor of the more frequent,
+more attractive and more thoroughly entertaining monthlies.
+
+It is one of the curiosities in the history of periodical literature
+that no popular monthly developed during the first half of the
+nineteenth century: the great quarterlies apparently usurped the entire
+field. We have already seen that the _Critical Review_ came to an end in
+1817 whilst the _Monthly_ continued until 1843. In both cases, however,
+the publication amounted to little more than a sheer struggle for
+existence. The _Monthly's_ attempt to imitate in a smaller way the plan
+of the quarterlies proved an unqualified failure. Neither of the two
+periodicals established at the beginning of the century ever achieved a
+position of critical authority. The _Christian Observer_, started (1802)
+by Josiah Pratt and conducted by Zachary Macaulay until 1816, was
+devoted mainly to the abolition of the slave-trade. Its subsequent
+history until its demise in 1877 is confined almost wholly to the
+theological pale. The second periodical was the _Monthly Repository of
+Theology and General Literature_ (1806-37), which achieved some literary
+prominence for a time under the editorship of W.J. Fox. During the last
+two years of its existence, Richard Hengist Horne and Leigh Hunt became
+its successive editors, but failed to avert the final collapse.
+
+It would be useless to enumerate the many short-lived attempts, such as
+the _Monthly Censor_ (1822) and Longman's _Monthly Chronicle_ (1838-41)
+that were made to provide a successful monthly review. The first of the
+modern literary monthlies was the _Fortnightly Review_, established in
+1865, evidently upon the model of _Revue des Deux Mondes_, which had
+been published at Paris since 1831. Like the great French periodical,
+it was issued fortnightly (at first) and printed signed articles. It was
+Liberal in politics, agnostic in religion and abreast of the times in
+science. The publishers, Messrs. Chapman and Hall, secured an
+experienced editor in George Henry Lewes, who had contributed
+extensively to most of the reviews then in progress. The success of the
+new review was assured by the presence of such names as Walter Bagehot,
+George Eliot, Sir John Herschel, Mr. Frederic Harrison and Herbert
+Spencer on its list of contributors. It provided articles of timely
+interest in politics, literature, art and science; in its early volumes
+appeared serially Anthony Trollope's _Belton Estate_ and Mr. George
+Meredith's _Vittoria_.
+
+Lewes edited the first six volumes, covering the years 1865-66. The
+review was then made a monthly without, however, changing its now
+inappropriate name, and the editorship was accepted by Mr. John Morley,
+who conducted the _Fortnightly_ with great success for sixteen years.
+Most of the earlier contributors were retained; others like Mr.
+Swinburne, J.A. Symonds, Professor Edward Dowden and (Sir) Leslie
+Stephen established a standard of literary criticism that was
+practically unrivalled. The authority of its scientific and political
+writers was equally high; as for serial fiction, Mr. Morley published
+Mr. Meredith's _Beauchamp's Career_ and _The Tragic Comedians_, besides
+less important novels by Trollope and others. More recently the
+publication of fiction has been exceptional. The (1890) _Review of
+Reviews_ Index said of the _Fortnightly_:
+
+     "While disclaiming 'party' or 'editorial consistency,' and
+     proclaiming that its pages were open to all views, the
+     _Fortnightly_ seldom included the orthodox among its contributors.
+     The articles which startled people and made small earthquakes
+     beneath the crust of conventional orthodoxy, political and
+     religious, usually appeared in the _Fortnightly_. It was here that
+     Professor Huxley seemed to foreshadow the expulsion of the
+     spiritual from the world, by his paper on 'The Physical Basis of
+     Life,' and that Professor Tyndall propounded his famous suggestion
+     for the establishment of a prayerless union or hospital as a
+     scientific method for testing the therapeutic value of prayer. Mr.
+     Frederic Harrison chanted in its pages the praises of the Commune,
+     and prepared the old ladies of both sexes for the imminent advent
+     of an English Terror by his plea for Trade Unionism. It was in the
+     _Fortnightly_ also that Mr. Chamberlain was introduced to the
+     world, when he was permitted to explain his proposals for Free
+     Labour, Free Land, Free Education, and Free Church. Mr. Morley's
+     papers on the heroes and saints (Heaven save the mark!) of the
+     French Revolution appeared here, and every month in an editorial
+     survey he summed up the leading features of the progress of the
+     world."
+
+Since Mr. Morley's retirement in 1883, the editors of the _Fortnightly_
+have been Mr. T.H.S. Escott (1883-86), Mr. Frank Harris (1886-94) and
+the present incumbent, Mr. W.L. Courtney.
+
+The _Fortnightly_ was not long permitted to enjoy undisputed possession
+of the field. In 1866, while it was still published semi-monthly, the
+_Contemporary Review_ was launched. Alexander Strahan, the publisher,
+selected Dean Alford as its editor in order to assure a more reserved
+tone than that of its popular predecessor. Although Liberal in politics,
+like the _Fortnightly_, it assumed a very different and apparently
+corrective attitude in religious matters. Most of its articles for many
+years were upon theological subjects and were written by scholars
+comparatively unknown to the public. The gradual change in policy
+furthered by its later editors, especially Mr. James Knowles and Mr.
+Percy Bunting has brought the _Contemporary_ nearer to the general type
+of popular monthlies. Its principles seem to tend toward "broad
+evangelical, semi-socialistic Liberalism."
+
+In 1877 Mr. Knowles found it impossible to conduct the _Contemporary_
+any longer in the independent manner that seemed essential to him;
+accordingly, he withdrew and established the _Nineteenth Century_, which
+in deference to the new era and a desire to be abreast of the times,
+recently adopted the somewhat awkward title of the _Nineteenth Century
+and After_. Like the _Fortnightly_, it presented a brilliant array of
+names from the first. The initial number contained a Prefatory Sonnet by
+Tennyson, and articles by Gladstone, Matthew Arnold, Cardinal Manning,
+and the Dean of Gloucester and Bristol. It is sufficient to state that
+this standard has since been maintained by Mr. Knowles and has made his
+_Nineteenth Century and After_ the most popular of the monthlies.
+
+The _National Review_ (not to be confounded with Bagehot and Hutton's
+quarterly of that name), is the youngest and least important of the
+monthly reviews. It was established in 1883 as a Conservative organ
+under the editorship of Mr. Alfred Austin and Professor W.J. Courthope.
+Well-known writers have contributed to its pages, yet it has never
+assumed a place of first importance in the periodical world. Its present
+editor is Mr. Louis J. Maxse.
+
+It is well to bear in mind that these reviews all seek to discuss the
+most important subjects of contemporary interest, and to secure the
+services of writers best qualified to treat those subjects. In the
+narrow sense of the term, they are not literary reviews; the function of
+periodicals that discuss present day politics, sociology, theology,
+history, science, art and numerous other generic subjects is more
+inclusive and appeals to a much larger audience than the periodical of
+literary criticism. In the quarterlies and monthlies we look for the
+most authoritative reviews of the important books of the day; but for
+general literary review and gossip, a new class of monthlies, best
+represented by Dr. Robertson Nicoll's _Bookman_ (1891) and the American
+_Bookman_ (1895) and _The Critic_ (1881) has appeared. These fill a gap
+between the more substantial monthlies and the very popular weekly
+papers.
+
+The last-mentioned class was practically developed during the nineteenth
+century. The frequency of publication forbade a strict devotion to the
+cause of _belles-lettres_; hence, in most cases, politics or music and
+art were included in the scheme. At first literature was granted meagre
+space in newspapers of the _Weekly Register_ and _Examiner_ type.
+William Cobbett, profiting by his previous experience with _Porcupine's
+Gazette_ and the _Porcupine_, began his _Weekly Political Register_ in
+1802 and continued its publication until his death in 1835. It was so
+thoroughly political in character that it hardly merits recognition as a
+literary periodical. The _Examiner_, begun in 1808 by John Hunt, enjoyed
+during the thirteen years of his brother Leigh's co�peration a wide
+reputation for the excellence of its political and literary criticism.
+Under Albany Fonblanque, John Forster and William Minto it continued
+with varying success until 1880.
+
+The first truly literary weekly review was the _Literary Gazette_,
+established in 1817 by Henry Colburn, of the _New Monthly Magazine_,
+under the joint editorship of Mr. H.E. Lloyd and Miss Ross. After the
+first half-year of its existence, Colburn sold a third share to the
+Messrs. Longman and another third to William Jerdan, who became sole
+editor and eventually (1842) sole proprietor. The original price of a
+shilling was soon reduced to eight pence. Jerdan set the prototype for
+later literary weeklies in his plan, which embraced "foreign and
+domestic correspondence, critical analyses of new publications,
+varieties connected with polite literature, philosophical researches,
+scientific inventions, sketches of society, biographical memoirs, essays
+on fine arts, and miscellaneous articles on drama, music and literary
+intelligence." Thus Jerdan followed his friend Canning's advice by
+avoiding "politics and polemics" and by aiming to present "a clear and
+instructive picture of the moral and literary improvement of the times,
+and a complete and authentic chronological literary record for general
+reference." He secured the services of Crabbe, Barry Cornwall, Maginn,
+Campbell, Mrs. Hemans and others: with such an array of contributors he
+was able to crush the several rival weeklies that soon entered the
+field.
+
+Toward the end of its prosperous first decade, however, the misfortunes
+of the _Literary Gazette_ began. Colburn's publications had been roughly
+handled in its pages and he accordingly aided James Silk Buckingham in
+founding the _Athen�um_. The first number appeared on January 2, 1828,
+as an evident rival of the older weekly. For a time the new venture was
+on the verge of failure and the proprietors actually offered to sell it
+to Jerdan. Within half a year Buckingham was succeeded by John Sterling
+as editor. Frederic Denison Maurice's friends purchased the _Literary
+Chronicle and Weekly Review_ (begun 1819) and merged it with the
+_Athen�um_ in July, 1828. For a year Sterling and Maurice contributed
+some of the most brilliant critical articles that have appeared in its
+pages. The working editor at that time was Henry Stebbing who had been
+associated with the _Athen�um_ since its inception and who was the only
+survivor[C] of the original staff when the semi-centennial number was
+published on January 5, 1878.
+
+Even the high standards set by Maurice and Sterling failed to win
+public favor. The crisis came about the middle of 1830 when Charles
+Wentworth Dilke became "supreme editor," enlisted Lamb, George Darley,
+Barry Cornwall and others on his staff, and reduced the price of the
+_Athen�um_ from eightpence to fourpence. The apparent folly of reducing
+the price and increasing the expenses did not lead to the generally
+prophesied collapse; this first experiment in modern methods resulted in
+the rapid growth of the _Athen�um's_ circulation, to the serious
+detriment of the _Literary Gazette_. Jerdan tried to stem the tide by
+publishing lampoons on the dullness of Dilke's paper; but when the
+_Athen�um_ was enlarged in 1835 from sixteen to twenty-four pages
+Dilke's triumph was evident. The _Literary Gazette_ was compelled to
+reduce its price to fourpence in its effort to regain the lost
+subscriptions. Dilke labored earnestly to improve his paper and when, in
+1846, he felt that it was established on a firm basis, he made Thomas
+Kibble Hervey editor and devoted his own time to furthering his
+journalistic enterprises. However, he continued to contribute to the
+weekly; his valuable articles on Junius and Pope together with several
+others were afterwards reprinted as _Papers of a Critic_.
+
+Jerdan withdrew from the _Literary Gazette_ in 1850. The hopeless
+struggle with the _Athen�um_, involving a third reduction in price to
+threepence, lasted until 1862, when the _Gazette_ was incorporated with
+the _Parthenon_ and came to an end during the following year. Hervey
+edited the _Athen�um_ until 1853 when ill-health necessitated his
+resignation. The later editors include William Hepworth Dixon, Norman
+MacColl and at present Mr. Vernon Rendall. After the withdrawal of Dixon
+in 1869 a reformation in the staff and management of the _Athen�um_ took
+place.
+
+     "Some old writers were parted with, and a great many fresh
+     contributors were found. While special departments, such as
+     science, art, music and the drama, were of necessity entrusted to
+     regular hands, indeed, the reviewing of books, now more than ever
+     the principal business of 'The Athen�um,' was distributed over a
+     very large staff, the plan being to assign each work to a writer
+     familiar with its subject and competent to deal with it
+     intelligently, but rigidly to exclude personal favouritism or
+     prejudice, and to secure as much impartiality as possible. The rule
+     of anonymity has been more carefully observed in 'The Athen�um'
+     than in most other papers. Its authority as a literary censor is
+     not lessened, however, and is in some respects increased, by the
+     fact that the paper itself, and not any particular critic of great
+     or small account, is responsible for the verdicts passed in its
+     columns." (Fox Bourne.)
+
+Half a year after the inception of the _Athen�um_, the first number of
+the _Spectator_ was issued (July 6, 1828) by Robert Stephen Rintoul, an
+experienced journalist who had launched the ill-fated semi-political
+_Atlas_ two years before and therefore decided to confine his new
+venture to literary and social topics. The political excitement of the
+time soon aroused Rintoul's interest, and he undertook the advocacy of
+the Reform Bill with all possible ardor. From him emanated the famous
+battle-cry: "The Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill." He
+conducted the _Spectator_ with great skill until 1858, when he sold it
+two months before his death. Although he wrote little for its pages,
+Rintoul made the _Spectator_ a power in furthering all reforms. The
+literary standard, while somewhat obscured for a time by its politics,
+was high. In 1861 the _Spectator_ passed into the hands of Mr. Meredith
+Townsend who sold a half share to the late Richard Holt Hutton with the
+understanding that they should act as political and literary editors
+respectively. During the four years of the American Civil War, the
+_Spectator_ espoused the cause of the North and was consequently
+unpopular; but the outcome turned the sentiment in England and likewise
+the fortunes of the _Spectator_. Hutton's contributions included his
+most memorable utterances upon theological and literary subjects. In the
+midst of religious controversy he was able to discuss delicate questions
+without giving offense, to enlist all parties by refraining from
+expressed allegiance to one. The _Spectator_ of Hutton's day was, in
+Mrs. Oliphant's opinion, "specially distinguished by the thoughtful tone
+of its writing, the almost Quixotic fairness of its judgments, and the
+profoundly religious spirit which pervades its more serious articles."
+Hutton retired shortly before his death in 1897. The present editor is
+Mr. J. St. Loe Strachey.
+
+The _Saturday Review_ was established in November, 1855, by A.J.
+Beresford Hope. Its first editor was John Douglass Cook, who had indexed
+the early volumes of the _Quarterly_ for Murray and had gained his
+journalistic experience with the _Times_ and the _Morning Chronicle_.
+Though possessed of no great personal ability, Cook had the useful
+editorial faculty of recognizing talent, and consequently gathered about
+himself the most promising writers of the younger generation, including,
+among others, Robert Talbot Cecil, the late Lord Salisbury. The
+_Saturday Review_ at once became the most influential and most energetic
+of the weekly papers. Its politics, independent at first, later assumed
+a pronounced Conservative complexion. Cook remained editor until his
+death (1868) when he was succeeded by his assistant, Philip Harwood.
+Since the latter's retirement in 1883 the more recent editors include
+Mr. Walter H. Pollock, Mr. Frank Harris and the present incumbent, Mr.
+Harold Hodge. Professor Saintsbury wrote of the _Saturday Review_:
+
+     "Its staff was, as a rule, recruited from the two Universities
+     (though there was no kind of exclusion for the unmatriculated; as a
+     matter of fact, neither of its first two editors was a son either
+     of Oxford or Cambridge), and it always insisted on the necessity of
+     classical culture.... It observed, for perhaps a longer time than
+     any other paper, the salutary principles of anonymity (real as well
+     as ostensible) in regard to the authorship of particular articles;
+     and those who knew were constantly amused at the public mistakes on
+     this subject."
+
+Such "salutary principles of anonymity" were not observed by the
+_Academy, a Monthly Record of Literature, Learning, Science and Art_,
+which began to appear in October, 1869, and was published for a short
+time by John Murray. Its founder, Dr. Charles E. Appleton, edited the
+_Academy_ until his death in 1879. All the leading articles bore the
+authors' signatures, and, following the example of the more ambitious
+monthlies, Dr. Appleton secured the best known writers as contributors.
+The first number opened with an interesting unpublished letter of Lord
+Byron's; its literary articles were by Matthew Arnold, Gustave Masson
+and Mr. Sidney Colvin, theology was represented by the Rev. T.K. Cheyne
+and J.B. Lightfoot (later Bishop of Durham), science by Thomas Huxley
+and Sir John Lubbock (now Lord Avebury), and classical learning by Mark
+Pattison and John Conington. This remarkable array of names did not
+diminish in subsequent numbers. Besides those mentioned Mr. W.M.
+Rossetti, Max M�ller, G. Maspero, J.A. Symonds, F.T. Palgrave and others
+contributed to the first volume. Later such names as William Morris,
+John Tyndall, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Walter Pater and Robert Louis
+Stevenson appeared in its pages.
+
+In spite of its brilliant program, the size of the _Academy_, even at
+its price of sixpence, was too slight to rank as a monthly. After four
+years' experience, first as a monthly, then as a fortnightly, it became
+and has remained a weekly. The editorial succession since the death of
+Dr. Appleton has been C.E. Doble (1879-81); Mr. James Sutherland Cotton
+(1881-96); Mr. C. Lewis Hind (1896-1903); and Mr. W. Teignmouth Shore.
+The issue of November 7, 1896, announced Mr. Cotton's retirement and the
+inauguration of a new policy, which, in addition to technical
+improvements, promised the issue of occasional supplements of a purely
+academic and educational character, and the beginning of the series of
+_Academy Portraits_ of men of letters. At the same time the publication
+of signed articles was abolished and the _Academy_ remained anonymous
+until the recent editorial change. A new departure in October, 1898,
+made the _Academy_ an illustrated paper--the most attractive though not
+the most authoritative of the weeklies. It has departed widely from the
+set traditions of Dr. Appleton, but most readers will agree that the
+departure has been justified by the needs of the hour. There is small
+satisfaction in reading a one-page review from the pen of an Arnold or a
+Pater; we feel that such authorities should express themselves at length
+in the pages of the literary monthlies; that the reader of the weekly
+should be content with the anonymous (and less expensive) review written
+by the staff-critic. Whatever the personal bias, it is at least certain
+that under present conditions the _Academy_ appeals more generally to
+the popular taste. Its recent absorption of a younger periodical is
+indicated in the compounding of its title into the _Academy and
+Literature_--a change that does not commend itself on abstract grounds
+of literary fitness and tradition.
+
+A consideration of periodicals of the _Tatler_, _Spectator_ and
+_Rambler_ class evidently lies beyond our present purpose; though
+Addison's papers on _Paradise Lost_ and similar articles show an
+occasional critical intent. The magazines, however, have in various
+instances shown such an extensive interest in matters literary that a
+brief account of their development will not be amiss. The primary
+distinction between the review and the magazine is well understood; the
+former criticizes, the latter entertains. Hence fiction, poetry and
+essays are better adapted than book-reviews to the needs of the literary
+magazine. As already stated, Peter Motteux's _Gentleman's Journal_
+(1692-94) probably deserves recognition as the first English magazine,
+though its brief career is forgotten in the honor accorded to the
+_Gentleman's Magazine_, established in 1731 by Edward Cave and which,
+still under the editorship of "Sylvanus Urban, Gentleman," is now
+approaching its three hundredth volume. In the early days its lists of
+births, deaths, marriages, bankrupts, events, etc., must have made it a
+useful summary for the public. In literature it printed merely a
+"Register of New Books" without comment of any sort. It is exasperating
+to find such books as _Pamela_ or _Tom Jones_ listed among "New
+Publications" without a word of criticism or commendation. We could
+spare whole reams of pages devoted to "Army Promotions" and "Monthly
+Chronicle" for a few lines of literary review.
+
+Although the booksellers refused to aid Cave in establishing his
+magazine, the demonstration of its success brought forth numerous
+rivals. As they all followed Cave's precedent in ignoring literary
+criticism, it will suffice to mention merely the names of the _London
+Magazine_ (1732-79); the _Scots Magazine_ (1739-1817), continued as the
+_Edinburgh Magazine_ until 1826; the _Universal Magazine_ (1743-1815);
+the _British Magazine_ (1746-50); the _Royal Magazine_ (1759-71); and
+finally the _British Magazine, or Monthly Repository for Gentlemen and
+Ladies_ (1760-67) edited by Tobias Smollett, who published his _Sir
+Launcelot Greaves_ in its pages--perhaps the first instance of the
+serial publication of fiction. Goldsmith wrote some of his most
+interesting essays for Smollett's magazine.
+
+An important addition to the ranks was the _Monthly Magazine_ begun in
+1796 by Sir Richard Phillips under the editorship of John Aikin. The
+principal contributor was William Taylor of Norwich who, during a period
+of thirty years, supplied to the _Monthly Magazine_ and other
+periodicals a series of 1,750 articles of remarkable quality. His
+contributions gave the Magazine standing as a literary review. Hazlitt
+accorded to Taylor the honor of writing the first reviews in the style
+afterwards adopted by the Edinburgh Reviewers, which established their
+reputations as original and impartial critics. He is remembered to-day
+as the author of an unread _Historic Survey of German Poetry_ which was
+vigorously assailed by Carlyle in the _Edinburgh Review_. The _New
+Monthly Magazine_ was started in 1814 by Henry Colburn and Frederick
+Shoberl in opposition to Phillips' magazine. Its first editors were Dr.
+Watkins and Alaric A. Watts. At a later time Campbell, Bulwer, Theodore
+Hook and Harrison Ainsworth successively assumed charge. Under such
+capable direction the magazine naturally won a prominent place among the
+periodicals of the day. During its later years the _New Monthly_ was
+obscured by more ambitious ventures and came to an inglorious end in
+1875--thirty-two years after the suspension of Phillips' _Monthly
+Magazine_.
+
+A most significant event in the history of the magazine was the founding
+of the _Edinburgh Monthly Magazine_ in April, 1817, by William
+Blackwood. The new magazine was projected to counteract the influence
+of the _Edinburgh Review_, but under its first editors, James Cleghorn
+and Thomas Pringle, it failed to win favor. After six numbers were
+issued, a final disagreement between Blackwood and the editors resulted
+in the withdrawal of the latter. The name of the monthly was changed to
+_Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine_--popularly _Blackwood's_ or "Maga"--and
+henceforth until his death Blackwood was his own editor. John Wilson
+(Christopher North) and John Gibson Lockhart, the most important of the
+early contributors to _Blackwood's_, published in that famous seventh
+number the clever _Chaldee Manuscript_--an audacious satire upon the
+original editors, the rival publisher Constable, the _Edinburgh Review_
+and various literary personages under a thinly veiled allegory in
+apocalyptic style. It at once attracted wide attention (including a
+costly action for libel within a fortnight) and was suppressed in the
+second impression of the number. The same number of _Blackwood's_ set
+the precedent for the subsequent critical vituperation that made the
+magazine notorious. It contained an abusive article on Coleridge's
+_Biographia Literaria_ and the first of a series of virulent attacks on
+"The Cockney School of Poetry." Much of the literary criticism in the
+first few volumes is inexcusably brutal; fortunately, _Blackwood's_ soon
+became less rampant in its critical outbursts. The co�peration of James
+Hogg and the ill-fated Maginn introduced new articles of varied
+interest, particularly the witty letters and the parodies of "Ensign
+O'Doherty." Wilson's _Noctes Ambrosian�_ became a characteristic feature
+of _Blackwood's_; John Galt and Susan Ferrier won popularity among the
+novel readers of the day; and in the trenchant literary criticism of
+Lockhart, Wilson, Hogg and their confr�res an equally high standard was
+maintained.
+
+After the death of the elder Blackwood in 1834, the management of the
+magazine passed to his sons successively. John Blackwood, the sixth son,
+enjoyed the distinction of "discovering" George Eliot and beginning, by
+the publication of her _Scenes of Clerical Life_ in 1857, a relationship
+that was both pleasant and profitable to the firm. A few years earlier
+appeared the first contributions of another remarkable literary
+woman--Mrs. Margaret Oliphant, whose association with _Blackwood's_
+lasted over forty years. Her history of the house of Blackwood was
+published in the year of her death (1897).
+
+_Blackwood's_ is still a strong conservative organ. The already quoted
+Index of the _Review of Reviews_ says of it: "With a rare consistency it
+has contrived to appear for over three score years and ten as a spirited
+and defiant advocate of all those who are at least five years behind
+their time. Sometimes _Blackwood_ is fifty years in the rear, but that
+is a detail of circumstance. Five or fifty, it does not matter, so long
+as it is well in the rear." Such gentle sarcasm merely emphasizes the
+fact that _Blackwood's_ has always aimed to be more than a magazine of
+_belles-lettres_. The publishers celebrated the appearance of the one
+thousandth number in February, 1899, by almost doubling its size to a
+volume of three hundred pages, including a latter-day addition to the
+_Noctes Ambrosian�_ and other features.
+
+An important though short-lived venture was the _London Magazine_, begun
+in January, 1820, under the editorship of John Scott. By its editorial
+assaults upon the _Blackwood_ criticisms of the "Cockney School," it
+became the recognized champion of that loosely defined coterie. The
+initial attack in the May number was further emphasized by more vigorous
+articles in November and December of 1820, and January, 1821. Lockhart,
+who was the recipient of the worst abuse, demanded of Scott an apology
+or a hostile meeting. The outcome of the controversy was a duel on
+February 16th between Scott and Lockhart's intimate friend, Jonathan
+Henry Christie. Scott was mortally wounded, and died within a fortnight;
+the verdict of wilful murder brought against Christie and his second at
+the inquest resulted in their trial and acquittal at the old Bailey two
+months later. It would have been well for the _London Magazine_ and for
+literature in general if that unfortunate duel could have been prevented
+or at least diverted into such a ludicrous affair as the meeting between
+Jeffrey and Tom Moore in 1806.
+
+The most famous contributions to the _London Magazine_ during Scott's
+r�gime were Lamb's _Essays of Elia_. Those charming productions, now
+ranked among our dearly treasured classics, were not received at first
+with universal approbation. The long and justly forgotten Alaric A.
+Watts said of them: "Charles Lamb delivers himself with infinite pain
+and labour of a silly piece of trifling, every month, in this Magazine,
+under the signature of Elia. It is the curse of the Cockney School that,
+with all their desire to appear exceedingly off-hand and ready with all
+they have to say, they are constrained to elaborate every sentence, as
+though the web were woven from their own bowels. Charles Lamb says he
+can make no way in an article under at least a week." In July, 1821, the
+_London Magazine_ was purchased by Taylor and Hessey. Although Thomas
+Hood was made working-editor, the _Blackwood_ idea of retaining
+editorial supervision in the firm was followed. Within a few months De
+Quincey contributed his _Confessions of an English Opium-Eater_--the
+most famous of all the articles that appeared in the magazine. Lamb[D]
+and De Quincey continued to write for the magazine for several years.
+Other contributors, especially of literary criticism, were Barry
+Cornwall, Carlyle, Hazlitt, Henry Cary and, toward the end, Walter
+Savage Landor. The magazine became less conspicuous after 1824 and
+dragged out an obscure existence until 1829; but it is probable that no
+other periodical achieved the standard of purely literary excellence
+represented by the _London Magazine_ during the first five years of its
+existence.
+
+In February, 1830, James Fraser published the first number of _Fraser's
+Magazine for Town and Country_. The magazine was not named after the
+publisher but after its sponsor, Hugh Fraser, a "briefless barrister"
+and man about town. The latter enlisted the aid of Maginn who had
+severed his connection with _Blackwood's_ in 1828. In general,
+_Fraser's_ was modelled upon _Blackwood's_; but a unique and popular
+feature was the publication of the "Gallery of Illustrious Literary
+Characters" between 1830-38. This famous series of eighty-one caricature
+portraits chiefly by Daniel Maclise, with letter-press by Maginn, has
+been made accessible to present-day readers in William Bates' _Maclise
+Portrait Gallery_ (1883) where much illustrative material has been added
+to the original articles. It is evident that the literary standard of
+_Fraser's_ soon equalled and possibly surpassed that of _Blackwood's_.
+Among its writers were Carlyle (who contributed a critique to the first
+number, published _Sartor Resartus_ in its pages, 1833-35, and, as late
+as 1875, his _Early Kings of Norway_), Thackeray, Father Prout and
+Thomas Love Peacock. Maclise's plate of "The Fraserians" also includes
+Allan Cunningham, Theodore Hook, William Jerdan, Lockhart, Hogg,
+Coleridge, Southey and several others. It is unlikely that all of them
+wrote much for _Fraser's_; but the staff was undoubtedly a brilliant
+assemblage. James Anthony Froude became editor in 1860 and was assisted
+for a time by Charles Kingsley and Sir Theodore Martin. He was succeeded
+by his sub-editor, William Allingham, during whose administration
+(1874-79) the fortunes of _Fraser's_ suffered a decline. The gradual
+failure was due to the competition of the new shilling magazines rather
+than to incompetence on the part of the editor. The end came in October,
+1882, when _Fraser's_ was succeeded by _Longman's Magazine_ which is
+still in progress.
+
+The magazines established soon after _Fraser's_ followed for the most
+part a policy that demands for them mere passing mention in the present
+connection. Literary criticism and reviews were largely abandoned in
+favor of lighter and more entertaining material. The _Dublin University
+Magazine_ (1833-80) and _Tait's Edinburgh Magazine_ (1832-61) best
+represent the transitional stage. During its early history, the latter
+employed prominent contributors, who gave it an important position. Such
+magazines as the _Metropolitan_ (1831-50) and _Bentley's Miscellany_
+(1837-68) set the standards for similar periodicals since that time.
+Charles Dickens' experience with _Bentley's_ led to the publication of
+his weeklies, _Household Words_ (1850 to date) and _All the Year Round_
+(1859), which was incorporated in 1895 with the former. _Macmillan's
+Magazine_, first of the popular shilling monthlies, began in 1859 and
+was soon followed by Thackeray's _Cornhill Magazine_ (1860) and _Temple
+Bar_ (1860). All of these magazines are still in progress. The
+occasional publication of an article by a literary critic hardly
+justifies their inclusion within the category of critical reviews, as
+their essential purpose is to instruct and entertain, rather than to sit
+in judgment upon contemporary letters.
+
+There are in course of publication to-day numerous literary periodicals
+of varying scope and importance that have not even been mentioned by
+title in our hasty survey. Enough has been said, however, to give some
+idea of the magnitude of the field, and to show that most of the great
+names of modern English literature have been more or less closely
+associated with the history of the literary reviews. Those reviews have
+usually sought to foster all that is highest and best in our
+intellectual development; and although English literary criticism has
+been, on the whole, less convincing, less brilliant and less
+authoritative than that of France, it has during the past century set a
+fairly high standard of excellence. It seems difficult to understand why
+the literary conditions in England, instead of developing critics like
+Sainte-Beuve, Gaston Paris, Bruneti�re and others whose utterances
+redound to the lasting glory of French criticism, should be steadily
+tending toward a lower and less influential level. Mr. Churton Collins
+in his pessimistic discussion of "The Present Functions of Criticism"
+deplores the spirit of tolerance and charity manifested toward the
+mediocre productions of contemporary writers; he attributes the
+degradation of criticism to the lack of critical standards and
+principles, and indirectly to the neglect of the study of literature at
+the English Universities. The plea for an English Academy has been made
+at different times and with different ends in view, but under modern
+conditions such an institution would hardly solve the problem. Mr.
+Collins shows how the intellectual aristocracy of the past has been
+superseded by the present omnivorous reading-public afflicted with a
+perpetual craving for literary novelty. The inevitable rapidity of
+production results in a deluge of poor books which are foisted upon
+readers by a "detestable system of mutual puffery." This condition of
+affairs naturally offers few opportunities for the development of
+critical ideals; but it hardly applies to the incorruptible reviews of
+recognized standing. The reasons for the lack of authority in modern
+English criticism are more deeply grounded in an inherent objection to
+the restraint imposed upon an artist by artificial canons of taste, and
+in a well-founded impression that many of the greatest literary
+achievements evince a violation of such canons.
+
+It is not to be inferred that criticism is thereby disdained and
+disregarded. The critical dicta of a Dryden or a Johnson, a Coleridge or
+a Hazlitt, and, more recently, an Arnold or a Pater, are valued and
+studied because they emphasize the vital elements essential to the
+proper appreciation of a literary product; and, moreover, because such
+critics, in transcending the limitations of their kind, establish higher
+and juster standards for the criticism of the future. On the other hand,
+the great majority of critical utterances must necessarily be ephemeral;
+they may exert considerable contemporary influence, but are usually
+forgotten long before the works that called them forth. Unless this
+criticism is more than a perfunctory examination of the merits and
+defects of the work under consideration, it cannot endure beyond its own
+brief day.
+
+Several fruitless attempts have been made to reduce criticism to an
+exact science, which, quite disregarding the factor of personal taste,
+could refer all literature to a more or less fixed and arbitrary set of
+critical principles. The champions of this objective criticism point to
+the occasionally ludicrous divergence of the views expressed in
+criticism of certain poets or novelists, and insist that there is no
+occasion for such a bewildering difference of opinion. They seem to
+forget that the criticism which we esteem most highly at all times is
+the subjective criticism in which the personality of a competent and
+sincere critic is manifest. Literature, like music, painting and the
+other arts, has its own laws of technique--fundamental canons that must
+be observed in the successful pursuit of the art; but at a certain point
+difference of opinion is not only possible but profitable. The critics
+who would unite in condemning a thirteen-line sonnet or a ten-act
+tragedy could not be expected to agree on the relative merits of
+Milton's and Wordsworth's sonnets. Unanimity of opinion is as impossible
+and undesirable concerning the poetic achievement of Browning and
+Whitman as it is concerning the music of Brahms and Wagner, or the
+painting of Turner and Whistler. Great artists who have taken liberties
+with traditions and precedents have done much to prevent the critics
+from falling into a state of self-complacency over their scientific
+methods and formulas.
+
+The most helpful form of criticism is the interpretative variety, not
+necessarily the laudatory "appreciation" that is so popular in our day,
+but an honest effort to understand and elucidate the intention of the
+writer. The proper exercise of this art occasionally demands rare
+qualifications on the part of the critic; at the same time it adds
+dignity to his calling and value to his utterance. It serves to dispel
+the popular conception of a critic as a disappointed _litterateur_ who
+begrudges his more brilliant fellow craftsmen their success and who dogs
+their triumphs with his ill-tempered snarling. Interpretative criticism
+needs few rules and no system; yet it serves a noble purpose as a guide
+and monitor for subsequent literary effort.
+
+The question of anonymous criticism has occasioned much thoughtful
+discussion. In former times anonymity was often a shield for the
+slanderer who saw fit to abuse and assail his victim with the rancorous
+outburst of his malice; but it is also clear that the earlier reviewers
+were mere literary hacks whose names would have given no weight to the
+critique and hence could be omitted without much loss. The authorship of
+important _Edinburgh_ and _Quarterly_[E] articles in the days of their
+greatness was usually an open secret. Later periodicals, like the
+_Fortnightly_ and the _Academy_ found it a profitable advertisement to
+publish the signatures of their eminent critics. The tendency of the
+present day is largely in favor of anonymity; no longer as a cover for
+the dispensation of malicious vituperation, but as a necessary
+safe-guard for the unbiased and untrammeled exercise of the critical
+function. Certain abuses of the privilege are inevitable. Mr. Sidney
+Colvin in looking over the criticisms of Mr. Stephen Phillips' poetry
+recently discovered in three periodicals convincing parallels that led
+Mr. Arthur Symons to confess to the authorship of all three critiques.
+The average reader would in most cases be strongly influenced by the
+united verdict of the critics of the _Saturday Review_, the _Athen�um_
+and the _Quarterly Review_; in this instance his convictions would
+undoubtedly be rudely shattered when he learned the truth. Under such
+conditions anonymous criticism is a menace, not an aid to the reader's
+judgment.
+
+In conclusion, it must be borne in mind that criticism is not an end but
+a means to an end. All the literary criticism ever uttered would be
+useless as such if it did not evince a desire to further the development
+of literary art. The _Iliad_ and the _Oedipus_ were written long
+before Aristotle's _Poetics_, and it is not likely that either Homer or
+Sophocles would have been a greater poet if he could have read the
+Stagirite's treatise. Yet the _Poetics_, as a summary of the essential
+features of that art, served an important purpose in later ages and
+exerted far-reaching influences. Criticism in all ages has necessarily
+been of less importance than art itself--it guides and suggests, but
+cannot create. Literary history shows that true criticism must be in
+conformity with the spirit of the age; it cannot oppose the trend of
+intelligent opinion. It may praise, censure, advise, interpret--but it
+will always remain subservient to the art that called it forth. There is
+no reason to believe that criticism can ever be established in the
+English-speaking world upon a basis that will subject to an arbitrary
+and irrevocable ruling the form and spirit of the artist's message to
+mankind.
+
+[Footnote A: Reprinted in Professor Arber's _The Term Catalogues_
+(1668-1709). London, privately printed, 1903.]
+
+[Footnote B: See the centenary number of the _Edinburgh Review_
+(October, 1902). During the editor's recent tenure of government office,
+the review was temporarily edited by Mr. E.S. Roscoe.]
+
+[Footnote C: See his letter in _Athen�um_, January 19, 1878. See also
+"Our Seventieth Birthday," _Athen�um_, January 1, 1898.]
+
+[Footnote D: Mr. Bertram Dobell in his _Side-Lights on Charles Lamb_
+(1903) directs attention to some hitherto unknown articles of Lamb's in
+the _London Magazine_.]
+
+[Footnote E: In July, 1902, the _Quarterly Review_ published its first
+signed article--the widely-discussed paper on Charles Dickens by Mr.
+Algernon Charles Swinburne. Since then several other noteworthy articles
+have appeared over the authors' signatures.]
+
+
+
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHY
+
+
+British Museum. Catalogue of Printed Books. Periodicals. (Revised ed.,
+1900.)
+
+Dictionary of National Biography.
+
+Encyclopedia Britannica. Article on Periodicals, by H.R. Tedder.
+
+Barrow, Sir John. Autobiography. London, 1847.
+
+Bourne, H.R. Fox. English Newspapers. Chapters in the History of
+Journalism. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1887.
+
+Cockburn, Lord. Life of Lord Jeffrey. With a Selection from his
+Correspondence. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1852.
+
+Copinger, W.A. On the Authorship of the first Hundred Numbers of the
+"Edinburgh Review." (Privately Printed.) Manchester, 1895.
+
+Cross, Maurice. Selections from the Edinburgh Review, etc. With a
+Preliminary Dissertation. 4 vols. 8vo. London, 1833.
+
+Gates, Lewis E. Francis Jeffrey. In _Three Studies in Literature_. 12mo.
+New York, 1899.
+
+Horner, Leonard. Memoirs and Correspondence of Francis Horner, M.P.
+Edited by his brother. 2 vols. 8vo. Boston, 1853.
+
+Jennings, Louis J. The Correspondence and Diaries of John Wilson Croker.
+2 vols. 8vo. New York, 1884.
+
+Jerdan, William. Autobiography. With his Literary, Political, and Social
+Reminiscences and Correspondence, etc. 4 vols. 12mo. London, 1852-53.
+
+Laughton, John Knox. Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry
+Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1898.
+
+Napier, Macvey. Selections from the Correspondence of the late Macvey
+Napier, Esq. Edited by his son. 8vo. London, 1879.
+
+Oliphant, Mrs. M.O.W., and Porter, Mrs. Gerald. William Blackwood and
+his Sons, etc. 3 vols. 8vo. New York, 1897-98.
+
+Paston, George. The "Monthly Review." In _Side-Lights on the Georgian
+Period_. 8vo. London, 1903.
+
+Smiles, Samuel. A Publisher and his Friends. Memoir and Correspondence
+of the late John Murray, etc. 2 vols. 8vo. London and New York, 1891.
+
+
+Last Century Magazines. (By T.H.) _Fraser's Magazine_, XCIV (325-333).
+
+Layton, W.E. Early Periodicals. In _The Bibliographer_, III (36-39).
+
+Lee, William. Periodical Publications during the Twenty Years 1712 to
+1732. _Notes and Queries_ (Third Series), IX (53-54, 72-75, 92-95). Cf.
+_ibid._, pp. 164, 268, and X, p. 134.
+
+Niven, G.W. On some Eighteenth Century Periodicals. In _The
+Bibliographer_, II (38-40).
+
+Parkes, Samuel. An Account of the Periodical Literary Journals which
+were Published in Great Britain and Ireland, from the Year 1681 to the
+Commencement of the Monthly Review in the year 1749. In _The Quarterly
+Journal of Science, Literature and the Arts_ (1822), XIII (36-58,
+289-312).
+
+Stephen, (Sir) Leslie. The First Edinburgh Reviewers. In _Cornhill
+Magazine_, XXXVIII (218-234). Also in _Living Age_, CXXXVIII (643-653).
+
+Waugh, Arthur. The English Reviewers. A Sketch of their History and
+Principles. In _The Critic_, XL (26-37).
+
+
+Allingham, William. Varieties in Prose. 3 vols. 12mo. London, 1893. Vol.
+III contains _Some Curiosities of Criticism_, reprinted from _Fraser's
+Magazine_, LXXXVII (43-51).
+
+Arnold, Matthew. Essays in Criticism. First Series. 12mo. London, 1865.
+Contains _The Function of Criticism at the Present Time._
+
+Birrell, Augustine. Men, Women, and Books. 16mo. London, 1894. Contains
+_Authors and Critics_.
+
+Collins, J. Churton. Ephemera Critica, or Plain Truths about Current
+Literature. 12mo. Westminster and New York, 1901.
+
+[Copleston, Edward.] Advice to a Young Reviewer, with a Specimen of the
+Art. 8vo. Oxford and London, 1807. Reprinted in _An English Garner,
+Critical Essays and Literary Fragments_, ed. J.C. Collins. New York,
+1903.
+
+Disraeli, I. Calamities and Quarrels of Authors. A New Edition, etc.
+12mo. London, n.d. Contains _Undue Severity of Criticism_.
+
+Gayley, C.M., and Scott, F.N. An Introduction to the Methods and
+Materials of Literary Criticism, etc. 12mo. Boston, 1899.
+
+Jennings, Henry J. Curiosities of Criticism. 12mo. London, 1881. See
+_Eclectic Magazine_, XCVII (420-423).
+
+Johnson, Charles F. Elements of Literary Criticism. 12mo. New York,
+1898.
+
+Mabie, Hamilton W. Essays in Literary Interpretation. 12mo. New York,
+1896. Contains _The Significance of Modern Criticism_.
+
+Matthews, William. The Great Conversers, and other Essays. 12mo.
+Chicago, 1874. Contains _Curiosities of Criticism_.
+
+Repplier, Agnes. Books and Men. 16mo. Boston, 1888. Contains
+_Curiosities of Criticism_.
+
+Robertson, John M. Essays toward a Critical Method. Sm. 8vo. London,
+1889. Contains _Science in Criticism_.
+
+Robertson, John M. New Essays toward a Critical Method. Sm. 8vo. London,
+1897.
+
+Sears, Lorenzo. Principles and Methods of Literary Criticism. 12mo. New
+York and London, 1898.
+
+Stevenson, E. Early Reviews of Great Writers (1786-1832): Selected and
+Edited with an Introduction. 12mo. London, n.d.
+
+Trent, W.P. The Authority of Criticism and other Essays. 12mo. New York,
+1899.
+
+Winchester, C.T. Some Principles of Literary Criticism. 12mo. New York,
+1899.
+
+Worsfold, W. Basil. The Principles of Criticism. An Introduction to the
+Study of Literature. New Edition. 8vo. New York, 1902.
+
+Wylie, Laura Johnson. Studies in the Evolution of English Criticism.
+16mo. Boston, 1894.
+
+
+Allen, Grant. The Decay of Criticism. In _Fortnightly Review_, XXXVII
+(339-351).
+
+Clarke, Helen A. The Value of Contemporary Judgment. In _Poet-Lore_, V
+(201-209).
+
+Critical Errors. In _Chamber's Journal_, XLII (164-166).
+
+Criticism Extraordinary. In _All the Year Round_, XXXIII (558-563).
+
+G.L.A. Some Curiosities of Criticism. In _Temple Bar_, LXXX (241-247).
+
+Howe, Herbert Crombie. The Contradictions of Literary Criticism. In
+_North American Review_, CLXXV (399-408).
+
+Hunt, T.W. Critics and Criticism. In _Modern Language Notes_, IV, p.
+161.
+
+
+
+
+EARLY REVIEWS OF ENGLISH POETS
+
+
+
+
+THOMAS GRAY
+
+
+ODES. _By Mr._ Gray. 4to. 1s. Dodsley.
+
+As this publication seems designed for those who have formed their taste
+by the models of antiquity, the generality of Readers cannot be supposed
+adequate Judges of its merit; nor will the Poet, it is presumed, be
+greatly disappointed if he finds them backward in commending a
+performance not entirely suited to their apprehensions. We cannot,
+however, without some regret behold those talents so capable of giving
+pleasure to all, exerted in efforts that, at best, can amuse only the
+few; we cannot behold this rising Poet seeking fame among the learned,
+without hinting to him the same advice that Isocrates used to give his
+Scholars, _Study the People_. This study it is that has conducted the
+great Masters of antiquity up to immortality. Pindar himself, of whom
+our modern Lyrist is an imitator, appears entirely guided by it. He
+adapted his works exactly to the dispositions of his countrymen.
+Irregular[,] enthusiastic, and quick in transition,--he wrote for a
+people inconstant, of warm imaginations and exquisite sensibility. He
+chose the most popular subjects, and all his allusions are to customs
+well known, in his day, to the meanest person.[F]
+
+His English Imitator wants those advantages. He speaks to a people not
+easily impressed with new ideas; extremely tenacious of the old; with
+difficulty warmed; and as slowly cooling again.--How unsuited then to
+our national character is that species of poetry which rises upon us
+with unexpected flights! Where we must hastily catch the thought, or it
+flies from us; and, in short, where the Reader must largely partake of
+the Poet's enthusiasm, in order to taste his beauties. To carry the
+parallel a little farther; the Greek Poet wrote in a language the most
+proper that can be imagined for this species of composition; lofty,
+harmonious, and never needing rhyme to heighten the numbers. But, for
+us, several unsuccessful experiments seem to prove that the English
+cannot have Odes in blank Verse; while, on the other hand, a natural
+imperfection attends those which are composed in irregular rhymes:--the
+similar sound often recurring where it is not expected, and not being
+found where it is, creates no small confusion to the Reader,--who, as we
+have not seldom observed, beginning in all the solemnity of poetic
+elocution, is by frequent disappointments of the rhyme, at last obliged
+to drawl out the uncomplying numbers into disagreeable prose.
+
+It is, by no means, our design to detract from the merit of our Author's
+present attempt: we would only intimate, that an English Poet,--one whom
+the Muse has _mark'd for her own_, could produce a more luxuriant bloom
+of flowers, by cultivating such as are natives of the soil, than by
+endeavouring to force the exotics of another climate: or, to speak
+without a metaphor, such a genius as Mr. Gray might give greater
+pleasure, and acquire a larger portion of fame, if, instead of being an
+imitator, he did justice to his talents, and ventured to be more an
+original. These two Odes, it must be confessed, breath[e] much of the
+spirit of Pindar, but then they have caught the seeming obscurity, the
+sudden transition, and hazardous epithet, of his mighty master; all
+which, though evidently intended for beauties, will, probably, be
+regarded as blemishes, by the generality of his Readers. In short, they
+are in some measure, a representation of what Pindar now appears to be,
+though perhaps, not what he appeared to the States of Greece, when they
+rivalled each other in his applause, and when Pan himself was seen
+dancing to his melody.
+
+In conformity to the antients, these Odes consist of the _Strophe_,
+_Antistrophe_, and _Epode_, which, in each Ode, are thrice repeated. The
+Strophes have a correspondent resemblance in their str[u]cture and
+numbers: and the Antistrophe and Epode also bear the same similitude.
+The Poet seems, in the first Ode particularly, to design the Epode as a
+complete air to the Strophe and Antistrophe, which have more the
+appearance of Recitative. There was a necessity for these divisions
+among the antients, for they served as directions to the dancer and
+musician; but we see no reason why they should be continued among the
+moderns; for, instead of assisting, they will but perplex the Musician,
+as our music requires a more frequent transition from the Air to the
+Recitative than could agree with the simplicity of the antients.
+
+The first of these Poems celebrates the Lyric Muse. It seems the most
+laboured performance of the two, but yet we think its merit is not equal
+to that of the second. It seems to want that regularity of plan upon
+which the second is founded; and though it abounds with images that
+strike, yet, unlike the second, it contains none that are affecting.
+
+In the second Antistrophe the Bard thus marks the progress of Poetry.
+
+    II. [2.]
+
+    In climes beyond the solar road,
+    Where shaggy forms o'er ice-built mountains roam,
+    The Muse has broke the twilight-gloom
+    To cheer the shivering natives dull abode
+    And oft beneath the od'rous shade
+    Of Chili's boundless forests laid,
+    She deigns to hear the savage youth repeat,
+    In loose numbers wildly sweet
+    Their feather-cinctured Chiefs, and dusky loves.
+    Her track, where'er the Goddess roves,
+    Glory pursue, and generous shame,
+    Th' unconquerable Mind, and Freedom's holy flame.
+
+There is great spirit in the irregularity of the numbers towards the
+conclusion of the foregoing stanza.
+
+[II, 3, and III, 2, of _The Progress of Poesy_ are quoted without
+comment.]
+
+The second 'Ode is founded on a tradition current in Wales, that Edward
+the first, when he compleated the conquest of that country, ordered all
+the Bards that fell into his hands to be put to death.' The Author seems
+to have taken the hint of this subject from the fifteenth Ode of the
+first book of Horace. Our Poet introduces the only surviving Bard of
+that country in concert with the spirits of his murdered brethren, as
+prophetically denouncing woes upon the Conqueror and his posterity. The
+circumstances of grief and horror in which the Bard is represented,
+those of terror in the preparation of the votive web, and the mystic
+obscurity with which the prophecies are delivered, will give as much
+pleasure to those who relish this species of composition, as anything
+that has hitherto appeared in our language, the Odes of Dryden himself
+not excepted.
+
+[I, 2, I, 3, part of II, 1, and the conclusion of _The Bard_ are
+quoted]--_The Monthly Review_.
+
+[Footnote F: The best Odes of Pindar are said to be those which have
+been destroyed by time; and even they were seldom recited among the
+Greeks, without the adventitious ornaments of music and dancing. Our
+Lyric Odes are seldom set off with these advantages, which, trifling as
+they seem, have alone given immortality to the works of Quinault.]
+
+
+
+
+OLIVER GOLDSMITH
+
+
+_The Traveller, or a Prospect of Society. A Poem_. _Inscribed to the
+Rev. Mr._ Henry Goldsmith. _By_ OLIVER GOLDSMITH, _M.B. 4to. Pr. 1s.
+6d_. Newbery.
+
+The author has, in an elegant dedication to his brother, a country
+clergyman, given the design of his poem:--'Without espousing the cause
+of any party, I have attempted to moderate the rage of all. I have
+endeavoured to shew, that there may be equal happiness in other states,
+though differently governed from our own; that each state has a peculiar
+principle of happiness; and that this principle in each state,
+particularly in our own, may be carried to a mischievous excess.'
+
+That he may illustrate and enforce this important position, the author
+places himself on a summit of the Alps, and, turning his eyes around, in
+all directions, upon the different regions that lie before him,
+compares, not merely their situation or policy, but those social and
+domestic manners which, after a very few deductions, make the sum total
+of human life.
+
+    'Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow,
+    Or by the lazy Scheld, or wandering Po;
+    Or onward, where the rude Carinthian boor
+    Against the houseless stranger shuts the door;
+    Or where Campania's plain forsaken lies,
+    A weary waste expanded to the skies.
+    Where'er I roam, whatever realms to see,
+    My heart untravell'd fond turns to thee;
+    Still to my brother turns with ceaseless pain,
+    And drags at each remove a lengthening chain.--
+      Even now, where Alpine solitudes ascend,
+    I sit me down a pensive hour to spend;
+    And, plac'd on high above the storm's career,
+    Look downward where an hundred realms appear;
+    Lakes, forests, cities, plains extended wide,
+    The pomp of kings, the shepherd's humbler pride.
+      When thus creation's charms around combine,
+    Amidst the store 'twere thankless to repine.
+    'Twere affectation all, and school-taught pride,
+    To spurn the splendid things by heaven supply'd.
+    Let school-taught pride dissemble all it can,
+    These little things are great to little man;
+    And wiser he, whose sympathetic mind
+    Exults in all the good of all mankind.'
+
+The author already appears, by his numbers, to be a versifier; and by
+his scenery, to be a poet; it therefore only remains that his sentiments
+discover him to be a just estimator of comparative happiness.
+
+The goods of life are either given by nature, or procured by ourselves.
+Nature has distributed her gifts in very different proportions, yet all
+her children are content; but the acquisitions of art are such as
+terminate in good or evil, as they are differently regulated or
+combined.
+
+    'Yet, where to find that happiest spot below,
+    Who can direct, when all pretend to know?
+    The shudd'ring tenant of the frigid zone
+    Boldly asserts that country for his own,
+    Extols the treasures of his stormy seas,
+    And live-long nights of revelry and ease;
+    The naked Negro, panting at the line,
+    Boasts of his golden sands and palmy wine,
+    Basks in the glare, or stems the tepid wave,
+    And thanks his Gods for all the good they gave.--
+      Nature, a mother kind alike, to all,
+    Still grants her bliss at Labour's earnest call;
+    And though rough rocks or gloomy summits frown,
+    These rocks, by custom, turn to beds of down.
+      From Art more various are the blessings sent;
+    Wealth, splendours, honor, liberty, content:
+    Yet these each other's power so strong contest,
+    That either seems destructive of the rest.
+    Hence every state, to one lov'd blessing prone,
+    Conforms and models life to that alone.
+    Each to the favourite happiness attends,
+    And spurns the plan that aims at other ends;
+    Till, carried to excess in each domain,
+    This favourite good begets peculiar pain.'
+
+This is the position which he conducts through Italy, Swisserland,
+France, Holland, and England; and which he endeavours to confirm by
+remarking the manners of every country.
+
+Having censured the degeneracy of the modern Italians, he proceeds thus:
+
+    'My soul turn from them, turn we to survey
+    Where rougher climes a nobler race display,
+    Where the bleak Swiss their stormy mansions tread,
+    And force a churlish soil for scanty bread;
+    No product here the barren hills afford,
+    But man and steel, the soldier and his sword.
+    No vernal blooms their torpid rocks array,
+    But winter lingering chills the lap of May;
+    No Zephyr fondly soothes the mountain's breast,
+    But meteors glare, and stormy glooms invest.
+    Yet still, even here, content can spread a charm,
+    Redress the clime, and all its rage disarm.
+    Though poor the peasant's hut, his feasts though small,
+    He sees his little lot, the lot of all;
+    See no contiguous palace rear its head
+    To shame the meanness of his humble shed;
+    No costly lord the sumptuous banquet deal
+    To make him loath his vegetable meal;
+    But calm, and bred in ignorance and toil,
+    Each wish contracting, fits him to the soil.'
+
+But having found that the rural life of a Swiss has its evils as well as
+comforts, he turns to France.
+
+    'To kinder skies, where gentler manners reign,
+    We turn; and France displays her bright domain.
+    Gay sprightly land of mirth and social ease,
+    Pleas'd with thyself, whom all the world can please.--
+    Theirs are those arts that mind to mind endear,
+    For honour forms the social temper here.--
+    From courts to camps, to cottages it strays,
+    And all are taught an avarice of praise;
+    They please, are pleas'd, they give to get esteem,
+    Till, seeming blest, they grow to what they seem.'
+
+Yet France has its evils:
+
+    'For praise too dearly lov'd, or warmly sought,
+    Enfeebles all internal strength of thought,
+    And the weak soul, within itself unblest,
+    Leans all for pleasure on another's breast.--
+    The mind still turns where shifting fashion draws,
+    Nor weighs the solid worth of self-applause.'
+
+Having then passed through Holland, he arrives in England, where,
+
+    'Stern o'er each bosom reason holds her state,
+    With daring aims, irregularly great,
+    I see the lords of human kind pass by,
+    Pride in their port, defiance in their eye,
+    Intent on high designs, a thoughtful band,
+    By forms unfashion'd, fresh from Nature's hand.'
+
+With the inconveniences that harrass [_sic_] the sons of freedom, this
+extract shall be concluded.
+
+    'That independence Britons prize too high,
+    Keeps man from man, and breaks the social tie;
+    See, though by circling deeps together held,
+    Minds combat minds, repelling and repell'd;
+    Ferments arise, imprison'd factions roar,
+    Represt ambition struggles round her shore,
+    Whilst, over-wrought, the general system feels
+    Its motions stopt, or phrenzy fires the wheels.
+      Nor this the worst. As social bonds decay,
+    As duty, love, and honour fail to sway,
+    Fictitious bonds, the bonds of wealth and law,
+    Still gather strength, and force unwilling awe.
+    Hence all obedience bows to these alone,
+    And talent sinks, and merit weeps unknown;
+    Till time may come, when, stript of all her charms,
+    That land of scholars, and that nurse of arms;
+    Where noble stems transmit the patriot flame,
+    And monarchs toil, and poets pant for fame;
+    One sink of level avarice shall lie,
+    And scholars, soldiers, kings unhonor'd die.'
+
+Such is the poem, 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 any thing equal.--_The Critical Review_.
+
+
+
+
+WILLIAM COWPER
+
+
+_Poems by William Cowper, of the Inner Temple, Esq._ _8vo. 5s._ Johnson.
+
+These Poems are written, as we learn from the title-page, by Mr. Cowper
+of the Inner Temple, who seems to be a man of a sober and religious turn
+of mind, with a benevolent heart, and a serious wish to inculcate the
+precepts of morality; he is not, however, possessed of any superior
+abilities, or powers of genius, requisite to so arduous an undertaking;
+his verses are, in general, weak and languid, and have neither novelty,
+spirit, or animation, to recommend them; that mediocrity so severely
+condemned by Horace,
+
+    Non Dii non homines, &c.
+
+pervades the whole; and, whilst the author avoids every thing that is
+ridiculous or contemptible, he, at the same time, never rises to any
+thing that we can commend or admire. He says what is incontrovertible,
+and what has already been said over and over, with much gravity, but
+says nothing new, sprightly, or entertaining; travelling on in a plain,
+level, flat road, with great composure, almost through the whole long,
+and rather tedious volume, which is little better than a dull sermon, in
+very indifferent verse, on Truth, the Progress of Error, Charity, and
+some other grave subjects. If this author had followed the advice given
+by Caraccioli,[G] and which he has chosen for one of the mottos
+prefixed to these Poems, he would have clothed his indisputable truths
+in some becoming _disguise_, and rendered his work much more agreeable.
+In its present state, we cannot compliment him on its shape or beauty;
+for, as this bard himself _sweetly_ sings,
+
+    'The clear harangue, and cold as it is clear,
+    Falls soporific on the listless ear.'
+
+In his learned dissertation on _Hope_, we meet with the following lines
+
+    [Quotes some fifty lines from _Hope_ beginning,
+      Build by whatever plan caprice decrees,
+      With what materials, on what ground you please, etc.]
+
+All this is very true; but there needs no ghost, nor author, nor poet,
+to tell us what we knew before, unless he could tell it to us in a new
+and better manner. Add to this, that many of our author's expressions
+are coarse, vulgar, and unpoetical; such as _parrying_, _pushing by_,
+_spitting abhorrence_, &c. The greatest part of Mr. Cowper's didactics
+is in the same strain. He attempts indeed sometimes to be lively,
+facetious, and satirical; but is seldom more successful in this, than in
+the serious and pathetic. In his poem on Conversation there are two or
+three faint attempts at humour; in one of them he tells us that
+
+    'A story in which native humour reigns
+    Is often useful, always entertains,
+    A graver fact enlisted on your side,
+    May furnish illustration, well applied;
+    But sedentary weavers of long tales,
+    Give me the fidgets and my patience fails.
+    'Tis the most asinine employ on earth,
+    To hear them tell of parentage and birth,
+    And echo conversations dull and dry,
+    Embellished with, _he said_, and _so said I_.
+    At ev'ry interview their route the same,
+    The repetition makes attention lame,
+    We bustle up with unsuccessful speed,
+    And in the saddest part cry--droll indeed!
+    The path of narrative with care pursue,
+    Still making probability your clue,
+    On all the vestiges of truth attend,
+    And let them guide you to a decent end.
+    Of all ambitions man may entertain,
+    The worst that can invade a sickly brain,
+    Is that which angles hourly for surprize,
+    And baits its hook with prodigies and lies.
+    Credulous infancy or age as weak
+    Are fittest auditors for such to seek,
+    Who to please others will themselves disgrace,
+    Yet please not, but affront you to your face.'
+
+In the passage above quoted, our readers will perceive that the wit is
+rather aukward, [_sic_] and the verses, especially the last, very
+prosaic.
+
+Toward the end of this volume are some little pieces of a lighter kind,
+which, after dragging through Mr. Cowper's long moral lectures, afforded
+us some relief. The fables of the Lily and the Rose, the Nightingale and
+Glow-worm, the Pine-apple and the Bee, with two or three others, are
+written with ease and spirit. It is a pity that our author had not
+confined himself altogether to this species of poetry, without entering
+into a system of ethics, for which his genius seems but ill
+adapted.--_The Critical Review_.
+
+[Footnote G: Nous sommes n�s pour la v�rit�, et nous ne pouvons souffrir
+son abord. Les figures, les paraboles, les embl�mes, sont toujours des
+ornements n�cessaires pour qu'elle puisse s'annoncer: on veut, en la
+recevant, qu'elle soit _d�guis�e_.]
+
+
+
+
+ROBERT BURNS
+
+
+_Poems, chiefly in the Scottish Dialect_. _By_ ROBERT BURNS,
+_Kilmarnock_.
+
+When an author we know nothing of solicits our attention, we are but too
+apt to treat him with the same reluctant civility we show to a person
+who has come unbidden into company. Yet talents and address will
+gradually diminish the distance of our behaviour, and when the first
+unfavourable impression has worn off, the author may become a favourite,
+and the stranger a friend. The poems we have just announced may probably
+have to struggle with the pride of learning and the partiality of
+refinement; yet they are intitled to particular indulgence.
+
+Who are you, Mr. Burns? will some surly critic say. At what university
+have you been educated? what languages do you understand? what authors
+have you particularly studied? whether has Aristotle or Horace directed
+your taste? who has praised your poems, and under whose patronage are
+they published? In short, what qualifications intitle you to instruct or
+entertain us? To the questions of such a catechism, perhaps honest
+Robert Burns would make no satisfactory answers. 'My good Sir, he might
+say, I am a poor country man; I was bred up at the school of Kilmarnock;
+I understand no languages but my own; I have studied Allan Ramsay and
+Ferguson. My poems have been praised at many a fireside; and I ask no
+patronage for them, if they deserve none. I have not looked on mankind
+_through the spectacle of books_. An ounce of mother-wit, you know, is
+worth a pound of clergy; and Homer and Ossian, for any thing that I have
+heard, could neither write nor read.' The author is indeed a striking
+example of native genius bursting through the obscurity of poverty and
+the obstructions of laborious life. He is said to be a common ploughman;
+and when we consider him in this light, we cannot help regretting that
+wayward fate had not placed him in a more favoured situation. Those who
+view him with the severity of lettered criticism, and judge him by the
+fastidious rules of art, will discover that he has not the doric
+simplicity of Ramsay, nor the brilliant imagination of Ferguson; but to
+those who admire the exertions of untutored fancy, and are blind to many
+faults for the sake of numberless beauties, his poems will afford
+singular gratification. His observations on human characters are acute
+and sagacious, and his descriptions are lively and just. Of rustic
+pleasantry he has a rich fund; and some of his softer scenes are touched
+with inimitable delicacy. He seems to be a boon companion, and often
+startles us with a dash of libertinism, which will keep some readers at
+a distance. Some of his subjects are serious, but those of the humorous
+kind are the best. It is not meant, however, to enter into a minute
+investigation of his merits, as the copious extracts we have subjoined
+will enable our readers to judge for themselves. The Character Horace
+gives to Osellus is particularly applicable to him.
+
+    _Rusticus abnormis sapiens, crassaque Minerva._
+
+[Quotes _Address to the Deil_, from the _Epistle to a Brother Bard_,
+from _Description of a Sermon in the Fields_, and from
+_Hallowe'en_.]--_The Edinburgh Magazine_.
+
+
+_Poems, chiefly in the Scottish Dialect_. _By Robert Burns._ Printed at
+Kilmarnock.
+
+We have had occasion to examine a number of poetical productions,
+written by persons in the lower rank of life, and who had hardly
+received any education; but we do not recollect to have ever met with a
+more signal instance of true and uncultivated genius, than in the author
+of these Poems. His occupation is that of a common ploughman; and his
+life has hitherto been spent in struggling with poverty. But all the
+rigours of fortune have not been able to repress the frequent efforts of
+his lively and vigorous imagination. Some of these poems are of a
+serious cast; but the strain which seems most natural to the author, is
+the sportive and humorous. It is to be regretted, that the Scottish
+dialect, in which these poems are written, must obscure the native
+beauties with which they appear to abound, and renders the sense often
+unintelligible to an English reader. Should it, however, prove true,
+that the author has been taken under the patronage of a great lady in
+Scotland, and that a celebrated professor has interested himself in the
+cultivation of his talents, there is reason to hope, that his
+distinguished genius may yet be exerted in such a manner as to afford
+more general delight. In the meantime, we must admire the generous
+enthusiasm of his untutored muse; and bestow the tribute of just
+applause on one whose name will be transmitted to posterity with
+honour.--_The Critical Review_.
+
+
+
+
+WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
+
+
+_Descriptive Sketches_, in Verse. Taken during a Pedestrian Tour in the
+Italian, Grison, Swiss and Savoyard Alps. By W. WORDSWORTH, B.A. of St.
+John's, Cambridge. 4to. pp. 55. 3s. Johnson. 1793.
+
+More descriptive poetry! (See page 166, &c.) Have we not yet enough?
+Must eternal changes be rung on uplands and lowlands, and nodding
+forests, and brooding clouds, and cells, and dells, and dingles? Yes;
+more, and yet more: so it is decreed.
+
+Mr. Wordsworth begins his descriptive sketches with the following
+exordium:
+
+    'Were there, below, a spot of holy ground,
+    By Pain and her sad family _un_found,
+    Sure, Nature's God that spot to man had giv'n,
+    Where murmuring _rivers join_ the song of _ev'n_!
+    Where _falls_ the purple morning far and wide
+    _In flakes_ of light upon the mountain side;
+    Where summer suns in ocean sink to rest,
+    Or moonlight upland lifts her hoary breast;
+    Where Silence, on her night of wing, o'er-broods
+    Unfathom'd dells and undiscover'd woods;
+    Where rocks and groves the _power_ of waters _shakes_
+    In cataracts, or sleeps in quiet lakes.'
+
+May we ask, how it is that rivers join the song of ev'n? or, in plain
+prose, the evening! but, if they do, is it not true that they equally
+join the song of morning, noon, and night? The _purple morning falling
+in flakes_ of light is a bold figure: but we are told, it falls far and
+wide--Where?--On the mountain's _side_. We are sorry to see the purple
+morning confined so like a maniac in a straight waistcoat. What the
+night of wing of silence is, we are unable to comprehend: but the
+climax of the passage is, that, were there such a spot of holy ground as
+is here so sublimely described, _unfound_ by Pain and her sad family,
+Nature's God had surely given that spot to man, though its _woods_ were
+_undiscovered_.
+
+Let us proceed,
+
+    'But doubly pitying Nature loves to show'r
+    Soft on his _wounded heart_ her healing pow'r,
+    Who _plods_ o'er hills and vales his road _forlorn_,
+    Wooing her varying charms from eve to morn.
+    _No sad vacuities_ his heart _annoy_,
+    _Blows_ not a Zephyr but it _whispers joy_;
+    For him _lost_ flowers their _idle_ sweets _exhale_;
+    He _tastes_ the meanest _note_ that swells the gale;
+    For him sod-seats the cottage-door adorn,
+    And _peeps_ the far-off _spire_, his evening bourn!
+    Dear is the forest _frowning_ o'er his head,
+    And dear the green-sward to his _velvet tread_;
+    Moves there a _cloud_ o'er mid-day's flaming eye?
+    Upwards he looks--and calls it luxury;
+    Kind Nature's _charities_ his steps attend,
+    In every babbling brook he finds a friend.'
+
+Here we find that _doubly_ pitying Nature is very kind to the traveller,
+but that this traveller has a _wounded heart_ and _plods_ his road
+_forlorn_. In the next line but one we discover that--
+
+    'No _sad vacuities_ his heart _annoy_;
+    Blows not a Zephyr but it whispers _joy_.'
+
+The flowers, though they have lost themselves, or are lost, exhale their
+idle sweets for him; the _spire peeps_ for him; sod-seats, forests,
+clouds, nature's charities, and babbling brooks, all are to him luxury
+and friendship. He is the happiest of mortals, and plods, is forlorn,
+and has a wounded heart. How often shall we in vain advise those, who
+are so delighted with their own thoughts that they cannot forbear from
+putting them into rhyme, to examine those thoughts till they themselves
+understand them? No man will ever be a poet, till his mind be
+sufficiently powerful to sustain this labour.--_The Monthly Review_.
+
+
+_An Evening Walk_. An Epistle; in Verse. Addressed to a Young Lady, from
+the Lakes of the North of England. By W. Wordsworth, B.A. of St. John's,
+Cambridge. 4to. pp. 27. 2s. Johnson. 1793.
+
+In this Epistle, the subject and the manner of treating it vary but
+little from the former poem. We will quote four lines from a passage
+which the author very sorrowfully apologizes for having omitted:
+
+    'Return delights! with whom my road beg_un_,
+    When _Life-rear'd_ laughing _up her_ morning _sun_;
+    When Transport kiss'd away my April tear,
+    "Rocking as in a dream the tedious year."
+
+Life _rearing_ up the sun! Transport kissing away an _April_ tear and
+_rocking_ the year as in a dream! Would the cradle had been specified!
+Seriously, these are figures which no poetical license can justify. If
+they can possibly give pleasure, it must be to readers whose habits of
+thinking are totally different from ours. Mr. Wordsworth is a scholar,
+and, no doubt, when reading the works of others, a critic. There are
+passages in his poems which display imagination, and which afford hope
+for the future: but, if he can divest himself of all partiality, and
+will critically question every line that he has written, he will find
+many which, he must allow, call loudly for amendment.--_The Monthly
+Review_.
+
+
+_Lyrical Ballads, with a few other Poems_. _Small 8vo. 5s. Boards._
+Arch. 1798.
+
+The majority of these poems, we are informed in the advertisement, are
+to be considered as experiments.
+
+'They were written chiefly with a view to ascertain how far the language
+of conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to
+the purposes of poetic pleasure.' P. i.
+
+Of these experimental poems, the most important is the Idiot Boy, the
+story of which is simply this. Betty Foy's neighbour Susan Gale is
+indisposed; and no one can conveniently be sent for the doctor but
+Betty's idiot boy. She therefore puts him upon her poney, at eight
+o'clock in the evening, gives him proper directions, and returns to take
+care of her sick neighbour. Johnny is expected with the doctor by
+eleven; but the clock strikes eleven, and twelve, and one, without the
+appearance either of Johnny or the doctor. Betty's restless fears become
+insupportable; and she now leaves her friend to look for her idiot son.
+She goes to the doctor's house, but hears nothing of Johnny. About five
+o'clock, however, she finds him sitting quietly upon his feeding poney.
+As they go home they meet old Susan, whose apprehensions have cured her,
+and brought her out to seek them; and they all return merrily together.
+
+Upon this subject the author has written nearly five hundred lines. With
+what spirit the story is told, our extract will evince.
+
+[Quotes lines (322-401) of _The Idiot Boy_.]
+
+No tale less deserved the labour that appears to have been bestowed upon
+this. It resembles a Flemish picture in the worthlessness of its design
+and the excellence of its execution. From Flemish artists we are
+satisfied with such pieces: who would not have lamented, if Corregio or
+Rafaelle had wasted their talents in painting Dutch boors or the humours
+of a Flemish wake?
+
+The other ballads of this kind are as bald in story, and are not so
+highly embellished in narration. With that which is entitled the Thorn,
+we were altogether displeased. The advertisement says, it is not told in
+the person of the author, but in that of some loquacious narrator. The
+author should have recollected that he who personates tiresome
+loquacity, becomes tiresome himself. The story of a man who suffers the
+perpetual pain of cold, because an old woman prayed that he might never
+be warm, is perhaps a good story for a ballad, because it is a
+well-known tale: but is the author certain that it is '_well
+authenticated?_' and does not such an assertion promote the popular
+superstition of witchcraft?
+
+In a very different style of poetry, is the Rime of the Ancyent
+Marinere; a ballad (says the advertisement) 'professedly written in
+imitation of the _style_, as well as of the spirit of the elder poets.'
+We are tolerably conversant with the early English poets; and can
+discover no resemblance whatever, except in antiquated spelling and a
+few obsolete words. This piece appears to us perfectly original in style
+as well as in story. Many of the stanzas are laboriously beautiful; but
+in connection they are absurd or unintelligible. Our readers may
+exercise their ingenuity in attempting to unriddle what follows.
+
+    'The roaring wind! it roar'd far off,
+      It did not come anear;
+    But with its sound it shook the sails
+      That were so thin and sere.
+
+    The upper air bursts into life,
+      And a hundred fire-flags sheen
+    To and fro they are hurried about;
+    And to and fro, and in and out
+      The stars dance on between.
+
+    The coming wind doth roar more loud;
+      The sails do sigh, like sedge:
+    The rain pours down from one black cloud,
+      And the moon is at its edge.
+
+    Hark! hark! the thick black cloud is cleft,
+      And the moon is at its side:
+    Like waters shot from some high crag,
+    The lightning falls with never a jag
+      A river steep and wide.
+
+    The strong wind reach'd the ship: it roar'd
+      And dropp'd down, like a stone!
+    Beneath the lightning and the moon
+      The dead men gave a groan.' P. 27.
+
+We do not sufficiently understand the story to analyse it. It is a Dutch
+attempt at German sublimity. Genius has here been employed in producing
+a poem of little merit.
+
+With pleasure we turn to the serious pieces, the better part of the
+volume. The Foster-Mother's Tale is in the best style of dramatic
+narrative. The Dungeon, and the Lines upon the Yew-tree Seat, are
+beautiful. The Tale of the Female Vagrant is written in the stanza, not
+the style, of Spenser. We extract a part of this poem.
+
+[Quotes lines (91-180) of _The Female Vagrant_.]
+
+Admirable as this poem is, the author seems to discover still superior
+powers in the Lines written near Tintern Abbey. On reading this
+production, it is impossible not to lament that he should ever have
+condescended to write such pieces as the Last of the Flock, the Convict,
+and most of the ballads. In the whole range of English poetry, we
+scarcely recollect anything superior to a part of the following passage.
+
+[Quotes lines (66-112) of _Lines Written a few Miles above Tintern
+Abbey_.]
+
+The 'experiment,' we think, has failed, not because the language of
+conversation is little adapted to 'the purposes of poetic pleasure' but
+because it has been tried upon uninteresting subjects. Yet every piece
+discovers genius; and, ill as the author has frequently employed his
+talents, they certainly rank him with the best of living poets.--_The
+Critical Review_.
+
+
+_Poems, in Two Volumes_. _By_ WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, _Author of the Lyrical
+Ballads._ 8vo. pp. 320. London, 1807.
+
+This author is known to belong to a certain brotherhood of poets, who
+have haunted for some years about the Lakes of Cumberland; and is
+generally looked upon, we believe, as the purest model of the
+excellences and peculiarities of the school which they have been
+labouring to establish. Of the general merits of that school, we have
+had occasion to express our opinion pretty freely, in more places than
+one, and even to make some allusion to the former publications of the
+writer now before us. We are glad, however, to have found an opportunity
+of attending somewhat more particularly to his pretensions.
+
+The Lyrical Ballads were unquestionably popular; and, we have no
+hesitation in saying, deservedly popular; for in spite of their
+occasional vulgarity, affectation, and silliness, they were undoubtedly
+characterised by a strong spirit of originality, of pathos, and natural
+feeling; and recommended to all good minds by the clear impression which
+they bore of the amiable dispositions and virtuous principles of the
+author. By the help of these qualities, they were enabled, not only to
+recommend themselves to the indulgence of many judicious readers, but
+even to beget among a pretty numerous class of persons, a sort of
+admiration of the very defects by which they were attended. It was upon
+this account chiefly, that we thought it necessary to set ourselves
+against this alarming innovation. Childishness, conceit, and
+affectation, are not of themselves very popular or attractive; and
+though mere novelty has sometimes been found sufficient to give them a
+temporary currency, we should have had no fear of their prevailing to
+any dangerous extent, if they had been graced with no more seductive
+accompaniments. It was precisely because the perverseness and bad taste
+of this new school was combined with a great deal of genius and of
+laudable feeling, that we were afraid of their spreading and gaining
+ground among us, and that we entered into the discussion with a degree
+of zeal and animosity which some might think unreasonable toward
+authors, to whom so much merit had been conceded. There were times and
+moods indeed, in which we were led to suspect ourselves of unjustifiable
+severity, and to doubt, whether a sense of public duty had not carried
+us rather too far in reprobation of errors, that seemed to be atoned
+for, by excellences of no vulgar description. At other times, the
+magnitude of these errors--the disgusting absurdities into which they
+led their feebler admirers, and the derision and contempt which they
+drew from the more fastidious, even upon the merits with which they were
+associated, made us wonder more than ever at the perversity by which
+they were retained, and regret that we had not declared ourselves
+against them with still more formidable and decided hostility.
+
+In this temper of mind, we read the _annonce_ of Mr Wordsworth's
+publication with a good deal of interest and expectation, and opened his
+volumes with greater anxiety, than he or his admirers will probably give
+us credit for. We have been greatly disappointed certainly as to the
+quality of the poetry; but we doubt whether the publication has afforded
+so much satisfaction to any other of his readers:--it has freed us from
+all doubt or hesitation as to the justice of our former censures, and
+has brought the matter to a test, which we cannot help hoping may be
+convincing to the author himself.
+
+Mr Wordsworth, we think, has now brought the question, as to the merit
+of his new school of poetry, to a very fair and decisive issue. The
+volumes before us are much more strongly marked by all its peculiarities
+than any former publication of the fraternity. In our apprehension, they
+are, on this very account, infinitely less interesting or meritorious;
+but it belongs to the public, and not to us, to decide upon their merit,
+and we will confess, that so strong is our conviction of their obvious
+inferiority, and the grounds of it, that we are willing for once to
+wa[i]ve our right of appealing to posterity, and to take the judgment of
+the present generation of readers, and even of Mr Wordsworth's former
+admirers, as conclusive on this occasion. If these volumes, which have
+all the benefit of the author's former popularity, turn out to be nearly
+as popular as the lyrical ballads--if they sell nearly to the same
+extent--or are quoted and imitated among half as many individuals, we
+shall admit that Mr Wordsworth has come much nearer the truth in his
+judgment of what constitutes the charm of poetry, than we had previously
+imagined--and shall institute a more serious and respectful inquiry into
+his principles of composition than we have yet thought necessary. On the
+other hand,--if this little work, selected from the compositions of five
+maturer years, and written avowedly for the purpose of exalting a
+system, which has already excited a good deal of attention, should be
+generally rejected by those whose prepossessions were in its favour,
+there is room to hope, not only that the system itself will meet with no
+more encouragement, but even that the author will be persuaded to
+abandon a plan of writing, which defrauds his industry and talents of
+their natural reward.
+
+Putting ourselves thus upon our country, we certainly look for a verdict
+against this publication; and have little doubt indeed of the result,
+upon a fair consideration of the evidence contained in these
+volumes.--To accelerate that result, and to give a general view of the
+evidence, to those into whose hands the record may not have already
+fallen, we must now make a few observations and extracts.
+
+We shall not resume any of the particular discussions by which we
+formerly attempted to ascertain the value of the improvements which this
+new school had effected in poetry;[H] but shall lay the grounds of our
+opposition, for this time, a little more broadly. The end of poetry, we
+take it, is to please--and the name, we think, is strictly applicable to
+every metrical composition from which we receive pleasure, without any
+laborious exercise of the understanding. This pleasure, may, in general,
+be analyzed into three parts--that which we receive from the excitement
+of Passion or emotion--that which is derived from the play of
+Imagination, or the easy exercise of Reason--and that which depends on
+the character and qualities of the Diction. The two first are the vital
+and primary springs of poetical delight, and can scarcely require
+explanation to any one. The last has been alternately overrated and
+undervalued by the professors of the poetical art, and is in such low
+estimation with the author now before us and his associates, that it is
+necessary to say a few words in explanation of it.
+
+One great beauty of diction exists only for those who have some degree
+of scholarship or critical skill. This is what depends on the exquisite
+_propriety_ of the words employed, and the delicacy with which they are
+adapted to the meaning which is to be expressed. Many of the finest
+passages in Virgil and Pope derive their principal charm from the fine
+propriety of their diction. Another source of beauty, which extends
+only to the more instructed class of readers, is that which consists in
+the judicious or happy application of expressions which have been
+sanctified by the use of famous writers, or which bear the stamp of a
+simple or venerable antiquity. There are other beauties of diction,
+however, which are perceptible by all--the beauties of sweet sound and
+pleasant associations. The melody of words and verses is indifferent to
+no reader of poetry; but the chief recommendation of poetical language
+is certainly derived from those general associations, which give it a
+character of dignity or elegance, sublimity or tenderness. Every one
+knows that there are low and mean expressions, as well as lofty and
+grave ones; and that some words bear the impression of coarseness and
+vulgarity, as clearly as others do of refinement and affection. We do
+not mean, of course, to say anything in defence of the hackneyed
+common-places of ordinary versemen. Whatever might have been the
+original character of these unlucky phrases, they are now associated
+with nothing but ideas of schoolboy imbecility and vulgar affectation.
+But what we do maintain is, that much of the most popular poetry in the
+world owes its celebrity chiefly to the beauty of its diction; and that
+no poetry can be long or generally acceptable, the language of which is
+coarse, inelegant, or infantine.
+
+From this great source of pleasure, we think the readers of Mr
+Wordsworth are in a great measure cut off. His diction has no where any
+pretensions to elegance or dignity; and he has scarcely ever
+condescended to give the grace of correctness or melody to his
+versification. If it were merely slovenly and neglected, however, all
+this might be endured. Strong sense and powerful feeling will ennoble
+any expressions; or, at least, no one who is capable of estimating those
+higher merits, will be disposed to mark these little defects. But, in
+good truth, no man, now-a-days, composes verses for publication with a
+slovenly neglect of their language. It is a fine and laborious
+manufacture, which can scarcely ever be made in a hurry; and the faults
+which it has, may, for the most part, be set down to bad taste or
+incapacity, rather than to carelessness or oversight. With Mr Wordsworth
+and his friends, it is plain that their peculiarities of diction are
+things of choice, and not of accident. They write as they do, upon
+principle and system; and it evidently costs them much pains to keep
+_down_ to the standard which they have proposed to themselves. They are,
+to the full, as much mannerists, too, as the poetasters who ring changes
+on the common-places of magazine versification; and all the difference
+between them is, that they borrow their phrases from a different and a
+scantier _gradus ad Parnassum_. If they were, indeed, to discard all
+imitation and set phraseology, and to bring in no words merely for show
+or for metre,--as much, perhaps, might be gained in freedom and
+originality, as would infallibly be lost in allusion and authority; but,
+in point of fact, the new poets are just as great borrowers as the old;
+only that, instead of borrowing from the more popular passages of their
+illustrious predecessors, they have preferred furnishing themselves from
+vulgar ballads and plebeian nurseries.
+
+Their peculiarities of diction alone, are enough, perhaps, to render
+them ridiculous; but the author before us really seems anxious to court
+this literary martyrdom by a device still more infallible,--we mean,
+that of connecting his most lofty, tender, or impassioned conceptions,
+with objects and incidents, which the greater part of his readers will
+probably persist in thinking low, silly, or uninteresting. Whether this
+is done from affectation and conceit alone, or whether it may not
+arise, in some measure, from the self-illusion of a mind of
+extraordinary sensibility, habituated to solitary meditation, we cannot
+undertake to determine. It is possible enough, we allow, that the sight
+of a friend's garden-spade, or a sparrow's nest, or a man gathering
+leeches, might really have suggested to such a mind a train of powerful
+impressions and interesting reflections; but it is certain, that, to
+most minds, such associations will always appear forced, strained, and
+unnatural; and that the composition in which it is attempted to exhibit
+them, will always have the air of parody, or ludicrous and affected
+singularity. All the world laughs at Elegiac stanzas to a sucking-pig--a
+Hymn on Washing-day--Sonnets to one's grandmother--or Pindarics on
+gooseberry-pye; and yet, we are afraid, it will not be quite easy to
+convince Mr Wordsworth, that the same ridicule must infallibly attach to
+most of the pathetic pieces in these volumes. To satisfy our readers,
+however, as to the justice of this and our other anticipations, we shall
+proceed, without further preface, to lay before them a short view of
+their contents.
+
+The first is a kind of ode 'to the Daisy,'--very flat, feeble, and
+affected; and in a diction as artificial, and as much encumbered with
+heavy expletives, as the theme of an unpractised schoolboy. The two
+following stanzas will serve as a specimen.
+
+    'When soothed a while by milder airs,
+    Thee Winter in the garland wears
+    That thinly shades his few grey hairs;
+      _Spring cannot shun thee_;
+    Whole summer fields are thine by right;
+    And Autumn, melancholy Wight!
+    Doth in thy crimson head delight
+      When rains are on thee.
+    In shoals and bands, a morrice train,
+    Thou greet'st the Traveller in the lane;
+    If welcome once thou count'st it gain;
+      _Thou art not daunted_,
+    Nor car'st if thou be set at naught;
+    And oft alone in nooks remote
+    We meet thee, like a pleasant thought,
+      _When such are wanted_.' I. p. 2.
+
+The scope of the piece is to say, that the flower is found everywhere;
+and that it has suggested many pleasant thoughts to the author--some
+chime of fancy '_wrong or right_'--some feeling of devotion 'more or
+less'--and other elegancies of the same stamp. It ends with this
+unmeaning prophecy.
+
+    'Thou long the poet's praise shalt gain;
+    Thou wilt be more beloved by men
+    In times to come; thou not in vain
+      Art Nature's favourite.' I. 6.
+
+The next is called 'Louisa,' and begins in this dashing and affected
+manner.
+
+    'I met Louisa in the shade;
+    And, having seen that lovely maid,
+    _Why should I fear to say_
+    That she is ruddy, fleet, and _strong_;
+    _And down the rocks can leap_ along,
+    Like rivulets in May?' I. 7.
+
+Does Mr Wordsworth really imagine that this is at all more natural or
+engaging than the ditties of our common song writers?
+
+A little farther on we have another original piece, entitled, 'The
+Redbreast and the Butterfly,' of which our readers will probably be
+contented with the first stanza.
+
+    'Art thou the bird whom man loves best,
+    The pious bird with the scarlet breast,
+      Our little English Robin;
+    The bird that comes about our doors
+    When autumn winds are sobbing?
+    Art thou the Peter of Norway Boors?
+      Their Thomas in Finland,
+      And Russia far inland?
+    The bird, whom _by some name or other_
+    All men who know thee call their brother,
+    The darling of children and men?
+    Could Father Adam open his eyes,
+    And see this sight beneath the skies,
+    He'd wish to close them again.' I. 16.
+
+This, it must be confessed, is 'Silly Sooth' in good earnest. The three
+last [_sic_] lines seem to be downright raving.
+
+By and by, we have a piece of namby-pamby 'to the Small Celandine,'
+which we should almost have taken for a professed imitation of one of Mr
+Philip's prettyisms. Here is a page of it.
+
+    'Comfort have thou of thy merit,
+    Kindly, unassuming spirit!
+    Careless of thy neighbourhood,
+    Thou dost show thy pleasant face
+    On the moor, and in the wood,
+    In the lane;--there's not a place,
+    Howsoever mean it be,
+    But 'tis good enough for thee.
+    Ill befal the yellow flowers,
+    Children of the flaring hours!
+    Buttercups, that will be seen,
+    Whether we will see or no;
+    Others, too, of lofty mien;
+    They have done as worldlings do,
+    Taken praise that should be thine,
+    Little, humble, Celandine!' I. 25.
+
+After talking of its 'bright coronet,' the ditty is wound up with this
+piece of babyish absurdity.
+
+    'Thou art not beyond the moon,
+    But a thing "beneath our shoon;"
+    Let, as old Magellan did,
+    Others roam about the sea;
+    Build who will a pyramid;
+    Praise it is enough for me,
+    If there be but three or four
+    Who will love my little flower.' I. 30.
+
+After this come some more manly lines on 'The Character of the Happy
+Warrior,' and a chivalrous legend on 'The Horn of Egremont Castle,'
+which, without being very good, is very tolerable, and free from most of
+the author's habitual defects. Then follow some pretty, but professedly
+childish verses, on a kitten playing with the falling leaves. There is
+rather too much of Mr Ambrose Philips here and there in this piece also;
+but it is amiable and lively.
+
+Further on, we find an 'Ode to Duty,' in which the lofty vein is very
+unsuccessfully attempted. This is the concluding stanza.
+
+    'Stern lawgiver! yet thou dost wear
+    The Godhead's most benignant grace;
+    Nor know we anything so fair
+    As is the smile upon thy face;
+    Flowers laugh before thee on their beds;
+    And fragrance in thy footing treads;
+    Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong;
+    And the most ancient heavens through thee are fresh and strong.' I. 73.
+
+The two last [_sic_] lines seem to be utterly without meaning; at least
+we have no sort of conception in what sense _Duty_ can be said to keep
+the old skies _fresh_, and the stars from wrong.
+
+The next piece, entitled 'The Beggars,' may be taken, we fancy, as a
+touchstone of Mr Wordsworth's merit. There is something about it that
+convinces us it is a favourite of the author's; though to us, we will
+confess, it appears to be a very paragon of silliness and affectation.
+Our readers shall have the greater part of it. It begins thus.
+
+      'She had a tall man's height, or more;
+      No bonnet screen'd her from the heat;
+      A long drab-coloured cloak she wore,
+      A mantle reaching to her feet:
+      What other dress she had I could not know;
+    Only she wore a cap that was as white as snow.
+
+      'Before me begging did she stand,
+      Pouring out sorrows like a sea;
+      Grief after grief:--on English land
+      Such woes I knew could never be;
+      And yet a boon I gave her; for the creature
+    Was beautiful to see; a weed of glorious feature!' I. 77, 78.
+
+The poet, leaving this interesting person, falls in with two ragged boys
+at play, and 'like that woman's face as gold is like to gold.' Here is
+the conclusion of this memorable adventure.
+
+      'They bolted on me thus, and lo!
+      Each ready with a plaintive whine;
+      Said I, "Not half an hour ago
+      Your mother has had alms of mine."
+      "That cannot be," one answered, "She is dead."
+    "Nay but I gave her pence, and she will buy you bread."
+
+      "She has been dead, Sir, many a day."
+      "Sweet boys, you're telling me a lie";
+      "It was your mother, as I say--"
+      And in the twinkling of an eye,
+      "Come, come!" cried one; and, without more ado,
+    Off to some other play they both together flew.' I. 79.
+
+'Alice Fell' is a performance of the same order. The poet, driving into
+Durham in a postchaise, hears a sort of scream; and, calling to the
+post-boy to stop, finds a little girl crying on the back of the vehicle.
+
+    "My cloak!" the word was last and first,
+    And loud and bitterly she wept,
+    As if her very heart would burst;
+    And down from off the chaise she leapt.
+
+    "What ails you, child?" she sobb'd, "Look here!"
+    I saw it in the wheel entangled,
+    A weather beaten rag as e'er
+    From any garden scarecrow dangled.' I. 85, 86.
+
+They then extricate the torn garment, and the good-natured bard takes
+the child into the carriage along with him. The narrative proceeds--
+
+    "My child, in Durham do you dwell?"
+    She check'd herself in her distress,
+    And said, "My name is Alice Fell;
+    I'm fatherless and motherless.
+
+    And I to Durham, Sir, belong."
+    And then, as if the thought would choke
+    Her very heart, her grief grew strong;
+    And all was for her tatter'd cloak.
+
+    The chaise drove on; our journey's end
+    Was nigh; and, sitting by my side,
+    As if she'd lost her only friend
+    She wept, nor would be pacified.
+
+    Up to the tavern-door we post;
+    Of Alice and her grief I told;
+    And I gave money to the host,
+    To buy a new cloak for the old.
+
+    "And let it be of duffil grey,
+    As warm a cloak as man can sell!"
+    Proud creature was she the next day,
+    The little orphan, Alice Fell!' I. p. 87, 88.
+
+If the printing of such trash as this be not felt as an insult on the
+public taste, we are afraid it cannot be insulted.
+
+After this follows the longest and most elaborate poem in the volume,
+under the title of 'Resolution and Independence.' The poet, roving about
+on a common one fine morning, falls into pensive musings on the fate of
+the sons of song, which he sums up in this fine distich.
+
+    'We poets in our youth begin in gladness;
+    But thereof comes in the end despondency and madness.' I. p. 92.
+
+In the midst of his meditations--
+
+    'I saw a man before me unawares;
+    The oldest man he seemed that ever wore grey hairs.
+
+              ----------
+
+    Motionless as a cloud the old man stood;
+    That heareth not the loud winds when they call;
+    And moveth altogether, if it move at all.
+    At length, himself unsettling, he the pond
+    Stirred with his staff, and fixedly did look
+    Upon the muddy water, which he conn'd,
+    As if he had been reading in a book:
+    And now such fre[e]dom as I could I took;
+    And, drawing to his side, to him did say,
+    "This morning gives us promise of a glorious day."
+
+              ----------
+
+    "What kind of work is that which you pursue?
+    This is a lonesome place for one like you."
+    He answer'd me _with pleasure and surprise_;
+    And there was, while he spake, a fire about his eyes.
+    He told me _that he to this pond had come
+    To gather leeches_, being old and poor:
+    Employment hazardous and wearisome!
+    And he had many hardships to endure:
+    From pond to pond he roam'd, from moor to moor,
+    Housing, with God's good help, by choice or chance:
+    And in this way he gain'd an honest maintenance.' I. p. 92-95.
+
+Notwithstanding the distinctness of this answer, the poet, it seems, was
+so wrapped up in his own moody fancies, that he could not attend to it.
+
+    'And now, not knowing what the old man had said,
+    My question eagerly did I renew,
+    "How is it that you live, and what is it you do?"
+    He with a smile did then his words repeat;
+    And said, that, _gathering leeches_, far and wide
+    He travelled; stirring thus _about his feet_
+    The waters of the ponds where they abide.
+    "_Once I could meet with them on every side_;
+    But they have dwindled long by slow decay;
+    Yet still I persevere, and find them where I may." I. p. 96, 97.
+
+This very interesting account, which he is lucky enough at last to
+comprehend, fills the poet with comfort and admiration; and, quite glad
+to find the old man so cheerful, he resolves to take a lesson of
+contentedness from him; and the poem ends with this pious ejaculation--
+
+    "God," said I, "be my help and stay secure;
+    I'll think of the leech-gatherer on the lonely moor." I. p. 97.
+
+We defy the bitterest enemy of Mr Wordsworth to produce anything at all
+parallel to this from any collection of English poetry, or even from the
+specimens of his friend Mr Southey. The volume ends with some sonnets,
+in a very different measure, of which we shall say something by and by.
+
+The first poems in the second volume were written during a tour in
+Scotland. The first is a very dull one about Rob Roy; but the title that
+attracted us most was 'an Address to the Sons of _Burns_, after visiting
+their Father's Grave.' Never was anything, however, more miserable. This
+is one of the four stanzas.
+
+    'Strong bodied if ye be to bear
+    Intemperance with less harm, beware!
+    But if your father's wit ye share,
+      Then, then indeed,
+    Ye sons of Burns! for watchful care
+      There will be need.' II. p. 29.
+
+The next is a very tedious, affected performance, called 'the Yarrow
+Unvisited.' The drift of it is, that the poet refused to visit this
+celebrated stream, because he had 'a vision of his own' about it, which
+the reality might perhaps undo; and, for this no less fantastical
+reason--
+
+    "Should life be dull, and spirits low,
+    'Twill soothe us in our sorrow,
+    That earth has something yet to show,
+    The bonny holms of Yarrow!" II. p. 35.
+
+After this we come to some ineffable compositions which the poet has
+simply entitled, 'Moods of my own Mind.' One begins--
+
+    'O Nightingale! thou surely art
+    A creature of a fiery heart--
+    Thou sing'st as if the god of wine
+    Had help'd thee to a valentine.' II. p. 42.
+
+This is the whole of another--
+
+    'My heart leaps up when I behold
+      A rainbow in the sky:
+    So was it when my life began;
+    So is it now I am a man;
+    So be it when I shall grow old,
+      Or let me die!
+    The child is father of the man;
+    And I could wish my days to be
+    Bound each to each by natural piety.' II. p. 44.
+
+A third, 'on a Sparrow's Nest,' runs thus--
+
+    'Look, five blue eggs are gleaming there!
+    _Few visions have I seen more fair,_
+    _Nor many prospects of delight_
+    More pleasing than that simple sight.' II. p. 53.
+
+The charm of this fine prospect, however, was, that it reminded him of
+another nest which his sister Emmeline and he had visited in their
+childhood.
+
+    'She look'd at it as if she fear'd it;
+    Still wishing, dreading to be near it:
+    Such heart was in her, being then
+    A little prattler among men,' &c., &c. II. p. 54.
+
+We have then a rapturous mystical ode to the Cuckoo; in which the
+author, striving after force and originality, produces nothing but
+absurdity.
+
+    'O cuckoo! shall I call thee bird,
+    Or but a wandering voice?' II. p. 57.
+
+And then he says, that the said voice seemed to pass from hill to hill,
+'about and all about!'--Afterwards he assures us, it tells him 'in the
+vale of visionary hours,' and calls it a darling; but still insists,
+that it is
+
+    'No bird; but an invisible thing,
+    A voice,--a mystery.' II. p. 58.
+
+It is afterwards 'a hope;' and 'a love;' and, finally,
+
+    'O blessed _bird_! the earth we pace
+    Again appears to be
+    An unsubstantial, faery place,
+    That is fit home for thee!' II. p. 59.
+
+After this there is an address to a butterfly, whom he invites to visit
+him, in these simple strains--
+
+    'This plot of orchard-ground is ours;
+    My trees they are, my sister's flowers;
+    Stop here whenever you are weary.' II. p. 61.
+
+We come next to a long story of a 'Blind Highland Boy,' who lived near
+an arm of the sea, and had taken a most unnatural desire to venture on
+that perilous element. His mother did all she could to prevent him; but
+one morning, when the good woman was out of the way, he got into a
+vessel of his own, and pushed out from the shore.
+
+    'In such a vessel ne'er before
+    Did human creature leave the shore.' II. p. 72.
+
+And then we are told, that if the sea should get rough, 'a bee-hive
+would be ship as safe.' 'But say, what is it?' a poetical interlocutor
+is made to exclaim most naturally; and here followeth the answer, upon
+which all the pathos and interest of the story depend.
+
+    'A HOUSEHOLD TUB, like one of those
+    Which women use to wash their clothes!!' II. p. 72.
+
+This, it will be admitted, is carrying the matter as far as it will well
+go; nor is there anything,--down to the wiping of shoes, or the
+evisceration of chickens,--which may not be introduced in poetry, if
+this is tolerated. A boat is sent out and brings the boy ashore, who
+being tolerably frightened we suppose, promises to go to sea no more;
+and so the story ends.
+
+Then we have a poem, called 'the Green Linnet,' which opens with the
+poet's telling us;
+
+    'A whispering leaf is now my joy,
+    And then a bird will be the _toy_
+      That doth my fancy _tether_.' II. p. 79.
+
+and closes thus--
+
+    'While thus before my eyes he gleams,
+    A brother of the leaves he seems;
+    When in a moment forth _he teems_
+      His little song in gushes:
+    As if it pleas'd him to disdain
+    And mock the form which he did feign,
+    While he was dancing with the train
+      Of leaves among the bushes.' II. p. 81.
+
+The next is called 'Star Gazers.' A set of people peeping through a
+telescope, all seem to come away disappointed with the sight; whereupon
+thus sweetly moralizeth our poet.
+
+    'Yet, showman, where can lie the cause? Shall thy implement have blame,
+    A boaster, that when he is tried, fails, and is put to shame?
+    Or is it good as others are, and be their eyes in fault?
+    Their eyes, or minds? or, finally, is this resplendent vault?
+
+    Or, is it rather, that conceit rapacious is and strong,
+    And bounty never yields so much but it seems to do her wrong?
+    Or is it, that when human souls a journey long have had,
+    And are returned into themselves, they cannot but be sad?' II. p. 88.
+
+There are then some really sweet and amiable verses on a French lady,
+separated from her own children, fondling the baby of a neighbouring
+cottager;--after which we have this quintessence of unmeaningness,
+entitled, 'Foresight.'
+
+    'That is work which I am rueing--
+    Do as Charles and I are doing!
+    Strawberry-blossoms, one and all,
+    We must spare them--here are many:
+    Look at it--the flower is small,
+    Small and low, though fair as any:
+    Do not touch it! Summers two
+    I am older, Anne, than you.
+    Pull the primrose, sister Anne!
+    Pull as many as you can.
+
+    Primroses, the spring may love them--
+    Summer knows but little of them:
+    Violets, do what they will,
+    Wither'd on the ground must lie:
+    Daisies will be daisies still;
+    Daisies they must live and die:
+    Fill your lap, and fill your bosom,
+    Only spare the strawberry-blossom!' II. p. 115, 116.
+
+Afterwards come some stanzas about an echo repeating a cuckoo's voice;
+here is one for a sample--
+
+    'Whence the voice? from air or earth?
+    _This the cuckoo cannot tell_;
+    But a startling sound had birth,
+    _As the bird must know full well_.' II. p. 123.
+
+Then we have Elegiac stanzas 'to the Spade of a friend,' beginning--
+
+    'Spade! with which Wilkinson hath till'd his lands,'
+
+--but too dull to be quoted any further.
+
+After this there is a Minstrel's Song, on the Restoration of Lord
+Clifford the Shepherd, which is in a very different strain of poetry;
+and then the volume is wound up with an 'Ode,' with no other title but
+the motto, _Paulo majora canamus_. This is, beyond all doubt, the most
+illegible and unintelligible part of the publication. We can pretend to
+give no analysis or explanation of it;--our readers must make what they
+can of the following extracts.
+
+    '----But there's a tree, of many one,
+    A single field which I have look'd upon,
+    Both of them speak of something that is gone:
+          The pansy at my feet
+          Doth the same tale repeat:
+    Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
+    Where is it now, the glory and the dream?' II. 150.
+
+              ----------
+
+          O joy! that in our embers
+          Is something that doth live,
+          That nature yet remembers
+          What was so fugitive!
+    The thought of our past years in me doth breed
+    Perpetual benedictions: not indeed
+    For that which is most worthy to be blest:
+    Delight and liberty, the simple creed
+    Of childhood, whether fluttering or at rest,
+    With new-born hope forever in his breast:--
+          Not for these I raise
+        The song of thanks and praise;
+      But for those obstinate questionings
+      Of sense and outward things,
+      Fallings from us, vanishings;
+      Blank misgivings of a creature
+    Moving about in worlds not realiz'd,
+    High instincts, before which our mortal nature
+    Did tremble like a guilty thing surpriz'd:
+      But for those first affections,
+      Those shadowy recollections,
+          Which be they what they may,
+    Are yet the fountain light of all our day,
+    Are yet a master light of all our feeling
+          Uphold us, cherish us, and make
+    Our noisy years seem moments in the being
+    Of the eternal silence: truths that wake,
+          To perish never;
+    Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
+          Nor man nor boy,
+    Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
+    Can utterly abolish or destroy!
+        Hence, in a season of calm weather,
+          Though inland far we be,
+    Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
+          Which brought us hither,
+        Can in a moment travel thither,
+    And see the children sport upon the shore,
+    And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.' II. 154-6.
+
+We have thus gone through this publication, with a view to enable our
+readers to determine, whether the author of the verses which have now
+been exhibited, is entitled to claim the honours of an improver or
+restorer of our poetry, and to found a new school to supersede or
+new-model all our maxims on this subject. If we were to stop here, we do
+not think that Mr Wordsworth, or his admirers, would have any reason to
+complain; for what we have now quoted is undeniably the most peculiar
+and characteristic part of his publication, and must be defended and
+applauded if the merit or originality of his system is to be seriously
+maintained. In our own opinion, however, the demerit of that system
+cannot be fairly appreciated, until it be shown, that the author of the
+bad verses which we have already extracted, can write good verses when
+he pleases; and that, in point of fact, he does always write good
+verses, when, by any accident, he is led to abandon his system, and to
+transgress the laws of that school which he would fain establish on the
+ruin of all existing authority.
+
+The length to which our extracts and observations have already extended,
+necessarily restrains us within more narrow limits in this part of our
+citations; but it will not require much labour to find a pretty decided
+contrast to some of the passages we have already detailed. The song on
+the restoration of Lord Clifford is put into the mouth of an ancient
+minstrel of the family; and in composing it, the author was led,
+therefore, almost irresistibly to adopt the manner and phraseology that
+is understood to be connected with that sort of composition, and to
+throw aside his own babyish incidents and fantastical sensibilities. How
+he has succeeded, the reader will be able to judge from the few
+following extracts.
+
+[Quotes fifty-six lines of _Lord Clifford_.]
+
+All English writers of sonnets have imitated Milton; and, in this way,
+Mr Wordsworth, when he writes sonnets, escapes again from the trammels
+of his own unfortunate system; and the consequence is, that his sonnets
+are as much superior to the greater part of his other poems, as Milton's
+sonnets are superior to his.
+
+[Quotes the sonnets _On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic_,
+_London_, and _I griev'd for Buonaparte_.]
+
+When we look at these, and many still finer passages, in the writings of
+this author, it is impossible not to feel a mixtures of indignation and
+compassion, at that strange infatuation which has bound him up from the
+fair exercise of his talents, and withheld from the public the many
+excellent productions that would otherwise have taken the place of the
+trash now before us. Even in the worst of these productions, there are,
+no doubt, occasional little traits of delicate feeling and original
+fancy; but these are quite lost and obscured in the mass of childishness
+and insipidity with which they are incorporated; nor can any thing give
+us a more melancholy view of the debasing effects of this miserable
+theory, than that it has given ordinary men a right to wonder at the
+folly and presumption of a man gifted like Mr Wordsworth, and made him
+appear, in his second avowed publication, like a bad imitator of the
+worst of his former productions.
+
+We venture to hope, that there is now an end of this folly; and that,
+like other follies, it will be found to have cured itself by the
+extravagances resulting from its unbridled indulgence. In this point of
+view, the publication of the volumes before us may ultimately be of
+service to the good cause of literature. Many a generous rebel, it is
+said, has been reclaimed to his allegiance by the spectacle of lawless
+outrage and excess presented in the conduct of the insurgents; and we
+think there is every reason to hope, that the lamentable consequences
+which have resulted from Mr Wordsworth's open violation of the
+established laws of poetry, will operate as a wholesome warning to those
+who might otherwise have been seduced by his example, and be the means
+of restoring to that antient and venerable code its due honour and
+authority.--_The Edinburgh Review_.
+
+[Footnote H: See Vol. I. p. 63, &c.--Vol. VII. p. 1, &c.]
+
+
+
+
+SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
+
+
+_Christabel: Kubla Khan, a Vision. The Pains of Sleep_. By S.T.
+COLERIDGE, ESQ. London, Murray, 1816.
+
+The advertisement by which this work was announced to the publick,
+carried in its front a recommendation from Lord Byron,--who, it seems,
+has somewhere praised Christabel, as 'a wild and singularly original and
+beautiful poem.' Great as the noble bard's merits undoubtedly are in
+poetry, some of his latest _publications_ dispose us to distrust his
+authority, where the question is what ought to meet the public eye; and
+the works before us afford an additional proof, that his judgment on
+such matters is not absolutely to be relied on. Moreover, we are a
+little inclined to doubt the value of the praise which one poet lends
+another. It seems now-a-days to be the practice of that once irritable
+race to laud each other without bounds; and one can hardly avoid
+suspecting, that what is thus lavishly advanced may be laid out with a
+view to being repaid with interest. Mr Coleridge, however, must be
+judged by his own merits.
+
+It is remarked, by the writers upon the Bathos, that the true _profound_
+is surely known by one quality--its being wholly bottomless; insomuch,
+that when you think you have attained its utmost depth in the work of
+some of its great masters, another, or peradventure the same, astonishes
+you, immediately after, by a plunge so much more vigorous, as to outdo
+all his former outdoings. So it seems to be with the new school, or, as
+they may be termed, the wild or lawless poets. After we had been
+admiring their extravagance for many years, and marvelling at the ease
+and rapidity with which one exceeded another in the unmeaning or
+infantine, until not an idea was left in the rhyme--or in the insane,
+until we had reached something that seemed the untamed effusion of an
+author whose thoughts were rather more free than his actions--forth
+steps Mr Coleridge, like a giant refreshed with sleep, and as if to
+redeem his character after so long a silence, ('his poetic powers having
+been, he says, from 1808 till very lately, in a state of suspended
+animation,' p. v.) and breaks out in these precise words--
+
+    ''Tis the middle of night by the castle clock,
+    And the owls have awaken'd the crowing cock;
+    Tu ---- whit! ---- Tu ---- whoo!
+    And hark, again! the crowing cock,
+    How drowsily it crew.'
+    'Sir Leoline, the Baron rich,
+    Hath a toothless mastiff bitch;
+    From her kennel beneath the rock
+    She makes answer to the clock,
+    Four for the quarters, and twelve for the hour:
+    Ever and aye, moonshine or shower,
+    Sixteen short howls, not over loud;
+    Some say she sees my lady's shroud.'
+    'Is the night chilly and dark?
+    The night is chilly, but not dark.' p. 3, 4.
+
+It is probable that Lord Byron may have had this passage in his eye,
+when he called the poem 'wild' and 'original;' but how he discovered it
+to be 'beautiful,' is not quite so easy for us to imagine.
+
+Much of the art of the wild writers consists in sudden
+transitions--opening eagerly upon some topic, and then flying from it
+immediately. This indeed is known to the medical men, who not
+unfrequently have the care of them, as an unerring symptom. Accordingly,
+here we take leave of the Mastiff Bitch, and lose sight of her entirely,
+upon the entrance of another personage of a higher degree,
+
+    'The lovely Lady Christabel,
+    Whom her father loves so well'--
+
+And who, it seems, has been rambling about all night, having, the night
+before, had dreams about her lover, which 'made her moan and _leap_.'
+While kneeling, in the course of her rambles, at an old oak, she hears a
+noise on the other side of the stump, and going round, finds, to her
+great surprize, another fair damsel in white silk, but with her dress
+and hair in some disorder; at the mention of whom, the poet takes
+fright, not, as might be imagined, because of her disorder, but on
+account of her beauty and her fair attire--
+
+    'I guess, 'twas frightful there to see
+    A lady so richly clad as she--
+    Beautiful exceedingly!'
+
+Christabel naturally asks who she is, and is answered, at some length,
+that her name is Geraldine; that she was, on the morning before, seized
+by five warriors, who tied her on a white horse, and drove her on, they
+themselves following, also on white horses; and that they had rode all
+night. Her narrative now gets to be a little contradictory, which gives
+rise to unpleasant suspicions. She protests vehemently, and with oaths,
+that she has no idea who the men were; only that one of them, the
+tallest of the five, took her and placed her under the tree, and that
+they all went away, she knew not whither; but how long she had remained
+there she cannot tell--
+
+    'Nor do I know how long it is,
+    For I have lain in fits, I _wis_;'
+
+--although she had previously kept a pretty exact account of the time.
+The two ladies then go home together, after this satisfactory
+explanation, which appears to have conveyed to the intelligent mind of
+Lady C. every requisite information. They arrive at the castle, and pass
+the night in the same bed-room; not to disturb Sir Leoline, who, it
+seems, was poorly at the time, and, of course, must have been called up
+to speak to the chambermaids, and have the sheets aired, if Lady G. had
+had a room to herself. They do not get to their bed, however in the
+poem, quite so easily as we have carried them. They first cross the
+moat, and Lady C. 'took the key that fitted well,' and opened a little
+door, 'all in the middle of the gate.' Lady G. then sinks down 'belike
+through pain;' but it should seem more probably from laziness; for her
+fair companion having lifted her up, and carried her a little way, she
+then walks on 'as she were not in pain.' Then they cross the court--but
+we must give this in the poet's words, for he seems so pleased with
+them, that he inserts them twice over in the space of ten lines.
+
+    'So free from danger, free from fear,
+    They crossed the court--right glad they were.'
+
+Lady C. is desirous of a little conversation on the way, but Lady G.
+will not indulge her Ladyship, saying she is too much tired to speak. We
+now meet our old friend, the mastiff bitch, who is much too important a
+person to be slightly passed by--
+
+    'Outside her kennel, the mastiff old
+    Lay fast asleep, in moonshine cold.
+    The mastiff old did not awake,
+    Yet she an angry moan did make!
+    And what can ail the mastiff bitch?
+    Never till now she uttered yell
+    Beneath the eye of Christabel.
+    Perhaps it is the owlet's scritch:
+    For what can ail the mastiff bitch?'
+
+Whatever it may be that ails the bitch, the ladies pass forward, and
+take off their shoes, and tread softly all the way upstairs, as
+Christabel observes that her father is a bad sleeper. At last, however,
+they do arrive at the bed-room, and comfort themselves with a dram of
+some homemade liquor, which proves to be very old; for it was made by
+Lady C.'s mother; and when her new friend asks if she thinks the old
+lady will take her part, she answers, that this is out of the question,
+in as much as she happened to die in childbed of her. The mention of the
+old lady, however, gives occasion to the following pathetic
+couplet.--Christabel says,
+
+    'O mother dear, that thou wert here!
+    I would, said Geraldine, she were!'
+
+A very mysterious conversation next takes place between Lady Geraldine
+and the old gentlewoman's ghost, which proving extremely fatiguing to
+her, she again has recourse to the bottle--and with excellent effect, as
+appears by these lines.
+
+    'Again the wild-flower wine she drank;
+    Her fair large eyes 'gan glitter bright,
+    'And from the floor whereon she sank,
+    The lofty Lady stood upright:
+      She was most beautiful to see,
+      Like a Lady of a far countr�e.'
+
+--From which, we may gather among other points, the exceeding great
+beauty of all women who live in a distant place, no matter where. The
+effects of the cordial speedily begin to appear; as no one, we imagine,
+will doubt, that to its influence must be ascribed the following
+speech--
+
+    'And thus the lofty lady spake--
+    All they, who live in the upper sky,
+    Do love you, holy Christabel!
+    And you love them--and for their sake
+    And for the good which me befel,
+    Even I in my degree will try,
+    Fair maiden, to requite you well.'
+
+Before going to bed, Lady G. kneels to pray, and desires her friend to
+undress, and lie down; which she does 'in her loveliness;' but being
+curious, she leans 'on her elbow,' and looks toward the fair
+devotee,--where she sees something which the poet does not think fit to
+tell us very explicitly.
+
+    'Her silken robe, and inner vest,
+    Dropt to her feet, and full in view,
+    Behold! her bosom and half her side--
+    A sight to dream of, not to tell!
+    And she is to sleep by Christabel.'
+
+She soon rises, however, from her knees; and as it was not a
+double-bedded room, she turns in to Lady Christabel, taking only 'two
+paces and a stride.' She then clasps her tight in her arms, and mutters
+a very dark spell, which we apprehend the poet manufactured by shaking
+words together at random; for it is impossible to fancy that he can
+annex any meaning whatever to it. This is the end of it.
+
+        'But vainly thou warrest,
+          For this is alone in
+        Thy power to declare,
+          That in the dim forest
+          Thou heard'st a low moaning,
+    And found'st a bright lady, surpassingly fair:
+    And didst bring her home with thee in love and in charity,
+    To shield her and shelter her from the damp air.'
+
+The consequence of this incantation is, that Lady Christabel has a
+strange dream--and when she awakes, her first exclamation is, 'Sure I
+have sinn'd'--'Now heaven be praised if all be well!' Being still
+perplexed with the remembrance of her 'too lively' dream--she then
+dresses herself, and modestly prays to be forgiven for 'her sins
+unknown.' The two companions now go to the Baron's parlour, and
+Geraldine tells her story to him. This, however, the poet judiciously
+leaves out, and only signifies that the Baron recognized in her the
+daughter of his old friend Sir Roland, with whom he had had a deadly
+quarrel. Now, however, he despatches his tame poet, or laureate, called
+Bard Bracy, to invite him and his family over, promising to forgive
+every thing, and even make an apology for what had passed. To understand
+what follows, we own, surpasses our comprehension. Mr Bracy, the poet,
+recounts a strange dream he has just had, of a dove being almost
+strangled by a snake; whereupon the Lady Geraldine falls a hissing, and
+her eyes grow small, like a serpent's,--or at least so they seem to her
+friend; who begs her father to 'send away that woman.' Upon this the
+Baron falls into a passion, as if he had discovered that his daughter
+had been seduced; at least, we can understand him in no other sense,
+though no hint of such a kind is given; but on the contrary, she is
+painted to the last moment as full of innocence and
+purity.--Nevertheless,
+
+    'His heart was cleft with pain and rage,
+    His cheeks they quiver'd, his eyes were wild,
+    Dishonour'd thus in his old age;
+    Dishonour'd by his only child;
+    And all his hospitality
+    To th' insulted daughter of his friend
+    By more than woman's jealousy,
+    Brought thus to a disgraceful end.--'
+
+Nothing further is said to explain the mystery; but there follows
+incontinently, what is termed '_The conclusion of Part the Second_.' And
+as we are pretty confident that Mr Coleridge holds this passage in the
+highest estimation; that he prizes it more than any other part of 'that
+wild, and singularly original and beautiful poem Christabel,' excepting
+always the two passages touching the 'toothless mastiff bitch;' we shall
+extract it for the amazement of our readers--premising our own frank
+avowal that we are wholly unable to divine the meaning of any portion of
+it.
+
+    'A little child, a limber elf,
+    Singing, dancing to itself,
+    A fairy thing with red round cheeks,
+    That always finds and never seeks;
+    Makes such a vision to the sight
+    As fills a father's eyes with light;
+    And pleasures flow in so thick and fast
+    Upon his heart, that he at last
+    Must needs express his love's excess
+    With words of unmeant bitterness.
+    Perhaps 'tis pretty to force together
+    Thoughts so all unlike each other;
+    To mutter and mock a broken charm,
+    To dally with wrong that does no harm
+    Perhaps 'tis tender too, and pretty,
+    At each wild word to feel within
+    A sweet recoil of love and pity.
+    And what if in a world of sin
+    (O sorrow and shame should this be true!)
+    Such giddiness of heart and brain
+    Comes seldom save from rage and pain,
+    So talks as it's most used to do.'
+
+Hence endeth the Second Part, and, in truth, the 'singular' poem itself;
+for the author has not yet written, or, as he phrases it, 'embodied in
+verse,' the 'three parts yet to come;'--though he trusts he shall be
+able to do so' in the course of the present year.'
+
+One word as to the metre of Christabel, or, as Mr Coleridge terms it,
+'_the_ Christabel'--happily enough; for indeed we doubt if the peculiar
+force of the definite article was ever more strongly exemplified. He
+says, that though the reader may fancy there prevails a great
+_irregularity_ in the metre, some lines being of four, others of twelve
+syllables, yet in reality it is quite regular; only that it is 'founded
+on a new principle, namely, that of counting in each line the accents,
+not the syllables.' We say nothing of the monstrous assurance of any man
+coming forward coolly at this time of day, and telling the readers of
+English poetry, whose ear has been tuned to the lays of Spenser, Milton,
+Dryden, and Pope, that he makes his metre 'on a new principle!' but we
+utterly deny the truth of the assertion, and defy him to show us _any_
+principle upon which his lines can be conceived to tally. We give two or
+three specimens to confound at once this miserable piece of coxcombry
+and shuffling. Let our 'wild, and singularly original and beautiful'
+author, show us how these lines agree either in number of accents or of
+feet.
+
+      'Ah wel-a-day!'
+      'For this is alone in--'
+    'And didst bring her home with thee in love and in charity'--
+      'I pray you drink this cordial wine'--
+      'Sir Leoline'--
+      'And found a bright lady surpassingly fair'--
+      'Tu--whit!----Tu--whoo!'
+
+_Kubla Khan_ is given to the public, it seems, 'at the request of a poet
+of great and deserved celebrity;'--but whether Lord Byron, the praiser
+of 'the Christabel,' or the Laureate, the praiser of Princes, we are not
+informed. As far as Mr Coleridge's 'own opinions are concerned,' it is
+published, 'not upon the ground of any _poetic_ merits,' but 'as a
+PSYCHOLOGICAL CURIOSITY!' In these opinions of the candid author, we
+entirely concur; but for this reason we hardly think it was necessary to
+give the minute detail which the Preface contains, of the circumstances
+attending its composition. Had the question regarded '_Paradise Lost_,'
+or '_Dryden's Ode_,' we could not have had a more particular account of
+the circumstances in which it was composed. It was in the year 1797, and
+in the summer season. Mr Coleridge was in bad health;--the particular
+disease is not given; but the careful reader will form his own
+conjectures. He had retired very prudently to a lonely farm-house; and
+whoever would see the place which gave birth to the 'psychological
+curiosity,' may find his way thither without a guide; for it is situated
+on the confines of Somerset and Devonshire, and on the Exmoor part of
+the boundary; and it is, moreover, between Porlock and Linton. In that
+farm-house, he had a slight indisposition, and had taken an anodyne,
+which threw him into a deep sleep in his chair (whether after dinner or
+not he omits to state), 'at the moment that he was reading a sentence in
+Purchas's Pilgrims,' relative to a palace of Kubla Khan. The effects of
+the anodyne, and the sentence together, were prodigious: They produced
+the 'curiosity' now before us; for, during his three-hours sleep, Mr
+Coleridge 'has the most vivid confidence that he could not have composed
+less than from two to three hundred lines.' On awaking, he 'instantly
+and eagerly' wrote down the verses here published; when he was (he says,
+'_unfortunately_') called out by a 'person on business from Porlock, and
+detained by him above an hour;' and when he returned the vision was
+gone. The lines here given smell strongly, it must be owned, of the
+anodyne; and, but that an under dose of a sedative produces contrary
+effects, we should inevitably have been lulled by them into
+forgetfulness of all things. Perhaps a dozen more such lines as the
+following would reduce the most irritable of critics to a state of
+inaction.
+
+        'A damsel with a dulcimer
+        In a vision once I saw:
+        It was an Abyssinian maid
+        And on her dulcimer she play'd,
+        Singing of Mount Abora.
+        Could I revive within me
+        Her symphony and song,
+        To such a deep delight 'twould win me,
+    That with music loud and long,
+    I would build that dome in air,
+    That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
+    And all who heard should see them there,
+    And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
+    His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
+    Weave a circle round him thrice,
+    And close your eyes with holy dread:
+    For he on honey-dew hath fed,' &c. &c.
+
+There is a good deal more altogether as exquisite--and in particular a
+fine description of a wood, 'ancient as the hills;' and 'folding sunny
+spots of _greenery_!' But we suppose this specimen will be sufficient.
+
+Persons in this poet's unhappy condition, generally feel the want of
+sleep as the worst of their evils; but there are instances, too, in the
+history of the disease, of sleep being attended with new agony, as if
+the waking thoughts, how wild and turbulent soever, had still been under
+some slight restraint, which sleep instantly removed. Mr Coleridge
+appears to have experienced this symptom, if we may judge from the title
+of his third poem, '_The Pains of Sleep_;' and, in truth, from its
+composition--which is mere raving, without any thing more affecting than
+a number of incoherent words, expressive of extravagance and
+incongruity.--We need give no specimen of it.
+
+Upon the whole, we look upon this publication as one of the most notable
+pieces of impertinence of which the press has lately been guilty; and
+one of the boldest experiments that has yet been made on the patience or
+understanding of the public. It is impossible, however, to dismiss it,
+without a remark or two. The other productions of the Lake School have
+generally exhibited talents thrown away upon subjects so mean, that no
+power of genius could ennoble them; or perverted and rendered useless by
+a false theory of poetical composition. But even in the worst of them,
+if we except the White Doe of Mr Wordsworth and some of the laureate
+odes, there were always some gleams of feeling or of fancy. But the
+thing now before us is utterly destitute of value. It exhibits from
+beginning to end not a ray of genius; and we defy any man to point out a
+passage of poetical merit in any of the three pieces which it contains,
+except, perhaps, the following lines in p. 32, and even these are not
+very brilliant; nor is the leading thought original--
+
+    'Alas! they had been friends in youth;
+    But whispering tongues can poison truth;
+    And constancy lives in realms above;
+    And life is thorny; and youth is vain;
+    And to be wroth with one we love,
+    Doth work like madness in the brain.'
+
+With this one exception, there is literally not one couplet in the
+publication before us which would be reckoned poetry, or even sense,
+were it found in the corner of a newspaper or upon the window of an inn.
+Must we then be doomed to hear such a mixture of raving and driv'ling,
+extolled as the work of a '_wild and original_' genius, simply because
+Mr Coleridge has now and then written fine verses, and a brother poet
+chooses, in his milder mood, to laud him from courtesy or from interest?
+And are such panegyrics to be echoed by the mean tools of a political
+faction, because they relate to one whose daily prose is understood to
+be dedicated to the support of all that courtiers think should be
+supported? If it be true that the author has thus earned the patronage
+of those liberal dispensers of bounty, we can have no objection that
+they should give him proper proofs of their gratitude; but we cannot
+help wishing, for his sake, as well as our own, that they would pay in
+solid pudding instead of empty praise; and adhere, at least in this
+instance, to the good old system of rewarding their champions with
+places and pensions, instead of puffing their bad poetry, and
+endeavouring to cram their nonsense down the throats of all the loyal
+and well affected.--_The Edinburgh Review_.
+
+
+
+
+ROBERT SOUTHEY
+
+
+_Madoc_, by ROBERT SOUTHEY. 4to. pp. 560. 2l. 2s. Boards. Printed at
+Edinburgh, for Longman and Co., London. 1805.
+
+It has fallen to the lot of this writer to puzzle our critical
+discernment more than once. In the _Annual Anthology_ we had reason to
+complain that it was difficult to distinguish his jocular from his
+serious poetry; and sometimes indeed to know his poetry from his prose.
+He has now contrived to manufacture a large quarto, which he has styled
+a poem, but of what description it is no easy matter to decide. The
+title of epic, which he indignantly disclaims, we might have been
+inclined to refuse his production, had it been claimed; and we suppose
+that Mr. Southey would not suffer it to be classed under the
+mock-heroic. The poem of Madoc is not didactic, nor elegiac, nor
+classical, in any respect. Neither is it _Macphersonic_, nor
+_Klopstockian_, nor _Darwinian_,--we beg pardon, we mean _Brookian_. To
+conclude, according to a phrase of the last century, which was applied
+to ladies of ambiguous character, _it is what it is_.--As Mr. Southey
+has set the rules of Aristotle at defiance in his preface, we hope that
+he will feel a due degree of gratitude for this appropriate definition
+of his work. It is an old saying, thoroughly descriptive of such an old
+song as this before us.
+
+Mr. Southey, however, has not disdained all ancient precedents in his
+poem, for he introduces it with this advertisement:
+
+    'Come, listen to a tale of times of old!
+    Come, for ye know me! I am he who sung
+    The maid of Arc; and I am he who framed
+    Of Thalaba the wild and wonderous song.
+    Come, listen to my lay, and ye shall hear
+    How Madoc from the shores of Britain spread
+    The adventurous sail, explored the ocean ways,
+    And quelled barbarian power, and overthrew
+    The bloody altars of idolatry,
+    And planted in its fanes triumphantly
+    The cross of Christ. Come, listen to my lay!'
+
+This _modest ostentation_ was certainly derived from the verses imputed
+to Virgil;
+
+    "Ille ego, qui quondam gracili modulatus avena
+    Carmen; et egressus sylvis, vicina co�gi
+    Ut quamvis avido parerent arva colono,
+    Gratum opus agricolis: at nunc horrentia Martis, &c."
+
+In the very first part of the poem, also, we find Mr. Southey pursuing
+the Horatian precept, "_prorumpere in medias res_;" for he commences
+with the _return_ of Madoc to his native country. It is true that, like
+the Messenger in Macklin's tragedy, he "goes but to return;" and the
+critic is tempted to say, with Martial, _toto carere possum_.--Thus the
+grand interest of the work, which ought to consist in exploring a new
+world, is destroyed at once, by the reader at his outset encountering
+the heroes returning "sound, wind and limb," to their native country. It
+may be said that Camoens has thrown a great part of Da Gama's Voyage
+into the form of a narrative: but he has also given much in description;
+enough, at least, to have justified Mr. Southey in commencing rather
+nearer the commencement of his tale.
+
+That he might withdraw himself entirely from the yoke of Aristotle, Mr.
+Southey has divided his poem into two parts, instead of giving it a
+beginning, a middle and an end. One of these parts is concisely
+entitled, 'Madoc in Wales;' the other, 'Madoc in Aztlan.' A _middle_
+might, however, have been easily found, by adding, _Madoc on
+Shipboard_.--The first of these Anti Peripatetic parts contains 18
+divisions; the second, 27 which include every incident, episode, &c.
+introduced into the poem. This arrangement gives it very much the
+appearance of a journal versified, and effectually precludes any
+imputation of luxuriance of fancy in the plot.
+
+Respecting the manners, Mr. Southey appears to have been more successful
+than in his choice of the story. He has adhered to history where he
+could discover any facts adapted to his purpose; and when history failed
+him, he has had recourse to probability. Yet we own that the
+nomenclature of his heroes has shocked what Mr. S. would call our
+prejudices. _Goervyl_ and _Ririd_ and _Rodri_ and _Llaian_ may have
+charms for Cambrian ears, but who can feel an interest in _Tezozomoc_,
+_Tlalala_, or _Ocelopan_? Or, should
+
+    ----'Tyneio, Merini,
+    Boda and Brenda and Aelgyvarch,
+    Gwynon and Celynin and Gwynodyl,' (p. 129.)
+    "Those rugged names to our like mouths grow sleek,
+    That would have made Quintilian stare and gasp[I],"
+
+how could we swallow _Yuhidthiton_, _Coanocotzin_, and, above all, the
+yawning jaw-dislocating _Ayayaca_?--These torturing words, particularly
+the latter, remind us so strongly of the odious cacophony of the Nurse
+and Child, that they really are not to be tolerated. Mr. Southey's
+defence (for he has partially anticipated this objection) is that the
+names are conformable to history or analogy, which we are not inclined
+to dispute: but it is not requisite to tread so closely in the traces of
+barbarity. Truth does not constitute the essence of poetry: but it is
+indispensably necessary that the lines should be agreeable to the ear,
+as well as to the sense. Sorry, indeed, we are to complain that Mr.
+Southey, in attempting a new method of writing,--in professing to set
+aside the old models, and to promote his own work to a distinguished
+place in the library,--has failed to interest our feelings, or to excite
+our admiration. The dull tenor of mediocrity, which characterizes his
+pages, is totally unsuitable to heroic poetry, regular or irregular.
+Instead of viewing him on a _fiery Pegasus_, and "snatching a grace
+beyond the reach of art," we behold the author mounted on a strange
+animal, something between a rough Welsh poney and a Peruvian sheep,
+whose utmost capriole only tends to land him in the mud. We may indeed
+safely compliment Mr. Southey, by assuring him that there is nothing in
+Homer, Virgil, or Milton, in any degree resembling the beauties of
+Madoc.
+
+Whether the expedition of Madoc, and the existence of a Welsh tribe in
+America, be historically true, it is not our present business to
+examine. It is obvious, however, that one great object of the poem, the
+destruction of the altars of idolatry, had failed; for it is not
+pretended that the supposed descendants of Madoc remained Christians.
+
+We shall now make some extracts from this poem, which will enable our
+readers to judge whether we have spoken too severely of Mr. Southey's
+labours.
+
+[Quotes 270 lines of _Madoc_ with interpolated comments.]
+
+If the perusal of these and the preceding verses should tempt any of our
+readers to purchase Mr. Southey's volume, we can warrant equal
+entertainment in all its other parts, and shall heartily wish the
+gentleman all happiness with his poet.--To us, there appears a thorough
+perversion of taste, in the conception and execution of the whole; and
+we are disgusted with the tameness of the verse, the vulgarity of the
+thoughts, and the barbarity of the manners. If this style of writing be
+continued, we may expect not only the actions of Vindomarus or
+Ariovistus to be celebrated, but we may perhaps see the history of the
+Cherokees, Choctaws, and Catabaws, versified in quarto. The name of
+Atakulla-kulla would not be inharmonious, compared with some of Mr.
+Southey's heroes. Indeed, a very interesting poem might be founded on
+the story of Pocahuntas, as it is detailed by Smith, in his History of
+the Settlement of Virginia; and if Mr. Southey should meditate another
+irruption into the territories of the Muse, we would recommend this
+subject to his attention.
+
+It must be remarked that this is a very handsome and elegantly printed
+book, with engraved title-pages, vignettes, &c. and had the poet
+equalled the printer, his work might have stood on the same shelf with
+those of our most admired writers.--_The Monthly Review_.
+
+[Footnote I: Milton.]
+
+
+
+
+CHARLES LAMB
+
+
+_Blank Verse_, by CHARLES LLOYD, and CHARLES LAMB. 12mo. 2s. 6d. Boards.
+Arch. 1798.
+
+Dr. Johnson, speaking of blank verse, seemed to have adopted the opinion
+of some great man,--we forget whom,--that it is only "_poetry to the
+eye_." On perusing the works of several modern bards of our own country,
+we have sometimes rather inclined to the same idea, but the recollection
+of Milton and Thomson presently banished it.
+
+We have more than once delivered our sentiments respecting the poetry of
+Mr. Charles Lloyd. To what we have formerly remarked, in general on this
+head, we have little to add on the present occasion; except that we
+begin to grow weary of his continued melancholy strains. Why is this
+ingenious writer so uncomfortably constant to the _mournful_ Muse? If he
+has any taste for variety, he has little to fear from _jealousy_ in the
+sacred sisterhood.--Then why not sometimes make his bow to THALIA?
+
+Mr. Lamb, the joint author of this little volume, seems to be very
+properly associated with his plaintive companion.--_The Monthly
+Review_.
+
+
+_Album Verses, with a few others_. By CHARLES LAMB. 12mo. pp. 150.
+London, 1830. Moxon.
+
+If any thing could prevent our laughing at the present collection of
+absurdities, it would be a lamentable conviction of the blinding and
+engrossing nature of vanity. We could forgive the folly of the original
+composition, but cannot but marvel at the egotism which has preserved,
+and the conceit which has published. What exaggerated notion must that
+man entertain of his talents, who believes their slightest efforts
+worthy of remembrance; one who keeps a copy of the verses he writes in
+young ladies' albums, the proverbial receptacles for trash! Here and
+there a sweet and natural thought intervenes; but the chief part is best
+characterized by that expressive though ungracious word "rubbish." And
+what could induce our author to trench on the masculine and vigorous
+Crabbe? did he think his powerful and dark outlines might with advantage
+be turned to "prettiness and favour?" But let our readers judge from the
+following specimens. The first is from the album of Mrs. Jane Towers.
+
+    "Conjecturing, I wander in the dark,
+    I know thee only sister to Charles Clarke!"
+
+Directions for a picture--
+
+    "You wished a picture, cheap, but good;
+    The colouring? decent; clear, not muddy;
+    To suit a poet's quiet study."
+
+The subject is a child--
+
+    "Thrusting his fingers in his ears,
+    Like Obstinate, that perverse funny one,
+    In honest parable of Bunyan."
+
+We were not aware of "Obstinate's" fun before.
+
+An epitaph:--
+
+    "On her bones the turf lie lightly,
+    And her rise again be brightly!
+    No dark stain be found upon her--
+    No, there will not, on mine honour--
+    Answer that at least I can."
+
+Or what is the merit of the ensuing epicedium?
+
+[Quotes 48 lines beginning:--
+
+    There's rich Kitty Wheatley,
+    With footing it featly, etc.]
+
+Mr. Lamb, in his dedication, says his motive for publishing is to
+benefit his publisher, by affording him an opportunity of shewing how he
+means to bring out works. We could have dispensed with the specimen;
+though it is but justice to remark on the neat manner in which the work
+is produced: the title-page is especially pretty.--_The Literary
+Gazette_.
+
+
+
+
+WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
+
+
+_Gebir; a Poem, in Seven Books_. 12mo. 74 pp. Rivingtons. 1798.
+
+How this Poem, which appears to issue from the same publishers as our
+own work, so long escaped our notice, we cannot say. Still less are we
+able to guess at the author, or his meaning. In a copy lately lent to
+us, as a matter we had overlooked, we observe the following very
+apposite quotation, inscribed on the title-page, by some unknown hand:
+
+    Some love the verse----
+    Which read, and read, you raise your eyes in doubt,
+    And gravely wonder what it is about.
+
+Among persons of that turn of mind, the author must look for the _ten_
+admirers who, as he says, would satisfy his ambition; but whether they
+could have the qualities of taste and genius, which he requires, is with
+us a matter of doubt. Turgid obscurity is the general character of the
+composition, with now and then a gleam of genuine poetry, irradiating
+the dark profound. The effect of the perusal is to give a kind of whirl
+to the brain, more like distraction than pleasure; and something
+analogous to the sensation produced, when the end of the finger is
+rubbed against the parchment of the tambourine.--_The British Critic_.
+
+
+_Gebir_; a Poem, in Seven Books. 8vo. pp. 74. 2s. 6d. Rivingtons. 1798.
+
+An unpractised author has attempted, in this poem, the difficult task of
+relating a romantic story in blank-verse. His performance betrays all
+the incorrectness and abruptness of inexperience, but it manifests
+occasionally some talent for description. He has fallen into the common
+error of those who aspire to the composition of blank-verse, by
+borrowing too many phrases and epithets from our incomparable Milton. We
+give the following extract, as affording a fair specimen:
+
+[Quotes about 60 lines from the beginning of the fifth and sixth books
+of _Gebir_.]
+
+We must observe that the story is told very obscurely, and should have
+been assisted by an _Argument_ in prose. Young writers are often
+astonished to find that passages, which seem very clear to their own
+heated imaginations, appear very dark to their readers.--The author of
+the poem before us may produce something worthy of more approbation, if
+he will labour hard, and delay for a few years the publication of his
+next performance.--_The Monthly Review_.
+
+
+
+
+SIR WALTER SCOTT
+
+
+_Marmion; a Tale of Flodden Field_. By WALTER SCOTT, Esq. 4to. pp. 500.
+Edinburgh and London, 1808.
+
+There is a kind of right of primogeniture among books, as well as among
+men; and it is difficult for an author, who has obtained great fame by a
+first publication, not to appear to fall off in a second--especially if
+his original success could be imputed, in any degree, to the novelty of
+his plan of composition. The public is always indulgent to untried
+talents; and is even apt to exaggerate a little the value of what it
+receives without any previous expectation. But, for this advance of
+kindness, it usually exacts a most usurious return in the end. When the
+poor author comes back, he is no longer received as a benefactor, but a
+debtor. In return for the credit it formerly gave him, the world now
+conceives that it has a just claim on him for excellence, and becomes
+impertinently scrupulous as to the quality of the coin in which it is to
+be paid.
+
+The just amount of this claim plainly cannot be for more than the rate
+of excellence which he had reached in his former production; but, in
+estimating this rate, various errors are perpetually committed, which
+increase the difficulties of the task which is thus imposed on him. In
+the _first_ place, the comparative amount of his past and present merits
+can only be ascertained by the uncertain standard of his reader's
+feelings; and these must always be less lively with regard to a second
+performance; which, with every other excellence of the first, must
+necessarily want the powerful recommendations of novelty and surprise,
+and consequently fall very far short of the effect produced by their
+strong co�peration. In the _second_ place, it may be observed, in
+general, that wherever our impression of any work is favourable on the
+whole, its excellence is constantly exaggerated, in those vague and
+habitual recollections which form the basis of subsequent comparisons.
+We readily drop from our memory the dull and bad passages, and carry
+along with us the remembrance of those only which had afforded us
+delight. Thus, when we take the merit of any favourite poem as a
+standard of comparison for some later production of the same author, we
+never take its true average merit, which is the only fair standard, but
+the merit of its most striking and memorable passages, which naturally
+stand forward in our recollection, and pass upon our hasty retrospect as
+just and characteristic specimens of the whole work; and this high and
+exaggerated standard we rigorously apply to the first, and perhaps the
+least interesting parts of the second performance. Finally, it deserves
+to be noticed, that where a first work, containing considerable
+blemishes, has been favourably received, the public always expects this
+indulgence to be repaid by an improvement that ought not to be always
+expected. If a second performance appear, therefore, with the same
+faults, they will no longer meet with the same toleration. Murmurs will
+be heard about indolence, presumption, and abuse of good nature; while
+the critics, and those who had gently hinted at the necessity of
+correction, will be more out of humour than the rest at this apparent
+neglect of their admonitions.
+
+For these, and for other reasons, we are inclined to suspect, that the
+success of the work now before us will be less brilliant than that of
+the author's former publication, though we are ourselves of opinion,
+that its intrinsic merits are nearly, if not altogether, equal; and
+that, if it had had the fortune to be the elder born, it would have
+inherited as fair a portion of renown as has fallen to the lot of its
+predecessor. It is a good deal longer, indeed, and somewhat more
+ambitious; and it is rather clearer that it has greater faults, than
+that it has greater beauties; though, for our own parts, we are inclined
+to believe in both propositions. It has more tedious and flat passages,
+and more ostentation of historical and antiquarian lore; but it has also
+greater richness and variety, both of character and incident; and if it
+has less sweetness and pathos in the softer passages, it has certainly
+more vehemence and force of colouring in the loftier and busier
+representations of action and emotion. The place of the prologuizing
+minstrel is but ill supplied, indeed, by the epistolary dissertations
+which are prefixed to each book of the present poem; and the ballad
+pieces and mere episodes which it contains, have less finish and
+poetical beauty; but there is more airiness and spirit in the lighter
+delineations; and the story, if not more skilfully conducted, is at
+least better complicated, and extended through a wider field of
+adventure. The characteristics of both, however, are evidently the
+same;--a broken narrative--a redundancy of minute description--bursts of
+unequal and energetic poetry--and a general tone of spirit and
+animation, unchecked by timidity or affectation, and unchastised by any
+great delicacy of taste, or elegance of fancy.
+
+But though we think this last romance of Mr Scott's about as good as the
+former, and allow that it affords great indications of poetical talent,
+we must remind our readers, that we never entertained much partiality
+for this sort of composition, and ventured on a former occasion to
+express our regret, that an author endowed with such talents should
+consume them in imitations of obsolete extravagance, and in the
+representation of manners and sentiments in which none of his readers
+can be supposed to take much interest, except the few who can judge of
+their exactness. To write a modern romance of chivalry, seems to be
+much such a fantasy as to build a modern abbey, or an English pagoda.
+For once, however, it may be excused as a pretty caprice of genius; but
+a second production of the same sort is entitled to less indulgence, and
+imposes a sort of duty to drive the author from so idle a task, by a
+fair exposition of the faults which are in a manner inseparable from its
+execution. To enable our readers to judge fairly of the present
+performance, we shall first present them with a brief abstract of the
+story; and then endeavour to point out what seems to be exceptionable,
+and what is praiseworthy, in the execution.
+
+[Here follows a detailed outline of the plot of _Marmion_.]
+
+Now, upon this narrative, we are led to observe, in the first place,
+that it forms a very scanty and narrow foundation for a poem of such
+length as is now before us. There is scarcely matter enough in the main
+story for a ballad of ordinary dimensions; and the present work is not
+so properly diversified with episodes and descriptions, as made up and
+composed of them. No long poem, however, can maintain its interest
+without a connected narrative. It should be a grand historical picture,
+in which all the personages are concerned in one great transaction, and
+not a mere gallery of detailed groups and portraits. When we accompany
+the poet in his career of adventure, it is not enough that he points out
+to us, as we go along, the beauties of the landscape, and the costumes
+of the inhabitants. The people must do something after they are
+described, and they must do it in concert, or in opposition to each
+other; while the landscape, with its castles and woods and defiles, must
+serve merely as the scene of their exploits, and the field of their
+conspiracies and contentions. There is too little connected incident in
+Marmion, and a great deal too much gratuitous description.
+
+In the second place, we object to the whole plan and conception of the
+fable, as turning mainly upon incidents unsuitable for poetical
+narrative, and brought out in the denouement in a very obscure,
+laborious, and imperfect manner. The events of an epic narrative should
+all be of a broad, clear, and palpable description; and the difficulties
+and embarrassments of the characters, of a nature to be easily
+comprehended and entered into by readers of all descriptions. Now, the
+leading incidents in this poem are of a very narrow and peculiar
+character, and are woven together into a petty intricacy and
+entanglement which puzzles the reader instead of interesting him, and
+fatigues instead of exciting his curiosity. The unaccountable conduct of
+Constance, in first ruining De Wilton in order to forward Marmion's suit
+with Clara, and then trying to poison Clara, because Marmion's suit
+seemed likely to succeed with her--but, above all, the paltry device of
+the forged letters, and the sealed packet given up by Constance at her
+condemnation, and handed over by the abbess to De Wilton and Lord Angus,
+are incidents not only unworthy of the dignity of poetry, but really
+incapable of being made subservient to its legitimate purposes. They are
+particularly unsuitable, too, to the age and character of the personages
+to whom they relate; and, instead of forming the instruments of knightly
+vengeance and redress, remind us of the machinery of a bad German novel,
+or of the disclosures which might be expected on the trial of a
+pettifogging attorney. The obscurity and intricacy which they
+communicate to the whole story, must be very painfully felt by every
+reader who tries to comprehend it; and is prodigiously increased by the
+very clumsy and inartificial manner in which the denouement is
+ultimately brought about by the author. Three several attempts are made
+by three several persons to beat into the head of the reader the
+evidence of De Wilton's innocence, and of Marmion's guilt; first, by
+Constance in her dying speech and confession; secondly, by the abbess in
+her conference with De Wilton; and, lastly, by this injured innocent
+himself, on disclosing himself to Clara in the castle of Lord Angus.
+After all, the precise nature of the plot and the detection is very
+imperfectly explained, and we will venture to say, is not fully
+understood by one half those who have fairly read through every word of
+the quarto now before us. We would object, on the same grounds, to the
+whole scenery of Constance's condemnation. The subterranean chamber,
+with its low arches, massive walls, and silent monks with smoky
+torches,--its old chandelier in an iron chain,--the stern abbots and
+haughty prioresses, with their flowing black dresses, and book of
+statutes laid on an iron table, are all images borrowed from the novels
+of Mrs Ratcliffe [_sic_] and her imitators. The public, we believe, has
+now supped full of this sort of horrors; or, if any effect is still to
+be produced by their exhibition, it may certainly be produced at too
+cheap a rate, to be worthy the ambition of a poet of original
+imagination.
+
+In the third place, we object to the extreme and monstrous improbability
+of almost all the incidents which go to the composition of this fable.
+We know very well that poetry does not describe what is ordinary; but
+the marvellous, in which it is privileged to indulge, is the marvellous
+of performance, and not of accident. One extraordinary rencontre or
+opportune coincidence may be permitted, perhaps, to bring the parties
+together, and wind up matters for the catastrophe; but a writer who gets
+through the whole business of his poem, by a series of lucky hits and
+incalculable chances, certainly manages matters in a very economical way
+for his judgment and invention, and will probably be found to have
+consulted his own ease, rather than the delight of his readers. Now,
+the whole story of Marmion seems to us to turn upon a tissue of such
+incredible accidents. In the first place, it was totally beyond all
+calculation, that Marmion and De Wilton should meet, by pure chance, at
+Norham, on the only night which either of them could spend in that
+fortress. In the next place, it is almost totally incredible that the
+former should not recognize his antient rival and antagonist, merely
+because he had assumed a palmer's habit, and lost a little flesh and
+colour in his travels. He appears unhooded, and walks and speaks before
+him; and, as near as we can guess, it could not be more than a year
+since they had entered the lists against each other. Constance, at her
+death, says she had lived but three years with Marmion; and, it was not
+till he tired of her, that he aspired to Clara, or laid plots against De
+Wilton. It is equally inconceivable that De Wilton should have taken
+upon himself the friendly office of a guide to his arch enemy, and
+discharged it quietly and faithfully, without seeking, or apparently
+thinking of any opportunity of disclosure or revenge. So far from
+meditating anything of the sort, he makes two several efforts to leave
+him, when it appears that his services are no longer indispensable. If
+his accidental meeting, and continued association with Marmion, be
+altogether unnatural, it must appear still more extraordinary, that he
+should afterwards meet with the Lady Clare, his adored mistress, and the
+Abbess of Whitby, who had in her pocket the written proofs of his
+innocence, in consequence of an occurrence equally accidental. These two
+ladies, the only two persons in the universe whom it was of any
+consequence to him to meet, are captured in their voyage from Holy Isle,
+and brought to Edinburgh, by the luckiest accident in the world, the
+very day that De Wilton and Marmion make their entry into it. Nay, the
+king, without knowing that they are at all of his acquaintance, happens
+to appoint them lodgings in the same stair-case, and to make them travel
+under his escort! We pass the night combat at Gifford, in which Marmion
+knows his opponent by moonlight, though he never could guess at him in
+sunshine; and all the inconsistencies of his dilatory wooing of Lady
+Clare. Those, and all the prodigies and miracles of the story, we can
+excuse, as within the privilege of poetry; but, the lucky chances we
+have already specified, are rather too much for our patience. A poet, we
+think, should never let his heroes contract such great debts to fortune;
+especially when a little exertion of his own might make them independent
+of her bounty. De Wilton might have been made to seek and watch his
+adversary, from some moody feeling of patient revenge; and it certainly
+would not have been difficult to discover motives which might have
+induced both Clara and the Abbess to follow and relieve him, without
+dragging them into his presence by the clumsy hands of a cruizer from
+Dunbar.
+
+In the _fourth_ place, we think we have reason to complain of Mr Scott
+for having made his figuring characters so entirely worthless, as to
+excite but little of our sympathy, and at the same time keeping his
+virtuous personages so completely in the back ground, that we are
+scarcely at all acquainted with them when the work is brought to a
+conclusion. Marmion is not only a villain, but a mean and sordid
+villain; and represented as such, without any visible motive, and at the
+evident expense of characteristic truth and consistency. His elopement
+with Constance, and his subsequent desertion of her, are knightly vices
+enough, we suppose; but then he would surely have been more interesting
+and natural, if he had deserted her for a brighter beauty, and not
+merely for a richer bride. This was very well for Mr Thomas Inkle, the
+young merchant of London; but for the valiant, haughty, and liberal Lord
+Marmion of Fontenaye and Lutterward, we do think it was quite
+unsuitable. Thus, too, it was very chivalrous and orderly perhaps, for
+him to hate De Wilton, and to seek to supplant him in his lady's love;
+but, to slip a bundle of forged letters into his bureau, was cowardly as
+well as malignant. Now, Marmion is not represented as a coward, nor as
+at all afraid of De Wilton; on the contrary, and it is certainly the
+most absurd part of the story, he fights him fairly and valiantly after
+all, and overcomes him by mere force of arms, as he might have done at
+the beginning, without having recourse to devices so unsuitable to his
+general character and habits of acting. By the way, we have great doubts
+whether a _convicted_ traitor, like De Wilton, whose guilt was
+established by written evidence under his own hand, was ever allowed to
+enter the lists, as a knight, against his accuser. At all events, we are
+positive, that an accuser, who was as ready and willing to fight as
+Marmion, could never have condescended to forge in support of his
+accusation; and that the author has greatly diminished our interest in
+the story, as well as needlessly violated the truth of character, by
+loading his hero with the guilt of this most revolting and improbable
+proceeding. The crimes of Constance are multiplied in like manner to
+such a degree, as both to destroy our interest in her fate, and to
+violate all probability. Her elopement was enough to bring on her doom;
+and we should have felt more for it, if it had appeared a little more
+unmerited. She is utterly debased, when she becomes the instrument of
+Marmion's murderous perfidy, and the assassin of her unwilling rival.
+
+De Wilton, again, is too much depressed throughout the poem. It is
+rather dangerous for a poet to chuse a hero who has been beaten in fair
+battle. The readers of romance do not like an unsuccessful warrior; but
+to be beaten in a judicial combat, and to have his arms reversed and
+tied on the gallows, is an adventure which can only be expiated by
+signal prowess and exemplary revenge, achieved against great odds, in
+full view of the reader. The unfortunate De Wilton, however, carries the
+stain upon him from one end of the poem to the other. He wanders up and
+down, a dishonoured fugitive, in the disguise of a palmer, through the
+five first books; and though he is knighted and mounted again in the
+last, yet we see nothing of his performances; nor is the author merciful
+enough to afford him one opportunity of redeeming his credit by an
+exploit of gallantry or skill. For the poor Lady Clare, she is a
+personage of still greater insipidity and insignificance. The author
+seems to have formed her upon the principle of Mr Pope's maxim, that
+women have no characters at all. We find her every where, where she has
+no business to be; neither saying nor doing any thing of the least
+consequence, but whimpering and sobbing over the Matrimony in her prayer
+book, like a great miss from a boarding school; and all this is the more
+inexcusable, as she is altogether a supernumerary person in the play,
+who should atone for her intrusion by some brilliancy or novelty of
+deportment. Matters would have gone on just as well, although she had
+been left behind at Whitby till after the battle of Flodden; and she is
+daggled about in the train, first of the Abbess and then of Lord
+Marmion, for no purpose, that we can see, but to afford the author an
+opportunity for two or three pages of indifferent description.
+
+Finally, we must object, both on critical and on national grounds, to
+the discrepancy between the title and the substance of the poem, and the
+neglect of Scotish feelings and Scotish character that is manifested
+throughout. Marmion is no more a tale of Flodden Field, than of Bosworth
+Field, or any other field in history. The story is quite independent of
+the national feuds of the sister kingdoms; and the battle of Flodden has
+no other connexion with it, than from being the conflict in which the
+hero loses his life. Flodden, however, is mentioned; and the
+preparations for Flodden, and the consequences of it, are repeatedly
+alluded to in the course of the composition. Yet we nowhere find any
+adequate expressions of those melancholy and patriotic sentiments which
+are still all over Scotland the accompaniment of those allusions and
+recollections. No picture is drawn of the national feelings before or
+after that fatal encounter; and the day that broke for ever the pride
+and the splendour of his country, is only commemorated by a Scotish poet
+as the period when an English warrior was beaten to the ground. There is
+scarcely one trait of true Scotish nationality or patriotism introduced
+into the whole poem; and Mr Scott's only expression of admiration or
+love for the beautiful country to which he belongs, is put, if we
+rightly remember, into the mouth of one of his Southern favourites.
+Independently of this, we think that too little pains is taken to
+distinguish the Scotish character and manners from the English, or to
+give expression to the general feeling of rivalry and mutual jealousy
+which at that time existed between the two countries.
+
+If there be any truth in what we have now said, it is evident that the
+merit of this poem cannot consist in the story. And yet it has very
+great merit, and various kinds of merit,--both in the picturesque
+representation of visible objects, in the delineation of manners and
+characters, and in the description of great and striking events. After
+having detained the reader so long with our own dull remarks, it will
+be refreshing to him to peruse a few specimens of Mr Scott's more
+enlivening strains.
+
+[Quotes over six hundred lines of _Marmion_ with brief comment.]
+
+The powerful poetry of these passages can receive no illustration from
+any praises or observations of ours. It is superior, in our
+apprehension, to all that this author has hitherto produced; and, with a
+few faults of diction, equal to any thing that has _ever_ been written
+upon similar subjects. Though we have extended our extracts to a very
+unusual length, in order to do justice to these fine conceptions, we
+have been obliged to leave out a great deal, which serves in the
+original to give beauty and effect to what we have actually cited. From
+the moment the author gets in sight of Flodden Field, indeed, to the end
+of the poem, there is no tame writing, and no intervention of ordinary
+passages. He does not once flag or grow tedious; and neither stops to
+describe dresses and ceremonies, nor to commemorate the harsh names of
+feudal barons from the Border. There is a flight of five or six hundred
+lines, in short, in which he never stoops his wing, nor wavers in his
+course; but carries the reader forward with a more rapid, sustained, and
+lofty movement, than any Epic bard that we can at present remember.
+
+From the contemplation of such distinguished excellence, it is painful
+to be obliged to turn to the defects and deformities which occur in the
+same composition. But this, though a less pleasing, is a still more
+indispensable part of our duty; and one, from the resolute discharge of
+which, much more beneficial consequences may be expected. In the work
+which contains the fine passages we have just quoted, and many of nearly
+equal beauty, there is such a proportion of tedious, hasty, and
+injudicious composition, as makes it questionable with us, whether it
+is entitled to go down to posterity as a work of classical merit, or
+whether the author will retain, with another generation, that high
+reputation which his genius certainly might make coeval with the
+language. These are the authors, after all, whose faults it is of most
+consequence to point out; and criticism performs her best and boldest
+office,--not when she tramples down the weed, or tears up the
+bramble,--but when she strips the strangling ivy from the oak, or cuts
+out the canker from the rose. The faults of the fable we have already
+noticed at sufficient length. Those of the execution we shall now
+endeavour to enumerate with greater brevity.
+
+And, in the _first_ place, we must beg leave to protest, in the name of
+a very numerous class of readers, against the insufferable number, and
+length and minuteness of those descriptions of antient dresses and
+manners, and buildings; and ceremonies, and local superstitions; with
+which the whole poem is overrun,--which render so many notes necessary,
+and are, after all, but imperfectly understood by those to whom
+chivalrous antiquity has not hitherto been an object of peculiar
+attention. We object to these, and to all such details, because they
+are, for the most part, without dignity or interest in themselves;
+because, in a modern author, they are evidently unnatural; and because
+they must always be strange, and, in a good degree, obscure and
+unintelligible to ordinary readers.
+
+When a great personage is to be introduced, it is right, perhaps, to
+give the reader some notion of his external appearance; and when a
+memorable event is to be narrated, it is natural to help the imagination
+by some picturesque representation of the scenes with which it is
+connected. Yet, even upon such occasions, it can seldom be advisable to
+present the reader with a full inventory of the hero's dress, from his
+shoebuckle to the plume in his cap, or to enumerate all the drawbridges,
+portcullisses, and diamond cut stones in the castle. Mr Scott, however,
+not only draws out almost all his pictures in these full dimensions, but
+frequently introduces those pieces of Flemish or Chinese painting to
+represent persons who are of no consequence, or places and events which
+are of no importance to the story. It would be endless to go through the
+poem for examples of this excess of minute description; we shall merely
+glance at the First Canto as a specimen. We pass the long description of
+Lord Marmion himself, with his mail of Milan steel; the blue ribbons on
+his horse's mane; and his blue velvet housings. We pass also the two
+gallant squires who ride behind him. But our patience is really
+exhausted, when we are forced to attend to the black stockings and blue
+jerkins of the inferior persons in the train, and to the whole process
+of turning out the guard with advanced arms on entering the castle.
+
+    'Four men-at-arms came _at their backs_,
+    With halberd, bill, and battle-axe:
+    They bore Lord Marmion's lance so strong,
+    And led his sumpter mules along,
+    And ambling palfrey, _when at need_
+    Him listed ease his battle-steed.
+    The last, and trustiest of the four,
+    On high his forky pennon bore;
+    Like swallow's tail, in shape and hue,
+    Flutter'd the streamer glossy blue,
+    Where, blazoned sable, as before,
+    The towering falcon seemed to soar.
+    Last, twenty yeomen, two and two,
+    In hosen black, and jerkins blue,
+    With falcons broider'd on each breast,
+    Attended on their lord's behest.
+    'Tis meet that I should tell you now,
+    How fairly armed, and ordered how,
+      The soldiers of the guard,
+    With musquet, pike, and morion,
+    To welcome noble Marmion,
+      Stood in the Castle-yard;
+    Minstrels and trumpeters were there,
+    The gunner held his _linstock yare_,
+      For welcome-shot prepared--
+
+    The guards their morrice pikes advanced,
+      The trumpets flourished brave,
+    The cannon from the ramparts glanced,
+      And thundering welcome gave.
+
+    Two pursuivants, whom tabards deck,
+    With silver scutcheon round their neck,
+      Stood on the steps of stone,
+    By which you reach the Donjon gate,
+    And there, with herald pomp and state,
+      They hailed Lord Marmion.
+    And he, their courtesy to requite,
+    Gave them a chain of twelve marks weight,
+      All as he lighted down.' p. 29-32.
+
+Sir Hugh the Heron then orders supper--
+
+    'Now broach ye a pipe of Malvoisie,
+    Bring pasties of the doe.'
+
+--And after the repast is concluded, they have some mulled wine, and
+drink good night very ceremoniously.
+
+    'Lord Marmion drank a fair good rest,
+    The Captain pledged his noble guest,
+    The cup went round among the rest.'
+
+In the morning, again, we are informed that they had prayers, and that
+knight and squire
+
+    ----'broke their fast
+    On rich substantial repast.'
+    'Then came the stirrup-cup in course,' &c., &c.
+
+And thus a whole Canto is filled up with the account of a visit and a
+supper, which lead to no consequences whatever, and are not attended
+with any circumstances which must not have occurred at every visit and
+supper among persons of the same rank at that period. Now, we are really
+at a loss to know, why the mere circumstance of a moderate antiquity
+should be supposed so far to ennoble those details, as to entitle them
+to a place in poetry, which certainly never could be claimed for a
+description of more modern adventures. Nobody, we believe, would be bold
+enough to introduce into a serious poem a description of the hussar
+boots and gold epaulets of a commander in chief, and much less to
+particularize the liveries and canes of his servants, or the order and
+array of a grand dinner, given even to the cabinet ministers. Yet these
+things are, in their own nature, fully as picturesque, and as
+interesting, as the ribbons at the mane of Lord Marmion's horse, or his
+supper and breakfast at the castle of Norham. We are glad, indeed, to
+find these little details in _old_ books, whether in prose or verse,
+because they are there authentic and valuable documents of the usages
+and modes of life of our ancestors; and we are thankful when we light
+upon this sort of information in an antient romance, which commonly
+contains matter much more tedious. Even there, however, we smile at the
+simplicity which could mistake such naked enumerations for poetical
+description; and reckon them as nearly on a level, in point of taste,
+with the theological disputations that are sometimes introduced in the
+same meritorious compositions. In a _modern_ romance, however, these
+details being no longer authentic, are of no value in point of
+information; and as the author has no claim to indulgence on the ground
+of simplicity, the smile which his predecessors excited is in some
+danger of being turned into a yawn. If he wishes sincerely to follow
+their example, he should describe the manners of his own time, and not
+of theirs. They painted from observation, and not from study; and the
+familiarity and _na�vet�_ of their delineations, transcribed with a
+slovenly and hasty hand from what they saw daily before them, is as
+remote as possible from the elaborate pictures extracted by a modern
+imitator from black-letter books, and coloured, not from the life, but
+from learned theories, or at best from mouldy monkish illuminations, and
+mutilated fragments of painted glass.
+
+But the times of chivalry, it may be said, were more picturesque than
+the present times. They are better adapted to poetry; and everything
+that is associated with them has a certain hold on the imagination, and
+partakes of the interest of the period. We do not mean utterly to deny
+this; nor can we stop, at present, to assign exact limits to our assent:
+but this we will venture to observe, in general, that if it be true that
+the interest which we take in the contemplation of the chivalrous era,
+arises from the dangers and virtues by which it was distinguished,--from
+the constant hazards in which its warriors passed their days, and the
+mild and generous valour with which they met those hazards,--joined to
+the singular contrast which it presented between the ceremonious polish
+and gallantry of the nobles, and the brutish ignorance of the body of
+the people:--if these are, as we conceive they are, the sources of the
+charm which still operates in behalf of the days of knightly adventure,
+then it should follow, that nothing should interest us, by association
+with that age, but what serves naturally to bring before us those
+hazards and that valour, and gallantry, and aristocratical superiority.
+Any description, or any imitation of the exploits in which those
+qualities were signalized, will do this most effectually.
+Battles,--tournaments,--penances,--deliverance of damsels,--instalments
+of knights, &c.--and, intermixed with these, we must admit some
+description of arms, armorial bearings, castles, battlements, and
+chapels: but the least and lowest of the whole certainly is the
+description of servants' liveries, and of the peaceful operations of
+eating, drinking, and ordinary salutation. These have no sensible
+connexion with the qualities or peculiarities which have conferred
+certain poetical privileges on the manners of chivalry. They do not
+enter either necessarily or naturally into our conception of what is
+interesting in those manners; and, though protected, by their
+strangeness, from the ridicule which would infallibly attach to their
+modern equivalents, are substantially as unpoetic, and as little
+entitled to indulgence from impartial criticism.
+
+We would extend this censure to a larger proportion of the work before
+us than we now choose to mention--certainly to all the stupid monkish
+legends about St Hilda and St Cuthbert--to the ludicrous description of
+Lord Gifford's habiliments of divination--and to all the various scraps
+and fragments of antiquarian history and baronial biography, which are
+scattered profusely through the whole narrative. These we conceive to be
+put in purely for the sake of displaying the erudition of the author;
+and poetry, which has no other recommendation, but that the substance of
+it has been gleaned from rare or obscure books, has, in our estimation,
+the least of all possible recommendations. Mr Scott's great talents, and
+the novelty of the style in which his romances are written, have made
+even these defects acceptable to a considerable part of his readers. His
+genius, seconded by the omnipotence of fashion, has brought chivalry
+again into temporary favour; but he ought to know, that this is a taste
+too evidently unnatural to be long prevalent in the modern world. Fine
+ladies and gentlemen now talk, indeed, of donjons, keeps, tabards,
+scutcheons, tressures, caps of maintenance, portcullisses, wimples, and
+we know not what besides; just as they did, in the days of Dr Darwin's
+popularity, of gnomes, sylphs, oxygen, gossamer, polygynia, and
+polyandria. That fashion, however, passed rapidly away; and if it be now
+evident to all the world, that Dr Darwin obstructed the extension of his
+fame, and hastened the extinction of his brilliant reputation, by the
+pedantry and ostentatious learning of his poems, Mr Scott should take
+care that a different sort of pedantry does not produce the same
+effects. The world will never be long pleased with what it does not
+readily understand; and the poetry which is destined for immortality,
+should treat only of feelings and events which can be conceived and
+entered into by readers of all descriptions.
+
+What we have now mentioned is the cardinal fault of the work before us;
+but it has other faults, of too great magnitude to be passed altogether
+without notice. There is a debasing lowness and vulgarity in some
+passages, which we think must be offensive to every reader of delicacy,
+and which are not, for the most part, redeemed by any vigour or
+picturesque effect. The venison pasties, we think, are of this
+description; and this commemoration of Sir Hugh Heron's troopers, who
+
+    'Have drunk the monks of St Bothan's ale,
+    And driven the beeves of Lauderdale;
+    Harried the wives of Greenlaw's goods,
+    And given them light to set their hoods.' p. 41.
+
+The long account of Friar John, though not without merit, offends in the
+same sort; nor can we easily conceive, how any one could venture, in a
+serious poem, to speak of
+
+    ----'the wind that blows,
+    And _warms itself against his nose_.'
+
+The speeches of squire Blount, too, are a great deal too unpolished for
+a noble youth aspiring to knighthood. On two occasions, to specify no
+more, he addresses his brother squire in these cacophonous lines--
+
+    '_St Anton' fire thee!_ wilt thou stand
+    All day with bonnet in thy hand?'
+
+And,
+
+    '_Stint in thy prate_,' quoth Blount, '_thou'dst best_,
+    And listen to our Lord's behest.'
+
+Neither can we be brought to admire the simple dignity of Sir Hugh the
+Heron, who thus encourageth his nephew,
+
+    ----'_By my fay_,
+    Well hast thou spoke--say forth thy say.'
+
+There are other passages in which the flatness and tediousness of the
+narrative is relieved by no sort of beauty, nor elegance of diction, and
+which form an extraordinary contrast with the more animated and finished
+portions of the poem. We shall not afflict our readers with more than
+one specimen of this falling off. We select it from the Abbess's
+explanation to De Wilton.
+
+    'De Wilton and Lord Marmion wooed
+    Clara de Clare, of Gloster's blood;
+    (Idle it were of Whitby's dame,
+    To say of that same blood I came;)
+    And once, when jealous rage was high,
+    Lord Marmion said despiteously,
+    Wilton was traitor in his heart,
+    And had made league with Martin Swart,
+    When he came here on Simnel's part;
+    And only cowardice did restrain
+    His rebel aid on Stokefield's plain,--
+    And down he threw his glove:--the thing
+    Was tried, as wont, before the king;
+    Where frankly did De Wilton own,
+    That Swart in Guelders he had known;
+    And that between them then there went
+    Some scroll of courteous compliment.
+    For this he to his castle sent;
+    But when his messenger returned,
+    Judge how De Wilton's fury burned!
+    For in his packet there were laid
+    Letters that claimed disloyal aid,
+    And proved King Henry's cause betrayed.' p. 272-274.
+
+In some other places, Mr Scott's love of variety has betrayed him into
+strange imitations. This is evidently formed on the school of Sternhold
+and Hopkins.
+
+    'Of all the palaces so fair,
+      Built for the royal dwelling,
+    In Scotland, far beyond compare,
+      Linlithgow is excelling.'
+
+The following is a sort of mongrel between the same school, and the
+later one of Mr Wordsworth.
+
+    'And Bishop Gawin, as he rose,
+    Said--Wilton, grieve not for thy woes,
+      Disgrace, and trouble;
+    For He, who honour best bestows,
+      May give thee double.'
+
+There are many other blemishes, both of taste and of diction, which we
+had marked for reprehension, but now think it unnecessary to specify;
+and which, with some of those we have mentioned, we are willing to
+ascribe to the haste in which much of the poem seems evidently to have
+been composed. Mr Scott knows too well what is due to the public, to
+make any boast of the rapidity with which his works are written; but the
+dates and the extent of his successive publications show sufficiently
+how short a time could be devoted to each; and explain, though they do
+not apologize for, the many imperfections with which they have been
+suffered to appear. He who writes for immortality should not be sparing
+of time; and if it be true, that in every thing which has a principle of
+life, the period of gestation and growth bears some proportion to that
+of the whole future existence, the author now before us should tremble
+when he looks back on the miracles of his own facility.
+
+We have dwelt longer on the beauties and defects of this poem, than we
+are afraid will be agreeable either to the partial or the indifferent;
+not only because we look upon it as a misapplication, in some degree, of
+very extraordinary talents, but because we cannot help considering it as
+the foundation of a new school, which may hereafter occasion no little
+annoyance both to us and to the public. Mr Scott has hitherto filled the
+whole stage himself; and the very splendour of his success has probably
+operated, as yet, rather to deter, than to encourage, the herd of rivals
+and imitators: but if, by the help of the good parts of his poem, he
+succeeds in suborning the verdict of the public in favour of the bad
+parts also, and establishes an indiscriminate taste for chivalrous
+legends and romances in irregular rhime, he may depend upon having as
+many copyists as Mrs Radcliffe or Schiller, and upon becoming the
+founder of a new schism in the catholic poetical church, for which, in
+spite of all our exertions, there will probably be no cure, but in the
+extravagance of the last and lowest of its followers. It is for this
+reason that we conceive it to be our duty to make one strong effort to
+bring back the great apostle of the heresy to the wholesome creed of
+his instructors, and to stop the insurrection before it becomes
+desperate and senseless, by persuading the leader to return to his duty
+and allegiance. We admire Mr Scott's genius as much as any of those who
+may be misled by its perversion; and, like the curate and the barber in
+Don Quixote, lament the day when a gentleman of such endowments was
+corrupted by the wicked tales of knight-errantry and enchantment.
+
+We have left ourselves no room to say any thing of the epistolary
+effusions which are prefixed to each of the cantos. They certainly are
+not among the happiest productions of Mr Scott's muse. They want
+interest in the subjects, and finish in the execution. There is too much
+of them about the personal and private feelings and affairs of the
+author; and too much of the remainder about the most trite commonplaces
+of politics and poetry. There is a good deal of spirit, however, and a
+good deal of nature intermingled. There is a fine description of St
+Mary's loch, in that prefixed to the second canto; and a very pleasing
+representation of the author's early tastes and prejudices, in that
+prefixed to the third. The last, which is about Christmas, is the worst;
+though the first, containing a threnody on Nelson, Pitt, and Fox,
+exhibits a more remarkable failure. We are unwilling to quarrel with a
+poet on the score of politics; but the manner in which he has chosen to
+praise the last of these great men, is more likely, we conceive, to give
+offence to his admirers, than the most direct censure. The only deed for
+which he is praised, is for having broken off the negotiation for peace;
+and for this act of firmness, it is added, Heaven rewarded him with a
+share in the honoured grave of Pitt! It is then said, that his errors
+should be forgotten, and that he _died_ a Briton--a pretty plain
+insinuation, that, in the author's opinion, he did not live one; and
+just such an encomium as he himself pronounces over the grave of his
+villain hero Marmion. There was no need, surely, to pay compliments to
+ministers or princesses, either in the introduction or in the body of a
+romance of the 16th century. Yet we have a laboured lamentation over the
+Duke of Brunswick, in one of the epistles; and in the heart of the poem,
+a triumphant allusion to the siege of Copenhagen--the last exploit,
+certainly, of British valour, on which we should have expected a
+chivalrous poet to found his patriotic gratulations. We have no
+business, however, on this occasion, with the political creed of the
+author; and we notice these allusions to objects of temporary interest,
+chiefly as instances of bad taste, and additional proofs that the author
+does not always recollect, that a poet should address himself to more
+than one generation.--_The Edinburgh Review_.
+
+
+
+
+GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON
+
+
+_Hours of Idleness: A Series of Poems, Original and Translated_. By
+GEORGE GORDON, Lord Byron, a Minor. 8vo. pp. 200. Newark. 1807.
+
+The poesy of this young lord belongs to the class which neither gods nor
+men are said to permit. Indeed, we do not recollect to have seen a
+quantity of verse with so few deviations in either direction from that
+exact standard. His effusions are spread over a dead flat, and can no
+more get above or below the level, than if they were so much stagnant
+water. As an extenuation of this offence, the noble author is peculiarly
+forward in pleading minority. We have it in the title-page, and on the
+very back of the volume; it follows his name like a favourite part of
+his _style_. Much stress is laid upon it in the preface, and the poems
+are connected with this general statement of his case, by particular
+dates, substantiating the age at which each was written. Now, the law
+upon the point of minority, we hold to be perfectly clear. It is a plea
+available only to the defendant; no plaintiff can offer it as a
+supplementary ground of action. Thus, if any suit could be brought
+against Lord Byron, for the purpose of compelling him to put into court
+a certain quantity of poetry; and if judgment were given against him; it
+is highly probable that an exception would be taken, were he to deliver
+_for poetry_, the contents of this volume. To this he might plead
+_minority_; but as he now makes voluntary tender of the article, he hath
+no right to sue, on that ground, for the price in good current praise,
+should the goods be unmarketable. This is our view of the law on the
+point, and, we dare to say, so will it be ruled. Perhaps, however, in
+reality, all that he tells us about his youth, is rather with a view to
+increase our wonder, than to soften our censures. He possibly means to
+say, 'See how a minor can write! This poem was actually composed by a
+young man of eighteen, and this by one of only sixteen!'--But, alas, we
+all remember the poetry of Cowley at ten, and Pope at twelve; and so far
+from hearing, with any degree of surprise, that very poor verses were
+written by a youth from his leaving school to his leaving college,
+inclusive, we really believe this to be the most common of all
+occurrences; that it happens in the life of nine men in ten who are
+educated in England; and that the tenth man writes better verse than
+Lord Byron.
+
+His other plea of privilege, our author rather brings forward in order
+to wa[i]ve it. He certainly, however, does allude frequently to his
+family and ancestors--sometimes in poetry, sometimes in notes; and while
+giving up his claim on the score of rank, he takes care to remember us
+of Dr Johnson's saying, that when a nobleman appears as an author, his
+merit should be handsomely acknowledged. In truth, it is this
+consideration only, that induces us to give Lord Byron's poems a place
+in our review, beside our desire to counsel him, that he do forthwith
+abandon poetry, and turn his talents, which are considerable, and his
+opportunities, which are great, to better account.
+
+With this view, we must beg leave seriously to assure him, that the mere
+rhyming of the final syllable, even when accompanied by the presence of
+a certain number of feet,--nay, although (which does not always happen)
+those feet should scan regularly, and have been all counted accurately
+upon the fingers,--is not the whole art of poetry. We would entreat him
+to believe, that a certain portion of liveliness, somewhat of fancy, is
+necessary to constitute a poem; and that a poem in the present day, to
+be read, must contain at least one thought, either in a little degree
+different from the ideas of former writers, or differently expressed. We
+put it to his candour, whether there is any thing so deserving the name
+of poetry in verses like the following, written in 1806, and whether, if
+a youth of eighteen could say any thing so uninteresting to his
+ancestors, a youth of nineteen should publish it.
+
+    'Shades of heroes, farewell! your descendant, departing
+      From the seat of his ancestors, bids you, adieu!
+    Abroad, or at home, your remembrance imparting
+      New courage, he'll think upon glory, and you.
+
+    Though a tear dim his eye, at this sad separation,
+      'Tis nature, not fear, that excites his regret:
+    Far distant he goes, with the same emulation;
+      The fame of his fathers he ne'er can forget.
+
+    That fame, and that memory, still will he cherish,
+      He vows, that he ne'er will disgrace your renown;
+    Like you will he live, or like you will he perish;
+      When decay'd, may he mingle his dust with your own.' p. 3.
+
+Now we positively do assert, that there is nothing better than these
+stanzas in the whole compass of the noble minor's volume.
+
+Lord Byron should also have a care of attempting what the greatest poets
+have done before him, for comparisons (as he must have had occasion to
+see at his writing-master's) are odious.--Gray's Ode on Eton College,
+should really have kept out the ten hobbling stanzas 'on a distant view
+of the village and school of Harrow.'
+
+    'Where fancy, yet, joys to retrace the resemblance,
+      Of comrades, in friendship and mischief allied;
+    How welcome to me, your ne'er fading remembrance,
+      Which rests in the bosom, though hope is deny'd.' p. 4.
+
+In like manner the exquisite lines of Mr Rogers, '_On a Tear_,' might
+have warned the noble author off those premises, and spared us a whole
+dozen such stanzas as the following.
+
+        'Mild Charity's glow,
+        To us mortals below,
+    Shows the soul from barbarity clear;
+        Compassion will melt,
+        Where this virtue is felt,
+    And its dew is diffus'd in a Tear.
+
+        The man doom'd to sail,
+        With the blast of the gale,
+    Through billows Atlantic to steer,
+        As he bends o'er the wave,
+        Which may soon be his grave,
+    The green sparkles bright with a Tear.' p. 11.
+
+And so of instances in which former poets had failed. Thus, we do not
+think Lord Byron was made for translating, during his non-age, Adrian's
+Address to his Soul, when Pope succeeded so indifferently in the
+attempt. If our readers, however, are of another opinion, they may look
+at it.
+
+    'Ah! gentle, fleeting, wav'ring sprite,
+    Friend and associate of this clay!
+      To what unknown region borne,
+    Wilt thou now wing thy distant flight?
+    No more, with wonted humour gay,
+      But pallid, cheerless, and forlorn.' p. 72.
+
+However, be this as it may, we fear his translations and imitations are
+great favourites with Lord Byron. We have them of all kinds, from
+Anacreon to Ossian; and, viewing them as school exercises, they may
+pass. Only, why print them after they have had their day and served
+their turn? And why call the thing in p. 79 a translation, where _two_
+words ([Greek: thelo legein]) of the original are expanded into four
+lines, and the other thing in p. 81, where [Greek: mesonychtiois poth'
+ho rais], is rendered by means of six hobbling verses?--As to his
+Ossianic poesy, we are not very good judges, being, in truth, so
+moderately skilled in that species of composition, that we should, in
+all probability be criticizing some bit of the genuine Macpherson
+itself, were we to express our opinion of Lord Byron's rhapsodies. _If_,
+then, the following beginning of a 'Song of bards,' is by his Lordship,
+we venture to object to it, as far as we can comprehend it. 'What form
+rises on the roar of clouds, whose dark ghost gleams on the red stream
+of tempests? His voice rolls on the thunder; 'tis Orla, the brown chief
+of Otihoma. He was,' &c. After detaining this 'brown chief' some time,
+the bards conclude by giving him their advice to 'raise his fair locks;'
+then to 'spread them on the arch of the rainbow;' and 'to smile through
+the tears of the storm.' Of this kind of thing there are no less than
+_nine_ pages; and we can so far venture an opinion in their favour, that
+they look very like Macpherson; and we are positive they are pretty
+nearly as stupid and tiresome.
+
+It is a sort of privilege of poets to be egotists; but they should 'use
+it as not abusing it;' and particularly one who piques himself (though
+indeed at the ripe age of nineteen), of being 'an infant bard,'--('The
+artless Helicon I boast is youth;')--should either not know, or should
+seem not to know, so much about his own ancestry. Besides a poem above
+cited on the family seat of the Byrons, we have another of eleven pages,
+on the self-same subject, introduced with an apology, 'he certainly had
+no intention of inserting it;' but really, 'the particular request of
+some friends,' &c., &c. It concludes with five stanzas on himself, 'the
+last and youngest of a noble line.' There is a good deal also about his
+maternal ancestors, in a poem on Lachin-y-gair, a mountain where he
+spent part of his youth, and might have learned that _pibroch_ is not a
+bagpipe, any more than duet means a fiddle.
+
+As the author has dedicated so large a part of his volume to immortalize
+his employments at school and college, we cannot possibly dismiss it
+without presenting the reader with a specimen of these ingenious
+effusions. In an ode with a Greek motto, called Granta, we have the
+following magnificent stanzas.
+
+    'There, in apartments small and damp,
+      The candidate for college prizes,
+    Sits poring by the midnight lamp,
+      Goes late to bed, yet early rises.
+
+    Who reads false quantities in Sele,
+      Or puzzles o'er the deep triangle;
+    Depriv'd of many a wholesome meal,
+      In barbarous Latin doom'd to wrangle.
+
+    Renouncing every pleasing page,
+      From authors of historic use;
+    Preferring to the lettered sage,
+      The square of the hypothenuse.
+
+    Still harmless are these occupations,
+      That hurt none but the hapless student,
+    Compar'd with other recreations
+      Which bring together the imprudent.' p. 123, 124, 125.
+
+We are sorry to hear so bad an account of the college psalmody as is
+contained in the following Attic stanzas.
+
+    'Our choir would scarcely be excus'd.
+      Even as a band of new beginners;
+    All mercy, now, must be refus'd
+      To such a set of croaking sinners.
+
+    If David, when his toils were ended,
+      Had heard these blockheads sing before him
+    To us, his psalms had ne'er descended,
+      In furious mood, he would have tore 'em.' p. 126, 127.
+
+But whatever judgment may be passed on the poems of this noble minor, it
+seems we must take them as we find them, and be content; for they are
+the last we shall ever have from him. He is at best, he says, but an
+intruder into the groves of Parnassus; he never lived in a garret, like
+thorough-bred poets; and 'though he once roved a careless mountaineer in
+the Highlands of Scotland,' he has not of late enjoyed this advantage.
+Moreover, he expects no profit from his publication; and whether it
+succeeds or not 'it is highly improbable, from his situation and
+pursuits hereafter,' that he should again condescend to become an
+author. Therefore, let us take what we get and be thankful. What right
+have we poor devils to be nice? We are well off to have got so much from
+a man of this Lord's station, who does not live in a garret, but 'has
+the sway' of Newstead Abbey. Again we say, let us be thankful; and, with
+honest Sancho, bid God bless the giver, nor look the gift horse in the
+mouth.--_The Edinburgh Review_.
+
+
+_Childe Harolde's Pilgrimage. A Romaunt_. _By_ LORD BYRON. The Second
+Edition. London: Murray, Fleet Street. 1812. 8vo. pp. 300. Price 12s.
+
+If the object of poetry is to instruct by pleasing, then every poetical
+effort has a double claim upon the attention of the Christian observer.
+For we are anxious that the world should be instructed at all rates, and
+that they should be pleased where they innocently may. We are,
+therefore, by no means among those spectators who view the occasional
+ascent of a poetic luminary upon the horizon of literature, as a
+meteoric flash which has no relation to ourselves; but we feel instantly
+an eager desire to find its altitude, to take its bearings, to trace its
+course, and to calculate its influence upon surrounding bodies. When
+especially it is no more an "oaten reed" that is blown; or a "simple
+shepherd" who blows it; but when the song involves many high and solemn
+feelings, and a man of rank and notoriety strikes his golden harp, we
+feel, at once, that the increased influence of the song demands the more
+rigid scrutiny of the critic.
+
+Lord Byron is the author, beside the book before us, of a small volume
+of poems, which gave little promise, we think, of the present work; and
+of a satyrical poem, which, as far as temper is concerned, did give some
+promise of it. It had pleased more than one critic to treat his
+Lordship's first work in no very courtier-like manner; and especially
+the Lion of the north had let him feel the lashing of his angry tail.
+Not of a temperament to bear calmly even a "look that threatened him
+with insult," his Lordship seized the tomahawk of satire, mounted the
+fiery wings of his muse, and, like Bonaparte, spared neither rank, nor
+sex, nor age, but converted the republic of letters into one universal
+field of carnage. The volume called English Bards and Scotch Reviewers
+is, in short, to be considered, among other works, as one of those
+playful vessels which are said to have accompanied the Spanish armada,
+manned by executioners, and loaded with nothing but instruments of
+torture.
+
+This second work was of too sanguinary a complexion to beget a very
+pleasant impression upon the public mind; and all men, who wished well
+to peace, politeness and literature, joined in the p�an sung by the
+immediate victims of his Lordship's wrath, when he embarked to soften
+his manners, and, as it were, oil his tempers, amidst the gentler
+spirits of more southern climes. Travelling, indeed, through any climes,
+may be expected to exert this mitigating influence upon the mind. Nature
+is so truly gentle, or, to speak more justly, the God of nature displays
+so expansive a benevolence in all his works; so prodigally sheds his
+blessings "upon the evil and the good;" builds up so many exquisite
+fabrics to delight the eyes of his creatures; tinges the flowers with
+such colours, and fills the grove with such music; that anyone who
+becomes familiar with nature, can scarcely remain angry with man. With
+what mitigating touches the scenery of Europe has visited our author,
+remains to be seen. That he did not disarm it of its force by regarding
+it with a cold or contemptuous eye, he himself teaches us--
+
+    "Dear Nature is the kindest mother still,
+    Though always changing in her aspect mild;
+    From her bare bosom let me take my fill,
+    Her never-weaned, though not her favoured child.
+    O she is fairest in her features wild,
+    Where nothing polished dares pollute her path;
+    To me by day or night she ever smiled,
+    Though I have marked her when none other hath,
+    And sought her more and more, and loved her most in wrath." p. 79.
+
+Our author having re-landed upon his native shores, his first deed is to
+present to his country the work before us, as the fruits of his travels.
+It is a kind of poetical journal of journeys and voyages through Spain
+and Portugal, along the shores of the Mediterranean and Archipelago, and
+through the states of ancient Greece. When we speak of journal, we mean
+rather to designate the topics of the work than the manner of its
+execution; for it is highly poetical. Most contrary to the spirit of
+those less fanciful records, his Lordship sublimely discards all facts
+and histories; all incidents; A.M. and P.M.; and bad inns and worse
+winds; and battles and feasts. Seizing merely upon the picturesque
+features in every object and event before him, he paints and records
+them with such reflections, moral or immoral, as arise in his ardent
+mind.
+
+The "Childe Harolde" is the traveller; and as he is a mighty surly
+fellow, neither loves nor is loved by any one; "through sin's long
+labyrinth had run, nor made atonement when he did amiss;" as, moreover,
+he is licentious and sceptical; Lord Byron very naturally, and
+creditably to himself, sets out in his Preface with disclaiming any
+connection with this imaginary personage. It is somewhat singular,
+however, that most of the offensive reflections in the poem are made,
+not by the "Childe," but the poet.
+
+[Here follows a summary of the two cantos, with extensive quotations.]
+
+Having by these extracts endeavoured to put our readers in possession of
+some of the finest parts of this poem, and also of those passages which
+determine its moral complexion, we shall proceed to offer a few remarks
+upon its character and pretensions in both points of view.
+
+The poem is in the stanza of Spenser--a stanza of which we think it
+difficult to say whether the excellencies or defects are the greatest.
+The paramount advantage is the variety of tone and pause of which it
+admits. The great disadvantages are, the constraint of such complicated
+rhymes, and the long suspension of the sense, especially in the latter
+half of the stanza. The noblest conception and most brilliant diction
+must be sacrificed, if four words in one place, and three in another
+cannot be found rhyming to each other. And as to the suspension of the
+sense, we are persuaded that no man reads a single stanza without
+feeling a sort of strain upon the intellect and lungs--a kind of
+suffocation of mind and body, before he can either discover the
+lingering meaning, or pronounce the nine lines. To us, we confess that
+the rhyming couplets of Mr. Scott, sometimes deviating into alternate
+rhymes, are, on both accounts, infinitely preferable. One of the ends of
+poetry is to relax, and the artificial and elaborate stanza of Spenser
+costs us too much trouble, even in the reading, to accomplish this end.
+To effect this, the sense should come to us, instead of our going far
+and wide in quest of the sense. In our conception also, the heroic line
+of ten syllables, though favourable to the most dignified order of
+poetry, appears to limp when forced into the service of sonneteers: and
+poems in the metre before us, are, after all, little better than a
+string of sonnets; of which it is the constituent principle to be rather
+pretty than grand--rather tender than martial--rather conceited than
+wise--to keep the sense suspended for eight lines, and to discharge it
+with a point in the ninth. These observations are by no means designed
+to apply especially to the author--the extreme gravity of whose general
+manner and matter, in a measure covet the dignity of the heroic line.
+But it is this discordancy of measure and subject, together with the
+obviously laboured rhymes and the halting of the sense, which in
+general, we think, have shut out the Spenserian school from popular
+reading, and have caused a distinguished critic[J] to say, that the
+"Faiery Queen will not often be read through;" and that, although it
+maintains its place upon the shelf, it is seldom found on the table of
+the modern library.
+
+Whilst, however, Lord Byron participates in this defect of his great
+original, he is to be congratulated, as a poet, but alas! in his
+poetical character alone, on much happy deviation from him. In the first
+place, he has altogether washed his hands of allegory; a species of
+fiction open to a thousand objections. In the next place, he is
+infinitely more brief than his prototype. And in the third place, he
+philosophizes and moralizes (though not indeed in a very sound strain),
+as well as paints--provides food for the mind as well as the
+eye--kindles the feeling as well as gratifies the sense. Thus far, then,
+we are among the admirers of his Lordship. But it is to be lamented,
+that what was well conceived is, from the temperament of his mind, ill
+executed; that his philosophy is, strictly speaking, "only philosophy so
+called;" that the moral emotions he feels, and is likely to communicate,
+are of a character rather to offend and pollute the mind, than to sooth
+or to improve it. This defect, however, we fear, is to be charged, not
+upon the poet, but upon the man, at least upon his principles. But,
+whatever be the cause, the consequences are dreadful. Indeed, we do not
+hesitate to say, that the temperament of his mind is the ruin of his
+poem. We shall take the liberty, as we have intimated, of touching upon
+these defects as moral delinquincies, under another head; but for the
+present we wish to notice them merely as poetical errors.
+
+The legitimate object, then, of poetry, as we have said, is to
+_instruct_ by _pleasing_; and, c�teris paribus, that poem is the best
+which conveys the noblest lessons in the most attractive form. If, in
+reply to this, it is urged that the heathen poets, and especially Homer,
+taught no lesson to his readers; we answer, that he taught all the
+lessons which, in his own days, were deemed of highest importance to his
+country. The first object of philosophers and other teachers, in those
+days, was to make good soldiers, and therefore to condemn the vices
+which interfered with successful warfare. Now be it remembered, that the
+grand topic of the Iliad is the fatal influence of the wrath of kings on
+the success of armies. Its first words are [Greek: M�NIN aeide]. Besides
+this, the Iliad upholds the national mythology, or the only accredited
+religion; and by a bold fiction, bordering upon truth, displays in an
+Elysium and Tartarus, the eternal mansions of the good and bad, the
+strongest incentive to virtue and penalty to vice. Indeed, that both
+this and the Odyssey had a moral object, and that this object was
+recognized by the ancients, may be inferred from Horace, who says of
+Homer, in reference to the first poem:
+
+    "Qui, quid sit pulchrum, quid turpe, quid utile, quid non,
+    Plenius ac melius Chrysippo aut Crantore dicit."
+
+And as to the second:
+
+    "Rursum--quid virtus, et quid sapientia possit,
+    Utile proposuit nobis exemplar Ulyssem." Epist. I. 2.
+
+Many of the Odes of Horace had a patriotic subject--his Epistles and
+Satires, with those of Juvenal and Persius, were the sermons of the
+day. Virgil chiefly proposed to himself to exalt in his hero the
+character of a patriot, and, in his fictitious history, the dignity of
+his country. If the lessons they taught were of small importance or
+doubtful value, or if they often forget to "teach" in their ambition to
+"please," this is to be charged rather on the age than on the poet. They
+taught the best lessons they knew; and were satisfied to please only
+when they had nothing better to do. In modern times, it will not be
+questioned that the greatest poets have ever endeavoured to enshrine
+some moral or intellectual object in their verse. Milton calls Spenser
+"our sage serious Spenser, whom I dare be known to think a better
+teacher than Scotus or Aquinas." In like manner, the Absalom and
+Achitophel, the Hind and Panther of Dryden, the philosophic strain of
+Pope, the immortal page of Milton, and the half-inspired numbers of the
+Task, are all, in their various ways, attempts of poets to improve or
+reform the world. Every species of poetry, indeed, has received fresh
+lustre, and even taken a new place in Parnassian dignity, by a larger
+infusion of moral sentiment into its numbers. The ancient ballad has
+arisen to new dignity through the moral touches, we wish they had been
+less rare, of a Scott; and the stanza of Spenser has acquired new
+interest in the hands of Lord Byron, from the philosophical air which it
+wears. Numbers without morals are the man without "the glory." We
+sincerely wish that the moral tone of his Lordship's poem had been less
+liable to exception.
+
+His Lordship, we believe, is acquainted with ancient authors. Let him
+turn to Quinctilian, and he will find a whole chapter to prove that a
+great writer must be a good man. Let him go to Longinus, and he will
+read that a man who would write sublimely, "must spare no labour to
+educate his soul to grandeur, and impregnate it with great and generous
+ideas"--that "the faculties of the soul will then grow stupid, their
+spirit will be lost, and good sense and genius lie in ruins, when the
+care and study of man is engaged about the mortal, the worthless part of
+himself, and he has ceased to cultivate virtue, and polish his nobler
+part, his soul." Or, if poetical authority alone will satisfy a poet,
+let him learn from one of the finest of our modern poems:
+
+    "But of our souls the high-born loftier part,
+    Th' ethereal energies that touch the heart,
+    Conceptions ardent, laboring thought intense,
+    Creative fancy's wild magnificence,
+    And all the dread sublimities of song:
+    These, Virtue, these to thee alone belong:
+    Chill'd, by the breath of vice, their radiance dies,
+    And brightest burns when lighted at the skies:
+    Like vestal flames to purest bosoms given,
+    And kindled only by a ray from heaven."[K]
+
+That the object of poetry, however, is not simply to instruct, but to
+"instruct by _pleasing_," is too obvious to need a proof. However the
+original object of measure and rhythm may have been to graft truth on
+the memory, and associate it with music; they are perpetuated by the
+universal conviction that they delight the ear. Like the armour which
+adorns the modern hall, they were contrived for use, but are continued
+for ornament.
+
+Assuming this, then, to be a just definition of poetry, we repeat our
+assertion, that, in the work before us, the temperament of mind in the
+poet creates the grand defect of the poetry. If poetry should instruct,
+then he is a defective poet whose lessons rather revolt than improve the
+mind. If poetry should please, then he is a bad poet who offends the
+eye by calling up the most hideous images--who shews the world through a
+discoloured medium--who warms the heart by no generous feelings--who
+uniformly turns to us the worst side of men and things--who goes on his
+way grumbling, and labours hard to make his readers as peevish and
+wretched as himself. The tendency of the strain of Homer is to transform
+us for the moment into heroes; of Cowper, into saints; of Milton, into
+angels: but Lord Byron would almost degrade us into a Thersites or a
+Caliban; or lodge us, as fellow-grumblers, in the style of Diogenes, or
+any of his two or four-footed snarling or moody posterity. Now his
+Lordship, we trust, is accessible upon much higher grounds; but he will
+perceive that mere regard for his poetical reputation ought to induce
+him to change his manner. If, as Longinus instructs us, a man must feel
+sublimely to write sublimely, a poet must find pleasure in the objects
+of nature before him, if he hope to give pleasure to others. Let him
+remember, that not merely his conceptions, but his mind and character
+are to be imparted to us in his verse. He will, in a measure, "stamp an
+image of himself!" The fire with which we are to glow must issue from
+him. Till this change take place in him, then, he can be no great poet.
+It is Heraclitus who mourns in his pages, or Zeno who scolds, or Zoilus
+who lashes; but we look in vain for the poet, for the living fountain of
+our innocent pleasures, for the artificer of our literary delight, for
+the hand which, as by enchantment, snatches us from the little cares of
+life, whirls us into the boundless regions of imagination, "exhausting"
+one "world," and imagining others, to supply pictures which may refresh
+and charm the mind.[L] Lord Byron shews us man and nature, like the
+phantasmagoria, _in shade_; whereas, in poetry at least, we desire to
+see them illuminated by all the friendly rays which a benevolent
+imagination can impart.
+
+We have hitherto confined ourselves to an examination of the influence
+of the principles and temper of this work upon its literary pretensions;
+but his Lordship will forgive us if we now put off the mere critic for a
+moment, and address him in that graver character which we assume to
+ourselves in the title of our work. In truth, we are deeply affected by
+the spectacle his poem presents to us. As the minor poems at the
+conclusion of the work breathe the same spirit, suggest the same doubts,
+and employ the same language with the "Childe Harold" we are compelled
+to recognise the author in the hero whom he has painted. In fact, the
+disclaimer, already noticed in the Preface, seems merely like one of
+those veils worn to draw attention to the face rather than to baffle it:
+and in the work before us we are forced to recognise a character, which,
+since Rousseau gave his Confessions to the public, has scarcely ever, we
+think, darkened the horizon of letters. The reader of the "Confessions"
+is dismayed to find a man frankly avowing the most disgraceful vices;
+abandoning them, not upon principle, but merely because they have ceased
+to gratify; prepared to return to them if they promise to reward him
+better; without natural affection, neither loving, nor beloved by any;
+without peace, without hope, "without God in the world." When we search
+into the mysterious cause of this autobiographical phenomenon, we at
+once discover that Rousseau's immeasurable vanity betrayed him into a
+belief, that even his vices would vanish in the blaze of his
+excellencies; and that the world would worship him, as idolaters do
+their mishapen gods, in spite of their ugliness. The confessions of
+Lord Byron, we regret to say, bear something of an analogy to those of
+the philosopher of Geneva. Are they, then, to be traced to the _same
+source_? He plainly is far from indifferent to the opinion of
+by-standers: can he, then, conceive that this peep into the window of
+his breast must not revolt every virtuous eye? Can he boldly proclaim
+his violations of decency and of sobriety; his common contempt for all
+modifications of religion; his monstrous belief in the universal rest or
+annihilation of man in a future state; and forget that he is one of
+those who
+
+    "Play such tricks before high heaven,
+    As make the angels weep;"
+
+as offend against all moral taste; as attempt to shake the very pillars
+of domestic happiness and of public security?
+
+It is, however, a matter of congratulation, that his Lordship, in common
+with the republican Confessor, has not revealed his creed without very
+honestly displaying the influence of this creed upon his own mind. We
+should not, indeed, have credited a man of his sentiments, had he
+assured us he was happy: happiness takes no root in such soils. But it
+is still better to have his own testimony to the unmixed misery of
+licentiousness and unbelief. It is almost comforting to be told, if we
+dared to draw comfort out of the well of another man's miseries, that
+
+    "Though gay companions o'er the bowl
+      Dispel awhile the sense of ill;
+    Though pleasure fires the maddening soul,
+      The heart--the heart is lonely still."
+
+It is consolatory also to contrast the peace and triumph of the dying
+Christian, with the awful uncertainty, or rather the sullen despair,
+which breathe in these verses.
+
+    "'Aye--but to die and go'--alas,
+      Where all have gone, and all must go;
+    To be the nothing that I was,
+      Ere born to life and living woe.
+
+    "Count o'er the joys thine hours have seen,
+      Count o'er thy days from anguish free;
+    And know, whatever thou hast been,
+      'Tis something better not to be."
+
+Nor can religion be more powerfully recommended than by the following
+avowal of an apostle of the opposite system.
+
+    "No, for myself, so dark my fate
+      Through every turn of life has been,
+    Man and the world I so much hate,
+      I care not when I quit the scene."
+
+But whilst, for the benefit of others, we thus avail ourselves of the
+antidote supplied by his Lordship to his own poison, we would wish also
+that he might feel the efficacy of it himself. Could we hope that so
+humble a work as this would reach the lofty sphere in which he moves, we
+would solemnly say to him: "You are wretched, but will nothing make you
+happy? You hate all men; will nothing warm you with new feelings? You
+are (as you say) hated by all; will nothing make you an object of
+affection? Suppose yourself the victim of some disease, which resisted
+many ordinary applications; but that all who used one medicine uniformly
+pronounced themselves cured:--would it be worthy of a philosopher not
+merely to neglect the remedy, but to traduce it? Such, however, my Lord,
+is the fatuity of your own conduct as to the religion of Christ.
+Thousands, as wretched as yourself, have found 'a Comforter' in Him;
+thousands, having stepped into these waters, have been healed of their
+disease; thousands, touching the hem of His garment, have found 'virtue
+go out of it.' Beggared then of every other resource, try this.
+'Acquaint yourself with God, and be at peace.'" His Lordship may
+designate this language by that expressive monosyllable, cant; and may
+possibly, before long, hunt us down, as a sort of mad March hare, with
+the blood-hounds of his angry muse. But we hope better things of him. We
+assure him, that, whatever may be true of others, we do not "hate him."
+As Christians, even he who professes to be unchristian is dear to us. We
+regard the waste of his fine talents, and the laboured suppression and
+apparent extinction of his better feelings, with the deepest
+commiseration and sorrow. We long to see him escape from the black cloud
+which, by what may fairly be called his "black art," he has conjured up
+around himself. We hope to know him as a future buttress of his shaken
+country, and as a friend of his yet "unknown God." Should this change,
+by the mercy of God, take place, what pangs would many passages of his
+present work cost him! Happy should we be, could we persuade him, in the
+bare anticipation of such a change, even now to contrive for his future
+happiness, by expunging sentiments that would then so much embitter it.
+Should he never change; yet, such an act would prove, that, at least, he
+meditated no cruel invasion upon the joys of others. Even Rousseau
+taught his child religion, as a delusion essential to happiness. The
+philosophic Tully also, if a belief in futurity were an error, deemed it
+one with which it was impossible to part. Let the author then, at all
+events, leave us in unmolested possession of our supposed privileges.
+_He_ plainly knows no noble or "royal way" to happiness. _We_ find in
+religion a bark that rides the waves in every storm; a sun that never
+goes down; a living fountain of waters. Religion is suffered to change
+its aspect and influence according to the eye and faith of the
+examiner. Like one side of the pillar of the wilderness, it may merely
+darken and perplex his Lordship's path: to millions it is like the
+opposite side of that pillar to the Israelites, the symbol of Deity; the
+pillar of hallowed flame, which lights and guides, and cheers them as
+they toil onward through the pilgrimage of life. Could we hear any voice
+proclaim of him, as of one reclaimed from as inveterate, though more
+honest, prejudices, "behold, he prayeth;" we should hope that here also
+the scales would drop from the eyes, and his Lordship become an eloquent
+defender and promulgator of the religion which he now scorns.--_The
+Christian Observer_.
+
+[Footnote J: Hume.]
+
+[Footnote K: Grant's Restoration of Learning in the East.]
+
+[Footnote L: We cannot resist the temptation of saying, that in this
+highest department of the poet's art, we know of no living poet who will
+bear a comparison with Mr. Southey.]
+
+
+
+
+PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
+
+
+_Alastor_; or, The Spirit of Solitude; and other Poems. By Percy Bysshe
+Shelley. Crown 8vo. pp. 101. Baldwin, and Co. 1816.
+
+We must candidly own that these poems are beyond our comprehension; and
+we did not obtain a clue to their sublime obscurity, till an address to
+Mr. Wordsworth explained in what school the author had formed his taste.
+We perceive, through the "darkness visible" in which Mr. Shelley veils
+his subject, some beautiful imagery and poetical expressions: but he
+appears to be a poet "whose eye, in a fine phrenzy rolling," seeks only
+such objects as are "above this visible diurnal sphere;" and therefore
+we entreat him, for the sake of his reviewers as well as of his other
+readers, (if he has any,) to subjoin to his next publication an _ordo_,
+a glossary, and copious notes, illustrative of his allusions and
+explanatory of his meaning.--_The Monthly Review_.
+
+
+_The Cenci. A Tragedy, in Five Acts_. By PERCY BYSSHE SHELL[E]Y. Italy.
+1819. pp. 104.
+
+There has lately arisen a new-fangled style of poetry, facetiously
+yclept the Cockney School, that it would really be worth any one's while
+to enter as a candidate. The qualifications are so easy, that he need
+never doubt the chance of his success, for he has only to knock, and it
+shall be opened unto him. The principal requisites for admission, in a
+literary point of view, are as follows. First, an inordinate share of
+affectation and conceit, with a few occasional good things sprinkled,
+like green spots of verdure in a wilderness, with a "parc� quod satis
+est manu." Secondly, a prodigious quantity of assurance, that neither
+God nor man can daunt, founded on the honest principle of "who is like
+unto me?" and lastly, a contempt for all institutions, moral and divine,
+with secret yearnings for aught that is degrading to human nature, or
+revolting to decency. These qualifications ensured, a regular initiation
+into the Cockney mysteries follows as a matter of course, and the novice
+enlists himself under their banners, proud of his newly-acquired honors,
+and starched up to the very throat in all the prim stiffness of his
+intellect. A few symptoms of this literary malady appeared as early as
+the year 1795, but it then assumed the guise of simplicity and pathos.
+It was a poetical Lord Fanny. It wept its pretty self to death by
+murmuring brooks, and rippling cascades, it heaved delicious sighs over
+sentimental lambs, and love-lorn sheep, apostrophized donkies in the
+innocence of prim�val nature; sung tender songs to tender nightingales;
+went to bed without a candle, that it might gaze on the chubby faces of
+the stars; discoursed sweet nothings to all who would listen to its
+nonsense; and displayed (_horrendum dictu_) the acute profundity of its
+grief in ponderous folios and spiral duodecimos. The literary world,
+little suspecting the dangerous consequences of this distressing malady,
+suffered it to germinate in silence; and not until they became
+thoroughly convinced that the disorder was of an epidemical nature, did
+they start from their long continued lethargy. But it was then too late!
+The evil was incurable; it branched out into the most vigorous
+ramifications, and following the scriptural admonition, "Increase and
+multiply," disseminated its poetry and its prose throughout a great part
+of England. As a dog, when once completely mad, is never satisfied until
+he has bitten half a dozen more, so the Cockney professors, in laudable
+zeal for the propagation of their creed, were never at rest until they
+had spread their own doctrines around them. They stood on the house tops
+and preached, 'till of a verity they were black in the face with the
+heating quality of their arguments; they stationed themselves by the bye
+roads and hedges, to discuss the beauties of the country; they looked
+out from their garrett [_sic_] windows in Grub-street, and exclaimed,
+"_O! rus, quando ego te aspiciam_;" and gave such afflicting tokens of
+insanity, that the different reviewers and satirists of the day kindly
+laced them in the strait jackets of their criticism. "But all this
+availeth _us_ nothing," exclaimed the critics, "so long as _we_ see
+Mordecai the Jew sitting at the gate of the Temple; that is to say, as
+long as there is one Cockney pericranium left unscalped by the tomahawks
+of our satire." But notwithstanding the strenuous exertions of all those
+whose brains have not been cast in the mould of this new species of
+intellectual dandyism, the evil has been daily and even hourly
+increasing; and so prodigious is the progressive ratio of its march,
+that the _worthy_ Society for the Suppression of Vice should be called
+upon to eradicate it. It now no longer masks its real intentions under
+affected purity of sentiment; its countenance has recently acquired a
+considerable addition of brass, the glitter of which has often been
+mistaken for sterling coin, and incest, adultery, murder, blasphemy, are
+among other favorite topics of its discussion. It seems to delight in an
+utter perversion of all moral, intellectual, and religious qualities. It
+gluts over the monstrous deformities of nature; finds gratification in
+proportion to the magnitude of the crime it extolls; and sees no virtue
+but in vice; no sin, but in true feeling. Like poor Tom, in Lear, whom
+the foul fiend has possessed for many a day, it will run through
+ditches, through quagmires, and through bogs, to see a man stand on his
+head for the exact space of half an hour. Ask the reason of this raging
+appetite for eccentricity, the answer is, such a thing is out of the
+beaten track of manhood, _ergo_, it is praiseworthy.
+
+Among the professors of the Cockney school, Mr. Percy Bysshe Shell[e]y
+is one of the most conspicuous. With more fervid imagination and
+splendid talents than nine-tenths of the community, he yet prostitutes
+those talents by the utter degradation to which he unequivocally
+consigns them. His Rosalind and Helen, his Revolt of Islam, and his
+Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude, while they possess beauties of a
+superior order, are lamentably deficient in morality and religion. The
+doctrines they inculcate are of the most evil tendency; the characters
+they depict are of the most horrible description; but in the midst of
+these disgraceful passages, there are beauties of such exquisite, such
+redeeming qualities, that we adore while we pity--we admire while we
+execrate--and are tempted to exclaim with the last of the Romans, "Oh!
+what a fall is _here_, my countrymen." In the modern Eclogue of Rosalind
+and Helen in particular, there is a pensive sadness, a delicious
+melancholy, nurst in the purest, the deepest recesses of the heart, and
+springing up like a fountain in the desert, that pervades the poem, and
+forms its principal attraction. The rich yet delicate imagery that is
+every where scattered over it, is like the glowing splendor of the
+setting sun, when he retires to rest, amid the blessings of exulting
+nature. It is the balmy breath of the summer breeze, the twilight's last
+and holiest sigh. In the dramatic poem before us, the interest is of a
+different nature; it is dark--wild, and unearthly. The characters that
+appear in it are of no mortal stamp; they are d�mons in human guise,
+inscrutable in their actions, subtle in their revenge. Each has his
+smile of awful meaning--his purport of hellish tendency. The tempest
+that rages in his bosom is irrepressible but by death. The phrenzied
+groan that diseased imagination extorts from his perverted soul, is as
+the thunder-clap that reverberates amid the cloud-capt summits of the
+Alps. It is the storm that convulses all nature--that lays bare the face
+of heaven, and gives transient glimpses of destruction yet to be. Then
+in the midst of all these accumulated horrors comes the gentle Beatrice,
+
+    "Who in the gentleness of thy sweet youth
+    Hast never trodden on a worm, or bruised
+    A living flower, but thou hast pitied it
+    With needless tears." Page 50.
+
+She walks in the light of innocence; in the unclouded sunshine of
+loveliness and modesty; but her felicity is transient as the calm that
+precedes the tempest; and in the very whispers of her virtue, you hear
+the indistinct muttering of the distant thunder. She is conceived in
+the true master spirit of genius; and in the very instant of her
+parricide, comes home to our imagination fresh in the spring time of
+innocence--hallowed in the deepest recesses of melancholy. But
+notwithstanding all these transcendant qualities, there are numerous
+passages that warrant our introductory observations respecting the
+Cockney school, and plunge "full fathom five," into the profoundest
+depths of the Bathos. While, therefore, we do justice to the abilities
+of the author, we shall bestow a passing smile or two on his unfortunate
+Cockney propensities.
+
+The following are the principal incidents of the play. Count Cenci, the
+_d�mon_ of the piece, delighted with the intelligence of the death of
+two of his sons, recounts at a large assembly, specially invited for the
+purpose, the circumstances of the dreadful transaction. Lucretia, his
+wife, Beatrice, his daughter, and the other guests, are of course
+startled at his transports; but when they hear his awful imprecations,
+
+    "Oh, thou bright wine whose purple splendor leaps
+    And bubbles gaily in this golden bowl
+    Under the lamp light, as my spirits do,
+    To hear the death of my accursed sons!
+    Could I believe thou wert their mingled blood,
+    Then would I taste thee like a sacrament,
+    And pledge with thee the mighty Devil in Hell,
+    Who, if a father's curses, as men say,
+    Climb with swift wings after their children's souls,
+    And drag them from the very throne of Heaven,
+    Now triumphs in my triumph!--But thou art
+    Superfluous; I have drunken deep of joy
+    And I will taste no other wine tonight--"
+
+their horror induces them to leave the room. Beatrice, in the meantime,
+who has been rating her parent for his cruelty, is subjected to every
+species of insult; and he sends her to her own apartment, with the
+hellish intention of prostituting her innocence, and contaminating, as
+he pithily expresses it, "both body and soul." The second act introduces
+us to a t�te-a-t�te between Bernardo (another of Cenci's sons) and
+Lucretia; when their conference is suddenly broken off, by the abrupt
+entrance of Beatrice, who has escaped from the pursuit of the Count. She
+recapitulates the injuries she has received from her father, the most
+atrocious of which appear to be, that he has given them all "ditch
+water" to drink, and "buffalos" to eat. But before we proceed further,
+we have a word or two respecting this same ditch water, and buffalo's
+flesh, which we shall mention, as a piece of advice to the author. It is
+well known, we believe, in a case of lunacy, that the first thing
+considered is, whether the patient has done any thing sufficiently
+foolish, to induce his relatives to apply for a statute against him: now
+any malicious, evil-minded person, were he so disposed, might make
+successful application to the court against the luckless author of the
+_Cenci, a tragedy in five acts_. Upon which the judge with all the
+solemnity suitable to so melancholy a circumstance as the decay of the
+mental faculties, would ask for proofs of the defendant's lunacy; upon
+which the plaintiff would produce the affecting episode of the ditch
+water and buffalo flesh; upon which the judge would shake his head, and
+acknowledge the insanity; upon which the defendant would be incarcerated
+in Bedlam.
+
+To return from this digression, we are next introduced to Giacomo,
+another of Cenci's hopeful progeny, who, like the rest, has a dreadful
+tale to unfold of his father's cruelty towards him. Orsino, the favored
+lover of Beatrice, enters at the moment of his irritation; and by the
+most artful pleading ultimately incites him to the murder of his
+father, in which he is to be joined by the rest of the family. The plot,
+after one unlucky attempt, succeeds; and at the moment of its
+accomplishment, is discovered by a messenger, who is despatched to the
+lonely castle of Petrella (one of the Count's family residences), with a
+summons of attendance from the Pope. We need hardly say that the
+criminals are condemned; and not even the lovely Beatrice is able to
+escape the punishment of the law. The agitation she experiences after
+the commission of the incest, is powerfully descriptive.
+
+              "How comes this hair undone?
+    Its wandering strings must be what blind me so,
+    And yet I tied it fast.--O, horrible!
+    The pavement sinks under my feet! The walls
+    Spin round! I see a woman weeping there,
+    And standing calm and motionless, whilst I
+    Slide giddily as the world reels--My God!
+    The beautiful blue heaven is flecked with blood!
+    The sunshine on the floor is black! The air
+    Is changed to vapours such as the dead breathe
+    In charnel pits! Pah! I am choaked! There creeps
+    A clinging, black, contaminating mist
+    About me--'tis substantial, heavy, thick,
+    I cannot pluck it from me, for it glues
+    My fingers and my limbs to one another,
+    And eats into my sinews, and dissolves
+    My flesh to a pollution, poisoning
+    The subtle, pure, and inmost spirit of life!"
+
+At first she concludes that she is mad; but then pathetically checks
+herself by saying, "No, I am dead." Lucretia naturally enough inquires
+into the cause of her disquietude, and but too soon discovers, by the
+broken hints of the victim, the source of her mental agitation.
+Terrified at their defenceless state, they then mutually conspire with
+Orsino against the Count; and Beatrice proposes to way-lay him (a plot,
+however, which fails) in a _deep and dark ravine_, as he journeys to
+Petrella.
+
+              "But I remember
+    Two miles on this side of the fort, the road
+    Crosses a deep ravine; 'tis rough and narrow,
+    And winds with short turns down the precipice;
+    And in its depth there is a mighty rock,
+    Which has, from unimaginable years,
+    Sustained itself with terror and with toil
+    Over a gulph, and with the agony
+    With which it clings seems slowly coming down;
+    Even as a wretched soul hour after hour,
+    Clings to the mass of life; yet clinging, leans;
+    And leaning, makes more dark the dread abyss
+    In which it fears to fall: beneath this crag
+    Huge as despair, as if in weariness,
+    The melancholy mountain yawns--below,
+    You hear but see not an impetuous torrent
+    Raging among the caverns, and a bridge
+    Crosses the chasm; and high above there grow,
+    With intersecting trunks, from crag to crag,
+    Cedars, and yews, and pines; whose tangled hair
+    Is matted in one solid roof of shade
+    By the dark ivy's twine. At noon day here
+    'Tis twilight, and at sunset blackest night."
+
+Giacomo, meanwhile, who was privy to the transaction, awaits the arrival
+of Orsino, with intelligence of the murder, in a state of the most
+fearful torture and suspence.
+
+          "Tis midnight, and Orsino comes not yet.
+              (_Thunder, and the sound of a storm._)
+    What! can the everlasting elements
+    Feel with a worm like man? If so, the shaft
+    Of mercy-winged lightning would not fall
+    On stones and trees. My wife and children sleep:
+    They are now living in unmeaning dreams:
+    But I must wake, still doubting if that deed
+    Be just which was most necessary. O,
+    Thou unreplenished lamp! whose narrow fire
+    Is shaken by the wind, and on whose edge
+    Devouring darkness hovers! Thou small flame,
+    Which, as a dying pulse rises and falls,
+    Still flickerest up and down, how very soon,
+    Did I not feed thee, thou wouldst fail and be
+    As thou hadst never been! So wastes and sinks
+    Even now, perhaps, the life that kindled mine:
+    But that no power can fill with vital oil
+    That broken lamp of flesh. Ha! 'tis the blood
+    Which fed these veins that ebbs till all is cold:
+    It is the form that moulded mine that sinks
+    Into the white and yellow spasms of death:
+    It is the soul by which mine was arrayed
+    In God's immortal likeness which now stands
+    Naked before Heaven's judgment seat!
+                        (_a bell strikes_)
+                    One! Two!
+    The hours crawl on; and when my hairs are white
+    My son will then perhaps be waiting thus.
+    Tortured between just hate and vain remorse;
+    Chiding the tardy messenger of news
+    Like those which I expect. I almost wish
+    He be not dead, although my wrongs are great;
+    Yet--'tis Orsino's step."
+
+We envy not the feelings of any one who can read the curses that Cenci
+invokes on his daughter, when she refuses to repeat her guilt, without
+the strongest disgust, notwithstanding the intense vigor of the
+imprecations
+
+      "_Cen._ (_Kneeling_) God!
+    Hear me! If this most specious mass of flesh,
+    Which thou hast made my daughter; this my blood,
+    This particle of my divided being;
+    Or rather, this my bane and my disease,
+    Whose sight infects and poisons me; this devil
+    Which sprung from me as from a hell, was meant
+    To aught good use; if her bright loveliness
+    Was kindled to illumine this dark world;
+    If nursed by thy selectest dew of love
+    Such virtues blossom in her as should make
+    The peace of life, I pray thee for my sake
+    As thou the common God and Father art
+    Of her, and me, and all; reverse that doom!
+    Earth, in the name of God, let her food be
+    Poison, until she be encrusted round
+    With leprous stains! Heaven, rain upon her head
+    The blistering drops of the Maremma's dew,
+    Till she be speckled like a toad; parch up
+    Those love-enkindled lips, warp those fine limbs
+    To loathed lameness! All beholding sun,
+    Strike in thine envy those life darting eyes
+    With thine own blinding beams!
+      _Lucr._ Peace! Peace!
+    For thine own sake unsay those dreadful words.
+    When high God grants he punishes such prayers.
+      _Cen._ (_Leaping up, and throwing his right hand toward Heaven_)
+    He does his will, I mine! This in addition,
+    That if she have a child--
+      _Lucr._ Horrible thought!
+      _Cen._ That if she ever have a child; and thou,
+    Quick Nature! I adjure thee by thy God,
+    That thou be fruitful in her, and encrease
+    And multiply, fulfilling his command,
+    And my deep imprecation! May it be
+    A hideous likeness of herself, that as
+    From a distorting mirror, she may see
+    Her image mixed with what she most abhors,
+    Smiling upon her from her nursing breast.
+    And that the child may from its infancy
+    Grow, day by day, more wicked and deformed,
+    Turning her mother's love to misery:
+    And that both she and it may live until
+    It shall repay her care and pain with hate,
+    Or what may else be more unnatural.
+    So he may hunt her thro' the clamorous scoffs
+    Of the loud world to a dishonoured grave.
+    Shall I revoke this curse? Go, bid her come,
+    Before my words are chronicled in Heaven.
+                              (_Exit_ LUCRETIA.)
+    I do not feel as if I were a man,
+    But like a fiend appointed to chastise
+    The offences of some unremembered world.
+    My blood is running up and down my veins;
+    A fearful pleasure makes it prick and tingle:
+    I feel a giddy sickness of strange awe;
+    My heart is beating with an expectation
+    Of horrid joy."
+
+_Oh�! jam satis est!!_--The _minuti�_ of this _affectionate_ parent's
+curses forcibly remind us of the equally minute excommunication so
+admirably recorded in Tristram Shandy. But Sterne has the start of him;
+for though Percy Bysshe Shell[e]y, Esquire, has contrived to include in
+the imprecations of Cenci, the eyes, head, lips, and limbs of his
+daughter, the other has anticipated his measures, in formally and
+specifically anathematizing the lights, lungs, liver, and _all odd
+joints_, without excepting even the great toe of his victim.--To proceed
+in our review; the dying expostulations of poor Beatrice, are beautiful
+and affecting, though occasionally tinged with the Cockney style of
+burlesque; for instance, Bernado asks, when they tear him from the
+embraces of his sister,
+
+    "Would ye divide body from soul?"
+
+On which the judge sturdily replies--"That is the headsman's business."
+The idea of approaching execution paralyses the soul of Beatrice, and
+she thus frantically expresses her horror.
+
+      "_Beatr._ (_Wildly_) Oh,
+    My God! Can it be possible I have
+    To die so suddenly? So young to go
+    Under the obscure, cold, rotting, wormy ground!
+    To be nailed down into a narrow place;
+    To see no more sweet sunshine; hear no more
+    Blithe voice of living thing; muse not again
+    Upon familiar thoughts, sad, yet thus lost.
+    How fearful! to be nothing! Or to be--
+    What? O, where am I? Let me not go mad!
+    Sweet Heaven, forgive weak thoughts! If there should be
+    No God, no Heaven, no Earth in the void world;
+    The wide, grey, lampless, deep, unpeopled world!
+    If all things then should be--my father's spirit
+    His eye, his voice, his touch surrounding me;
+    The atmosphere and breath of my dead life!
+    If sometimes, as a shape more like himself,
+    Even the form which tortured me on earth,
+    Masked in grey hairs and wrinkles, he should come
+    And wind me in his hellish arms, and fix
+    His eyes on mine, and drag me down, down, down!"
+
+The author, in his preface, observes that he has committed only one
+plagiarism in his play. But with all the triumph of vanity, we here
+stoutly convict him of having wilfully, maliciously and despitefully
+stolen, the pleasing idea of the repetition of "down, down, down," from
+the equally pathetic and instructive ditty of "up, up, up," in Tom
+Thumb; the exordium or prolegomena to which floweth _sweetly_ and
+_poetically_ thus:--
+
+    "Here we go up, up, up,
+    And here we go _down, down, down_!"
+
+In taking leave of Mr. Shelley, we have a few observations to whisper in
+his ear. That he has the seedlings of poetry in his composition no one
+can deny, after the perusal of many of our extracts; that he employs
+them worthily, is more than can be advanced. His style, though disgraced
+by occasional puerilities, and simpering affectations, is in general
+bold, vigorous, and manly; but the disgraceful fault to which we object
+in his writings, is the scorn he every where evinces for all that is
+moral or religious. If he must be skeptical--if he must be lax in his
+human codes of excellence, let him be so; but in God's name let him not
+publish his principles, and cram them down the throats of others.
+Existence in its present state is heavy enough; and if we take away the
+idea of eternal happiness, however visionary it may appear to some, who
+or what is to recompence us for the loss we have sustained? Will
+scepticism lighten the bed of death?--Will vice soothe the pillow of
+declining age? If so! let us all be sceptics, let us all be vicious; but
+until their admirable efficacy is proved, let us jog on the beaten
+course of life, neither influenced by the scoff of infidelity, nor
+fascinated by the dazzling but flimsy garb of licentiousness and
+immorality.--_The London Magazine_.
+
+
+ADONAIS. _An Elegy, on the Death of Mr. John Keats_. By P.B. Shelley.
+
+We have already given some of our columns to this writer's merits, and
+we will not now repeat our convictions of his incurable absurdity. On
+the last occasion of our alluding to him, we were compelled to notice
+his horrid licentiousness and profaneness, his fearful offences to all
+the maxims that honorable minds are in the habit of respecting, and his
+plain defiance of Christianity. On the present occasion we are not met
+by so continued and regular a determination of insult, though there are
+atrocities to be found in the poem quite enough to make us caution our
+readers against its pages. Adonais is an elegy after _the manner of
+Moschus_, on a foolish young man, who, after writing some volumes of
+very weak, and, in the greater part, of very indecent poetry, died some
+time since of a consumption: the breaking down of an infirm constitution
+having, in all probability, been accelerated by the discarding his neck
+cloth, a practice of the cockney poets, who look upon it as essential to
+genius, inasmuch as neither Michael Angelo, Raphael or Tasso are
+supposed to have worn those antispiritual incumbrances. In short, as the
+vigour of Sampson lay in his hair, the secret of talent with these
+persons lies in the neck; and what aspirations can be expected from a
+mind enveloped in muslin. Keats caught cold in training for a genius,
+and, after a lingering illness, died, to the great loss of the
+Independents of South America, whom he had intended to visit with an
+English epic poem, for the purpose of exciting them to liberty. But
+death, even the death of the radically presumptuous profligate, is a
+serious thing; and as we believe that Keats was made presumptuous
+chiefly by the treacherous puffing of his cockney fellow gossips, and
+profligate in his poems merely to make them saleable, we regret that he
+did not live long enough to acquire common sense, and abjure the
+pestilent and perfidious gang who betrayed his weakness to the grave,
+and are now panegyrising his memory into contempt. For what is the
+praise of cockneys but disgrace, or what honourable inscription can be
+placed over the dead by the hands of notorious libellers, exiled
+adulterers, and avowed atheists.
+
+Adonais, an Elegy, is the form in which Mr. Shelley puts forth his woes.
+We give a verse at random, premising that there is no story in the
+elegy, and that it consists of fifty-five stanzas, which are, to our
+seeming, altogether unconnected, interjectional, and nonsensical. We
+give one that we think among the more comprehensible. An address to
+Urania:--
+
+      "Most musical of mourners, weep anew!
+      Not all to that bright station dared to climb;
+    And _happier they their happiness who knew_,
+      Whose _tapers yet burn thro' that night of time
+    In which suns perish'd_; Others more sublime,
+      Struck by the _envious_ wroth of man or GOD!!
+    _Have sunk extinct in their refulgent prime_;
+      And some yet live," &c.----
+
+Now what is the meaning of this, or of any sentence of it, except indeed
+that horrid blasphemy which attributes crime to the Great Author of all
+virtue! The rest is mere empty absurdity. If it were worth our while to
+dilate on the folly of the production, we might find examples of every
+species of the ridiculous within those few pages.
+
+Mr. Shelley summons all kinds of visions round the grave of this young
+man, who, if he has now any feeling of the earth, must shrink with
+shame and disgust from the touch of the hand that could have written
+that impious sentence. These he classifies under names, the greater
+number as new we believe to poetry as strange to common sense. Those
+are--
+
+                  ----"Desires and _Adorations_
+      Winged _Persuasions_ and veiled Destinies,
+    _Splendours_, and _Glooms_, and glimmering _Incarnations_
+      Of hopes and fears and twilight Phantasies,
+    And Sorrow with her family of _Sighs_,
+      And Pleasure, _blind with tears_! led by the _gleam_
+    Of her own _dying_ SMILE instead of eyes!!"
+
+Let our readers try to imagine these weepers, and close with "_blind_
+Pleasure led," by what? "by the _light_ of _her own dying
+smile_--instead of _eyes_!!!"
+
+We give some specimens of Mr. S.'s
+
+                _Nonsense--pastoral._
+      "_Lost Echo_ sits amid the _voiceless mountains_,[M]
+      And feeds her grief with his remember'd lay,
+    _And will no more reply_ to winds and fountains."
+                _Nonsense--physical._
+    --"for whose disdain she (Echo) pin'd away
+    Into a _shadow_ of all _sounds_!"
+                _Nonsense--vermicular._
+    "Flowers springing from the corpse
+    ----------------------illumine death
+    And _mock_ the _merry_ worm that wakes beneath."
+                _Nonsense--pathetic._
+      "Alas! that all we lov'd of him should be
+      But for our grief, as if it had not been,
+    And _grief itself be mortal_! WOE IS ME!"
+                _Nonsense--nondescript._
+      "In the death chamber for a moment Death,
+    _Blush'd to annihilation_!"
+                _Nonsense--personal._
+    "A pardlike spirit, beautiful and swift--
+      A love in _desolation mask'd_;--a Power
+    Girt _round with weakness_;--it can scarce _uplift_
+    The _weight_ of the _superincumbent hour_!"
+
+We have some idea that this fragment of character is intended for Mr.
+Shelley himself. It closes with a passage of memorable and ferocious
+blasphemy:--
+
+      ---------------"He with a sudden hand
+    Made bare his branded and ensanguin'd brow,
+    Which was like Cain's or CHRIST'S!!!"
+
+What can be said to the wretched person capable of this daring
+profanation. The name of the first murderer--the accurst of God--brought
+into the same aspect image with that of the Saviour of the World! We are
+scarcely satisfied that even to quote such passages may not be criminal.
+The subject is too repulsive for us to proceed even in expressing our
+disgust for the general folly that makes the Poem as miserable in point
+of authorship, as in point of principle. We know that among a certain
+class this outrage and this inanity meet with some attempt at
+palliation, under the idea that frenzy holds the pen. That any man who
+insults the common order of society, and denies the being of God, is
+essentially mad we never doubted. But for the madness, that retains
+enough of rationality to be wilfully mischievous, we can have no more
+lenity than for the appetites of a wild beast. The poetry of the work is
+_contemptible_--a mere collection of bloated words heaped on each other
+without order, harmony, or meaning; the refuse of a schoolboy's
+common-place book, full of the vulgarisms of pastoral poetry, yellow
+gems and blue stars, bright Phoebus and rosy-fingered Aurora; and of
+this stuff is Keats's wretched Elegy compiled.
+
+We might add instances of like incomprehensible folly from every stanza.
+A heart _keeping_, a mute _sleep_, and death _feeding_ on a mute
+_voice_, occur in one verse (page 8); Spring in despair "throws down her
+_kindling_ buds as if she Autumn were," a thing we never knew Autumn do
+with buds of any sort, the kindling kind being unknown to our botany; a
+_green lizard_ is like an _unimprisoned flame_, _waking_ out of its
+_trance_ (page 13). In the same page the _leprous corpse_ touched by the
+tender spirit of Spring, so as to exhale itself in flowers, is compared
+to "_incarnations of the stars, when splendour is changed to
+fragrance_!!!" Urania (page 15) _wounds_ the "invisible palms" of her
+tender feet by treading on human hearts as she journeys to see the
+corpse. Page 22, somebody is asked to "clasp with panting soul the
+pendulous earth," an image which, we take it, exceeds that of
+Shakespeare, to "put a girdle about it in forty minutes."
+
+It is so far a fortunate thing that this piece of impious and utter
+absurdity can have little circulation in Britain. The copy in our hands
+is one of some score sent to the Author's intimates from Pisa, where it
+has been printed in a quarto form "with the types of Didot," and two
+learned Epigraphs from Plato and Moschus. Solemn as the subject is, (for
+in truth we must grieve for the early death of any youth of literary
+ambition,) it is hardly possible to help laughing at the mock solemnity
+with which Shelley charges the Quarterly Review for having murdered his
+friend with--a critique![N] If criticism killed the disciples of that
+school, Shelley would not have been alive to write an Elegy on
+another:--but the whole is most farcical from a pen which on other
+occasions, has treated of the soul, the body, life and death agreeably
+to the opinions, the principles, and the practice of Percy Bysshe
+Shelley.--_The Literary Gazette_.
+
+[Footnote M: Though there is _no Echo_ and the mountains are
+_voiceless_, the woodmen, nevertheless, in the last line of this verse
+hear "a drear murmur between their Songs!!"]
+
+[Footnote N: This would have done excellently for a coroner's inquest
+like that on _Honey_, which lasted _thirty_ days, and was facetiously
+called the "Honey-moon."]
+
+
+
+
+JOHN KEATS
+
+
+_Endymion: A Poetic Romance_. By John Keats. London. 1818. pp. 207.
+
+Reviewers have been sometimes accused of not reading the works which
+they affected to criticise. On the present occasion we shall anticipate
+the author's complaint, and honestly confess that we have not read his
+work. Not that we have been wanting in our duty--far from it--indeed, we
+have made efforts almost as superhuman as the story itself appears to
+be, to get through it; but with the fullest stretch of our perseverance,
+we are forced to confess that we have not been able to struggle beyond
+the first of the four books of which this Poetic Romance consists. We
+should extremely lament this want of energy, or whatever it may be, on
+our parts, were it not for one consolation--namely, that we are no
+better acquainted with the meaning of the book through which we have so
+painfully toiled, than we are with that of the three which we have not
+looked into.
+
+It is not that Mr. Keats, (if that be his real name, for we almost doubt
+that any man in his senses would put his real name to such a rhapsody,)
+it is not, we say, that the author has not powers of language, rays of
+fancy, and gleams of genius--he has all these; but he is unhappily a
+disciple of the new school of what has been somewhere called Cockney
+poetry; which may be defined to consist of the most incongruous ideas in
+the most uncouth language.
+
+Of this school, Mr. Leigh Hunt, as we observed in a former Number,
+aspires to be the hierophant. Our readers will recollect the pleasant
+recipes for harmonious and sublime poetry which he gave us in his
+preface to 'Rimini,' and the still more facetious instances of his
+harmony and sublimity in the verses themselves; and they will recollect
+above all the contempt of Pope, Johnson, and such like poetasters and
+pseudo-critics, which so forcibly contrasted itself with Mr. Leigh
+Hunt's self-complacent approbation of
+
+    --'all the things itself had wrote,
+    Of special merit though of little note.'
+
+This author is a copyist of Mr. Hunt; but he is more unintelligible,
+almost as rugged, twice as diffuse, and ten times more tiresome and
+absurd than his prototype, who, though he impudently presumed to seat
+himself in the chair of criticism, and to measure his own poetry by his
+own standard, yet generally had a meaning. But Mr. Keats has advanced no
+dogmas which he was bound to support by examples; his nonsense therefore
+is quite gratuitous; he writes it for its own sake, and, being bitten by
+Mr. Leigh Hunt's insane criticism, more than rivals the insanity of his
+poetry.
+
+Mr. Keats's preface hints that his poem was produced under peculiar
+circumstances.
+
+     'Knowing within myself (he says) the manner in which this Poem has
+     been produced, it is not without a feeling of regret that I make it
+     public.--What manner I mean, will be _quite clear_ to the reader,
+     who must soon perceive great inexperience, immaturity, and every
+     error denoting a feverish attempt, rather than a deed
+     accomplished.'--_Preface_, p. vii.
+
+We humbly beg his pardon, but this does not appear to us to be _quite so
+clear_--we really do not know what he means--but the next passage is
+more intelligible.
+
+     'The two first books, and indeed the two last, I feel sensible are
+     not of such completion as to warrant their passing the
+     press.'--_Preface_, p. vii.
+
+Thus 'the two first books' are, even in his own judgment, unfit to
+appear, and 'the two last' are, it seems, in the same condition--and as
+two and two make four, and as that is the whole number of books, we have
+a clear and, we believe, a very just estimate of the entire work.
+
+Mr. Keats, however, deprecates criticism on this 'immature and feverish
+work' in terms which are themselves sufficiently feverish; and we
+confess that we should have abstained from inflicting upon him any of
+the tortures of the '_fierce hell_' of criticism, which terrify his
+imagination, if he had not begged to be spared in order that he might
+write more; if we had not observed in him a certain degree of talent
+which deserves to be put in the right way, or which, at least, ought to
+be warned of the wrong; and if, finally, he had not told us that he is
+of an age and temper which imperiously require mental discipline.
+
+Of the story we have been able to make out but little; it seems to be
+mythological, and probably relates to the loves of Diana and Endymion;
+but of this, as the scope of the work has altogether escaped us, we
+cannot speak with any degree of certainty; and must therefore content
+ourselves with giving some instances of its diction and
+versification:--and here again we are perplexed and puzzled.--At first
+it appeared to us, that Mr. Keats had been amusing himself and wearying
+his readers with an immeasurable game at _bouts-rim�s_; but, if we
+recollect rightly, it is an indispensable condition at this play, that
+the rhymes when filled up shall have a meaning; and our author, as we
+have already hinted, has no meaning. He seems to us to write a line at
+random, and then he follows not the thought excited by this line, but
+that suggested by the _rhyme_ with which it concludes. There is hardly
+a complete couplet enclosing a complete idea in the whole book. He
+wanders from one subject to another, from the association, not of the
+ideas but of sounds, and the work is composed of hemistichs which, it is
+quite evident, have forced themselves upon the author by the mere force
+of the catchwords on which they turn.
+
+We shall select, not as the most striking instance, but as that least
+liable to suspicion, a passage from the opening of the poem.
+
+    ----'Such the sun, the moon,
+    Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon
+    For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
+    With the green world they live in; and clear rills
+    That for themselves a cooling covert make
+    'Gainst the hot season; the mid forest brake,
+    Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
+    And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
+    We have imagined for the mighty dead; &c. &c.'--pp. 3, 4.
+
+Here it is clear that the word, and not the idea, _moon_ produces the
+simple sheep and their shady _boon_, and that 'the _dooms_ of the mighty
+dead' would never have intruded themselves but for the '_fair musk-rose
+blooms_.'
+
+Again.
+
+    'For 'twas the morn: Apollo's upward fire
+    Made every eastern cloud a silvery pyre
+    Of brightness so unsullied, that therein
+    A melancholy spirit well might win
+    Oblivion, and melt out his essence fine
+    Into the winds: rain-scented eglantine
+    Gave temperate sweets to that well-wooing sun;
+    The lark was lost in him; cold springs had run
+    To warm their chilliest bubbles in the grass;
+    Man's voice was on the mountains; and the mass
+    Of nature's lives and wonders puls'd tenfold,
+    To feel this sun-rise and its glories old.'--p. 8.
+
+Here Apollo's _fire_ produces a _pyre_, a silvery pyre of clouds,
+_wherein_ a spirit may _win_ oblivion and melt his essence _fine_, and
+scented _eglantine_ gives sweets to the _sun_, and cold springs had
+_run_ into the _grass_, and then the pulse of the _mass_ pulsed
+_tenfold_ to feel the glories _old_ of the new-born day, &c.
+
+One example more.
+
+    'Be still the unimaginable lodge
+    For solitary thinkings; such as dodge
+    Conception to the very bourne of heaven,
+    Then leave the naked brain: be still the leaven,
+    That spreading in this dull and clodded earth
+    Gives it a touch ethereal--a new birth.'--p. 17.
+
+_Lodge, dodge_--_heaven, leaven_--_earth, birth_; such, in six words, is
+the sum and substance of six lines.
+
+We come now to the author's taste in versification. He cannot indeed
+write a sentence, but perhaps he may be able to spin a line. Let us see.
+The following are specimens of his prosodial notions of our English
+heroic metre.
+
+    'Dear as the temple's self, so does the moon,
+    The passion poesy, glories infinite.'--p. 4.
+
+    'So plenteously all weed-hidden roots.'--p. 6.
+
+    'Of some strange history, potent to send.'--p. 18.
+
+    'Before the deep intoxication.'--p. 27.
+
+    'Her scarf into a fluttering pavilion.'--p. 33.
+
+    'The stubborn canvass for my voyage prepared--.'--p. 39.
+
+    '"Endymion! the cave is secreter
+    Than the isle of Delos. Echo hence shall stir
+    No sighs but sigh-warm kisses, or light noise
+    Of thy combing hand, the while it travelling cloys
+    And trembles through my labyrinthine hair."'--p. 48.
+
+By this time our readers must be pretty well satisfied as to the meaning
+of his sentences and the structure of his lines: we now present them
+with some of the new words with which, in imitation of Mr. Leigh Hunt,
+he adorns our language.
+
+We are told that 'turtles _passion_ their voices,' (p. 15); that 'an
+arbour was _nested_,' (p. 23); and a lady's locks '_gordian'd_ up,' (p.
+32); and to supply the place of the nouns thus verbalized Mr. Keats,
+with great fecundity, spawns new ones; such as 'men-slugs and human
+_serpentry_,' (p. 41); the '_honey-feel_ of bliss,' (p. 45); 'wives
+prepare _needments_,' (p. 13)--and so forth.
+
+Then he has formed new verbs by the process of cutting off their natural
+tails, the adverbs, and affixing them to their foreheads; thus, 'the
+wine out-sparkled,' (p. 10); the 'multitude up-followed,' (p. 11); and
+'night up-took,' (p. 29). 'The wind up-blows,' (p. 32); and the 'hours
+are down-sunken,' (p. 36.)
+
+But if he sinks some adverbs in the verbs, he compensates the language
+with adverbs and adjectives which he separates from the parent stock.
+Thus, a lady 'whispers _pantingly_ and close,' makes '_hushing_ signs,'
+and steers her skiff into a '_ripply_ cove,' (p. 23); a shower falls
+'_refreshfully_,' (45); and a vulture has a '_spreaded_ tail,' (p. 44.)
+
+But enough of Mr. Leigh Hunt and his simple neophyte.--If any one should
+be bold enough to purchase this 'Poetic Romance,' and so much more
+patient, than ourselves, as to get beyond the first book, and so much
+more fortunate as to find a meaning, we entreat him to make us
+acquainted with his success; we shall then return to the task which we
+now abandon in despair, and endeavour to make all due amends to Mr.
+Keats and to our readers.--_The Quarterly Review_.
+
+
+COCKNEY SCHOOL OF POETRY.
+
+No[.] IV.
+
+    ------------------------------OF KEATS,
+    THE MUSES' SON OF PROMISE, AND WHAT FEATS
+    HE YET MAY DO, &C.
+
+CORNELIUS WEBB.
+
+Of all the manias of this mad age, the most incurable as well as the
+most common, seems to be no other than the _Metromanie_. The just
+celebrity of Robert Burns and Miss Baillie has had the melancholy effect
+of turning the heads of we know not how many farm-servants and unmarried
+ladies; our very footmen compose tragedies, and there is scarcely a
+superannuated governess in the island that does not leave a roll of
+lyrics behind her in her band-box. To witness the disease of any human
+understanding, however feeble, is distressing; but the spectacle of an
+able mind reduced to a state of insanity is of course ten times more
+afflicting. It is with such sorrow as this that we have contemplated the
+case of Mr John Keats. This young man appears to have received from
+nature talents of an excellent, perhaps even of a superior
+order--talents which, devoted to the purposes of any useful profession,
+must have rendered him a respectable, if not an eminent citizen. His
+friends, we understand, destined him to the career of medicine, and he
+was bound apprentice some years ago to a worthy apothecary in town. But
+all has been undone by a sudden attack of the malady to which we have
+alluded. Whether Mr John had been sent home with a diuretic or composing
+draught to some patient far gone in the poetical mania, we have not
+heard. This much is certain, that he has caught the infection, and that
+thoroughly. For some time we were in hopes, that he might get off with a
+violent fit or two; but of late the symptoms are terrible. The phrenzy
+of the "Poems" was bad enough in its way; but it did not alarm us half
+so seriously as the calm, settled, imperturbable, drivelling idiocy of
+"Endymion." We hope, however, that in so young a person, and with a
+constitution originally so good, even now the disease is not utterly
+incurable. Time, firm treatment, and rational restraint, do much for
+many apparently hopeless invalids; and if Mr Keats should happen, at
+some interval of reason, to cast his eye upon our pages, he may perhaps
+be convinced of the existence of his malady, which, in such cases, is
+often all that is necessary to put the patient in a fair way of being
+cured.
+
+The readers of the Examiner newspaper were informed, some time ago, by a
+solemn paragraph, in Mr Hunt's best style, of the appearance of two new
+stars of glorious magnitude and splendour in the poetical horizon of the
+land of Cockaigne. One of these turned out, by and by, to be no other
+than Mr John Keats. This precocious adulation confirmed the wavering
+apprentice in his desire to quit the gallipots, and at the same time
+excited in his too susceptible mind a fatal admiration for the character
+and talents of the most worthless and affected of all the versifiers of
+our time. One of his first productions was the following sonnet,
+"_written on the day when Mr Leigh Hunt left prison_." It will be
+recollected, that the cause of Hunt's confinement was a series of libels
+against his sovereign, and that its fruit was the odious and incestuous
+"Story of Rimini."
+
+    "What though, for shewing truth to flattered state,
+    _Kind Hunt_ was shut in prison, yet has he,
+    In his immortal spirit been as free
+    As the sky-searching lark and as elate.
+    Minion of grandeur! think you he did wait?
+    Think you he nought but prison walls did see,
+    Till, so unwilling, thou unturn'dst the key?
+    Ah, no! far happier, nobler was his fate!
+    _In Spenser's halls!_ he strayed, and bowers fair,
+    Culling enchanted flowers; and he flew
+    _With daring Milton!_ through the fields of air;
+    To regions of his own his genius true
+    Took happy flights. Who shall his fame impair
+    When thou art dead, and all thy wretched crew?"
+
+The absurdity of the thought in this sonnet is, however, if possible,
+surpassed in another, "_addressed to Haydon_" the painter, that clever,
+but most affected artist, who as little resembles Raphael in genius as
+he does in person, notwithstanding the foppery of having his hair curled
+over his shoulders in the old Italian fashion. In this exquisite piece
+it will be observed, that Mr Keats classes together WORDSWORTH, HUNT,
+and HAYDON, as the three greatest spirits of the age, and that he
+alludes to himself, and some others of the rising brood of Cockneys, as
+likely to attain hereafter an equally honourable elevation. Wordsworth
+and Hunt! what a juxta-position! The purest, the loftiest, and, we do
+not fear to say it, the most classical of living English poets, joined
+together in the same compliment with the meanest, the filthiest, and the
+most vulgar of Cockney poetasters. No wonder that he who could be guilty
+of this should class Haydon with Raphael, and himself with Spencer
+[_sic_].
+
+    "Great spirits now on earth are sojourning;
+    He of the cloud, the cataract, the lake,
+    Who on Helvellyn's summit, wide awake,
+    Catches his freshness from Archangel's wing:
+    _He of the rose, the violet, the spring,
+    The social smile, the chain for Freedom's sake_:
+    And lo!--whose steadfastness would never take
+    A meaner sound than Raphael's whispering.
+    And other spirits there are standing apart
+    Upon the forehead of the age to come;
+    These, these will give the world another heart,
+    And other pulses. _Hear ye not the hum
+    Of mighty workings?----
+    Listen awhile ye nations, and be dumb._"
+
+The nations are to listen and be dumb! and why, good Johnny Keats?
+because Leigh Hunt is editor of the Examiner, and Haydon has painted the
+judgment of Solomon, and you and Cornelius Webb, and a few more city
+sparks, are pleased to look upon yourselves as so many future
+Shakespeares and Miltons! The world has really some reason to look to
+its foundations! Here is a _tempestas in matul�_ with a vengeance. At
+the period when these sonnets were published Mr Keats had no hesitation
+in saying that he looked on himself as "_not yet_ a glorious denizen of
+the wide heaven of poetry," but he had many fine soothing visions of
+coming greatness, and many rare plans of study to prepare him for it.
+The following we think is very pretty raving.
+
+              "Why so sad a moan?
+    Life is the rose's hope while yet unblown;
+    The reading of an ever-changing tale;
+    The light uplifting of a maiden's veil;
+    A pigeon tumbling in clear summer air;
+    A laughing school-boy, without grief or care,
+    Riding the springing branches of an elm.
+
+    "O for ten years, that I may overwhelm
+    Myself in poesy; so I may do the deed
+    That my own soul has to itself decreed.
+    Then will I pass the countries that I see
+    In long perspective, and continually
+    Taste their pure fountains. First the realm I'll pass
+    Of Flora, and old Pan: sleep in the grass,
+    Feed on apples red, and strawberries,
+    And choose each pleasure that my fancy sees.
+    Catch the white-handed nymphs in shady places,
+    To woo sweet kisses from averted faces,--
+    Play with their fingers, touch their shoulders white
+    Into a pretty shrinking with a bite
+    As hard as lips can make it: till agreed,
+    A lovely tale of human life we'll read.
+    And one will teach a tame dove how it best
+    May fan the cool air gently o'er my rest;
+    Another, bending o'er her nimble tread,
+    Will set a green robe floating round her head,
+    And still will dance with ever varied ease,
+    Smiling upon the flowers and the trees:
+    Another will entice me on, and on
+    Through almond blossoms and rich cinnamon;
+    Till in the bosom of a leafy world
+    We rest in silence, like two gems upcurl'd
+    In the recesses of a pearly shell."
+
+Having cooled a little from this "fine passion," our youthful poet
+passes very naturally into a long strain of foaming abuse against a
+certain class of English Poets, whom, with Pope at their head, it is
+much the fashion with the ignorant unsettled pretenders of the present
+time to undervalue. Begging these gentlemens' pardon, although Pope was
+not a poet of the same high order with some who are now living, yet, to
+deny his genius, is just about as absurd as to dispute that of
+Wordsworth, or to believe in that of Hunt. Above all things, it is most
+pitiably ridiculous to hear men, of whom their country will always have
+reason to be proud, reviled by uneducated and flimsy striplings, who are
+not capable of understanding either their merits, or those of any other
+_men of power_--fanciful dreaming tea-drinkers, who, without logic
+enough to analyze a single idea, or imagination enough to form one
+original image, or learning enough to distinguish between the written
+language of Englishmen and the spoken jargon of Cockneys, presume to
+talk with contempt of some of the most exquisite spirits the world ever
+produced, merely because they did not happen to exert their faculties in
+laborious affected descriptions of flowers seen in window-pots, or
+cascades heard at Vauxhall; in short, because they chose to be wits,
+philosophers, patriots, and poets, rather than to found the Cockney
+school of versification, morality and politics, a century before its
+time. After blaspheming himself into a fury against Boileau, &c. Mr
+Keats comforts himself and his readers with a view of the present more
+promising aspect of affairs; above all, with the ripened glories of the
+poet of Rimini. Addressing the manes of the departed chiefs of English
+poetry, he informs them, in the following clear and touching manner, of
+the existence of "him of the Rose," &c.
+
+              "From a thick brake,
+    Nested and quiet in a valley mild,
+    Bubbles a pipe; fine sounds are floating wild
+    About the earth. Happy are ye and glad."
+
+From this he diverges into a view of "things in general." We smile when
+we think to ourselves how little most of our readers will understand of
+what follows.
+
+    "Yet I rejoice: a myrtle fairer than
+    E'er grew in Paphos, from the bitter weeds
+    Lifts its sweet head into the air, and feeds
+    A silent space with ever sprouting green.
+    All tenderest birds there find a pleasant screen,
+    Creep through the shade with jaunty fluttering,
+    Nibble the little cupped flowers and sing.
+    Then let us clear away the choaking _thorns_
+    From round its gentle stem; let the young _fawns_,
+    Yeaned in after times, when we are flown,
+    Find a fresh sward beneath it, overgrown
+    With simple flowers: let there nothing be
+    More boisterous than a lover's bended knee;
+    Nought more ungentle than the placid look
+    Of one who leans upon a closed book;
+    Nought more untranquil than the grassy slopes
+    Between two hills. All hail delightful hopes!
+    As she was wont, th' imagination
+    Into most lovely labyrinths will be gone,
+    And they shall be accounted poet kings
+    Who simply tell the most heart-easing things.
+    O may these joys be ripe before I die.
+    Will not some say that I presumptuously
+    Have spoken? that from hastening disgrace
+    'Twere better far to hide my foolish face?
+    That whining boyhood should with reverence bow
+    Ere the dreadful thunderbolt could reach? How!
+    If I do hide myself, it sure shall be
+    In the very fane, the light of poesy."
+
+From some verses addressed to various amiable individuals of the other
+sex, it appears, notwithstanding all this gossamer-work, that Johnny's
+affections are not entirely confined to objects purely etherial. Take,
+by way of specimen, the following prurient and vulgar lines, evidently
+meant for some young lady east of Temple-bar.
+
+              "Add too, the sweetness
+    Of thy honied voice; the neatness
+    Of thine ankle lightly turn'd:
+    With those beauties, scarce discern'd,
+    Kept with such sweet privacy,
+    That they seldom meet the eye
+    Of the little loves that fly
+    Round about with eager pry.
+    Saving when, with freshening lave,
+    Thou dipp'st them in the taintless wave;
+    Like twin water lilies, born
+    In the coolness of the morn
+    O, if thou hadst breathed then,
+    Now the Muses had been ten.
+    Couldst thou wish for lineage _higher_
+    Than twin sister of _Thalia_?
+    At last for ever, evermore,
+    Will I call the Graces four."
+
+Who will dispute that our poet, to use his own phrase (and rhyme),
+
+    "Can mingle music fit for the soft _ear_
+    Of Lady _Cytherea_."
+
+So much for the opening bud; now for the expanded flower. It is time to
+pass from the juvenile "Poems," to the mature and elaborate "Endymion, a
+Poetic Romance." The old story of the moon falling in love with a
+shepherd, so prettily told by a Roman Classic, and so exquisitely
+enlarged and adorned by one of the most elegant of German poets, has
+been seized upon by Mr John Keats, to be done with as might seem good
+unto the sickly fancy of one who never read a single line either of Ovid
+or of Wieland. If the quantity, not the quality, of the verses dedicated
+to the story is to be taken into account, there can be no doubt that Mr
+John Keats may now claim Endymion entirely to himself. To say the truth,
+we do not suppose either the Latin or the German poet would be very
+anxious to dispute about the property of the hero of the "Poetic
+Romance." Mr Keats has thoroughly appropriated the character, if not the
+name. His Endymion is not a Greek shepherd, loved by a Grecian goddess;
+he is merely a young Cockney rhymester, dreaming a phantastic dream at
+the full of the moon. Costume, were it worth while to notice such a
+trifle, is violated in every page of this goodly octavo. From his
+prototype Hunt, John Keats has acquired a sort of vague idea, that the
+Greeks were a most tasteful people, and that no mythology can be so
+finely adapted for the purposes of poetry as theirs. It is amusing to
+see what a hand the two Cockneys make of this mythology; the one
+confesses that he never read the Greek Tragedians, and the other knows
+Homer only from Chapman; and both of them write about Apollo, Pan,
+Nymphs, Muses, and Mysteries, as might be expected from persons of their
+education. We shall not, however, enlarge at present upon this subject,
+as we mean to dedicate an entire paper to the classical attainments and
+attempts of the Cockney poets. As for Mr Keats' "Endymion," it has just
+as much to do with Greece as it has with "old Tartary the fierce;" no
+man, whose mind has ever been imbued with the smallest knowledge or
+feeling of classical poetry or classical history, could have stooped to
+profane and vulgarise every association in the manner which has been
+adopted by this "son of promise." Before giving any extracts, we must
+inform our readers, that this romance is meant to be written in English
+heroic rhyme. To those who have read any of Hunt's poems, this hint
+might indeed be needless. Mr Keats has adopted the loose, nerveless
+versification, and the Cockney rhymes of the poet of Rimini; but in
+fairness to that gentleman, we must add, that the defects of the system
+are tenfold more conspicuous in his disciple's work than in his own. Mr
+Hunt is a small poet, but he is a clever man. Mr Keats is a still
+smaller poet, and he is only a boy of pretty abilities, which he has
+done everything in his power to spoil.
+
+[Quotes almost two hundred lines of _Endymion_ with brief interpolated
+comment.]
+
+And now, good-morrow to "the Muses' son of Promise;" as for "the feats
+he yet may do," as we do not pretend to say, like himself, "Muse of my
+native land am I inspired," we shall adhere to the safe old rule of
+_pauca verba_. We venture to make one small prophecy, that his
+bookseller will not a second time venture �50 upon any thing he can
+write. It is a better and a wiser thing to be a starved apothecary than
+a starved poet; so back to the shop Mr John, back to "plasters, pills,
+and ointment boxes," &c. But, for Heaven's sake, young Sangrado, be a
+little more sparing of extenuatives and soporifics in your practice than
+you have been in your poetry.
+
+Z.
+
+--_Blackwood's Magazine_.
+
+
+
+
+ALFRED LORD TENNYSON
+
+
+_Timbuctoo: a Poem, which obtained the Chancellor's Medal at the
+Cambridge Commencement_, _by A. Tennyson, of Trinity College,
+Cambridge._
+
+We have accustomed ourselves to think, perhaps without any good reason,
+that poetry was likely to perish among us for a considerable period
+after the great generation of poets which is now passing away. The age
+seems determined to contradict us, and that in the most decided manner,
+for it has put forth poetry by a young man, and that where we should
+least expect it, namely, in a prize-poem. These productions have often
+been ingenious and elegant, but we have never before seen one of them
+which indicated really first-rate poetical genius, and which would have
+done honour to any man that ever wrote. Such, we do not hesitate to
+affirm, is the little work before us; and the examiners seem to have
+felt about it like ourselves, for they have assigned the prize to its
+author, though the measure in which he writes was never before (we
+believe) thus selected for honour. We extract a few lines to justify our
+admiration.
+
+[Quotes fifty lines beginning:--
+
+    "A curve of whitening, flashing, ebbing light!
+    A rustling of white wings! the bright descent," etc.]
+
+How many men have lived for a century who could equal this?--_The
+Athen�um_.
+
+
+_Poems by Alfred Tennyson_. pp. 163. London. 12mo. 1833.
+
+This is, as some of his marginal notes intimate, Mr. Tennyson's second
+appearance. By some strange chance we have never seen his first
+publication, which, if it at all resembles its younge[r] brother, must
+be by this time so popular that any notice of it on our part would seem
+idle and presumptuous; but we gladly seize this opportunity of repairing
+an unintentional neglect, and of introducing to the admiration of our
+more sequestered readers a new prodigy of genius--another and a brighter
+star of that galaxy or _milky way_ of poetry of which the lamented Keats
+was the harbinger; and let us take this occasion to sing our palinode on
+the subject of 'Endymion.' We certainly did not[O] discover in that poem
+the same degree of merit that its more clear-sighted and prophetic
+admirers did. We did not foresee the unbounded popularity which has
+carried it through we know not how many editions; which has placed it on
+every table; and, what is still more unequivocal, familiarized it in
+every mouth. All this splendour of fame, however, though we had not the
+sagacity to anticipate, we have the candour to acknowledge: and we
+request that the publisher of the new and beautiful edition of Keats's
+works now in the press, with graphic illustrations by Calcott and
+Turner, will do us the favour and the justice to notice our conversion
+in his prolegomena.
+
+Warned by our former mishap, wiser by experience, and improved, as we
+hope, in taste, we have to offer Mr. Tennyson our tribute of unmingled
+approbation, and it is very agreeable to us, as well as to our readers,
+that our present task will be little more than the selection, for their
+delight, of a few specimens of Mr. Tennyson's singular genius, and the
+venturing to point out, now and then, the peculiar brilliancy of some of
+the gems that irradiate his poetical crown.
+
+A prefatory sonnet opens to the reader the aspirations of the young
+author, in which, after the manner of sundry poets, ancient and modern,
+he expresses his own peculiar character, by wishing himself to be
+something that he is not. The amorous Catullus aspired to be a sparrow;
+the tuneful and convivial Anacreon (for we totally reject the
+supposition that attributes the [Greek: Eithe lur� chal� genoim�n] to
+Alc�us) wished to be a lyre and a great drinking cup; a crowd of more
+modern sentimentalists have desired to approach their mistresses as
+flowers, tunicks, sandals, birds, breezes, and butterflies;--all poor
+conceits of narrow-minded poetasters! Mr. Tennyson (though he, too,
+would, as far as his true love is concerned, not unwillingly 'be an
+earring,' 'a girdle,' and 'a necklace,' p. 45) in the more serious and
+solemn exordium of his works ambitions a bolder metamorphosis--he wishes
+to be--_a river_!
+
+SONNET.
+
+    'Mine be the strength of spirit fierce and free,
+    Like some broad river rushing down _alone_'--
+
+rivers that travel in company are too common for his taste--
+
+    'With the self-same impulse wherewith he was thrown'--
+
+a beautiful and harmonious line--
+
+    'From his loud fount upon the echoing lea:--
+    Which, with _increasing_ might, doth _forward flee_'--
+
+Every word of this line is valuable--the natural progress of human
+ambition is here strongly characterized--two lines ago he would have
+been satisfied with the _self-same_ impulse--but now he must have
+_increasing_ might; and indeed he would require all his might to
+accomplish his object of _fleeing forward_, that is, going backwards and
+forwards at the same time. Perhaps he uses the word _flee_ for _flow_;
+which latter he could not well employ in _this_ place, it being, as we
+shall see, essentially necessary to rhyme to _Mexico_ towards the end of
+the sonnet--as an equivalent to _flow_ he has, therefore, with great
+taste and ingenuity, hit on the combination of _forward flee_--
+
+    ------------'doth forward flee
+    By town, and tower, and hill, and cape, and isle,
+    And in the middle of the green _salt_ sea
+    Keeps his blue waters fresh for many a mile.'
+
+A noble wish, beautifully expressed, that he may not be confounded with
+the deluge of ordinary poets, but, amidst their discoloured and briny
+ocean, still preserve his own bright tints and sweet savor. He may be at
+ease on this point--he never can be mistaken for any one else. We have
+but too late become acquainted with him, yet we assure ourselves that if
+a thousand anonymous specimens were presented to us, we should
+unerringly distinguish his by the total absence of any particle of
+_salt_. But again, his thoughts take another turn, and he reverts to the
+insatiability of human ambition:--we have seen him just now content to
+be a river, but as he _flees forward_, his desires expand into
+sublimity, and he wishes to become the great Gulfstream of the Atlantic.
+
+    'Mine be the power which ever to its sway
+    Will win _the wise at once_--
+
+We, for once, are wise, and he has won _us_--
+
+    'Will win the wise at once; and by degrees
+    May into uncongenial spirits flow,
+    Even as the great gulphstream of Flori_da_
+    Floats far away into the Northern seas
+    The lavish growths of southern Mexi_co_!'--p. 1.
+
+And so concludes the sonnet.
+
+The next piece is a kind of testamentary paper, addressed 'To ----,' a
+friend, we presume, containing his wishes as to what his friend should
+do for him when he (the poet) shall be dead--not, as we shall see, that
+he quite thinks that such a poet can die outright.
+
+    'Shake hands, my friend, across the brink
+      Of that deep grave to which I go.
+    Shake hands once more; I cannot sink
+      So far--far down, but I shall know
+      Thy voice, and answer from below!'
+
+Horace said 'non omnis moriar,' meaning that his fame should
+survive--Mr. Tennyson is still more vivacious, 'non _omnino_
+moriar,'--'I will not die at all; my body shall be as immortal as my
+verse, and however _low I may go_, I warrant you I shall keep all my
+wits about me,--therefore'
+
+    'When, in the darkness over me,
+      The four-handed mole shall scrape,
+    Plant thou no dusky cypress tree,
+      Nor wreath thy cap with doleful crape,
+      But pledge me in the flowing grape.'
+
+Observe how all ages become present to the mind of a great poet; and
+admire how naturally he combines the funeral cypress of classical
+antiquity with the crape hat-band of the modern undertaker.
+
+He proceeds:--
+
+    'And when the sappy field and wood
+      Grow green beneath the _showery gray_,
+    And rugged barks begin to bud,
+      And through damp holts, newflushed with May,
+      Ring sudden _laughters_ of the jay!'
+
+Laughter, the philosophers tell us, is a peculiar attribute of man--but
+as Shakespeare found 'tongues in trees and sermons in stones,' this true
+poet endows all nature not merely with human sensibilities but with
+human functions--the jay _laughs_, and we find, indeed, a little further
+on, that the woodpecker _laughs_ also; but to mark the distinction
+between their merriment and that of men, both jays and woodpeckers laugh
+upon melancholy occasions. We are glad, moreover, to observe, that Mr.
+Tennyson is prepared for, and therefore will not be disturbed by, human
+laughter, if any silly reader should catch the infection from the
+woodpeckers and the jays.
+
+    'Then let wise Nature work her will,
+      And on my clay her darnels grow,
+    Come only when the days are still,
+      And at my head-stone whisper low,
+      And tell me'--
+
+Now, what would an ordinary bard wish to be told under such
+circumstances?--why, perhaps, how his sweetheart was, or his child, or
+his family, or how the Reform Bill worked, or whether the last edition
+of his poems had been sold--_pap�_! our genuine poet's first wish is
+
+    'And tell me--_if the woodbines blow_!'
+
+When, indeed, he shall have been thus satisfied as to the _woodbines_,
+(of the blowing of which in their due season he may, we think, feel
+pretty secure,) he turns a passing thought to his friend--and another to
+his mother--
+
+    'If _thou_ art blest, my _mother's_ smile
+    Undimmed'--
+
+but such inquiries, short as they are, seem too common-place, and he
+immediately glides back into his curiosity as to the state of the
+weather and the forwardness of the spring--
+
+    'If thou art blessed--my mother's smile
+    Undimmed--_if bees are on the wing_?'
+
+No, we believe the whole circle of poetry does not furnish such another
+instance of enthusiasm for the sights and sounds of the vernal
+season!--The sorrows of a bereaved mother rank _after_ the blossoms of
+the _woodbine_, and just before the hummings of the _bee_; and this is
+_all_ that he has any curiosity about; for he proceeds:--
+
+    'Then cease, my friend, a little while
+    That I may'--
+
+'send my love to my mother,' or 'give you some hints about bees, which I
+have picked up from Arist�us, in the Elysian Fields,' or 'tell you how I
+am situated as to my own personal comforts in the world below'?--oh no--
+
+    'That I may--hear the _throstle sing_
+    His bridal song--the boast of spring.
+
+    Sweet as the noise, in parch�d plains,
+      Of bubbling wells that fret the stones,
+    (_If any sense in me remains_)
+      Thy words will be--thy cheerful tones
+      As welcome to--my _crumbling bones_!'--p. 4.
+
+'_If any sense in me remains!_'--This doubt is inconsistent with the
+opening stanza of the piece, and, in fact, too modest; we take upon
+ourselves to re-assure Mr. Tennyson, that, even after he shall be dead
+and buried, as much '_sense_' will still remain as he has now the good
+fortune to possess.
+
+We have quoted these first two poems in _extenso_, to obviate any
+suspicion of our having made a partial or delusive selection. We cannot
+afford space--we wish we could--for an equally minute examination of the
+rest of the volume, but we shall make a few extracts to show--what we
+solemnly affirm--that every page teems with beauties hardly less
+surprising.
+
+_The Lady of Shalott_ is a poem in four parts, the story of which we
+decline to maim by such an analysis as we could give, but it opens
+thus--
+
+    'On either side the river lie
+    Long fields of barley and of rye,
+    That clothe the wold and _meet the sky_--
+    And _through_ the field the road runs _by_.'
+
+The Lady of Shalott was, it seems, a spinster who had, under some
+unnamed penalty, a certain web to weave.
+
+    'Underneath the bearded barley,
+    The reaper, reaping late and early,
+    Hears her ever chanting cheerly,
+    Like an angel singing clearly....
+
+    'No time has she for sport or play,
+    A charm�d web she weaves alway;
+    A curse is on her if she stay
+    Her weaving either night or day....
+
+    'She knows not'--
+
+Poor lady, nor we either--
+
+    'She knows not what that curse may be,
+    Therefore she weaveth steadily;
+    Therefore no other care has she
+              The Lady of Shalott.'
+
+A knight, however, happens to ride past her window, coming
+
+              ----'from Camelot;[P]
+    From the bank, and _from_ the _river_,
+    He flashed _into_ the crystal _mirror_--
+    "Tirra lirra, tirra _lirra_," (_lirrar_?)
+                Sang Sir Launcelot.'--p. 15.
+
+The lady stepped to the window to look at the stranger, and forgot for
+an instant her web:--the curse fell on her, and she died; why, how, and
+wherefore, the following stanzas will clearly and pathetically
+explain:--
+
+    'A long drawn carol, mournful, holy,
+    She chanted loudly, chanted lowly,
+    Till her eyes were darkened _wholly_,
+    And her smooth face sharpened _slowly_,
+            Turned to towered Camelot.
+    For ere she reached upon the tide
+    The first house on the water side,
+    Singing in her song she died,
+            The Lady of Shalott!
+    Knight and burgher, lord and dame,
+    To the plank�d wharfage came;
+    Below _the stern_ they read her name,
+            The Lady of Shalott.'--p. 19.
+
+We pass by two--what shall we call them?--tales, or odes, or sketches,
+entitled 'Mariana in the South' and 'Ele�nore,' of which we fear we
+could make no intelligible extract, so curiously are they run together
+into one dreamy tissue--to a little novel in rhyme, called 'The Miller's
+Daughter.' Millers' daughters, poor things, have been so generally
+betrayed by their sweethearts, that it is refreshing to find that Mr.
+Tennyson has united himself to _his_ miller's daughter in lawful
+wedlock, and the poem is a history of his courtship and wedding. He
+begins with a sketch of his own birth, parentage, and personal
+appearance--
+
+    'My father's mansion, mounted high,
+      Looked down upon the village-spire;
+    I was a long and listless boy,
+      And son and heir unto the Squire.'
+
+But the son and heir of Squire Tennyson often descended from the
+'mansion mounted high;' and
+
+    'I met in all the close green ways,
+      While walking with my line and rod,'
+
+A metonymy for 'rod and line'--
+
+    'The wealthy miller's mealy face,
+      Like the _moon in an ivytod_.
+
+    'He looked so jolly and so good--
+      While fishing in the mill-dam water,
+    I laughed to see him as he stood,
+      And dreamt not of the miller's daughter.'--p. 33.
+
+He, however, soon saw, and, need we add, loved the miller's daughter,
+whose countenance, we presume, bore no great resemblance either to the
+'mealy face' of the miller, or 'the moon in an ivy-tod;' and we think
+our readers will be delighted at the way in which the impassioned
+husband relates to his wife how his fancy mingled enthusiasm for rural
+sights and sounds, with a prospect of the less romantic scene of her
+father's occupation.
+
+    'How dear to me in youth, my love,
+      Was everything about the mill;
+    The black, the silent pool above,
+      The pool beneath that ne'er stood still;
+
+    The meal-sacks on the whitened floor,
+      The dark round of the dripping wheel,
+    _The very air about the door,
+      Made misty with the floating meal!_'--p. 36.
+
+The accumulation of tender images in the following lines appears not
+less wonderful:--
+
+    'Remember you that pleasant day
+      When, after roving in the woods,
+    ('Twas April then) I came and lay
+      Beneath those _gummy_ chestnut-buds?
+
+    'A water-rat from off the bank
+      Plunged in the stream. With idle care,
+    Downlooking through the sedges rank,
+      I saw your troubled image there.
+
+    'If you remember, you had set,
+      Upon the narrow casement-edge,
+    A _long green box_ of mignonette
+      And you were leaning on the ledge.'
+
+The poet's truth to Nature in his 'gummy' chestnut-buds, and to Art in
+the 'long green box' of mignonette--and that masterful touch of likening
+the first intrusion of love into the virgin bosom of the Miller's
+daughter to the plunging of a water-rat into the mill-dam--these are
+beauties which, we do not fear to say, equal anything even in Keats.
+
+We pass by several songs, sonnets, and small pieces, all of singular
+merit, to arrive at a class, we may call them, of three poems derived
+from mythological sources--Oenone, the Hesperides, and the
+Lotos-eaters. But though the subjects are derived from classical
+antiquity, Mr. Tennyson treats them with so much originality that he
+makes them exclusively his own. Oenone, deserted by
+
+    'Beautiful Paris, evilhearted Paris,'
+
+sings a kind of dying soliloquy addressed to Mount Ida, in a formula
+which is _sixteen_ times repeated in this short poem.
+
+    'Dear mother Ida, hearken ere I die.'
+
+She tells her 'dear mother Ida,' that when evilhearted Paris was about
+to judge between the three goddesses, he hid her (Oenone) behind a
+rock, whence she had a full view of the _naked_ beauties of the rivals,
+which broke her heart.
+
+    '_Dear mother Ida, hearken ere I die_:--
+    It was the deep mid noon: one silvery cloud
+    Had _lost his way_ among the pined hills:
+    They came--_all three_--the Olympian goddesses.
+    Naked they came--
+
+        *    *    *    *    *    *
+
+    How beautiful they were! too beautiful
+    To look upon; but Paris was to me
+    _More lovelier_ than all the world beside.
+    _O mother Ida, hearken ere I die._'--p. 56.
+
+In the place where we have indicated a pause, follows a description,
+long, rich, and luscious--Of the three naked goddesses? Fye for
+shame--no--of the 'lily flower violet-eyed,' and the 'singing pine,' and
+the 'overwandering ivy and vine,' and 'festoons,' and 'gnarl�d boughs,'
+and 'tree tops,' and 'berries,' and 'flowers,' and all the _inanimate_
+beauties of the scene. It would be unjust to the _ingenuus pudor_ of the
+author not to observe the art with which he has veiled this ticklish
+interview behind such luxuriant trellis-work, and it is obvious that it
+is for our special sakes he has entered into these local details,
+because if there was one thing which 'mother Ida' knew better than
+another, it must have been her own bushes and brakes. We then have in
+detail the tempting speeches of, first--
+
+              'The imperial Olympian,
+    With arch�d eyebrow smiling sovranly,
+    Full-ey�d Here;'
+
+secondly of Pallas--
+
+              'Her clear and bar�d limbs
+    O'er-thwarted with the brazen-headed spear,'
+
+and thirdly--
+
+              'Idalian Aphrodite ocean-born,
+    Fresh as the foam, new-bathed in Paphian _wells_--'
+
+for one dip, or even three dips in one well, would not have been enough
+on such an occasion--and her succinct and prevailing promise of--
+
+    'The fairest and most loving _wife_ in Greece;'--
+
+upon evil-hearted Paris's catching at which prize, the tender and chaste
+Oenone exclaims her indignation, that she herself should not be
+considered fair enough, since only yesterday her charms had struck awe
+into--
+
+              'A wild and wanton pard,
+    Eyed like the evening-star, with playful tail--'
+
+and proceeds in this anti-Martineau rapture--
+
+              '_Most_ loving is _she_?'
+    'Ah me! my mountain shepherd, that my arms
+    Were wound about thee, and my hot lips prest
+    Close--close to thine in that quick-falling dew
+    Of _fruitful_ kisses ...
+    Dear mother Ida! hearken ere I die!--p. 62.
+
+After such reiterated assurances that she was about to die on the spot,
+it appears that Oenone thought better of it, and the poem concludes
+with her taking the wiser course of going to town to consult her swain's
+sister, Cassandra--whose advice, we presume, prevailed upon her to live,
+as we can, from other sources, assure our readers she did to a good old
+age.
+
+In the 'Hesperides' our author, with great judgment, rejects the common
+fable, which attributes to Hercules the slaying of the dragon and the
+plunder of the golden fruit. Nay, he supposes them to have existed to a
+comparatively recent period--namely, the voyage of Hanno, on the coarse
+canvas of whose log-book Mr. Tennyson has judiciously embroidered the
+Hesperian romance. The poem opens with a geographical description of the
+neighbourhood, which must be very clear and satisfactory to the English
+reader; indeed, it leaves far behind in accuracy of topography and
+melody of rhythm the heroics of Dionysius _Periegetes_.
+
+    'The north wind fall'n, in the new-starr�d night.'
+
+Here we must pause to observe a new species of _metabol�_ with which Mr.
+Tennyson has enriched our language. He suppresses the E in _fallen_,
+where it is usually written and where it must be pronounced, and
+transfers it to the word _new-starr�d_, where it would not be
+pronounced if he did not take due care to superfix a _grave_ accent.
+This use of the grave accent is, as our readers may have already
+perceived, so habitual with Mr. Tennyson, and is so obvious an
+improvement, that we really wonder how the language has hitherto done
+without it. We are tempted to suggest, that if analogy to the accented
+languages is to be thought of, it is rather the acute ([�]) than the
+grave ([`]) which should be employed on such occasions; but we speak
+with profound diffidence; and as Mr. Tennyson is the inventor of the
+system, we shall bow with respect to whatever his final determination
+may be.
+
+    'The north wind fall'n, in the new-starr�d night
+    Zidonian Hanno, voyaging beyond
+    The hoary promontory of Solo�,
+    Past Thymiaterion in calm�d bays.'
+
+We must here note specially the musical flow of this last line, which is
+the more creditable to Mr. Tennyson, because it was before the tuneless
+names of this very neighbourhood that the learned continuator of
+Dionysius retreated in despair--
+
+    ----[Greek: ep�nymias nyn ellachen allas
+    Aithiop�n gain, dysph�nous oud' epi�rons
+    Mousais ouneka tasd' eg� ouk agoreusom' apasas.]
+
+but Mr. Tennyson is bolder and happier--
+
+    'Past Thymiaterion in calm�d bays,
+    Between the southern and the western Horn,
+    Heard neither'--
+
+We pause for a moment to consider what a sea-captain might have expected
+to hear, by night, in the Atlantic ocean--he heard
+
+    --'neither the warbling of the _nightingale_
+    Nor melody o' the Libyan lotusflute,'
+
+but he did hear the three daughters of Hesper singing the following
+song:--
+
+    'The golden apple, the golden apple, the hallow�d fruit,
+    Guard it well, guard it warily,
+    Singing airily,
+    Standing about the charm�d root,
+    Round about all is mute'--
+
+_mute_, though they sung so loud as to be heard some leagues out at
+sea--
+
+      ----'all is mute
+    As the snow-field on mountain peaks,
+    As the sand-field at the mountain foot.
+    Crocodiles in briny creeks
+    Sleep, and stir not: all is mute.'
+
+How admirably do these lines describe the peculiarities of this charm�d
+neighbourhood--fields of snow, so talkative when they happen to lie at
+the foot of the mountain, are quite out of breath when they get to the
+top, and the sand, so noisy on the summit of a hill, is dumb at its
+foot. The very crocodiles, too, are _mute_--not dumb but _mute_. The
+'red-comb�d dragon curl'd' is next introduced--
+
+    'Look to him, father, lest he wink, and the golden apple be stolen
+        away,
+    For his ancient heart is drunk with overwatchings night and day,
+    Sing away, sing aloud evermore, in the wind, without stop.'
+
+The north wind, it appears, has by this time awaked again--
+
+    'Lest his scal�d eyelid drop,
+    For he is older than the world'--
+
+older than the _hills_, besides not rhyming to 'curl'd,' would hardly
+have been a sufficiently venerable phrase for this most harmonious of
+lyrics. It proceeds--
+
+    'If ye sing not, if ye make false measure,
+    We shall lose eternal pleasure,
+    Worth eternal want of rest.
+    Laugh not loudly: watch the treasure
+    Of the wisdom of the west.
+    In _a corner_ wisdom whispers. Five and three
+    (_Let it not be preached abroad_) make an awful mystery.'--p. 102.
+
+This recipe for keeping a secret, by singing it so loud as to be heard
+for miles, is almost the only point, in all Mr. Tennyson's poems, in
+which we can trace the remotest approach to anything like what other men
+have written, but it certainly does remind us of the 'chorus of
+conspirators' in the Rovers.
+
+Hanno, however, who understood no language but Punic--(the Hesperides
+sang, we presume, either in Greek or in English)--appears to have kept
+on his way without taking any notice of the song, for the poem
+concludes,--
+
+    'The apple of gold hangs over the sea,
+    Five links, a gold chain, are we,
+    Hesper, the Dragon, and sisters three;
+    Daughters three,
+    Bound about
+    All around about
+    The gnarl�d bole of the charm�d tree,
+    The golden apple, the golden apple, the hallow�d fruit,
+    Guard it well, guard it warily,
+    Watch it warily,
+    Singing airily
+    Standing about the charm�d root.'--p. 107.
+
+We hardly think that, if Hanno had translated it into Punic, the song
+would have been more intelligible.
+
+The 'Lotuseaters'--a kind of classical opium-eaters--are Ulysses and his
+crew. They land on the 'charm�d island,' and 'eat of the charm�d root,'
+and then they sing--
+
+    'Long enough the winedark wave our weary bark did carry.
+    This is lovelier and sweeter,
+    Men of Ithaca, this is meeter,
+    In the hollow rosy vale to tarry,
+    Like a dreamy Lotuseater--a delicious Lotuseater!
+    We will eat the Lotus, sweet
+    As the yellow honeycomb;
+    In the valley some, and some
+    On the ancient heights divine,
+    And no more roam,
+    On the loud hoar foam,
+    To the melancholy home,
+    At the limits of the brine,
+    The little isle of Ithaca, beneath the day's decline.'--p. 116.
+
+Our readers will, we think, agree that this is admirably characteristic,
+and that the singers of this song must have made pretty free with the
+intoxicating fruit. How they got home you must read in Homer:--Mr.
+Tennyson--himself, we presume, a dreamy lotus-eater, a delicious
+lotus-eater--leaves them in full song.
+
+Next comes another class of poems,--Visions. The first is the 'Palace of
+Art,' or a fine house, in which the poet _dreams_ that he sees a very
+fine collection of well-known pictures. An ordinary versifier would, no
+doubt, have followed the old routine, and dully described himself as
+walking into the Louvre, or Buckingham Palace, and there seeing certain
+masterpieces of painting:--a true poet dreams it. We have not room to
+hang many of these _chefs-d'oeuvre_, but for a few we must find
+space.--'The Madonna'--
+
+    'The maid mother by a crucifix,
+      In yellow pastures sunny warm,
+    Beneath branch work of costly sardonyx
+      Sat smiling--_babe in arm_.'--p. 72.
+
+The use of the latter, apparently, colloquial phrase is a deep stroke of
+art. The form of expression is always used to express an habitual and
+characteristic action. A knight is described '_lance in rest_'--a
+dragoon, '_sword in hand_'--so, as the idea of the Virgin is inseparably
+connected with her child, Mr. Tennyson reverently describes her
+conventional position--'_babe in arm_.'
+
+His gallery of illustrious portraits is thus admirably arranged:--The
+Madonna--Ganymede--St. Cecilia--Europa--Deep-haired
+Milton--Shakspeare--Grim Dante--Michael Angelo--Luther--Lord
+Bacon--Cervantes--Calderon--King David--'the Halicarnass�an' (_quaere_,
+which of them?)--Alfred, (not Alfred Tennyson, though no doubt in any
+other man's gallery _he_ would have a place) and finally--
+
+    'Isa�ah, with fierce Ezekiel,
+      Swarth Moses by the Coptic sea,
+    Plato, _Petrarca_, Livy, and Rapha�l,
+      And eastern Confutzee!'
+
+We can hardly suspect the very original mind of Mr. Tennyson to have
+harboured any recollections of that celebrated Doric idyll, 'The groves
+of Blarney,' but certainly there is a strong likeness between Mr.
+Tennyson's list of pictures and the Blarney collection of statutes--
+
+    'Statues growing that noble place in,
+      All heathen goddesses most rare,
+    Homer, Plutarch, and Nebuchadnezzar,
+      All standing naked in the open air!'
+
+In this poem we first observed a stroke of art (repeated afterwards)
+which we think very ingenious. No one who has ever written verse but
+must have felt the pain of erasing some happy line, some striking
+stanza, which, however excellent in itself, did not exactly suit the
+place for which it was destined. How curiously does an author mould and
+remould the plastic verse in order to fit in the favourite thought; and
+when he finds that he cannot introduce it, as Corporal Trim says, _any
+how_, with what reluctance does he at last reject the intractable, but
+still cherished offspring of his brain! Mr. Tennyson manages this
+delicate matter in a new and better way; he says, with great candour and
+simplicity, 'If this poem were not already too long, _I should have
+added_ the following stanzas,' and _then he adds them_, (p. 84;)--or,
+'the following lines are manifestly superfluous, as a part of the text,
+but they may be allowed to stand as a separate poem,' (p. 121,) _which
+they do_;--or, 'I intended to have added something on statuary, but I
+found it very difficult;'--(he had, moreover, as we have seen, been
+anticipated in this line by the Blarney poet)--'but I have finished the
+statues of _Elijah_ and _Olympias_--judge whether I have succeeded,' (p.
+73)--and then we have these two statues. This is certainly the most
+ingenious device that has ever come under our observation, for
+reconciling the rigour of criticism with the indulgence of parental
+partiality. It is economical too, and to the reader profitable, as by
+these means
+
+    'We lose no drop of the immortal man.'
+
+The other vision is 'A Dream of Fair Women,' in which the heroines of
+all ages--some, indeed, that belong to the times of 'heathen goddesses
+most rare'--pass before his view. We have not time to notice them all,
+but the second, whom we take to be Iphigenia, touches the heart with a
+stroke of nature more powerful than even the veil that the Grecian
+painter threw over the head of her father.
+
+      ----'dimly I could descry
+    The stern blackbearded kings with wolfish eyes,
+      Watching to see me die.
+
+    The tall masts quivered as they lay afloat;
+      The temples, and the people, and the shore;
+    One drew a sharp knife through my tender throat--
+      Slowly,--and _nothing more_!'
+
+What touching simplicity--what pathetic resignation--he cut my
+throat--'_nothing more_!' One might indeed ask, 'what _more_' she would
+have?
+
+But we must hasten on; and to tranquillize the reader's mind after this
+last affecting scene, shall notice the only two pieces of a lighter
+strain which the volume affords. The first is elegant and playful; it is
+a description of the author's study, which he affectionately calls his
+_Darling Room_.
+
+    'O darling room, my heart's delight;
+    Dear room, the apple of my sight;
+    With thy two couches, soft and white,
+    There is no room so exquis_ite_;
+    No little room so warm and bright,
+    Wherein to read, wherein to write.'
+
+We entreat our readers to note how, even in this little trifle, the
+singular taste and genius of Mr. Tennyson break forth. In such a dear
+_little_ room a narrow-minded scribbler would have been content with
+_one_ sofa, and that one he would probably have covered with black
+mohair, or red cloth, or a good striped chintz; how infinitely more
+characteristic is white dimity!--'tis as it were a type of the purity of
+the poet's mind. He proceeds--
+
+    'For I the Nonnenwerth have seen,
+    And Oberwinter's vineyards green,
+    Musical Lurlei; and between
+    The hills to Bingen I have been,
+    Bingen in Darmstadt, where the _Rhene_
+    Curves toward Mentz, a woody scene.
+
+    'Yet never did there meet my sight,
+    In any town, to left or right,
+    A little room so exquis_ite_,
+    With _two_ such couches soft and white;
+    Nor any room so warm and bright,
+    Wherein to read, wherein to write.'--p. 153.
+
+A common poet would have said that he had been in London or in Paris--in
+the loveliest villa on the banks of the Thames, or the most gorgeous
+chateau on the Loire--that he has reclined in Madame de Sta�l's boudoir,
+and mused in Mr. Roger's comfortable study; but the _darling room_ of
+the poet of nature (which we must suppose to be endued with sensibility,
+or he would not have addressed it) would not be flattered with such
+common-place comparisons;--no, no, but it is something to have it said
+that there is no such room in the ruins of the Drachenfels, in the
+vineyard of Oberwinter, or even in the rapids of the _Rhene_, under the
+Lurleyberg. We have ourselves visited all these celebrated spots, and
+can testify in corroboration of Mr. Tennyson, that we did not see in any
+of them anything like _this little room so exquis_ITE.
+
+The second of the lighter pieces, and the last with which we shall
+delight our readers, is a severe retaliation on the editor of the
+Edinburgh Magazine, who, it seems, had not treated the first volume of
+Mr. Tennyson with the same respect that we have, we trust, evinced for
+the second.
+
+      'To CHRISTOPHER NORTH.
+    You did late review my lays,
+      Crusty Christopher;
+    You did mingle blame and praise
+      Rusty Christopher.
+
+    When I learnt from whom it came
+    I forgave you all the blame,
+      Musty Christopher;
+    I could _not_ forgive the praise,
+      Fusty Christopher.'--p. 153.
+
+Was there ever anything so genteelly turned--so terse--so sharp--and the
+point so stinging and _so true_?
+
+    'I could not forgive the _praise_,
+      Fusty Christopher!'
+
+This leads us to observe on a phenomenon which we have frequently seen,
+but never been able to explain. It has been occasionally our painful lot
+to excite the displeasure of authors whom we have reviewed, and who have
+vented their dissatisfaction, some in prose, some in verse, and some in
+what we could not distinctly say whether it was verse or prose; but we
+have invariably found that the common formula of retort was that adopted
+by Mr. Tennyson against his northern critic, namely, that the author
+would always
+
+      --Forgive us all the _blame_,
+    But could _not_ forgive the _praise_.
+
+Now this seems very surprising. It has sometimes, though we regret to
+say rarely, happened, that, as in the present instance, we have been
+able to deal out unqualified praise, but never found that the dose in
+this case disagreed with the most squeamish stomach; on the contrary,
+the patient has always seemed exceedingly comfortable after he had
+swallowed it. He has been known to take the 'Review' home and keep his
+wife from a ball, and his children from bed, till he could administer it
+to them, by reading the article aloud. He has even been heard to
+recommend the 'Review' to his acquaintance at the clubs, as the best
+number which has yet appeared, and one, who happened to be an M.P. as
+well as an author, gave a _conditional_ order, that in case his last
+work should be favourably noticed, a dozen copies should be sent down by
+the mail to the borough of ----. But, on the other hand, when it has
+happened that the general course of our criticism has been unfavourable,
+if by accident we happened to introduce the smallest spice of _praise_,
+the patient immediately fell into paroxysms--declaring that the part
+which we foolishly thought might offend him had, on the contrary, given
+him pleasure--positive pleasure, but _that_ which he could not possibly
+either forget or forgive, was the grain of praise, be it ever so small,
+which we had dropped in, and for which, and _not for our censure_, he
+felt constrained, in honour and conscience, to visit us with his extreme
+indignation. Can any reader or writer inform us how it is that praise in
+the wholesale is so very agreeable to the very same stomach that rejects
+it with disgust and loathing, when it is scantily administered; and
+above all, can they tell us why it is, that the indignation and nausea
+should be in the exact inverse ratio to the quantity of the ingredient?
+These effects, of which we could quote several cases much more violent
+than Mr. Tennyson's, puzzle us exceedingly; but a learned friend, whom
+we have consulted, has, though he could not account for the phenomenon,
+pointed out what he thought an analogous case. It is related of Mr.
+Alderman Faulkner, of convivial memory, that one night when he expected
+his guests to sit late and try the strength of his claret and his head,
+he took the precaution of placing in his wine-glass a strawberry, which
+his doctor, he said, had recommended to him on account of its cooling
+qualities: on the faith of this specific, he drank even more deeply,
+and, as might be expected, was carried away at an earlier period and in
+rather a worse state, than was usual with him. When some of his friends
+condoled with him next day, and attributed his misfortune to six bottles
+of claret which he had imbibed, the Alderman was extremely
+indignant--'the claret,' he said, 'was sound, and never could do any man
+any harm--his discomfiture was altogether caused by that damned single
+strawberry' which he had kept all night at the bottom of his
+glass.--_The Quarterly Review_.
+
+[Footnote O: See Quarterly Review, vol. XIX, p. 204.]
+
+[Footnote P: The same Camelot, in Somersetshire, we presume, which is
+alluded to by Kent in 'King Lear'--
+
+    'Goose! if I had thee upon Sarum plain,
+    I'd drive thee cackling home to Camelot.'
+]
+
+
+_The Princess; a Medley_. By Alfred Tennyson. Moxon.
+
+That we are behind most even of our heaviest and slowest contemporaries
+in the notice of this volume, is a fact for which we cannot
+satisfactorily account to ourselves, and can therefore hardly hope to be
+able to make a valid excuse to our readers. The truth is, that whenever
+we turned to it we became, like the needle between positive and negative
+electric poles, so attracted and repelled, that we vibrated too much to
+settle to any fixed condition. Vacillation prevented criticism, and we
+had to try the experiment again and again before we could arrive at the
+necessary equipose to indicate the right direction of taste and opinion.
+We will now, however, note our variations, and leave them to the public
+judgment.
+
+The first lines of the prologue were repulsive, as a specimen of the
+poorest Wordsworth manner and style--
+
+    "Sir Walter Vivian all a summer's day
+    Gave his broad lawns until the set of sun
+    Up to his people: thither flock'd at noon
+    His tenants, wife and child, and thither half
+    The neighbouring borough with their Institute
+    Of which he was the patron. I was there
+    From college, visiting the son,--the son
+    A Walter too,--with others of our set."
+
+The "wife and child" of the tenants is hardly intelligible; and the
+"set" is but a dubious expression. Nor can we clearly comprehend the
+next line and a half--
+
+    "And me that morning Walter show'd the house,
+    Greek, set with busts:"
+
+Does this mean that Sir Walter Vivian inhabited a Greek house, and that
+the college "set" were guests in that dwelling "set with busts"? To say
+the least, this is inelegant, and the affectations proceed--
+
+                        "From vases in the hall
+    _Flowers of all heavens, and lovelier than their names_,
+    Grew side by side."
+
+Persons conversant with the botanical names of flowers will hardly be
+able to realize (as the Yankees have it) the idea of their loveliness;
+the loveliness of Hippuris, Dolichos, Syngenesia, Cheiranthus,
+Artocarpus, Arum dracunculus, Ampelopsis hederaca, Hexandria, Monogynea,
+and the rest.
+
+A good description of the demi-scientific sports of the Institute
+follows; but the house company and inmates retire to a ruined abbey:--
+
+              "High-arch'd and ivy-claspt,
+    Of finest Gothic, lighter than a fire."
+
+This is a curious jumble in company, two lights of altogether a
+different nature; but the party get into a rattling conversation, in
+which the noisy babble of the College Cubs is satirically characterized:
+we
+
+                                          "Told
+    Of college: he had climb'd across the spikes,
+    And he had squeez'd himself betwixt the bars,
+    And he had breathed the Proctor's dogs; and one
+    Discuss'd his tutor, rough to common men
+    But honeying at the whisper of a lord;
+    And one the Master, as a rogue in grain
+    Veneer'd with sanctimonious theory."
+
+The dialogue happily takes a turn, and the task of writing the
+_Princess_ is assigned to the author, as one of the tales in the
+Decameron of Boccaccio. A neighbouring princess of the south (so the
+story runs as the prince tells it) is in childhood betrothed to a like
+childish prince of the north:--
+
+                  "She to me
+    Was proxy-wedded with a _bootless calf_ [?]
+    At eight years old."
+
+Both grew up, the prince, all imaginative, filling his mind with
+pictures of her perfections; but she turning a female reformer of the
+Wolstencroft [_sic_] school, resolved never to wed till woman was raised
+to an equality with men, and establishing a strange female colony and
+college to carry this vast design into effect. In consequence of this
+her father is obliged to violate the contract, and his indignant father
+prepares for war to enforce it. The prince, with two companions, flies
+to the south, to try what he can do for himself; and in the disguise of
+ladies they obtain admission to the guarded precincts of the new
+Amazonian league. He, meanwhile, sings sweetly of his mistress--
+
+    "And still I wore her picture by my heart,
+    And one dark tress; and all around them both
+    Sweet thoughts would swarm as bees about their queen."
+
+And of his friend--
+
+                    "My other heart,
+    My shadow, my half-self, for still we moved
+    Together, kin as horse's ear and eye."
+
+His evasion is also finely told--
+
+      "But when the council broke, I rose and past
+    Through the wild woods that hang about the town;
+    Found a still place, and pluck'd her likeness out:
+    Laid it on flowers, and watch'd it lying bathed
+    In the green gleam of dewy-tassell'd trees:
+    What were those fancies? wherefore break her troth?
+    Proud look'd the lips: but while I meditated
+    A wind arose and rush'd upon the South,
+    And shook the songs, the whispers, and the shrieks
+    Of the wild woods together; and a Voice
+    Went with it 'Follow, follow, thou shalt win!'"
+
+Almost in juxtaposition with these beauties, we find one of the
+disagreeable blots, so offensive to good taste, which disfigure the
+poem. The travellers are interrogating the host of an inn close to the
+liberties where the princess holds her petticoated sway:--
+
+                      "And at the last--
+    The summer of the vine in all his veins--
+    'No doubt that we might make it worth his while.
+    For him, he reverenced his liege-lady there;
+    He always made a point to post with mares;
+    His daughter and his housemaid were the boys.
+    The land, he understood, for miles about
+    Was till'd by women; all the swine were sows,
+    And all the dogs'"--
+
+This is too bad, even for medley; but proceed we into the interior of
+the grand and luxurious feminine institution, where their sex is
+speedily discovered, but for certain reasons concealed by the
+discoverers. Lectures on the past and what might be done to accomplish
+female equality, and description of the boundaries, the dwelling place,
+and the dwellers therein, fill many a page of mingled excellence and
+defects. Here is a sample of both in half a dozen lines:--
+
+                          "We saw
+    The Lady Blanche's daughter where she stood,
+    Melissa, with her hand upon the lock,
+    A rosy blonde, and in a college gown
+    _That clad her like an April daffodilly_
+    (Her mother's colour) with her lips apart,
+    And all her thoughts as fair within her eyes,
+    _As bottom agates seem to wave and float
+    In crystal currents of clear morning seas_."
+
+Curious contradictions in mere terms, also occasionally occur. Thus, of
+a frightened girl, we are told that--
+
+                              "_Light_
+    As flies the _shadow_ of a bird she fled."
+
+Events move on. The prince reasons as a man in a colloquy with the
+princess, and speaks of the delights of maternal affections, and she
+replies--
+
+              "We are not talk'd to thus:
+    Yet will we say for children, would they grew
+    Like field-flowers everywhere! we like them well:
+    But children die; and let me tell you, girl,
+    Howe'er you babble, great deeds cannot die:
+    They with the sun and moon renew their light
+    Forever, blessing those that look on them:
+    Children--that men may pluck them from our hearts,
+    Kill us with pity, break us with ourselves--
+    O--children--there is nothing upon earth
+    More miserable than she that has a son
+    And sees him err:"
+
+A song on "The days that are no more," seems to us to be too laboured,
+nor is the other lyric introduced, "The Swallow," much more to our
+satisfaction. It is a mixture of prettinesses: the first four triplets
+run thus, ending in a poetic beauty--
+
+    "O Swallow, Swallow, flying, flying South,
+    Fly to her, and fall upon her gilded eaves,
+    And tell her, tell her what I tell to thee.
+
+    "O tell her, Swallow, thou that knowest each,
+    That bright and fierce and fickle is the South,
+    And _dark_ and true and tender is the North.
+
+    "O Swallow, Swallow, if I could follow, and light
+    Upon her lattice, I would pipe and trill,
+    And _cheep and twitter twenty million loves_.
+
+    "O were I thou that she might take me in,
+    And lay me on her bosom, _and her heart
+    Would rock the snowy cradle till I died_."
+
+The prince saves the princess from being drowned, when the secret
+explodes like a roll of gun cotton, and a grand turmoil ensues. The
+rival kings approach to confines in battle array, and the princess
+resumes the declaration of war:--
+
+                              "A tide of fierce
+    Invective seem'd to wait behind her lips,
+    As waits a river level with the dam
+    Ready to burst and flood the world with foam:
+    And so she would have spoken, but there rose
+    A hubbub in the court of half the maids
+    Gather'd together; from the illumin'd hall
+    Long lanes of splendour slanted o'er a press
+    Of snowy shoulders, thick as herded ewes,
+    And rainbow robes, and gems and gemlike eyes,
+    And gold and golden heads; they to and fro
+    Fluctuated, as flowers in storm, some red, same pale,
+    All open-mouth'd, all gazing to the light,
+    Some crying there was an army in the land,
+    And some that men were in the very walls,
+    And some they cared not; till a clamour grew
+    As of a new-world Babel, woman-built,
+    And worse-confounded: high above them stood
+    The placid marble Muses, looking peace."
+
+She denounces the perils outside and in--
+
+                                    "I dare
+    All these male thunderbolts: what is it ye fear?
+    Peace! there are those to avenge us and they come:
+    If not,--myself were like enough, O girls,
+    To unfurl the maiden banner of our rights,
+    And clad in iron burst the ranks of war,
+    Or, falling, protomartyr of our cause,
+    Die: yet I blame ye not so much for fear;
+    Six thousand years of fear have made ye that
+    From which I would redeem ye: but for those
+    That stir this hubbub--you and you--I know
+    Your faces there in the crowd--to-morrow morn
+    We meet to elect new tutors; then shall they
+    That love their voices more than duty, learn
+    With whom they deal, dismiss'd in shame to live
+    No wiser than their mothers, household stuff,
+    Live chattels, mincers of each other's fame,
+    Full of weak poison, turnspits for the clown,
+    The drunkard's football, laughing-stocks of Time,
+    Whose brains are in their hands and in their heels,
+    But fit to flaunt, to dress, to dance, to thrum,
+    To tramp, to scream, to burnish, and to scour
+    For ever slaves at home and fools abroad."
+
+Ay, just as Shakspere hath it--
+
+    "To suckle fools and chronicle small beer."
+
+The hero also meets the shock, at least in poetic grace:--
+
+                        "Upon my spirits
+    Settled a gentle cloud of melancholy,
+    Which I shook off, for I was young, and one
+    To whom the shadow of all mischance but came
+    As night to him that sitting on a hill
+    Sees the midsummer, midnight, Norway sun,
+    Set into sunrise."
+
+It is agreed to decide the contest by a combat of fifty on each
+side--the one led by the prince, and the other by Arac, the brother of
+the princess. And clad in "harness"--
+
+              "Issued in the sun that now
+    Leapt from the dewy shoulders of the Earth,
+    And hit the northern hills."
+
+To the fight--
+
+    "Then rode we with the old king across the lawns
+    Beneath huge trees, a thousand rings of Spring
+    In every bole, a song on every spray
+    Of birds that piped their Valentines."
+
+The prince and his companions are defeated; and he, wounded almost to
+the death, is consigned at her own request to be nursed by the
+princess:--
+
+    "So was their sanctuary violated,
+    So their fair college turn'd to hospital;
+    At first with all confusion; by and by
+    Sweet order lived again with other laws;
+    A kindlier influence reign'd; and everywhere
+    Low voices with the ministering hand
+    Hung round the sick."
+
+The result may be foreseen--
+
+    "From all a closer interest flourish'd up.
+    Tenderness touch by touch, and last, to these,
+    Love, like an Alpine harebell hung with tears
+    By some cold morning glacier; frail at first
+    And feeble, all unconscious of itself,
+    But such as gather'd colour day by day."
+
+And the agreement is filled up:--
+
+                "Dear, but let us type them now
+    In our lives, and this proud watchword rest
+    Of equal; seeing either sex alone
+    Is half itself, and in true marriage lies
+    Nor equal, nor unequal: each fulfils
+    Defect in each, and always thought in thought,
+    Purpose in purpose, will in will, they grow,
+    The single pure and perfect animal,
+    The two-cell'd heart beating with one full stroke
+    Life"
+
+              "O we will walk this world,
+    Yoked in all exercise of noble end,
+    And so through those dark gates across the wild
+    That no man knows. Indeed I love thee; come,
+    Yield thyself up; my hopes and thine are one;
+    Accomplish thou my manhood and thyself
+    Lay thy sweet hands in mine and trust to me."
+
+Who will question the true poetry of this production, or who will deny
+the imperfections, (mostly of affectation, though some of tastelessness)
+which obscure it? Who will wonder at our confessed wavering when they
+have read this course of alternate power, occasionally extravagant, and
+feebleness as in the long account of the _emeute_? Of the extravagant,
+the description of the princess, on receiving the declaration of war, is
+an example:--
+
+                    "She read, till over brow
+    And cheek and bosom brake the wrathful bloom
+    As of some fire against a stormy cloud,
+    When the wild peasant rights himself, and the rick
+    Flames, and his anger reddens in the heavens."
+
+The heroine, it must be acknowledged, is much of the virago throughout,
+and the prince rather of the softest; but the tale could not be
+otherwise told. We add four examples--two to be admired, and two to be
+contemned, in the fulfilment of our critique.
+
+    "For was, and is, and will be, are but is,"
+
+is a noble line; and the following, on the promised restoration of a
+child to its mother, is very touching--
+
+    "Again she veiled her brows, and prone she sank, and so
+    Like tender things that being caught feign death,
+    Spoke not, nor stirr'd."
+
+Not so the burlesque eight daughters of the plough, the brawny ministers
+of the princess' executive, and their usage of a herald. They were--
+
+    "Eight daughters of the plough, stronger than men,
+    Huge women blowzed with health, and wind, and rain
+    And labour. Each was like a Druid rock;
+    Or like a spire of land that stands apart
+    Cleft from the main, and clang'd about with mews."
+
+And they--
+
+    "Came sallying through the gates, and caught his hair,
+    And so belabour'd him on rib and cheek
+    They made him wild."
+
+Nor the following--
+
+    "When the man wants weight the woman takes it up,
+    And topples down the scales; but this is fixt
+    As are the roots of earth and base of all.
+    Man for the field and woman for the hearth;
+    Man for the sword and for the needle she;
+    Man with the head and woman with the heart;
+    Man to command and woman to obey;
+    All else confusion. Look to it; the gray mare
+    Is ill to live with, when her whinny shrills
+    From tile to scullery, and her small goodman
+    Shrinks in his arm-chair while the fires of Hell
+    Mix with his hearth; but take and break her, you!
+    She's yet a colt. Well groom'd and strongly curb'd
+    She might not rank with those detestable
+    That to the hireling leave their babe, and brawl
+    Their rights or wrongs like potherbs in the street.
+    They say she's comely; there's the fairer chance:
+    _I_ like her none the less for rating at her!
+    Besides, the woman wed is not as we,
+    But suffers change of frame. A lusty brace
+    Of twins may weed her of her folly. Boy,
+    The bearing and the training of a child
+    Is woman's wisdom."
+
+--_The Literary Gazette_.
+
+
+
+
+ROBERT BROWNING
+
+
+_Paracelsus_. By Robert Browning.
+
+There is talent in this dramatic poem, (in which is attempted a picture
+of the mind of this celebrated character,) but it is dreamy and obscure.
+Writers would do well to remember, (by way of example,) that though it
+is not difficult to imitate the mysticism and vagueness of Shelley, we
+love him and have taken him to our hearts as a poet, not _because_ of
+these characteristics--but _in spite_ of them.--_The Athen�um_.
+
+
+_Sordello_. By Robert Browning. London: Moxon. 1840.
+
+The scene of this poem is laid in Italy, when the Ghibelline and Guelph
+factions were in hottest contest. The author's style is rather peculiar,
+there being affectations of language and invertions of thought, and
+other causes of obscurity in the course of the story which detract from
+the pleasure of perusing it. But after all, we are much mistaken if Mr.
+Browning does not prove himself a poet of a right stamp,--original,
+vigorous, and finely inspired. He appears to us to possess a true sense
+of the dignity and sacredness of the poet's kingdom; and his imagination
+wings its way with a boldness, freedom and scope, as if he felt himself
+at home in that sphere, and was resolved to put his allegiance to the
+test.--_The Monthly Review_.
+
+
+_Men and Women_. By Robert Browning. Two Volumes. Chapman and Hall.
+
+It is really high time that this sort of thing should, if possible, be
+stopped. Here is another book of madness and mysticism--another
+melancholy specimen of power wantonly wasted, and talent deliberately
+perverted--another act of self-prostration before that demon of bad
+taste who now seems to hold in absolute possession the fashionable
+masters of our ideal literature. It is a strong case for the
+correctional justice of criticism, which has too long abdicated its
+proper functions. The Della Crusca of Sentimentalism perished under the
+_Baviad_--is there to be no future Gifford for the Della Crusca of
+Transcendentalism? The thing has really grown to a lamentable head
+amongst us. The contagion has affected not only our sciolists and our
+versifiers, but those whom, in the absence of a mightier race, we must
+be content to accept as the poets of our age. Here is Robert Browning,
+for instance--no one can doubt that he is capable of better things--no
+one, while deploring the obscurities that deface the _Paracelsus_ and
+the _Dramatic Lyrics_, can deny the less questionable qualities which
+characterized those remarkable poems--but can any of his devotees be
+found to uphold his present elaborate experiment on the patience of the
+public? Take any of his worshippers you please--let him be "well up" in
+the transcendental poets of the day--take him fresh from Alexander
+Smith, or Alfred Tennyson's _Maud_, or the _Mystic_ of Bailey--and we
+will engage to find him at least ten passages in the first ten pages of
+_Men and Women_, some of which, even after profound study, he will not
+be able to construe at all, and not one of which he will be able to
+read off at sight. Let us take one or two selections at random from the
+first volume, and try. What, for instance, is the meaning of these four
+stanzas from the poem entitled "By the Fireside"?--
+
+    My perfect wife, my Leonor,
+      Oh, heart my own, oh, eyes, mine too,
+    Whom else could I dare look backward for,
+      With whom beside should I dare pursue
+    The path grey heads abhor?
+
+    For it leads to a crag's sheer edge with them;
+      Youth, flowery all the way, there stops--
+    Not they; age threatens and they contemn,
+      Till they reach the gulf wherein youth drops,
+    One inch from our life's safe hem!
+
+    With me, youth led--I will speak now,
+      No longer watch you as you sit
+    Reading by fire-light, that great brow
+      And the spirit-small hand propping it
+    Mutely--my heart knows how--
+
+    When, if I think but deep enough,
+      You are wont to answer, prompt as rhyme;
+    And you, too, find without a rebuff
+      The response your soul seeks many a time
+    Piercing its fine flesh-stuff--
+
+We really should think highly of the powers of any interpreter who could
+"pierce" the obscurity of such "stuff" as this. One extract more and we
+have done. A gold medal in the department of Hermeneutical Science to
+the ingenious individual, who, after any length of study, can succeed in
+unriddling this tremendous passage from "Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha,"
+the organist:--
+
+    First you deliver your phrase
+      --Nothing propound, that I see,
+    Fit in itself for much blame or much praise--
+      Answered no less, where no answer needs be:
+    Off start the Two on their ways!
+
+    Straight must a Third interpose,
+      Volunteer needlessly help--
+    In strikes a Fourth, a Fifth thrusts in his nose,
+      So the cry's open, the kennel's a-yelp,
+    Argument's hot to the close!
+
+    One disertates, he is candid--
+      Two must dicept,--has distinguished!
+    Three helps the couple, if ever yet man did:
+      Four protests, Five makes a dart at the thing wished--
+    Back to One, goes the case bandied!
+
+    One says his say with a difference--
+      More of expounding, explaining!
+    All now is wrangle, abuse, and vociferance--
+      Now there's a truce, all's subdued, self-restraining--
+    Five, though, stands out all the stiffer hence.
+
+    One is incisive, corrosive--
+      Two retorts, nettled, curt, crepitant--
+    Three makes rejoinder, expansive, explosive--
+      Four overbears them all, strident and strepitant--
+    Five ... O Danaides, O Sieve!
+
+    Now, they ply axes and crowbars--
+      Now they prick pins at a tissue
+    Fine as a skein of the casuist Escobar's
+      Worked on the bone of a lie. To what issue?
+    Where is our gain at the Two-bars?
+
+    _Est fuga, volvitur rota!_
+      On we drift. Where looms the dim port?
+    One, Two, Three, Four, Five, contribute their quota--
+      Something is gained, if one caught but the import--
+    Show it us, Hugues of Saxe-Gotha!
+
+    What [with] affirming, denying,
+      Holding, risposting, subjoining,
+    All's like ... it's like ... for an instance I'm trying ...
+      There! See our roof, its gilt moulding and groining
+    Under those spider-webs lying?
+
+    So your fugue broadens and thickens,
+      Greatens and deepens and lengthens,
+    Till one exclaims--"But where's music, the dickens?
+      Blot ye the gold, while your spider-web strengthens,
+    Blacked to the stoutest of tickens?"
+
+Do our readers exclaim, "But where's poetry--the dickens--in all this
+rigmarole?" We confess we can find none--we can find nothing but a set
+purpose to be obscure, and an idiot captivity to the jingle of
+Hudibrastic rhyme. This idle weakness really appears to be at the bottom
+of half the daring nonsense in this most daringly nonsensical book.
+Hudibras Butler told us long ago that "rhyme the rudder is of verses;"
+and when, as in his case, or in that of Ingoldsby Barham, or
+Whims-and-Oddities Hood, the rudder guides the good ship into tracks of
+fun and fancy she might otherwise have missed, we are grateful to the
+double-endings, not on their own account, but for what they have led us
+to. But Mr. Browning is the mere thrall of his own rudder, and is
+constantly being steered by it into whirlpools of the most raging
+absurdity. This morbid passion for double rhymes, which is observable
+more or less throughout the book, reaches its climax in a long copy of
+verses on the "Old Pictures of Florence," which, with every disposition
+to be tolerant of the frailties of genius, we cannot hesitate to
+pronounce a masterpiece of absurdity. Let the lovers of the Hudibrastic
+admire these _tours de force_:--
+
+    Not that I expect the great Bigordi
+      Nor Sandro to hear me, chivalric, bellicose;
+    Nor wronged Lippino--and not a word I
+      Say of a scrap of Fra Angelico's.
+    But you are too fine, Taddeo Gaddi,
+      So grant me a taste of your intonaco--
+    Some Jerome that seeks the heaven with a sad eye?
+      No churlish saint, Lorenzo Monaco?
+
+        *    *    *    *    *    *    *
+
+    Margheritone of Arezzo,
+      With the grave-clothes garb and swaddling barret,
+    (Why purse up mouth and beak in a pet so,
+      You bald, saturnine, poll-clawed parrot?)
+    No poor glimmering Crucifixion,
+      Where in the foreground kneels the donor?
+    If such remain, as is my conviction,
+      The hoarding does you but little honour.
+
+The conclusion of this poem rises to a climax:--
+
+    How shall we prologuise, how shall we perorate,
+      Say fit things upon art and history--
+    Set truth at blood-heat and the false at zero rate,
+      Make of the want of the age no mystery!
+    Contrast the fructuous and sterile eras,
+      Show, monarchy its uncouth cub licks
+    Out of the bear's shape to the chim�ra's--
+      Pure Art's birth being still the republic's!
+
+    Then one shall propose (in a speech, curt Tuscan,
+      Sober, expurgate, spare of an "_issimo_,")
+    Ending our half-told tale of Cambuscan,
+      Turning the Bell-tower's altaltissimo.
+    And fine as the beak of a young beccaccia
+      The Campanile, the Duomo's fit ally,
+    Soars up in gold its full fifty braccia,
+      Completing Florence, as Florence, Italy.
+
+How really deplorable is all this! On what theory of art can it possibly
+be defended? In all the fine arts alike--poetry, painting, sculpture,
+music--the master works have this in common, that they please in the
+highest degree the most cultivated, and to the widest extent the less
+cultivated. _Lear_ and the _Divine Comedy_ exhaust the thinking of the
+profoundest student, yet subdue to hushed and breathless attention the
+illiterate minds that know not what study means. The "Last Judgment,"
+the "Transfiguration," the "Niobe," and the "Dying Gladiator" excite
+alike the intelligent rapture of artists, and the unintelligent
+admiration of those to whom art and its principles are a sealed book.
+Handel's _Israel in Egypt_--the wonder of the scientific musician in his
+closet--yet sways to and fro, like a mighty wind upon the waters, the
+hearts of assembled thousands at an Exeter Hall oratorio. To take an
+instance more striking still, Beethoven, the sublime, the rugged, the
+austere, is also, as even Mons. Jullien could tell us, fast becoming a
+popular favourite. Now why is this? Simply because these master minds,
+under the divine teaching of genius, have known how to clothe their
+works in a beauty of form incorporate with their very essence--a beauty
+of form which has an elective affinity with the highest instincts of
+universal humanity. And it is on this beauty of form, this exquisite
+perfection of style, that the Baileys and the Brownings would have us
+believe that they set small account, that they purposely and scornfully
+trample. We do not believe it. We believe that it is only because they
+are half-gifted that they are but half-intelligible. Their mysticism is
+weakness--weakness writhing itself into contortions that it may ape the
+muscles of strength. Artistic genius, in its higher degrees, necessarily
+involves the power of beautiful self-expression. It is but a weak and
+watery sun that allows the fogs to hang heavy between the objects on
+which it shines and the eyes it would enlighten; the true day-star
+chases the mists at once, and shows us the world at a glance.
+
+Our main object has been to protest against what we feel to be the false
+teachings of a perverted school of art; and we have used this book of
+Mr. Browning's chiefly as a means of showing the extravagant lengths of
+absurdity to which the tenets of that school can lead a man of admitted
+powers. We should regret, however in the pursuit of this object to
+inflict injustice on Mr. Browning. This last book of his, like most of
+its predecessors, contains some undeniable beauties--subtle thoughts,
+graceful fancies, and occasionally a strain of music, which only makes
+the chaos of surrounding discords jar more harshly on the ear. The
+dramatic scenes "In a Balcony" are finely conceived and vigorously
+written; "Bishop Blougram's Apology," and "Cleon," are well worth
+reading and thinking over; and there is a certain grace and beauty in
+several of the minor poems. That which, on the whole, has pleased us
+most--really, perhaps, because we could read it off-hand--is "The Statue
+and the Bust," of which we give the opening stanzas:--
+
+[Quotes fourteen stanzas of _The Statue and the Bust_.]
+
+Why should a man, who, with so little apparent labour, can write
+naturally and well, take so much apparent labour to write affectedly and
+ill? There can be but one of two solutions. Either he goes wrong from
+want of knowledge, in which case it is clear that he wants the highest
+intuitions of genius; or he sins against knowledge, in which case he
+must have been misled by the false promptings of a morbid vanity, eager
+for that applause of fools which always waits on quackery, and which is
+never refused to extravagance when tricked out in the guise of
+originality. It is difficult, from the internal evidence supplied by
+his works, to know which of these two theories to adopt. Frequently the
+conclusion is almost irresistible, that Mr. Browning's mysticism must be
+of _malice prepense_: on the whole, however, we are inclined to clear
+his honesty at the expense of his powers, and to conclude that he is
+obscure, not so much because he has the vanity to be thought original,
+as because he lacks sufficient genius to make himself clear.--_The
+Saturday Review_.
+
+
+
+
+NOTES
+
+
+THOMAS GRAY
+
+When Gray's _Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard_ appeared in 1751,
+the _Monthly Rev._, IV, p. 309, gave it the following curious
+notice:--"The excellence of this little piece amply compensates for its
+want of quantity." The immediate success and popularity of the _Elegy_
+established Gray's poetical reputation; hence his _Odes_ (1757) were
+received and criticized as the work of a poet of whom something entirely
+different was expected. The thin quarto volume containing _The Progress
+of Poesy_ and _The Bard_ (entitled merely Ode I and Ode II in that
+edition) was printed for Dodsley by Horace Walpole at Strawberry Hill,
+and was published on August 8, 1757. Within a fortnight Gray wrote to
+Thomas Warton that the poems were not at all popular, the great
+objection being their obscurity; a week later he wrote to Hurd:--"Even
+my friends tell me they [the Odes] do not succeed ... in short, I have
+heard nobody but a player [Garrick] and a doctor of divinity [Warburton]
+that profess their esteem for them." For further comment, see Gray's
+_Works_, ed. Gosse, II, pp. 321-328.
+
+Our review, which is reprinted from _Monthly Rev._, XVII (239-243)
+(September, 1757), was written by Oliver Goldsmith, and is included in
+most of the collected editions of his works. Although it was practically
+wrung from Goldsmith while he was the unwilling thrall of Griffiths, it
+is a noteworthy piece of criticism for its time--certainly far superior
+to the general standard of the _Monthly Review_. While recognizing the
+scholarly merit of the poet's work, Goldsmith showed clearly why the
+Odes could not become popular. A more favorable notice of the volume
+appeared in the _Critical Rev._, IV, p. 167.
+
+In reprinting this review, the long quotations from both odes have been
+omitted. This precedent is followed in all cases where the quotations
+are of inordinate length, or are offered merely as "specimens" without
+specific criticism. No useful end would be served in reprinting numerous
+pages of classic extracts that are readily accessible to every student.
+All omissions are, of course, properly indicated.
+
+1. _Quinault_. Philippe Quinault (1635-1688), a popular French dramatist
+and librettist.
+
+2. _Mark'd for her own_. An allusion to the line in the Epitaph appended
+to the _Elegy_: "And Melancholy marked him for her own."
+
+
+OLIVER GOLDSMITH
+
+Goldsmith's _Traveller_ (1764) was begun as early as 1755--before he had
+expressed what Professor Dowden calls his "qualified enthusiasm" and
+"official admiration" for Gray's _Odes_. In criticizing Gray, he quoted
+Isocrates' advice--_Study the people_--and properly bore that precept in
+mind while he was shaping his own verses. The _Odes_ and the _Traveller_
+are respectively characteristic utterances of their authors--of the
+academic recluse, and of the warm-hearted lover of humanity.
+
+The review, quoted from the _Critical Rev._, XVIII (458-462) (December,
+1764), is from the pen of Dr. Samuel Johnson. Apart from its
+distinguished authorship and the strong words of commendation in the
+final sentence, it possesses slight interest as literary criticism. It
+is, in fact, little more than a brief summary of the poem, enriched by a
+few well-chosen illustrative extracts. The fact that Johnson contributed
+nine or ten lines to the poem (see Boswell, ed. Hill, I, p. 441, n. 1,
+and II, p. 6) may account partly for the character of the review.
+Johnson's quotations from the poem are not continuous and show several
+variations from authoritative texts.
+
+
+WILLIAM COWPER
+
+Cowper stands almost alone among English poets as an instance of late
+manifestation of poetic power. He was over fifty years of age when he
+offered his first volume of _Poems_ (1782) to the public. This
+collection, which included _Table-Talk_ and other didactic poems,
+appeared at the beginning of the most prosaic age in the history of
+modern English literature; yet the critics did not find it sufficiently
+striking in quality to differentiate it from the level of contemporary
+verse, or to forecast the success of _The Task_ and _John Gilpin's Ride_
+three years later.
+
+The notice in the _Critical Rev._, LIII (287-290), appeared in April,
+1782. While the same poems are but slightly esteemed to-day, it must be
+recognized that the attitude of the reviewer was severe for his time.
+The age had grown accustomed to large draughts of moralizing and
+didacticism in verse, and the quality of Cowper's contribution was
+assuredly above the average. The _Monthly Rev._, LXVII, p. 262, gave the
+_Poems_ a much more favorable reception.
+
+10. _Non Dii, non homines, etc._ Properly, _non homines, non di_,
+Horace, _Ars Poetica_, l. 373.
+
+10. _Caraccioli_. _Jouissance de soi-m�me_ (ed. 1762), cap. xii.
+
+11. _There needs no ghost, etc._ See _Hamlet_, I, 5. 110.
+
+
+ROBERT BURNS
+
+The Kilmarnock edition (1786) of Burns' _Poems_ was published during the
+most eventful period of the poet's life; the almost universally kind
+reception accorded to this volume was the one source of consolation amid
+many sorrows and distractions. Two reviews have been selected to
+illustrate both the Scottish and English attitude toward the newly
+discovered "ploughman-poet." The _Edinburgh Magazine_, IV (284-288), in
+October, 1786, gave Burns a welcome that was hearty and sincere; though
+we may smile to-day at the information that he has neither the "doric
+simplicity" of Ramsay, nor the "brilliant imagination" of Ferguson.
+Besides the poems mentioned in brackets, the magazine published further
+extracts from Burns in subsequent numbers. The _Critical Review_, LXIII
+(387-388), gave the volume a belated notice in May, 1787, exceeding even
+the Scotch magazine in its generous appreciation. With the generally
+accepted fact in mind that all of Burns' enduring work is in the
+Scottish dialect, and that his English poems are comparatively inferior,
+it is interesting to note the _Critical Review's_ regret that the
+dialect must "obscure the native beauties" and be often unintelligible
+to English readers. The same sentiment was expressed by the _Monthly
+Review_, LXXV, p. 439, in the critique reprinted (without its curious
+anglified version of _The Cotter's Saturday Night_) in Stevenson's
+_Early Reviews_.
+
+There is perhaps no other English poet whose fame was so suddenly and
+securely established as Burns'. At no time since the appearance of the
+Kilmarnock volume has the worth of his lyrical achievement been
+seriously questioned. The _Reliques_ of Burns, edited by Dr. Cromek in
+1808, were reviewed by Walter Scott in the first number of the
+_Quarterly Review_, and by Jeffrey in the corresponding number of the
+_Edinburgh_. Both articles are valuable to the student of Burns, but
+their great length made their inclusion in the present volume
+impracticable.
+
+14. _Rusticus abnormis sapiens, etc._ Horace, Sat. II, l. 3.
+
+15. _A great lady ... and celebrated professor_. Evidently Mrs. Dunlop
+and Professor Dugald Stewart, who both took great interest in Burns
+after the appearance of the Kilmarnock volume.
+
+
+WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
+
+The thin quartos containing _An Evening Walk_ and _Descriptive Sketches_
+were published by Wordsworth in 1793. The former was practically a
+school-composition in verse, written between 1787-89 and dedicated to
+his sister; the latter was composed in France during 1791-92 and was
+revised shortly before publication. The dedication was addressed to the
+Rev. Robert Jones, fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, who was
+Wordsworth's companion during the pedestrian tour in the Alps. Though
+_An Evening Walk_ was published first, the _Monthly Review_, XII, n.s.
+(216-218), in October, 1793, noticed both in the same issue and
+naturally gave precedence to the longer poem. Specific allusions in the
+text necessitate the same order in the present reprint.
+
+The impatience of the reviewer at the prospect of "more descriptive
+poetry" was due to the fact that many such productions had recently been
+noticed by the _Monthly_, and that the volumes then under consideration
+evidently belonged to the broad stream of mediocre verse that had been
+flowing soberly along almost since the days of Thomson. These first
+attempts smacked so decidedly of the older manner that we cannot censure
+the critic for failing to foresee that Wordsworth was destined to
+glorify the "poetry of nature," and to rescue it from the rut of
+listless and soporific topographical description. Both poems, in the
+definitive text, are readable, and exhibit here and there a glimmer of
+the poet's future greatness; yet it must be borne in mind that
+Wordsworth was continually tinkering at his verse, to the subsequent
+despair of conscientious variorum editors, and that most of the
+absurdities and infelicities in his first editions disappeared under the
+correcting influence of his sarcastic critics and his own maturing
+taste.
+
+A collation of the accepted text with the _Monthly Review's_ quotations
+will repay the student; thus, the twelve opening lines quoted by the
+reviewer are represented by eight lines in Professor Knight's edition,
+and only four of these correspond to the original text. The reviewer
+confined his remarks to the first thirty lines of the poem and very
+properly neglected the rest. He followed, with moderate success, the
+method of quotation with interpolated sarcasm and badinage--a method
+that was afterwards effectively pursued by the early Edinburgh Reviewers
+and the Blackwood coterie. There are few examples of that style in the
+eighteenth century reviews, but some noteworthy specimens of a later
+period--_e.g._, the _Edinburgh Review_ on Coleridge's _Christabel_ and
+the _Quarterly_ on Tennyson's _Poems_--are reprinted in this volume.
+
+The review of _An Evening Walk_ is simply an appended paragraph to the
+previous article. Wordsworth evidently appreciated the advice conveyed
+in the reviewer's final sentence and found many of the lines that
+"called loudly for amendment." More favorable notices of both poems will
+be found in _Critical Review_, VIII, pp. 347 and 472.
+
+
+_Lyrical Ballads_
+
+The _Lyrical Ballads_ by Wordsworth and Coleridge were published
+anonymously early in September, 1798--a few days before the joint
+authors sailed for Germany. Coleridge's contributions were _The Rime of
+the Ancient Mariner_, _The Foster-Mother's Tale_, _The Nightingale_, and
+_The Dungeon_; the remaining nineteen poems were by Wordsworth. As the
+publication of this volume has been accepted by most critics as the
+first fruit of the new romantic spirit and the virtual beginning of
+modern English poetry, the reception accorded to the _Lyrical Ballads_
+becomes a matter of prime importance. It is well known that the effort
+was a failure at first and that the apparent triumph of romanticism did
+not occur until the publication of Scott's _Lay of the Last Minstrel_
+(1805); but a contemporary blindness to the beauty of two of the finest
+poems in English literature cannot be permitted to figure in the
+critics' dispassionate investigation of causes and influences.
+
+There were four interesting reviews of the first edition of the _Lyrical
+Ballads_, namely, (1) _Critical Rev._, XXIV, n.s. (197-204), in October,
+1798, which is reprinted here; (2) _Analytical Rev._, XXVIII (583-587),
+in December, 1798; (3) _Monthly Rev._, XXIX, n.s. (202-210), in May,
+1799, reprinted in Stevenson's _Early Reviews_; (4) _British Critic_,
+XIV (364-369) in October, 1799.
+
+The article in the _Critical Review_ was written by Robert Southey under
+conditions most favorable for such a malicious procedure. The publisher,
+his friend Cottle, had transferred the copyright of the _Lyrical
+Ballads_ to Arch, a London publisher, within two weeks of the appearance
+of the volume, giving as a shallow excuse the "heavy sale" of the book.
+Both Wordsworth and Coleridge were in Germany. Southey had quarreled
+with Coleridge, and was probably jealous of the latter's extravagant
+praise of Wordsworth. He accordingly seized the opportunity to assail
+the work without injuring Cottle's interests or entailing the immediate
+displeasure of the travelling bards.
+
+He covered his tracks to some extent by referring several times to "the
+author," although the joint authorship was well known to him. While
+severe in most of his strictures on Wordsworth, Southey reserved his
+special malice for _The Ancient Mariner_. He called it "a Dutch attempt
+at German sublimity"; and in a letter written to William Taylor on
+September 5, 1798--probably while he was writing his discreditable
+critique--he characterized the poem as "the clumsiest attempt at German
+sublimity I ever saw." Southey's responsibility for the article became
+known to Cottle, who communicated the fact to the poets on their return
+a year later. Wordsworth declared that "if Southey could not
+conscientiously have spoken differently of the volume, he ought to have
+declined the task of reviewing it." Coleridge indited an epigram, _To a
+Critic_, and let the matter drop. Shortly afterwards he showed his
+renewed good-will by aiding Southey in preparing the second _Annual
+Anthology_ (1800).
+
+The subsequent reviews of the _Lyrical Ballads_ adopted the tone of the
+_Critical_ (then recognized as the leading review) and internal evidence
+shows that they did not hesitate to borrow ideas from Southey's article.
+The _Analytical Review_ also saw German extravagances in _The Ancient
+Mariner_; the _Monthly_ borrowed Southey's figure of the Italian and
+Flemish painters, and called _The Ancient Mariner_ "the strangest story
+of a cock and bull that we ever saw on paper ... a rhapsody of
+unintelligible wildness and incoherence." The belated review in the
+_British Critic_ was probably written by Coleridge's friend, Rev.
+Francis Wrangham, and was somewhat more appreciative than the rest. For
+further details, consult Mr. Thomas Hutchinson's reprint (1898) of the
+_Lyrical Ballads_, pp. (xiii-xxviii). Despite the unfavorable reviews,
+the Ballads reached a fourth edition in 1805 (besides an American
+edition in 1802), thus achieving the popularity alluded to by Jeffrey at
+the beginning of our next review.
+
+
+_Poems_ (1807)
+
+Wordsworth's fourth publication, the _Poems_ (1807), included most of
+the pieces written after the first appearance of the _Lyrical Ballads_.
+It was likewise his first venture subsequent to the founding of the
+_Edinburgh Review_. Jeffrey had assailed the theories of the "Lake
+Poets" (and, incidentally, coined that unfortunate term) in the first
+number of the _Review_, in an article on Southey's _Thalaba_, and three
+years later (1805), in criticizing _Madoc_, he again expressed his views
+on the subject. Now came the first opportunity to deal with the
+recognized leader of the "Lakers"--the poet whose work most clearly
+illustrated the poetic theories that Jeffrey deemed pernicious.
+
+The article here reprinted from the _Edinburgh Rev._, XI (214-231), of
+October, 1807, and Jeffrey's review of _The Excursion_, in _ibid._, XXIV
+(1-30), are perhaps the two most important critiques of their kind. No
+student of Wordsworth's theory of poetry, as set forth in his various
+prefaces, can afford to ignore either of these interesting discussions
+of the subject. (For details, see A.J. George's edition of the
+_Prefaces_ of Wordsworth, Gates' _Selections_ from Jeffrey, Beers'
+_Nineteenth Century Romanticism_, Hutchinson's edition of _Lyrical
+Ballads_, etc.) It was undoubtedly true that Jeffrey, although an able
+critic, failed to grasp the real significance of the new poetic
+movement, and to appreciate the influence wrought by the doctrines of
+the Lake Poets on modern conceptions of poetry. Yet he was far from
+wrong in many of his criticisms of Wordsworth. While deprecating the
+latter's theories, it is clear that Jeffrey regarded him as a poet of
+great power who was being led astray by his perverse practice. The
+popular conception of Jeffrey as a hectoring and blatant opponent of
+Wordsworth is not substantiated by the review. The impartial reader must
+agree with Jeffrey at many points, and if he will take the trouble to
+collate Jeffrey's quotations with the revised text of Wordsworth, he
+will learn that the poet did not disdain to take an occasional
+suggestion for the improvement of his verse.
+
+We recognize Wordsworth to-day as the most unequal of English poets.
+There is little that is common to the inspired bard of _Tintern Abbey_,
+the _Immortality Ode_ and the nobler _Sonnets_, and the unsophisticated
+scribe of _Peter Bell_ and _The Idiot Boy_. Like Browning, he wrote too
+much to write well at all times, and if both poets were capable of the
+sublimest flights, they likewise descended to unimagined depths; but the
+fault of Wordsworth was perhaps the greater, because his bathos was the
+result of a deliberate and persistent attempt to enrich English poetry
+with prosaically versified incidents drawn at length from homely rural
+life.
+
+
+SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
+
+The first part of Coleridge's _Christabel_ was written in 1797 during
+the brief period of inspiration that also gave us _The Ancient Mariner_
+and _Kubla Khan_--in short, that small group of exquisite poems which in
+themselves suffice to place Coleridge in the front rank of English
+poets. The second part was written in 1800, after the author's return
+from Germany. The fragment circulated widely in manuscript among
+literary men, bewitched Scott and Byron into imitating its fascinating
+rhythms, and, at Byron's suggestion, was finally published by Murray in
+1816 with _Kubla Khan_ and _The Pains of Sleep_. It is probable that the
+high esteem in which these poems were held by Coleridge's literary
+friends led him to expect a favorable reception at the hands of the
+critics; hence his keen disappointment at the general tone of their
+sarcastic analysis and their protests against the absurdity and
+obscurity of the poems. The principal critiques on _Christabel_
+were:--(1) _Edinburgh Rev._, XXVII (58-67), which is here reprinted; (2)
+_Monthly Rev._, LXXXII, n.s. (22-25), reprinted in Stevenson's _Early
+Reviews_; (3) _The Literary Panorama_, IV, n.s. (561-565); and (4)
+_Anti-Jacobin Rev._, L (632-636).
+
+It is evident that Coleridge was eminently successful in the gentle art
+of making enemies. We have seen that Southey's attack on the _Lyrical
+Ballads_ was a direct result of his ill-will toward Coleridge; the
+outrageous article in the _Edinburgh Review_ was written by William
+Hazlitt under similar inspiration, and was followed by abusive papers in
+_The Examiner_ (1816, p. 743, and 1817, p. 236). There was no
+justification for Hazlitt, and none has been attempted by his
+biographers. Judged by its intrinsic merits, the Edinburgh article is
+one of the most absurd reviews ever written by a critic of recognized
+ability. Hazlitt followed the method of outlining the story by quotation
+with interspersed sarcasm and ironical criticism. As a coarse boor might
+crumple a delicate and beautifully wrought fabric to prove that it has
+not the wearing qualities of a blacksmith's apron, Hazlitt seized upon
+the ethereal story of _Christabel_, with its wealth of medi�val and
+romantic imagery, and held up to ridicule the incidents that did not
+conform to modern English conceptions of life. It requires no great art
+to produce such a critique; the same method was applied to _Christabel_
+with hardly less success by the anonymous hack of the _Anti-Jacobin_.
+Whatever may have been Hazlitt's motives, we cannot understand how a
+critic of his unquestioned ability could quote with ridicule some of the
+very finest lines of _Kubla Khan_, and expect his readers to concur with
+his opinion. The lack of taste was more apparent because he quoted, with
+qualified praise, six lines of no extraordinary merit from _Christabel_
+and insisted, that with this one exception, there was not a couplet in
+the whole poem that achieved the standard of a newspaper poetry-corner
+or the effusions scratched by peripatetic bards on inn-windows. An
+interesting discussion between Mr. Thomas Hutchinson and Col. Prideaux
+concerning Hazlitt's responsibility for this and other critiques on
+Coleridge in the _Edinburgh Review_ will be found in _Notes and Queries_
+(Ninth Series), X, pp. 388, 429; XI, 170, 269.
+
+The other reviews of _Christabel_ were all unfavorable. Most extravagant
+was the utterance of the _Monthly Magazine_, XLVI, p. 407, in 1818, when
+it declared that the "poem of Christabel is only fit for the inmates of
+Bedlam. We are not acquainted in the history of literature with so great
+an insult offered to the public understanding as the publication of that
+r[h]apsody of delirium."
+
+Hazlitt's primitive remarks on the metre of _Christabel_ are of little
+interest. Coleridge was, of course, wrong in stating that his metre was
+founded on a new principle. The irregularly four-stressed line occurs in
+Spenser's _Shepherd's Calender_ and can be traced back through the
+halting tetrameters of Skelton. Coleridge himself alludes to this fact
+in his note to his poem _The Raven_, and elsewhere.
+
+Coleridge's earlier poetical publications were received with commonplace
+critiques usually mildly favorable. For reviews of his _Poems_ (1796)
+see _Monthly Rev._, XX, n.s., p. 194; _Analytical Rev._, XXIII, p. 610;
+_British Critic_, VII, p. 549; and _Critical Rev._, XVII, n.s., p. 209;
+the second edition of _Poems_ (1797) is noticed in _Critical Rev._,
+XXIII, n.s., p. 266; for _Lyrical Ballads_, see under Wordsworth; for
+the successful play _Remorse_ (1813), see _Monthly Rev._, LXXI, n.s., p.
+82, and _Quarterly Rev._, XI, p. 177.
+
+
+ROBERT SOUTHEY
+
+_Madoc_, a ponderous quarto of over five hundred pages and issued at two
+guineas, was published by Southey in 1805 as the second of that
+long-forgotten series of interminable epics including _Thalaba_, _The
+Curse of Kehama_, and _Roderick, Last of the Goths_. These huge unformed
+productions were not poems, but metrical tales, written in a kind of
+verse that could have flowed indefinitely from the author's pen. In
+short, Southey was not a poet, and the whole bulk of his efforts in
+verse, with but one or two exceptions, seems destined to oblivion. As
+poet-laureate for thirty years and the associate of Wordsworth and
+Coleridge in the "Lake School," Southey will, however, remain a figure
+of some importance in the history of English poetry.
+
+The review of _Madoc_ reprinted from the _Monthly Rev._, XLVIII
+(113-122) for October, 1805, was written in the old style then fast
+giving way to the sprightlier methods of the _Edinburgh_. Here we find a
+style abounding in literary allusions and classical quotations, and
+evincing a generally patronizing attitude toward the author under
+discussion. Most readers will agree with the sentiments expressed by the
+reviewer, who succeeded in making his article interesting without
+descending to the depths of buffoonery. No apology is necessary for the
+excision of the reviewer's unreasonably long extracts from the poem.
+_Madoc_ was also reviewed at great length in the _Edinburgh Review_ by
+Francis Jeffrey.
+
+61. _Ille ego, qui quondam, etc._ The lines usually prefixed to the
+_�neid_.
+
+61. _Prorumpere in medias res_. Cf. Horace, _Ars Poetica_, l. 148.
+
+61. _Macklin's Tragedy_. _Henry VII_ (1746), his only tragedy, and a
+failure.
+
+61. _Toto carere possum_. Cf. Martial, _Epig._ XI, 56.
+
+61. _Camo�ns_. The author of the Portuguese _Lusiad_ (1572) which
+narrates the adventures of Vasco da Gama.
+
+62. _Milton_. Quoted from Sonnet XI.--_On the Detraction which followed
+upon my writing certain Treatises_.
+
+63. _Snatching a grace, etc._ Pope's _Essay on Criticism_, l. 153.
+
+
+CHARLES LAMB
+
+Most of Lamb's earlier poetical productions appeared in conjunction with
+the work of other poets. Four of his sonnets were printed with
+Coleridge's _Poems on Various Subjects_ (1796), and he was more fully
+represented in _Poems by S.T. Coleridge. Second Edition_. _To which are
+now added Poems by Charles Lamb and Charles Lloyd_ (1797). In the
+following year appeared _Blank Verse_, by Charles Lloyd and Charles
+Lamb. For new and interesting material concerning the three poets, see
+E.V. Lucas' _Charles Lamb and the Lloyds_ (1899). Lloyd (1775-1839)
+wrote melancholy verses and a sentimental, epistolary novel _Edmund
+Oliver_, but nothing of permanent value. However, in 1798, he was almost
+as well known as Coleridge, and was hailed in some quarters as a
+promising poet.
+
+The _Monthly Rev._, XXVII, n.s. (104-105), in September, 1798, published
+the critique of _Blank Verse_ which is here reprinted. Its principal
+interest lies in the scant attention shown to Lamb, although the volume
+contained his best poem--the tender _Old Familiar Faces_. Dr. Johnson's
+characterization of blank-verse as "poetry to the eye" will be found at
+the end of his _Life of Milton_ as a quotation from "an ingenious
+critic."
+
+Lamb's drama, _John Woodvil_ (1802), written in imitation of later
+Elizabethan models, was a failure. It was unfavorably noticed in the
+_Monthly Rev._, XL, n.s., p. 442 and at greater length in the _Edinburgh
+Rev._, II, p. 90 ff.
+
+Many years later (1830) Lamb prepared his collection of _Album-Verses_
+at the request of his friend Edward Moxon, who had achieved some fame as
+a poet and was enabled (by the generous aid of Samuel Rogers) to begin
+his more lucrative career as a publisher. Three years after the
+appearance of _Album-Verses_, he married Lamb's adopted daughter, Emma
+Isola. The _Album-Verses_, like most of their kind, were a collection of
+small value; the _Literary Gazette_, 1830 (441-442), consequently lost
+no time in assailing them. The _Athen�um_, 1830, p. 435, at that time
+the bitter rival of the _Gazette_, published a more favorable review,
+and a few weeks later (p. 491) printed Southey's verses, _To Charles
+Lamb, on the Reviewal of his Album-Verses in the Literary Gazette_,
+together with a sharp commentary on the methods of the _Gazette_.
+Several times during that year the _Athen�um_ assailed the system of
+private puffery which was followed by the _Gazette_ and eventually
+caused its downfall. There is a reply to the _Athen�um_ in the _Literary
+Gazette_, 1833, p. 772.
+
+
+WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
+
+Landor was twenty-three when he published _Gebir_ anonymously in
+1798--the year of the _Lyrical Ballads_--and he lived until 1864. The
+nine decades of his life covered an important period of literature. He
+was nine years old when the great Johnson died, yet he lived to see the
+best poetic achievements of Tennyson, Browning, and Arnold. However, he
+did not live to see _Gebir_ a popular poem. Southey gave it a favorable
+welcome in the _Critical Review_, and became a life-long admirer of
+Landor; but our brief notices reprinted from the _Monthly Rev._, XXXI,
+n.s., p. 206, and _British Critic_, XV, p. 190 of February, 1800,
+represent more nearly the popular verdict. Both reviewers complain of
+the obscurity of the poem, which, it will be remembered, had been
+originally written in Latin, then translated and abridged.
+Notwithstanding the fact that Landor declared himself amply repaid by
+the praise of a few appreciative readers, he prepared a violent and
+scornful reply to the _Monthly Review_, and would have published it but
+for the sensible dissuasion of a friend. Some interesting extracts from
+the letter are printed in Forster's _Life of Landor_, pp. (76-85). He
+protested especially against the imputed plagiarisms from Milton and
+gave ample evidence of the pugnacious spirit that brought him into
+difficulties several times during his life. See also the _Imaginary
+Conversation_ between Archdeacon Hare and Walter Landor, wherein the
+reception of _Gebir_ is discussed and Southey's poetry is praised at the
+expense of Wordsworth's. Landor's first publication, the _Poems_ (1795)
+was noticed in the _Monthly Rev._, XXI, n.s., p. 253.
+
+
+SIR WALTER SCOTT
+
+The successful series of metrical tales which Scott inaugurated with the
+_Lay of the Last Minstrel_ (1805) had for its second member the more
+elaborate _Marmion_ (1808). From the first, Scott's poems and romances
+were favorably received by the reviews and usually noticed at great
+length. There was always a story to outline and choice passages to
+quote. As suggested in the Preface, these p�ans of praise are of
+comparatively little interest to the student, and need hardly be cited
+here in detail.
+
+The critique of _Marmion_, written by Jeffrey for the _Edinburgh Rev._,
+XII (1-35), had the place of honor in the number for April, 1808. It was
+chosen for the present reprints partly as a fitting example of Jeffrey's
+fearlessness in expressing his opinions, and partly for its historic
+interest as the article that contributed to Scott's rupture with the
+Edinburghers and to his successful founding of a Tory rival in the
+_Quarterly Review_. Although the article has here been abridged to about
+half of its original length by the omission of six hundred quoted lines
+and a synopsis of the poem, it is still the longest of these reprints.
+Jeffrey evidently felt that a detailed account of the story was
+necessary in order to justify his strictures on the plot.
+
+An author of those days could afford to ignore the decisions of the
+critical monthlies, but the brilliant criticism and incisive diction of
+the _Edinburgh Review_ carried weight and exerted far-reaching
+influence. Jeffrey's article was practically the only dissonant note in
+the chorus of praise that greeted _Marmion_, and Scott probably resented
+the critic's attitude. Lockhart, in his admirable chapter on the
+publication of _Marmion_, admits that "Jeffrey acquitted himself on this
+occasion in a manner highly creditable to his courageous sense of duty."
+The April number of the _Edinburgh_ appeared shortly before a particular
+day on which Jeffrey had engaged to dine with Scott. Fearing that under
+the circumstances he might be an unwelcome guest, he sent the following
+tactful note with the copy which was forwarded to the poet:--
+
+"Dear Scott,--If I did not give you credit for more magnanimity than any
+other of your irritable tribe, I should scarcely venture to put this
+into your hands. As it is, I do it with no little solicitude, and
+earnestly hope that it will make no difference in the friendship which
+has hitherto subsisted between us. I have spoken of your poem exactly as
+I think, and though I cannot reasonably suppose that you will be pleased
+with everything I have said, it would mortify me very severely to
+believe I had given you pain. If you have any amity left for me, you
+will not delay very long to tell me so. In the meantime, I am very
+sincerely yours, F. Jeffrey."
+
+There was but one course open to Scott; accordingly to Lockhart, "he
+assured Mr. Jeffrey that the article had not disturbed his digestion,
+though he hoped neither his booksellers nor the public would agree with
+the opinions it expressed, and begged he would come to dinner at the
+hour previously appointed. Mr. Jeffrey appeared accordingly, and was
+received by his host with the frankest cordiality, but had the
+mortification to observe that the mistress of the house, though
+perfectly polite, was not quite so easy with him as usual. She, too,
+behaved herself with exemplary civility during the dinner, but could not
+help saying, in her broken English, when her guest was departing, 'Well,
+good night, Mr. Jeffrey. Dey tell me you have abused Scott in de Review,
+and I hope Mr. Constable has paid _you_ very well for writing it.'"
+
+Jeffrey's article apparently had little influence on the sale of
+_Marmion_, which reached eight editions (25,000 copies) in three years.
+In October, 1808, the _Edinburgh Review_ published an appreciative
+review of Scott's edition of Dryden, and afterwards received with favor
+the later poems and the principal Waverley Novels.
+
+78. _Mr. Thomas Inkle_. The story of Inkle and Yarico was related by
+Steele in no. 11 of the _Spectator_. It was afterwards dramatized (1787)
+by George Colman.
+
+
+LORD BYRON
+
+The twentieth number of the _Edinburgh Review_ contained Jeffrey's long
+article on Wordsworth's _Poems_ (1807); the twenty-second contained his
+review of Scott's _Marmion_; and the twenty-first (January, 1808)
+contained a still more famous critique, long attributed to Jeffrey--the
+review of Byron's _Hours of Idleness_ (1807). It is reprinted from
+_Edinburgh Rev._, XI (285-289) in Stevenson's _Early Reviews_ and forms
+Appendix II of R.E. Prothero's edition of Byron's _Letters and
+Journals_. We know definitely that the article was written by Henry
+Brougham. (See Prothero, op. cit., II, p. 397, and Sir M.E. Grant Duff's
+_Notes from a Diary_, II, p. 189.)
+
+It is hardly within the province of literary criticism to deal with
+hypothetical conditions in authors' lives; but it is at least a matter
+of some interest to conjecture whether Byron would have become a great
+poet if this stinging review had not been published. It is evident that
+the _Hours of Idleness_ gave few signs of promise, and the poet, fully
+intent upon a political career, himself expressed his intention of
+abandoning the muse. Many an educated Englishman has published such a
+volume of _Juvenilia_ and sinned no more. But a nature like Byron's
+could not overlook the effrontery of the _Edinburgh Review_. The
+proud-spirited poet was evidently far more incensed by the patronizing
+tone of the article than by its strictures: what could be more galling
+than the reiterated references to the "noble minor," or the withering
+contempt that characterized a particular poem as "the thing in page 79"?
+Many years later, Byron wrote to Shelley:--"I recollect the effect on me
+of the _Edinburgh_ on my first poem; it was rage, and resistance, and
+redress--but not despondency nor despair." (Prothero, V, p. 267.)
+
+There was method in Byron's "rage and resistance and redress." For more
+than a year he labored upon a satire which he had begun even before the
+appearance of the _Edinburgh_ article. (See letter of October 26, 1807,
+in _Letters_, ed. Prothero, I, p. 147.) In the spring of 1809, _English
+Bards and Scotch Reviewers_ was given anonymously to the world. The
+publication of this vigorous satire virtually decided Byron's career.
+Not only did he abuse Jeffrey, whom he believed responsible for the
+offending critique, but he flung defiance in the face of almost all his
+literary contemporaries. The authorship of the satire was soon apparent,
+and in a flippant note to the second edition, Byron became still more
+abusive toward Jeffrey and his "dirty pack," and declared that he was
+ready to give satisfaction to all who sought it. A few years later he
+regretted his rashness in assailing the authors of his time. He also
+learned of the injustice done to Jeffrey and had ample reason to feel
+embarrassed by the tone of the eight reviews of his poems that Jeffrey
+did write for the _Edinburgh_. (See the list in Prothero, II, p. 248.)
+In _Don Juan_ (canto X, xvi), he made the following retraction:--
+
+    "And all our little feuds, at least all _mine_,
+      Dear Jeffrey, once my most redoubted foe
+    (As far as rhyme and criticism combine
+      To make such puppets of us things below),
+    Are over. Here's a health to 'Auld Lang Syne!'
+      I do not know you, and may never know
+    Your face--but you have acted, on the whole,
+    Most nobly; and I own it from my soul."
+
+The other reviews of _Hours of Idleness_ are of little interest. The
+_Monthly_ and the _Critical_ both praised the book; the _Literary
+Panorama_, III, p. 273, said the author was no imbecile, but an
+incautious writer.
+
+98. [Greek: thelo legein],--Anacreon, Ode I. ([Greek: thel� legein
+Atreidas, k. t. l.])
+
+98. [Greek: mesonyktiois, poth' horais],--Anacreon, Ode III. ([Greek:
+mesonyktiois poth' h�rais, k. t. l.])
+
+100. _Sancho_,--Sancho Panza in _Don Quixote_. The proverb is of ancient
+origin. See French, Latin, Italian and Spanish forms in Brewer's
+_Dictionary of Phrase and Fable_.
+
+
+_Childe Harold_
+
+Shortly after the appearance of the second edition of _English Bards and
+Scotch Reviewers_, Byron left England and travelled through the East, at
+the same time leisurely composing the first two cantos of _Childe
+Harold's Pilgrimage_. Their publication in 1812 placed him at the head
+of the popular poets of the day. Henceforth the reviews gave extensive
+notices to all his productions. (For references, see J.P. Anderson's
+bibliography appended to Hon. Roden Noel's _Life of Byron_.) _Childe
+Harold_ was reviewed in the _Edinburgh Rev._, XIX (466-477), by Jeffrey;
+in the _Quarterly_, VII (180-200), by George Ellis; in the _British
+Review_, III (275-302); and _Eclectic Review_, XV (630-641).
+
+The article here reprinted from the _Christian Observer_, XI (376-386),
+of June, 1812, is of special interest as an early protest from
+conservative, religious circles against the immoral and irreverent tone
+of Byron's poetry. As literary criticism, it is almost worthless, in
+spite of the elaborate allusions and quotations with which the
+critic--evidently a survivor of the old school--has interlarded his
+remarks. Little can be said in defense of an article which insists that
+the chief end of poetry is to be agreeably didactic and which (in 1812)
+cites Southey as the greatest of living poets. However, it probably
+represents the attitude of a large number of worthy people of the time,
+who recognized that Byron had genius, and wished to see him exercise his
+powers with due regard for the proprieties of civilized life. As
+Byron's offences grew more flagrant in his later poems, the criticisms
+in the conservative reviews became more vehement. For Byron's
+controversy with the _British Review_, which he facetiously dubbed "my
+grandmother's review" in _Don Juan_, see Prothero, IV, pp. (346-347),
+and Appendix VII. The ninth Appendix to the same volume is Byron's
+caustic reply to the brutal review of _Don Juan_ in _Blackwood's
+Magazine_, V, p. 512 ff.
+
+101. _Lion of the north_, Francis Jeffrey. The usual agnomen of Gustavus
+Adolphus. Cf. Walter Scott, the "Wizard of the North."
+
+105. _Faiery Queen will not often be read through_. Hume's _History of
+England_, Appendix III.
+
+106. _Qui, quid sit pulchrum_, etc. Horace, Epis. II (3-4).
+
+106. _Rursum--quid virtus_, etc. Horace, Epis. II (17-18).
+
+107. _Our sage serious Spenser, etc._ Milton's _Areopagitica_, _Works_,
+ed. Mitford, IV, p. 412.
+
+107. _Quinctilian_. See Quintilian, Book XII, Chap. I.
+
+107. _Longinus_. _On the Sublime_, IX, XIII, etc.
+
+108. _Restoration of Learning in the East_. A Cambridge prize poem
+(1805) by Charles Grant, Lord Glenelg (1778-1866).
+
+109. _Thersites_. See Shakespeare's _Troilus and Cressida_.
+
+109. _Caliban_. See Shakespeare's _The Tempest_.
+
+109. _Heraclitus_. The "weeping philosopher" (circa 500 B.C.).
+
+109. _Zeno_. The founder (342-270 B.C.) of the Stoic School.
+
+109. _Zoilus_. The ancient grammarian who assailed the works of Homer.
+The epithet Homeromastix is sometimes applied to him.
+
+113. _The philosophic Tully, etc._ See the concluding paragraph of
+Cicero's _De Senectute_.
+
+
+PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
+
+It is doubtful whether any other poet was so widely and so continuously
+assailed in the reviews as Shelley. Circumstances have made certain
+critiques on Byron, Keats, and others more widely known, but nowhere
+else do we find the persistent stream of abuse that followed in the wake
+of Shelley's publications. The _Blackwood_ articles were usually most
+scathing, and those of the _Literary Gazette_ were not far behind.
+Fortunately, the poet spent most of his time in Italy and thus remained
+in ignorance of the great majority of these spiteful attacks in the
+less important periodicals.
+
+_Alastor_, which appeared in 1816, attracted comparatively little
+attention. The tone of the brief notice reprinted from the _Monthly
+Rev._, LXXIX, n.s., p. 433, shows that the poet was as yet unknown to
+the critics. _Blackwood's Magazine_, VI (148-154), gave a longer and, on
+the whole, more favorable account of the poem. In the same year, Leigh
+Hunt published his _Story of Rimini_, most noteworthy for its graceful
+rhythmical structure in the unrestricted couplets of Chaucer. This
+departure from the polished heroics of Pope, which were ill-adapted to
+narrative subjects in spite of his successful translation of Homer, was
+hailed with delight by the younger poets. Shelley imitated the measure
+in his _Julian_ and _Maddalo_, and Keats did likewise in _Lamia_ and
+_Endymion_. Hunt was soon recognized by the critics as the leader of a
+group of liberals whom they conveniently classified as the Cockney
+School. Shelley's ill-treatment at the hands of the reviewers dates from
+his association with this coterie. His _Revolt of Islam_ (1818) was
+assailed by John Taylor Coleridge in the _Quarterly Review_, XXI
+(460-471). _The Cenci_ was condemned as a horrible literary monstrosity
+by the scandalized critics of the _Monthly Rev._, XCIV, n.s. (161-168);
+the _Literary Gazette_, 1820 (209-10); and the _New Monthly Magazine_,
+XIII (550-553). The review here reprinted from the _London Mag._, I
+(401-405), is comparatively mild in its censure.
+
+One would naturally suppose that the death of Keats would have ensured
+at least a respectful consideration for Shelley's lament, _Adonais_
+(1821); but the callous critics were by no means abashed. The outrageous
+article in the _Literary Gazette_ of December 8, 1821, pp. (772-773), is
+one of the unpardonable errors of literary criticism; but it sinks into
+insignificance beside the brutal, unquotable review which _Blackwood's
+Magazine_ permitted to appear in its pages. In the same year Shelley's
+youthful poetical indiscretion, _Queen Mab_, which he himself called
+"villainous trash," was published under circumstances beyond his
+control, and forthwith the readers of the _Literary Gazette_ were
+regaled with ten columns of foul abuse from the pen of a critic who
+declared that he was driven almost speechless by the sentiments
+expressed in the poem. Well could the heartless reviewer of _Adonais_
+write:--"If criticism killed the disciples of that [the Cockney]
+school, Shelley would not have been alive to write an elegy on another."
+
+115. _Eye in a fine phrenzy rolling_. Shakespeare's _Midsummer-Night's
+Dream_, V, 1, 12.
+
+115. _Above this visible diurnal sphere_. Milton's _Paradise Lost_, Book
+VII, 22.
+
+116. _Parc� quod satis est manu_. Horace, _Odes_, III, 16, 24.
+
+116. _Lord Fanny_. A nickname bestowed upon Lord Hervey, an effeminate
+noble of the time of George II.
+
+117. _O! rus, quando ego te aspiciam_. Horace, _Satires_, II, 6, 60.
+
+117. _Mordecai_. See Book of _Esther_, V, 13.
+
+118. _Last of the Romans_. Mark Antony in Shakespeare's _Julius C�sar_,
+III, 2, 194.
+
+120. _Full fathom five_. Shakespeare's _The Tempest_, I, 2, 396.
+
+126. _Oh�! jam satis est_. Horace, _Satires_, I, 5, 12-13.
+
+126. _Tristram Shandy_. The excommunication is in vol. III, chap. XI.
+
+133. _Put a girdle_, etc. See Shakespeare's _Midsummer-Night's Dream_,
+II, 1, 175.
+
+
+JOHN KEATS
+
+The history of English poetry offers no more interesting case between
+poet and critic than that of John Keats. The imputed influence of a
+savage critique in hastening the death of the poet has given the
+_Quarterly Review_ an unenviable notoriety which clings in spite of the
+efforts of scholars to establish the truth. To many students, Keats,
+_Endymion_, and _Quarterly_ are practically connotative terms; and this
+is a direct result of the righteous but misguided indignation of
+Shelley--misguided because his information was incomplete and the more
+guilty party escaped, thus inflicting upon the _Quarterly_ the brunt of
+the opprobrium of which far more than half should be accredited to
+_Blackwood's Magazine_.
+
+_Endymion_ was published in April, 1818. One of the publishers (Taylor
+and Hessey) requested Gifford, then editor of the _Quarterly Review_, to
+treat the poem with indulgence. This indiscreet move probably actuated
+Gifford to provide a severe critique; at any rate, in the belated April
+number of the _Quarterly_, XIX (204-208), which was not issued until
+September, appeared the famous review. A persistent error, which has
+crept into W.M. Rossetti's _Life of Keats_, into Anderson's
+bibliography, and even into the article on Gifford in the _Dictionary of
+National Biography_, attributes this article to Gifford himself; but it
+is known to be the work of John Wilson Croker. (See the article on
+Croker in _Dict. Nat. Biog._ From the article on John Murray (_ibid._)
+we learn that Gifford was not wholly responsible for a single article in
+the _Quarterly_.)
+
+Meanwhile, _Blackwood's Magazine_, III (519-524) had made _Endymion_ the
+text of its fourth infamous tirade against the Cockney School of Poetry.
+The signature "Z" was appended to all the articles, but the critic's
+identity has not yet been discovered. Leigh Hunt thought it was Walter
+Scott, Haydon suspected the actor Terry, but it is more probable that
+the honor belongs to John Gibson Lockhart. One account attributes the
+entire series to Lockhart; another attributes the series to Wilson, but
+holds Lockhart responsible for the _Endymion_ article. Mr. Andrew Lang,
+in his _Life and Letters of Lockhart_, dismissed the matter by saying
+that he did not know who wrote the article.
+
+The _Quarterly_ critique was reprinted in Stevenson's _Early Reviews_,
+in Rossetti's _Life of Keats_, in Buxton Forman's edition of Keats'
+_Poetical Works_ (Appendix V) and elsewhere. From a critical point of
+view, it is, as Forman terms it, a "curiously unimportant production."
+The student will at once question its power to cause distress in the
+mind of the poet; as for malignant severity, there are several reviews
+among the present reprints that put the brief _Quarterly_ article to
+shame. When we turn to what Swinburne calls the "obscener insolence" of
+the _Blackwood_ article, we find an unrestrained torrent of abuse
+against both Hunt and Keats that amply justified Landor's subsequent
+allusions to the _Blackguard's Magazine_. The _Quarterly_ critique was
+captious and ill-tempered; but the _Blackwood_ article was a personal
+insult.
+
+It is impossible to consider in detail the vexed question of the
+influence which these reviews had upon Keats. In Mr. W.M. Rossetti's
+_Life of Keats_, pp. (83-106) there is a full discussion of the evidence
+on the subject. Within a few months after the appearance of the
+articles, Keats wrote:--"Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on
+the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic
+of his own works. My own domestic criticism has given me pain without
+comparison beyond what _Blackwood_ or _The Quarterly_ could possibly
+inflict." Some weeks later he wrote that the _Quarterly_ article had
+only served to make him more prominent among bookmen. After some time
+he expressed himself less confidently and deprecated the growing power
+of the reviews, but there is no evidence that he fretted over the
+critiques. Haydon tells us that Keats was morbid and silent for hours at
+a time; but it is quite likely that the consciousness of his physical
+affliction--hereditary consumption--was oppressing his mind. His death
+occurred on February 23, 1821--about two and a half years after the
+appearance of the _Endymion_ critiques.
+
+Shelley had gone to Italy before the reviews were published. He heard of
+the _Quarterly_ article, but knew nothing of _Blackwood's_ while writing
+_Adonais_; hence in both poem and preface, the former review is charged
+with having caused Keats' death. Shelley declared that Keats' agitation
+over the review ended in the rupture of a blood vessel in the lungs with
+an ensuing rapid consumption. These statements, which Shelley must have
+had indirectly, have not been substantiated. We are forced to the
+conclusion now generally accepted--that Keats, although sensitive to
+personal ridicule, was superior to the stings of review criticism and
+that the distressing events of the last year of his life were sufficient
+to assure the early triumph of the inherent and unconquerable disease.
+
+141. _Miss Baillie_. Joanna Baillie (1762-1851) authoress of numerous
+forgotten plays and poems which enjoyed great popularity in their day.
+
+142. _Land of Cockaigne_. Here means London, and refers specifically to
+the Cockney poets. An old French poem on the _Land of Cockaigne_
+described it as an ideal land of luxury and ease. The best authorities
+do not accept Cockney as a derivative form. The Cockney School was
+composed of Londoners of the middle-class, supposedly ill-bred and
+imperfectly educated. The critics took special delight in dwelling upon
+the humble origin of the Cockneys, their lack of university training,
+and especially their dependence on translations for their knowledge of
+the classics.
+
+142. _When Leigh Hunt left prison_. Hunt had been imprisoned for libel
+on the Prince Regent (1812).
+
+146. _Vauxhall_. The Gardens were a favorite resort for Londoners early
+in the eighteenth century and remained popular for a long time. See
+Thackeray's _Vanity Fair_ (chap. VI). The implication in the present
+passage is that the Cockney poet gets his ideas of nature from the
+immediate vicinity of London.
+
+147. _East of Temple-bar_. That is, living in the City of London.
+
+150. _Young Sangrado_. An allusion to Doctor Sangrado, in Le Sage's _Gil
+Blas_ (1715).
+
+
+ALFRED LORD TENNYSON
+
+Tennyson's first poetical efforts, which appeared in _Poems by Two
+Brothers_ (1827) attracted little critical attention. His prize-poem,
+_Timbuctoo_ (1829) received the interesting notice here reprinted from
+the _Athen�um_ (p. 456) of July 22, 1829. _Timbuctoo_ was printed in the
+_Cambridge Chronicle_ (July 10, 1829); in the _Prolusiones Academic�_
+(1829); and several times in _Cambridge Prize-Poems_. The use of heroic
+metre in prize-poems was traditional; hence the award was an enviable
+tribute to the blank-verse of _Timbuctoo_.
+
+Tennyson's success was emphasized by the remarkable series of reviews
+that greeted his earliest volumes of poems. The _Poems, chiefly Lyrical_
+(1830) were welcomed by Sir John Bowring in the _Westminster Review_, by
+Leigh Hunt in the _Tatler_, by Arthur Hallam in the _Englishman's
+Magazine_, and by John Wilson in _Blackwood's Magazine_. The _Poems_
+(1833) were reviewed by W.J. Fox in the _Monthly Repository_, and by
+John Stuart Mill in the _Westminster Review_. This array of names was
+indeed a tribute to the poet; but the unfavorable review, was, as usual,
+most significant. The article written by Lockhart for the _Quarterly
+Rev._, XLIX (81-97), has been characterized as "silly and brutal," but
+it was neither. Tennyson's fame is secure; we can at least be just to
+his early reviewer. It is true that the poet winced under the lash and
+that ten years elapsed before his next volume of collected poems
+appeared; but Canon Ainger is surely in error when he holds the
+_Quarterly Review_ mainly responsible for this long silence. The rich
+measure of praise elsewhere bestowed upon the volume would leave us no
+alternative but the conclusion that Tennyson was childish enough to
+maintain his silence for a decade because Lockhart took liberties with
+his poems instead of joining the chorus of adulation. We know that there
+were other and stronger reasons for Tennyson's silence and we also know
+that the effect of Lockhart's article was decidedly salutary. When the
+next collection of _Poems_ (1842) did appear, the shorter pieces
+ridiculed by Lockhart were omitted, and the derided passages in the
+longer poems were altered.
+
+We may, without conscientious scruples, take Mr. Andrew Lang's advice,
+and enjoy a laugh over Lockhart's performance. Its mock appreciations
+are, perhaps, far-fetched at times; but there are enough effective
+passages to give zest to the article. It has been said in all
+seriousness that Lockhart failed to appreciate the beauty of most of
+Tennyson's lines, and that he confined his remarks to the most
+assailable passages. Surely, when a critic undertakes to write a
+mock-appreciation, he will not quote the best verses, to the detriment
+of his plan. The poet must see to it that his volume does not contain
+enough absurdities to form a sufficient basis for such an article. There
+is a striking contrast to the humor of Lockhart in the little-known
+review of the same volume by the _Literary Gazette_, 1833, pp.
+(772-774). The latter seized upon some crudities that had escaped the
+_Quarterly's_ notice, and, with characteristic brutality, decided that
+the poet was insane and needed a low diet and a cell.
+
+Although the reception accorded to _Poems_ (1842) was generally
+favorable, the publication of _The Princess_ in 1847 afforded the
+critics another opportunity to lament Tennyson's inequalities. The
+spirit of the review of _The Princess_ here reprinted from the _Literary
+Gazette_ of August 8, 1848, is practically identical with that of the
+_Athen�um_ on January 6, 1848, but specifies more clearly the critic's
+objections to the medley. It is noteworthy that Lord Tennyson made
+extensive changes in subsequent editions of _The Princess_, but left
+unaltered all of the passages to which the _Literary Gazette_ took
+exception. The beautiful threnody _In Memoriam_ (1850) and Tennyson's
+elevation to the laureateship in the same year established his position
+as the leading poet of the time; but the appearance of _Maud_ in 1856
+proved to be a temporary check to his popularity. A few personal friends
+admired it and praised its fine lyrics; but as a dramatic narrative it
+failed to please the reviews. The most interesting of the critiques
+(unfortunately too long to be reprinted here) appeared in _Blackwood's
+Magazine_, XLI (311-321), of September, 1855,--a forcible, well-written
+article, which, incidentally, shows how much the magazine had improved
+in respectability since the days of the lampooners of Byron, Shelley,
+and Keats. The authorship of the article has not been disclosed, but we
+know that W.E. Aytoun asked permission of the proprietor to review
+Tennyson's _Maud_. (See Mrs. Oliphant's _William Blackwood and his
+Sons_.) The publication of the _Idylls of the King_ (1859), turned the
+tide more strongly than before in Tennyson's favor, and subsequent
+fault-finding on the part of the critics was confined largely to his
+dramas.
+
+153. _Catullus_. See Catullus, II and III--(_Passer, delici� me�
+puell�_, and _Lugete, O Veneres Cupidinesque_).
+
+153. [Greek: Eithe lyr�, k. t. l.] Usually found in the remains of
+Alc�us. Thomas Moore translates it with his _Odes of Anacreon_ (LXXVII),
+beginning "Would that I were a tuneful lyre," etc. Lockhart proceeds to
+ridicule Tennyson for wishing to be a river, which is not what the
+quoted lines state. Nor does Tennyson "ambition a bolder metamorphosis"
+than his predecessors. Anacreon (Ode XXII) wishes to be a stream, as
+well as a mirror, a robe, a pair of sandals and sundry other articles.
+See Moore's interesting note.
+
+155. _Non omnis moriar_. Horace, _Odes_, III, 30, 6.
+
+156. _Tongues in trees_, etc. Shakespeare's _As You Like It_, II, 1, 17.
+
+157. _Arist�us_. A minor Grecian divinity, worshipped as the first to
+introduce the culture of bees.
+
+164. _Dionysius Periegetes_. Author of [Greek: peri�g�sis t�s g�s], a
+description of the earth in hexameters, usually published with the
+scholia of Eustathius and the Latin paraphrases of Avienus and Priscian.
+For the account of �thiopia, see also Pausanias, I, 33, 4.
+
+167. _The Rovers_. _The Rovers_ was a parody on the German drama of the
+day, published in the _Anti-Jacobin_ (1798) and written by Frere,
+Canning and others. It is reprinted in Charles Edmund's _Poetry of the
+Anti-Jacobin_. The chorus of conspirators is at the end of Act IV.
+
+169. _The Groves of Blarney_. An old Irish song. A version may be seen
+in the _Antiquary_, I, p. 199. The quotation by Lockhart differs
+somewhat from the corresponding stanza of the cited version.
+
+170. _Corporal Trim_. In Sterne's _Tristram Shandy_.
+
+173. _Christopher North_. John Wilson, of _Blackwood's Magazine_.
+
+
+ROBERT BROWNING
+
+The reviews of Browning's poems are singularly uninteresting from a
+historical standpoint. There is usually a protest against the obscurity
+of the poetry and a plea that the author should make better use of his
+manifest genius. For details concerning these reviews, see the
+bibliography of Browning in Nicoll and Wise's _Literary Anecdotes of the
+Nineteenth Century_. The list there given is extensive, but does not
+include several of the reviews mentioned below.
+
+The early poems were so abstruse that the critics were unable to make
+sport of them as they did in the case of Wordsworth, Byron, Tennyson,
+and the rest; and when Browning finally deigned to write within range of
+the average human intellect, that particular style of reviewing had lost
+favor. His earliest publication, _Pauline_ (1832) was well received by
+W.J. Fox in _Monthly Repository_, and in the _Athen�um_. _Tait's
+Edinburgh Magazine_ called it a "piece of pure bewilderment." See also
+the brief notice in the _Literary Gazette_, 1833, p. 183. _Paracelsus_
+(1835) had a similar experience; the reprint from the _Athen�um_, 1835,
+p. 640, is fairly characteristic of the rest, among which are the
+articles in the _Monthly Repository_, 1835, p. 716; the _Christian
+Remembrancer_, XX, p. 346, and the reviews written by John Forster for
+the _Examiner_, 1835, p. 563, and the _New Monthly Magazine_, XLVI
+(289-308).
+
+Neither the favorable review of _Sordello_ (1840) in the _Monthly Rev._,
+1840, II, p. 149, nor the partly appreciative article in the _Athen�um_,
+1840, p. 431, seems to warrant the well-known anecdotes relating the
+difficulties of Douglas Jerrold and Tennyson in attempting to understand
+that poem. The _Athen�um_ gave the poet sound advice, especially in
+regard to the intentional obscurity of his meaning. That this admonition
+was futile may be gathered from the _Saturday Review's_ article (I, p.
+69) on _Men and Women_ (1855) published fifteen years after _Sordello_.
+The critic reverted to the earlier style, and produced one of the most
+readable reviews of Browning. Whatever may be the final verdict yet to
+be passed upon Browning's poetic achievement, the fact remains that the
+contemporary reviews from first to last deplored in his work a
+deliberate obscurity which was wholly unwarranted and which precluded
+the universal appeal that is essential to a poet's greatness.
+
+189. _Della Crusca of Sentimentalism_. Robert Merry (1755-1798) under
+the name Della Crusca became the leader of a set of poetasters who
+flourished during the poetic dearth at the end of the eighteenth century
+and poured forth their rubbish until William Gifford exposed their
+follies in his satires _The Baviad_ (1794) and _The M�viad_ (1795).
+
+189. _Alexander Smith_. A Scotch poet (1830-1867).
+
+189. _Mystic of Bailey_. Philip James Bailey (1816-1902), best known as
+the author of _Festus_, published _The Mystic_ in 1855.
+
+192. _Hudibras Butler, etc._ Samuel Butler, author of _Hudibras_
+(1663-78); Richard H. Barham, author of the _Ingoldsby Legends_ (1840);
+and Thomas Hood, author of _Whims and Oddities_ (1826-27). These poets
+are cited by the reviewer for their skill with unusual metres and
+difficult rhymes.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+_Academy_, xlii-xliii
+
+_Account of English Dramatic Poets_, xv
+
+_Adonais_, by Shelley, reviewed, 129-134; 214, 217
+
+_Advice to Young Reviewer_, xxiii
+
+Ainsworth, Harrison, xlv
+
+Akenside, Mark, xvi
+
+_Alastor_, by Shelley, reviewed, 115
+
+_Album Verses_, by Lamb, reviewed, 66-67
+
+Alford, Dean, xxxv
+
+Allingham, William, l
+
+_All the Year Round_, l
+
+_Analytical Review_, xxii
+
+_Anti-Jacobin Review_, xxiii
+
+Appleton, Dr. Charles, xlii
+
+Arber, Prof. Edward, xiii
+
+Arnold, Matthew, xxxii, xxxvi, xlii
+
+_Athen�um_, xxxviii-xl, liv;
+  on Tennyson's _Timbuctoo_, 151;
+  on Browning's _Paracelsus_, 187
+
+_Athenian Mercury_, xiv
+
+_Atlas_, xl
+
+Austin, Mr. Alfred, xxxvi
+
+
+Bagehot, Walter, xxxii, xxxiv
+
+Barrow, Sir John, xxviii
+
+_Battle of the Reviews_, xx-xxi
+
+Bayle, Pierre, xiii
+
+_Bee_, xvi
+
+Behn, Mrs. Aphra, xv
+
+Beloe, William, xxiii
+
+Bentham, Jeremy, xxxi
+
+_Bentley's Miscellany_, l
+
+Bibliography, lvi-lix
+
+_Bibliotheca Literaria_, xvi
+
+_Biblioth�que Ancienne et Moderne_, xvi
+
+_Biblioth�que Angloise_, xv
+
+_Biblioth�que Chois�e_, xvi
+
+Blackwood, John, xlvii
+
+Blackwood, William, xlv
+
+_Blackwood's Magazine_, xlv-xlvii;
+  on Keats' _Endymion_, 141-150; 216
+
+_Blank Verse_, by Lamb and Lloyd, reviewed, 65
+
+Blount, Sir Thomas Pope, xiv
+
+_Bookman_, xxxvii
+
+Bower, Archibald, xvi
+
+_British and Foreign Review_, xxxii
+
+_British Critic_, xxiii;
+  on Landor's _Gebir_, 68
+
+_British Librarian_, xvi
+
+_British Magazine_, xxii, xlv
+
+_British Review_, xxxii, 213
+
+Brougham, Henry, xxiv, xxvi-xxvii, xxx, 210
+
+Browning, Robert, _Paracelsus_ rev. in _Athen�um_, 187;
+  _Sordello_ rev. in _Monthly Rev._, 188;
+  _Men and Women_ rev. in _Saturday Rev._, 189-196; 220-222
+
+Buckingham, James Silk, xxxviii
+
+Budgell, Eustace, xvi
+
+Bulwer, Edward, xxx, xlv
+
+Bunting, Mr. Percy, xxxvi
+
+Burns, Robert, _Poems_ rev. in _Edinburgh Mag._, 13-14;
+  in _Critical Rev._, 15; 199-200
+
+Byron, Lord, 47, 48;
+  _Hours of Idleness_ rev. in _Edinburgh Rev._, 94-100;
+  _Childe Harold_ rev. in _Christian Observer_, 101-114; 210-213
+
+
+Campbell, Thomas, xlv
+
+Carlyle, Thomas, xxx, xlv, xlix
+
+Cave, Edward, xliv
+
+_Cenci_, by Shelley, reviewed, 116-128, 214
+
+_Censura Celebrium Authorum_, xiv
+
+_Censura Temporum_, xv
+
+_Childe Harold_, by Byron, reviewed, 101-114; 212-213
+
+_Christabel_, by Coleridge, reviewed, 47-59
+
+_Christian Observer_, xxxiii;
+  on Byron's _Childe Harold_, 101-114
+
+_Christian Remembrancer_, xxxii
+
+Christie, Jonathan Henry, xlviii
+
+Cleghorn, James, xlvi
+
+Cobbett, William, xxxvii
+
+Cockney School, _Blackwood's Mag._ on, 141-150; 216-217
+
+Colburn, Henry, xxxvii, xlv
+
+Coleridge, John Taylor, xxix
+
+Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, xlvi;
+  _Christabel_ rev. in _Edinburgh Rev._, 47-59; 201-202, 204-206
+
+Collins, Mr. John Churton, li
+
+Colvin, Mr. Sidney, xlii, liv
+
+_Compleat Library_, xiv
+
+Conder, Josiah, xxxii
+
+_Contemporary Review_, xxxv
+
+Cook, John D., xli
+
+Copleston, Edward, xxiii
+
+_Cornhill Magazine_, l
+
+Cotton, Mr. James S., xliii
+
+Courthope, Mr. W.J., xxxvi
+
+Courtney, Mr. W.L., xxxv
+
+Cowper, William, _Poems_ rev. in _Critical Rev._, 10-12; 198-199
+
+_Critic_, xxxvii
+
+_Critical Review_, xviii-xxi, xxiii, xxv, xxxiii;
+  on Goldsmith's _Traveller_, 5-9;
+  on Cowper's _Poems_, 10-12;
+  on Burn's _Poems_, 15;
+  on _Lyrical Ballads_, 20-23
+
+Croker, John Wilson, xxviii
+
+
+Dennis, John, xv
+
+DeQuincey, Thomas, xlviii
+
+_De Re Poetica_, xiv
+
+_Descriptive Sketches_, by Wordsworth, reviewed, 16-18
+
+Dickens, Charles, l, liv
+
+Dilke, Charles W., xxxix
+
+Dixon, William H., xxxix
+
+Doble, Mr. C.E., xliii
+
+Dowden, Prof. Edward, xxxiv
+
+_Dublin Review_, xxxii
+
+_Dublin University Magazine_, l
+
+D'Urfey, Thomas, xv
+
+
+_Eclectic Review_, xxxii
+
+_Edinburgh Magazine_, xliv;
+  on Burns' _Poems_, 13-14
+
+_Edinburgh Review_, xxiv-xxvii, xxix-xxxi, xlvi, liv;
+  on Wordsworth's _Poems_, 24-46;
+  on Coleridge's _Christabel_, 47-59;
+  on Scott's _Marmion_, 70-93;
+  on Byron's _Hours of Idleness_, 94-100; 209-211
+
+Eliot, George, xxxiv, xlvii
+
+Elliott, Hon. A.R.D., xxxi
+
+Elwin, Whitwell, xxix
+
+Empson, William, xxx
+
+_Endymion_, by Keats, rev. in _Quarterly Rev._, 135-140;
+  rev. in _Blackwood's Mag._, 141-150; 215-218
+
+_English Review_, xxii, xxxii
+
+Escott, Mr. T.H.S., xxxv
+
+_Evening Walk_, by Wordsworth, reviewed, 19
+
+_Examiner_, xxxvii
+
+
+Fonblanque, Albany, xxxvii
+
+_Foreign Quarterly Review_, xxxii
+
+_Foreign Review_, xxxii
+
+Forster, John, xxxvii
+
+_Fortnightly Review_, xxxiii-xxxv
+
+Fox, W.J., xxxiii
+
+_Fraser's Magazine_, xlix-l
+
+Froude, James A., l
+
+
+_Gebir_, by Landor, rev. in _British Critic_, 68;
+  rev. in _Monthly Rev._, 69; 208
+
+_Gentleman's Journal_, xv, xliv
+
+_Gentleman's Magazine_, xv, xliv
+
+Gifford, William, xxvii, xxviii
+
+Goldsmith, Oliver, xviii, xxi, xxii, xlv;
+  _The Traveller_ rev. in _Critical Rev._, 5-9, 197, 198
+
+Grant, Charles, 108
+
+Gray, Thomas, _Odes_ rev. in _Monthly Rev._, 1-4; 197-198
+
+Green, John Richards, xxiii
+
+Griffiths, Ralph, xvii, xviii, xx
+
+
+Hallam, Henry, xxx
+
+Hamilton, Sir William, xxx
+
+Harris, Mr. Frank, xxxv, xli
+
+Harwood, Mr. Philip, xli
+
+Hazlitt, William, 204-205
+
+Hervey, Thomas K., xxxix
+
+Hind, Mr. C. Lewis, xliii
+
+_Historia Literaria_, xvi
+
+_History of Learning_, xiv
+
+_History of the Works of the Learned_, xv, xvi
+
+Hodge, Mr. Harold, xli
+
+Hood, Thomas, xlviii
+
+Hook, Theodore, xlv
+
+Horne, Richard Hengist, xxxiii
+
+Horner, Francis, xxiv, xxv
+
+_Hours of Idleness_, by Byron, reviewed, 94-100; 210-212
+
+_Household Words_, l
+
+Hume, David, 105
+
+Hunt, Leigh, xxxiii, xxxvii, 135, 136, 142
+
+Hutton, Richard Holt, xxxii, xl
+
+
+Introduction, xiii-lv
+
+
+Jebb, Samuel, xvi
+
+Jeffrey, Francis, xxiv-xxvi, xxix, xlviii, 203, 206, 209-210
+
+Jerdan, William, xxxvii, xxxix
+
+Johnson, Samuel, xxi, xxii, 198
+
+_Journal des Savans_, xiii, xiv, xxi
+
+
+Keats, John, _Endymion_, reviewed in _Quarterly Rev._, 135-140;
+  in _Blackwood's Mag._, 141-150; 152, 215-218
+
+Kenrick, William, xx, xxi, xxii
+
+Kingsley, Charles, l
+
+Knowles, Mr. James, xxxv, xxxvi
+
+
+Lamb, Charles, xlviii;
+  _Blank Verse_ rev. in _Monthly Rev._, 65;
+  _Album-Verses_ rev. in _Literary Gazette_, 66-67; 207-208
+
+Landor, Walter Savage, _Gebir_ rev. in _British Critic_, 68;
+  in _Monthly Rev._, 69; 208
+
+Langbaine, Gerald, xv
+
+Le Clerc, Daniel, xvi
+
+Le Clerc, Jean, xiv, xvi
+
+Lewes, George Henry, xxxiv
+
+Lewis, Sir George Cornewall, xxx
+
+_Literary Chronicle_, xxxviii
+
+_Literary Gazette_, xxxvii-xxxix;
+  on Lamb's _Album-Verses_, 66-67;
+  on Shelley's _Adonais_, 129-134;
+  on Tennyson's _The Princess_, 176-186; 207-208
+
+_Literary Journal_, xvi
+
+_Literary Magazine_, xvi, xxii
+
+Lloyd, Charles, _Blank Verse_, rev. in _Monthly Rev._, 65
+
+Lloyd, H.E., xxxvii
+
+Lockhart, John Gibson, xxii, xxxi, 216, 218-219
+
+_London Magazine_, xliv, xlvii-xlviii;
+  on Shelley's _Cenci_, 116-128
+
+_London Quarterly Review_, xxxii
+
+_London Review_, xxii, xxxi
+
+_Longman's Magazine_, l
+
+Lowth, Bishop, xvi
+
+_Lyrical Ballads_, by Wordsworth, reviewed, 20-23; 201-203
+
+
+Macaulay, Thomas Babington, xxix-xxx
+
+MacColl, Mr. Norman, xxxix
+
+Maclise, Daniel, xlix
+
+_Macmillan's Magazine_, l
+
+Macpherson, William, xxix
+
+_Madoc_, by Southey, reviewed, 60-64; 206-207
+
+_Marmion_, by Scott, reviewed, 70-93; 208-210
+
+Martin, Sir Theodore, l
+
+Martineau, James, xxxii
+
+Maty, Paul Henry, xxii
+
+Maurice, Frederick D., xxxviii
+
+Maxse, Mr. Louis J., xxxvi
+
+Melbourne, Lord, xxx
+
+_Memoirs for the Ingenious_, xiv
+
+_Memoirs of Literature_, xv
+
+_Memoires Litt�raires_, xv
+
+_Men and Women_, by Browning, reviewed 189-196, 221
+
+_Mercurius Librarius_, xiii
+
+Meredith, Mr. George, xxxiv
+
+_Metropolitan_, l
+
+Mill, John Stuart, xxx, xxxi
+
+Minto, William, xxxvii
+
+_Miscellaneous Letters_, xiv
+
+_Monthly Censor_, xxxiii
+
+_Monthly Chronicle_, xxxiii
+
+_Monthly Magazine_, xlv
+
+_Monthly Miscellany_, xv
+
+_Monthly Repository_, xxxiii
+
+_Monthly Review_, xvii-xxi, xxv, xxxiii;
+  on Gray's _Odes_, 1-4;
+  on Wordsworth's _Descriptive Sketches_, 16-18;
+  on Wordsworth's _Evening Walk_, 19;
+  on Southey's _Madoc_, 60-64;
+  on Lamb's _Blank Verse_, 65;
+  on Landor's _Gebir_, 69;
+  on Shelley's _Alastor_, 115;
+  on Browning's _Sordello_, 188
+
+Moore, Thomas, xlviii
+
+Morley, Mr. John, xxxiv
+
+Motteux, Peter Anthony, xv, xliv
+
+Moxon, Edward, 207
+
+Murray, John, xxvii
+
+_Museum_, xvi
+
+
+Napier, Macvey, xxix
+
+Nares, Robert, xxxiii
+
+_National Review_ (quar.), xxxii;
+  (mon.), xxxvi
+
+_New Memoirs of Literature_, xvi
+
+_New Monthly Magazine_, xxxvii, xlv
+
+_New Review_, xxii
+
+Nicolas, Sir N.H., xxxii
+
+_Nineteenth Century_, xxxvi
+
+_North British Review_, xxxii
+
+_Nouvelles de la R�publique des Lettres_, xiii
+
+
+Oldys, William, xvi
+
+Oliphant, Mrs. M.O.W., xlvii
+
+
+_Paracelsus_, by Browning, reviewed, 187
+
+Parkes, Samuel, xiv
+
+Pater, Walter, xlii, xliii
+
+Phillips, Sir Richard, xlv
+
+Phillips, Mr. Stephen, liv
+
+Pollock, Mr. W.H., xli
+
+_Porcupine's Gazette_, xxxvii
+
+Pratt, Josiah, xxxiii
+
+_Present State of the Republic of Letters_, xvi
+
+_Princess_, by Tennyson, reviewed, 176-186
+
+Pringle, Thomas, xlvi
+
+Prothero, Mr. George, xxix
+
+Prothero, Mr. Rowland, xxix
+
+
+_Quarterly Review_, xxvii-xxix, liv;
+  on Keats' _Endymion_, 135-140;
+  on Tennyson's _Poems_, 152-175; 215-217
+
+_Quarterly Theological Review_, xxiii
+
+Quintilian, 107
+
+
+Reeve, Henry, xxx
+
+Reid, Andrew, xvi
+
+Rendall, Mr. Vernon, xxxix
+
+_Retrospective Review_, xxxii
+
+_Revue des Deux Mondes_, xxxiii
+
+Ridpath, George, xv
+
+Rintoul, Robert S., xl
+
+Roche, M. de la, xv, xvi
+
+Roscoe, Mr. E.S., xxxi
+
+Roscoe, William C., xxxii
+
+Ross, Miss, xxxvii
+
+_Royal Magazine_, xliv
+
+Russell, Lord John, xxx
+
+
+Salisbury, Lord, xli
+
+Sallo, Denis de, xiii
+
+_Saturday Review_, xli, liv;
+  on Browning's _Men and Women_, 189-196
+
+_Scots Magazine_, xliv
+
+Scott, John, xlvii
+
+Scott, Sir Walter, xxvii;
+  _Marmion_ rev. in _Edinburgh Rev._, 70-93; 208-210
+
+Shelley, Percy Bysshe, _Alastor_ rev. in _Monthly Rev._, 115;
+  _Cenci_ rev. in _London Mag._, 116-128;
+  _Adonais_ rev. in _Literary Gazette_, 129-134, 213-215
+
+Shore, Mr. W. Teignmouth, xliii
+
+Smith, Sydney, xxiv, xxvi
+
+Smith, Sir William, xxix
+
+Smollett, Tobias xviii, xx, xlv
+
+_Sordello_, by Browning, reviewed, 188
+
+Southern, Henry, xxxi, xxxii
+
+Southey, Robert, xxviii;
+  _Madoc_ rev. in _Monthly Rev._, 60-64; 109, 202, 206-207
+
+_Spectator_, xl-xli
+
+Stebbing, Henry, xxxviii
+
+Stephen, (Sir) Leslie, xxxiv
+
+Sterling, John, xxxviii
+
+Strachey, Mr. J. St. L., xl
+
+Swinburne, Mr. A.C., xxxiv, liv
+
+Symonds, J.A., xxxiv
+
+Symons, Mr. Arthur, liv
+
+
+_Tait's Edinburgh Magazine_, l
+
+Taylor, William, xlv
+
+_Temple Bar_, l
+
+Tennyson, Alfred, (Lord), xxxvi;
+  _Timbuctoo_ rev. in _Athen�um_, 151;
+  _Poems_ rev. in _Quarterly Rev._, 152-175;
+  _The Princess_ rev. in _Literary Gazette_, 176-186; 218-220
+
+Thackeray, W.M., xxx, xlix, l
+
+_Theatrum Poetarum_, xv
+
+_Timbuctoo_, by Tennyson, reviewed, 151
+
+Townsend, Meredith, xl
+
+_Traveller_, by Goldsmith, reviewed, 5-9
+
+
+_Universal Historical Biblioth�que_, xiv
+
+_Universal Magazine_, xliv
+
+_Universal Mercury_, xiv
+
+
+Walpole, Horace, xvi, xx
+
+Warton, J. and T., xvi
+
+Watkins, Dr., xlv
+
+Watts, Alaric A., xlv, xlviii
+
+_Weekly Memorial_, xiv
+
+_Weekly Register_, xxxvii
+
+_Westminster Review_, xxxi-xxxii
+
+Wilson, John, xlvi
+
+Wordsworth, William, _Descriptive Sketches_ rev. in _Monthly Rev._, 16-18;
+  _Evening Walk_ rev. in _ibid._, 19;
+  _Lyrical Ballads_ rev. in _Critical Rev._, 20-23;
+  _Poems_ rev. in _Edinburgh Rev._, 24-46; 200-204
+
+_Works of the Learned_, xiv
+
+
+_Young Student's Library_, xiv
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Early Reviews of English Poets, by John Louis Haney
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EARLY REVIEWS OF ENGLISH POETS ***
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+
+Project Gutenberg's Early Reviews of English Poets, by John Louis Haney
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Early Reviews of English Poets
+
+Author: John Louis Haney
+
+Release Date: July 6, 2006 [EBook #18766]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ISO-8859-1
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EARLY REVIEWS OF ENGLISH POETS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Starner, Taavi Kalju and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+</pre>
+
+
+
+
+
+<h1>EARLY REVIEWS</h1>
+
+<h3>OF</h3>
+
+<h1>ENGLISH POETS</h1>
+
+
+<h3>EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION</h3>
+
+<h3>BY</h3>
+
+<h2>JOHN LOUIS HANEY, <span class="smcap">Ph.D.</span></h2>
+
+<p class="center"><i>Assistant Professor of English and History, Central High School, Philadelphia;<br />
+Research Fellow in English, University of Pennsylvania</i></p>
+
+<hr style="width: 35%;" />
+
+<h4>PHILADELPHIA<br />
+THE EGERTON PRESS<br />
+1904</h4>
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+
+<h5><span class="smcap">Copyright</span>, 1904<br />
+<span class="smcap">By</span> JOHN LOUIS HANEY</h5>
+
+<hr style="width: 25%;" />
+
+<h4><span class="smcap">Press of<br />
+The New Era Printing Company,<br />
+Lancaster, Pa.</span></h4>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h4>TO</h4>
+
+<h3>MY FRIEND AND TEACHER</h3>
+
+<h2>PROFESSOR FELIX E. SCHELLING</h2>
+
+<h3>OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA</h3>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_vii" id="Page_vii">[Pg vii]</a></span></p>
+<h2>PREFACE</h2>
+
+
+<p>"Among the amusing and instructive books that remain to be written, one
+of the most piquant would be a history of the criticism with which the
+most celebrated literary productions have been greeted on their first
+appearance before the world." It is quite possible that when Dr. William
+Matthews began his essay on <i>Curiosities of Criticism</i> with these words,
+he failed to grasp the full significance of that future undertaking. Mr.
+Churton Collins recently declared that "a very amusing and edifying
+record might be compiled partly out of a selection of the various
+verdicts passed contemporaneously by reviews on particular works, and
+partly out of comparisons of the subsequent fortunes of works with their
+fortunes while submitted to this censorship." Both critics recognize the
+fact that such a volume would be entertaining and instructive; but, from
+another point of view, it would also be a somewhat doleful book. Even a
+reader of meagre imagination and rude sensibilities could not peruse
+such a volume without picturing in his mind the anguish and the
+heart-ache which those bitter and often vicious attacks inflicted upon
+the unfortunate victims whose works were being assailed.</p>
+
+<p>Authors (particularly sensitive poets) have been at all times the sport
+and plaything of the critics. Mrs. Oliphant, in her <i>Literary History of
+England</i>, said with much truth: "There are few things so amusing as to
+read a really 'slashing article'&mdash;except perhaps to write it. It is
+infinitely easier and gayer work than a well-weighed and serious
+criticism, and will always be more popular. The lively and brilliant
+examples of the art which dwell<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_viii" id="Page_viii">[Pg viii]</a></span> in the mind of the reader are
+invariably of this class." Thus it happens that we remember the witty
+onslaughts of the reviewers, and often ignore the fact that certain
+witticisms drove Byron, for example, into a frenzy of anger that called
+forth the most vigorous satire of the century; and others so completely
+unnerved Shelley that he felt tempted to write no more; and still others
+were so unanimously hostile in tone that Coleridge thought the whole
+detested tribe of critics was in league against his literary success.
+There were, of course, such admirable personalities as Wordsworth's&mdash;for
+the most part indifferent to the strongest torrent of abuse; and clever
+craftsmen like Tennyson, who, although hurt, read the criticisms and
+profited by them; but, on the other hand, there are still well-informed
+readers who believe that the <i>Quarterly Review</i> at least hastened the
+death of poor Keats.</p>
+
+<p>It has been suggested that such a volume of the "choice crudities of
+criticism" as is here proposed would likewise fulfill the desirable
+purpose of avenging the author upon his ancient enemy, the critic, by
+showing how absurd the latter's utterances often are, and what a
+veritable farrago of folly those collected utterances can make. We may
+rest assured that however much hostile criticism may have pained an
+author, it has never inflicted a permanent injury upon a good book. If
+there appear to be works that have been thus more or less obscured, the
+fault will probably be found not in the critic but in the works
+themselves. According to this agreeable theory, which we would all fain
+believe, the triumph of the ignorant or malevolent critic cannot endure;
+sooner or later the author's merit will be recognized and he will come
+into his own.</p>
+
+<p>The present volume does not attempt to fulfill the conditions suggested
+by Dr. Matthews and Mr. Collins. A history of contemporary criticism of
+famous authors would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_ix" id="Page_ix">[Pg ix]</a></span> be a more ambitious undertaking, necessitating an
+extensive apparatus of notes and references. It seeks merely to gather a
+number of interesting anomalies of criticism&mdash;reviews of famous poems
+and famous poets differing more or less from the modern consensus of
+opinion concerning those poems and their authors. Although most of the
+chosen reviews are unfavorable, several others have been selected to
+afford evidence of an early appreciation of certain poets. A few
+unexpectedly favorable notices, such as the <i>Monthly Review's</i> critique
+of Browning's <i>Sordello</i>, are printed because they appear to be unique.
+The chief criterion in selecting these reviews (apart from the effort to
+represent most of the periodicals and the principal poets between Gray
+and Browning) has been that of interest to the modern reader. In most
+cases, criticisms of a writer's earlier works were preferred as more
+likely to be spontaneous and uninfluenced by his growing literary
+reputation. Thus the volume does not attempt to trace the development of
+English critical methods, nor to supply a hand-book of representative
+English criticism; it offers merely a selection of bygone but readable
+reviews&mdash;what the critics thought, or, in some cases, pretended to
+think, of works of poets whom we have since held in honorable esteem.
+The short notices and the well-known longer reviews are printed entire;
+but considerations of space and interest necessitated excisions in a few
+cases, all of which are, of course, properly indicated. The spelling and
+punctuation of the original texts have been carefully followed.</p>
+
+<p>The history of English critical journals has not yet been adequately
+written. The following introduction offers a rapid survey of the
+subject, compiled principally from the sources indicated in the
+bibliographical list. I am indebted to Professor Felix E. Schelling of
+the University of Pennsylvania, and to Dr. Robert Ellis Thompson and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_x" id="Page_x">[Pg x]</a></span>
+Professor Albert H. Smyth of the Philadelphia Central High School for
+many suggestions that have been of value in writing the introduction.
+Dr. Edward Z. Davis examined at my request certain pamphlets in the
+British Museum that threw additional light upon the history of the early
+reviews. Dr. A.S.W. Rosenbach and Professor J.H. Moffatt read the proofs
+of the introduction and notes respectively, and suggested several
+noteworthy improvements.</p>
+
+<p>
+<span style="margin-left: 10em;">J.L.H.</span><br />
+<br />
+<span style="margin-left: 2em;"><span class="smcap">Central High School</span>,</span><br />
+<span class="smcap">Philadelphia</span>.
+</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xi" id="Page_xi">[Pg xi]</a></span></p>
+<h2>CONTENTS</h2>
+
+
+
+<div class='center'>
+<table border="0" cellpadding="4" cellspacing="0" summary="">
+<tr>
+  <td align='left' colspan="2">Preface</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_vii'>vii</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left' colspan="2">Introduction</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_xiii'>xiii</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left' colspan="2">Bibliography</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_lvi'>lvi</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='center' colspan="3"><b>REVIEWS</b></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'><span class="smcap">Gray</span></td>
+  <td align='left'>Odes (<i>Monthly Review</i>)</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_1'>1</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'><span class="smcap">Goldsmith</span></td>
+  <td align='left'>The Traveller (<i>Critical Review</i>)</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_5'>5</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'><span class="smcap">Cowper</span></td>
+  <td align='left'>Poems, 1782 (<i>Critical Review</i>)</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_10'>10</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'><span class="smcap">Burns</span></td>
+  <td align='left'>Poems, 1786 (<i>Edinburgh Magazine</i>)</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_13'>13</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'></td>
+  <td align='left'>Poems, 1786 (<i>Critical Review</i>)</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_15'>15</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'><span class="smcap">Wordsworth</span></td>
+  <td align='left'>Descriptive Sketches (<i>Monthly Review</i>)</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_16'>16</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'></td>
+  <td align='left'>An Evening Walk (<i>Monthly Review</i>)</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_19'>19</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'></td>
+  <td align='left'>Lyrical Ballads (<i>Critical Review</i>)</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_20'>20</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'></td>
+  <td align='left'>Poems, 1807 (<i>Edinburgh Review</i>)</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_24'>24</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'><span class="smcap">Coleridge</span></td>
+  <td align='left'>Christabel (<i>Edinburgh Review</i>)</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_47'>47</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'><span class="smcap">Southey</span></td>
+  <td align='left'>Madoc (<i>Monthly Review</i>)</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_60'>60</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'><span class="smcap">Lamb</span></td>
+  <td align='left'>Blank Verse (<i>Monthly Review</i>)</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_65'>65</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'></td>
+  <td align='left'>Album Verses (<i>Literary Gazette</i>)</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_66'>66</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'><span class="smcap">Landor</span></td>
+  <td align='left'>Gebir (<i>British Critic</i>)</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_68'>68</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'></td>
+  <td align='left'>Gebir (<i>Monthly Review</i>)</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_69'>69</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'><span class="smcap">Scott</span></td>
+  <td align='left'>Marmion (<i>Edinburgh Review</i>)</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_70'>70</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'><span class="smcap">Byron</span></td>
+  <td align='left'>Hours of Idleness (<i>Edinburgh Review</i>)</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_94'>94</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'></td>
+  <td align='left'>Childe Harold (<i>Christian Observer</i>)</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_101'>101</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'><span class="smcap">Shelley</span></td>
+  <td align='left'>Alastor (<i>Monthly Review</i>)</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_115'>115</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'></td>
+  <td align='left'>The Cenci (<i>London Magazine</i>)</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_116'>116</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'></td>
+  <td align='left'>Adonais (<i>Literary Gazette</i>)</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_129'>129</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'><span class="smcap">Keats</span></td>
+  <td align='left'>Endymion (<i>Quarterly Review</i>)</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_135'>135</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'></td>
+  <td align='left'>Endymion (<i>Blackwood's Magazine</i>)</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_141'>141</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'><span class="smcap">Tennyson</span></td>
+  <td align='left'>Timbuctoo (<i>Athen&aelig;um</i>)</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_151'>151</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'></td>
+  <td align='left'>Poems, 1833 (<i>Quarterly Review</i>)</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_152'>152</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'></td>
+  <td align='left'>The Princess (<i>Literary Gazette</i>)</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_176'>176</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'><span class="smcap">Browning</span></td>
+  <td align='left'>Paracelsus (<i>Athen&aelig;um</i>)</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_187'>187</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'></td>
+  <td align='left'>Sordello (<i>Monthly Review</i>)</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_188'>188</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left'></td>
+  <td align='left'>Men and Women (<i>Saturday Review</i>)</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_189'>189</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left' colspan="2">Notes</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_197'>197</a></td>
+</tr>
+<tr>
+  <td align='left' colspan="2">Index</td>
+  <td align='right'><a href='#Page_223'>223</a></td>
+</tr>
+</table></div>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xiii" id="Page_xiii">[Pg xiii]</a></span></p>
+<h2>INTRODUCTION</h2>
+
+
+<p>To the modern reader, with an abundance of periodicals of all sorts and
+upon all subjects at hand, it seems hardly possible that this wealth of
+ephemeral literature was virtually developed within the past two
+centuries. It offers such a rational means for the dissemination of the
+latest scientific and literary news that the mind undeceived by facts
+would naturally place the origin of the periodical near the invention of
+printing itself. Apart from certain sporadic manifestations of what is
+termed, by courtesy, periodical literature, the real beginning of that
+important department of letters was in the innumerable <i>Mercurii</i> that
+flourished in London after the outbreak of the Civil War. Although the
+<i>British Museum Catalogue</i> presents a long list of these curious
+messengers and news-carriers, the only one that could be of interest in
+the present connection is the <i>Mercurius Librarius; or a Catalogue of
+Books Printed and Published at London</i><a name="FNanchor_A_1" id="FNanchor_A_1"></a><a href="#Footnote_A_1" class="fnanchor">[A]</a> (1668-70), the contents of
+which simply fulfilled the promise of its title.</p>
+
+<p>Literary journals in England were, however, not a native development,
+but were copied, like the fashions and artistic norms of that period,
+from the French. The famous and long-lived <i>Journal des S&ccedil;avans</i> was
+begun at Paris in 1665 by M. Denis de Sallo, who has been called, since
+the time of Voltaire, the "inventor" of literary journals. In 1684
+Pierre Bayle began at Amsterdam the publication of <i>Nouvelles de la
+R&eacute;publique des Lettres</i>, which continued under various hands until
+1718.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xiv" id="Page_xiv">[Pg xiv]</a></span> These French periodicals were the acknowledged inspiration for
+similar ventures in England, beginning in 1682 with the <i>Weekly Memorial
+for the Ingenious: or an Account of Books lately set forth in Several
+Languages, with some other Curious Novelties relating to Arts and
+Sciences</i>. The preface stated the intention of the publishers to notice
+foreign as well as domestic works, and to transcribe the "curious
+novelties" from the <i>Journal des S&ccedil;avans</i>. Fifty weekly numbers appeared
+(1682-83), consisting principally of translations of the best articles
+in the French journal.</p>
+
+<p>A few years later (1686), the Genevan theologian, Jean Le Clerc, then a
+resident of London, established the <i>Universal Historical Biblioth&egrave;que;
+or, an Account of most of the Considerable Books printed in All
+Languages</i>, which was continued by various hands until 1693 in a series
+of twenty-five quarto volumes. Contemporary with this review was a
+number of similar publications which had for the most part a brief
+existence. Among them was the <i>Athenian Mercury</i>, published on Tuesdays
+and Saturdays (1691-1696), the <i>History of Learning</i>, which appeared for
+a short time in 1691 and again in 1694; <i>Works of the Learned</i>
+(1691-92); the <i>Young Student's Library</i> (1692) and its continuation,
+the <i>Compleat Library</i> (1692-94); <i>Memoirs for the Ingenious</i> (1693);
+the <i>Universal Mercury</i> (1694) and <i>Miscellaneous Letters, etc.</i>
+(1694-96). Samuel Parkes includes among the reviews of this period Sir
+Thomas Pope Blount's remarkable <i>Censura Celebrium Authorum</i> (1690).
+That popular bibliographical dictionary of criticism (reprinted 1694,
+1710 and 1718) is only remembered now for its omission of Shakespeare,
+Spenser, Jonson and Milton from its list of "celebrated authors."
+Neither that volume nor the same author's <i>De Re Poetica</i> (1694) finds a
+proper place in a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xv" id="Page_xv">[Pg xv]</a></span> list of periodicals. They should be grouped with such
+works as Phillips' <i>Theatrum Poetarum</i> (1675) and Langbaine's <i>Account
+of the English Dramatic Poets</i> (1691) among the more deliberate attempts
+at literary criticism.</p>
+
+<p>Between 1692-94 appeared the <i>Gentleman's Journal; or, the Monthly
+Miscellany. Consisting of News, History, Philosophy, Poetry, Music,
+Translations, etc.</i> This noteworthy paper, edited by Peter Anthony
+Motteux while he was translating Rabelais, included among its
+contributors Aphra Behn, Oldmixon, Dennis, D'Urfey and others. In many
+ways it anticipated the plan of the <i>Gentleman's Magazine</i> (1731), which
+has usually been accorded the honor of priority among English literary
+magazines. The <i>History of the Works of the Learned; or, an Impartial
+Account of Books lately printed in all Parts of Europe</i> was begun in
+1699 and succumbed after the publication of its thirteenth volume
+(1711). Among its editors was George Ridpath, who was afterwards
+immortalized in Pope's <i>Dunciad</i>. The careers of the <i>Monthly
+Miscellany</i> (1707-09) and <i>Censura Temporum</i> (1709-10) were brief. About
+the same time an extensive series of periodicals was begun by a Huguenot
+refugee, Michael De la Roche, who fled to England after the revocation
+of the Edict of Nantes and became an Episcopalian. After several years
+of hack-work for the booksellers, he published (1710) the first numbers
+of his <i>Memoirs of Literature, containing a Weekly Account of the State
+of Learning at Home and Abroad</i>, which he continued until 1714 and for a
+few months in 1717. In the latter year he began at Amsterdam his
+<i>Biblioth&egrave;que Angloise</i> (1717-27), continued by his <i>Memoires
+Litt&eacute;raires de la Grande Bretagne</i> (1720-1724) after the editorship of
+the former had been placed in other hands on account of his pronounced
+anti-Calvinistic views. At<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xvi" id="Page_xvi">[Pg xvi]</a></span> Amsterdam, Daniel Le Clerc, a brother of the
+Jean Le Clerc already mentioned, published his <i>Biblioth&egrave;que Chois&eacute;e</i>
+(1703-14) and his <i>Biblioth&egrave;que Ancienne et Moderne</i> (1714-28). Both of
+these periodicals suggested numerous ideas to De la Roche, who returned
+to London and conducted the <i>New Memoirs of Literature</i> (1725-27). His
+last venture was a <i>Literary Journal, or a Continuation of the Memoirs
+of Literature</i>, which lasted about a year.</p>
+
+<p>Contemporary with De la Roche, Samuel Jebb conducted <i>Bibliotheca
+Literaria</i> (1722-24), dealing with "inscriptions, medals, dissertations,
+etc." In 1728 Andrew Reid began the <i>Present State of the Republick of
+Letters</i>, which reached its eighteenth volume in 1736. It was then
+incorporated with the <i>Literary Magazine; or the History of the Works of
+the Learned</i> (1735-36) and the joint periodical was henceforth published
+as a <i>History of the Works of the Learned</i> until 1743. Other less
+extensive literary journals of the same period were Archibald Bower's
+<i>Historia Literaria</i> (1730-34); the <i>Bee; or, Universal Weekly Pamphlet</i>
+(1733-35), edited by Addison's cousin, Eustace Budgell; the <i>British
+Librarian, exhibiting a Compendious Review or Abstract of our most
+Scarce, Useful and Valuable Books, etc.</i>, published anonymously by the
+antiquarian William Oldys, from January to June, 1737, and much esteemed
+by modern bibliophiles as a pioneer and a curiosity of its kind; a
+<i>Literary Journal</i> (1744-49) published at Dublin; and, finally, the
+<i>Museum; or the Literary and Historical Register</i>. This interesting
+periodical printed essays, poems and reviews by such contributors as
+Spence, Horace Walpole, the brothers Warton, Akenside, Lowth and others.
+It was published fortnightly from March, 1746 to September, 1747, making
+three octavo volumes.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xvii" id="Page_xvii">[Pg xvii]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The periodicals enumerated thus far can hardly be regarded as literary
+in the modern acceptation of the term; they were, for the most part,
+ponderous, learned and scientific in character, and, with the exception
+of the <i>Gentleman's Journal</i> and Dodsley's <i>Museum</i>, rarely ventured
+into the domain of <i>belles-lettres</i>. An occasional erudite dissertation
+on classical poetry or on the French canons of taste suggested a
+literary intent, but the bulk of the journals was supplied by articles
+on natural history, curious experiments, physiological treatises and
+historical essays. During the latter half of the eighteenth century
+theological and political writings, and accounts of travels in distant
+lands became the staple offering of the reviews.</p>
+
+<p>A new era in the history of English periodicals was marked by the
+publication, on May 1, 1749, of the first number of the <i>Monthly
+Review</i>, destined to continue through ninety-six years of varying
+fortune and to reach its 249th volume. It bore the subtitle: <i>A
+Periodical Work giving an Account, with Proper Abstracts of, and
+Extracts from, the New Books, Pamphlets, etc., as they come out. By
+Several Hands.</i> The publisher was Ralph Griffiths, who continued to
+manage the review until his death in 1803. It seems remarkable that this
+periodical which set the norm for half a century should have appeared
+not only without preface or advertisement, but likewise without
+patronage or support of any kind. From the first it reviewed poetry,
+fiction and drama as well as the customary classes of applied
+literature, and thus appealed primarily to the public rather than, like
+most of its predecessors, to the learned. Its politics were Whig and its
+theology Non-conformist. Griffiths was not successful at first, but
+determined to achieve popularity by enlisting Ruffhead, Kippis,
+Langhorne and several other<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xviii" id="Page_xviii">[Pg xviii]</a></span> minor writers on his critical staff. In
+1757 Oliver Goldsmith became one of those unfortunate hacks as a result
+of his well-known agreement with Griffiths to serve as an
+assistant-editor in exchange for his board, lodging and "an adequate
+salary." About a score of miscellaneous reviews from Goldsmith's
+pen&mdash;including critiques of Home's <i>Douglas</i>, Burke's <i>On the Sublime
+and the Beautiful</i>, Smollett's <i>History of England</i> and Gray's
+<i>Odes</i>&mdash;appeared in the <i>Monthly Review</i> during 1757-58. The contract
+with Griffiths was soon broken, probably on account of incompatibility
+of temper. Goldsmith declared that he had been over-worked and badly
+treated; but it is quite likely that his idleness and irregular habits
+contributed largely to the misunderstanding.</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, a Tory rival and a champion of the Established Church had
+appeared on the field. A printer named Archibald Hamilton projected the
+<i>Critical Review: or, Annals of Literature. By a Society of Gentlemen</i>,
+which began to appear in February, 1756, under the editorship of Tobias
+Smollett and extended to a total of 144 volumes when it ceased
+publication in 1817. Its articles were of a high order for the time and
+the new review soon became popular. The open rivalry between the reviews
+was fostered by an exchange of editorial compliments. Griffiths
+published a statement that the <i>Monthly</i> was not written by "physicians
+without practice, authors without learning, men without decency,
+gentlemen without manners, and critics without judgment." Smollett
+retorted that "the <i>Critical Review</i> is not written by a parcel of
+obscure hirelings, under the restraint of a bookseller and his wife, who
+presume to revise, alter and amend the articles occasionally. The
+principal writers in the <i>Critical Review</i> are unconnected with
+booksellers, unawed by old women, and independent of each other." Such<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xix" id="Page_xix">[Pg xix]</a></span>
+literary encounters did not fail to stimulate public interest in both
+reviews and to add materially to their circulation.</p>
+
+<p>When the first volume of the <i>Critical Review</i> was complete, the
+"Society of Gentlemen" enriched it with an ornate, self-congratulatory
+Preface in which they said of themselves:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"However they may have erred in judgment, they have declared their
+thoughts without prejudice, fear, or affectation; and strove to
+forget the author's person, while his works fell under their
+consideration. They have treated simple dulness as the object of
+mirth or compassion, according to the nature of its appearance.
+Petulance and self-conceit they have corrected with more severe
+strictures; and though they have given no quarter to insolence,
+scurrility and sedition, they will venture to affirm, that no
+production of merit has been defrauded of its due share of
+applause. On the contrary, they have cherished with commendation,
+the very faintest bloom of genius, even when vapid and unformed, in
+hopes of its being warmed into flavour, and afterwards producing
+agreeable fruit by dint of proper care and culture; and never,
+without reluctance disapproved, even of a bad writer, who had the
+least title to indulgence. The judicious reader will perceive that
+their aim has been to exhibit a succinct plan of every performance;
+to point out the most striking beauties and glaring defects; to
+illustrate their remarks with proper quotations; and to convey
+these remarks in such a manner, as might best conduce to the
+entertainment of the public."</p></div>
+
+<p>Moreover, these high ideals were entertained under the most unfavorable
+circumstances. By the time the second volume was complete, the editors
+took pleasure in announcing that in spite of "open assault and private
+assassination," "published reproach and printed letters of abuse,
+distributed like poisoned arrows in the dark," yea, in spite of the
+"breath of secret calumny" and the "loud blasts of obloquy," the
+<i>Critical Review</i> was more strongly entrenched than before.</p>
+
+<p>There was more than mere rhodomontade in these<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xx" id="Page_xx">[Pg xx]</a></span> words. Not only did open
+rivalry exist between the two reviews, but they were both made the
+subject of violent attacks by authors whose productions had been
+condemned on their pages. John Brine (1755), John Shebbeare (1757),
+Horace Walpole (1759), William Kenrick (1759), James Grainger (1759) and
+Joseph Reed (1759) are the earliest of the many writers who issued
+pamphlets in reply to articles in the reviews. In 1759 Smollett was
+tried at the King's Bench for aspersions upon the character of Admiral
+Sir Charles Knowles published in the <i>Critical Review</i>. He was declared
+guilty, fined &pound;100, and sentenced to three months' imprisonment. Yet in
+spite of such difficulties, the <i>Critical Review</i> continued to find
+favor among its readers. The articles written by its "Society of
+Gentlemen" were on the whole far more interesting in subject and
+treatment than the work of Griffiths' unfortunate hacks; but the
+<i>Monthly</i> was also prospering, as in 1761 a fourth share in that review
+was sold for more than &pound;755.</p>
+
+<p>In 1760 appeared a curious anonymous satire entitled <i>The Battle of the
+Reviews</i>, which presented, upon the model of Swift's spirited account of
+the contest between ancient and modern learning, a fantastic description
+of the open warfare between the two reviews. After a formal declaration
+of hostilities both sides marshal their forces for the struggle. The
+"noble patron" of the <i>Monthly</i> is but slightly disguised as the Right
+Honourable Rehoboam Gruffy, Esq. His associates Sir Imp Brazen, Mynheer
+Tanaquil Limmonad, Martin Problem, and others were probably recognized
+by contemporary readers. To oppose this array the <i>Critical</i> summons a
+force that contains only two names of distinction, Sampson MacJackson
+and Sawney MacSmallhead (<i>i.e.</i>, Smollett). The ensuing battle, which is
+described at great length,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxi" id="Page_xxi">[Pg xxi]</a></span> results in a victory for the <i>Critical
+Review</i>, and the banishment of Squire Gruffy to the land of the
+Hottentots.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Johnson's well-known characterization of the two reviews was quite
+just. On the occasion of his memorable interview (1767) with George III,
+Johnson gave the King information concerning the <i>Journal des Savans</i>
+and said of the two English reviews that "the <i>Monthly Review</i> was done
+with most care; the <i>Critical</i> upon the best principles; adding that the
+authors of the <i>Monthly Review</i> were enemies to the Church." Some years
+later Johnson said of the reviews:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"I think them very impartial: I do not know an instance of
+partiality.... The Monthly Reviewers are not Deists; but they are
+Christians with as little Christianity as may be; and are for
+pulling down all establishments. The Critical Reviewers are for
+supporting the constitution both in church and state. The Critical
+Reviewers, I believe, often review without reading the books
+through; but lay hold of a topick and write chiefly from their own
+minds. The Monthly Reviewers are duller men and are glad to read
+the books through."</p></div>
+
+<p>Goldsmith's successor on the <i>Monthly</i> staff was the notorious libeller
+and "superlative scoundrel," Dr. William Kenrick, who signalized his
+advent (November, 1759) by writing an outrageous attack upon Goldsmith's
+<i>Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe</i>. His
+utterances were so thoroughly unjustified that Griffiths, who had scant
+reason for praising poor Oliver, made an indirect apology for his
+unworthy minion by a favorable though brief review (June, 1762) of <i>The
+Citizen of the World</i>. During 1759 the <i>Critical Review</i> published a
+number of Goldsmith's articles which probably enabled the impecunious
+author to effect his removal from the garret in Salisbury Square to the
+famous lodgings in Green Arbour Court. After March, 1760, we find no
+record of his association with either review, al<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxii" id="Page_xxii">[Pg xxii]</a></span>though he afterwards
+wrote for the <i>British Magazine</i> and others.</p>
+
+<p>During the latter half of the century several reviews appeared and
+flourished for a time without serious damage to their well-established
+rivals. The <i>Literary Magazine; or Universal Review</i> (1756-58) is
+memorable for Johnson's co&ouml;peration and a half-dozen articles by
+Goldsmith. Boswell tells us that Johnson wrote for the magazine until
+the fifteenth number and "that he never gave better proofs of the force,
+acuteness and vivacity of his mind, than in this miscellany, whether we
+consider his original essays, or his reviews of the works of others."
+The <i>London Review of English and Foreign Literature</i> (1775-80) was
+conducted by the infamous Kenrick and others who faithfully maintained
+the editor's well-recognized policy of vicious onslaught and personal
+abuse. Paul Henry Maty, an assistant-librarian of the British Museum,
+conducted for five years a <i>New Review</i> (1782-86), often called <i>Maty's
+Review</i>, and dealing principally with learned works. It apparently
+enjoyed some authority, but both Walpole and Gibbon spoke unfavorably of
+Maty's critical pretensions. <i>The English Review; or, an Abstract of
+English and Foreign Literature</i> (1783-96), extended to twenty-eight
+volumes modelled upon the plan of the older periodicals. In 1796 it was
+incorporated with the <i>Analytical Review</i> (1788) and survived under the
+latter title until 1799. The <i>Analytical Review</i> deprecated the
+self-sufficient attitude of contemporary criticism and advocated
+extensive quotations from the works under consideration so that readers
+might be able to judge for themselves. It likewise hinted at the tacit
+understanding then existing between certain authors, publishers and
+reviews for their mutual advantage, but which was arousing a growing
+feeling of distrust on the part of the public. The<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxiii" id="Page_xxiii">[Pg xxiii]</a></span> <i>British Critic</i>
+(1793-1843) was edited by William Beloe and Robert Nares as the organ of
+the High Church Party. This "dull mass of orthodoxy" concerned itself
+extensively with literary reviews; but its articles were best known for
+their lack of interest and authority. The foibles of the <i>British
+Critic</i> were satirized in Bishop Copleston's <i>Advice to a Young
+Reviewer</i> (1807) with an appended mock critique of Milton's <i>L'Allegro</i>.
+In 1826 it was united with the <i>Quarterly Theological Review</i> and
+continued until 1843.</p>
+
+<p><i>The Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine; or, Monthly Political and
+Literary Censor</i> (1799-1821) played a strenuous r&ocirc;le in the troublous
+times of the Napoleonic wars. It continued the policy of the
+<i>Anti-Jacobin, or Weekly Examiner</i> (1797-98) conducted with such marked
+vigor by William Gifford, but it numbered among its contributors none of
+the brilliant men whose witty verses for the weekly paper are still read
+in the popular <i>Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin</i>. The <i>Review</i> was conducted
+by John Richards Green, better known as John Gifford. Its articles were
+at times sensational in character, viciously abusing writers of known or
+suspected republican sentiments. From its pages could be culled a new
+series of "Beauties of the Anti-Jacobin" which for sheer vituperation
+and relentless abuse would be without a rival among such anthologies.</p>
+
+<p>At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the principal reviews in
+course of publication were the <i>Monthly</i>, the <i>Critical</i>, the <i>British
+Critic</i>, and the <i>Anti-Jacobin</i>. The latter was pre&euml;minently vulgar in
+its appeal, the <i>Critical</i> had lost its former prestige, and the other
+two had never risen above a level of mediocrity. There was more than a
+lurking suspicion that these periodicals were, to a certain extent,
+booksellers' organs, quite unreliable on ac<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxiv" id="Page_xxiv">[Pg xxiv]</a></span>count of the partial and
+biassed criticisms which they offered the dissatisfied public. The time
+was evidently ripe for a new departure in literary reviews&mdash;for the
+establishment of a trustworthy critical journal, conducted by capable
+editors and printing readable notices of important books. People were
+quite willing to have an unfortunate author assailed and flayed for
+their entertainment; but they did not care to be deceived by laudatory
+criticisms that were inspired by the publisher's name instead of the
+intrinsic merits of the work itself.</p>
+
+<p>Such was the state of affairs when Francis Jeffrey, Henry Brougham and
+Sydney Smith launched the <i>Edinburgh Review</i> in 1802, choosing a name
+that had been borne in 1755-56 by a short-lived semi-annual review.
+There were several significant facts associated with the new enterprise.
+It was the first important literary periodical to be published beyond
+the metropolis. It was the first review to appear quarterly&mdash;an interval
+that most contemporary journalists would have condemned as too long for
+a successful review. Moreover, it was conducted upon an entirely
+different principle than any previous review; by restricting its
+attention to the most important works of each quarter, it gave extensive
+critiques of only a few books in each number and thus avoided the
+multitude of perfunctory notices that had made previous reviews so
+dreary and unreadable.</p>
+
+<p>The idea of founding the <i>Edinburgh Review</i> was apparently suggested by
+Sydney Smith in March, 1802. Jeffrey and Francis Horner were his
+immediate associates; but during the period of preparation Henry
+Brougham, Dr. Thomas Brown, Dr. John Thomson and others became
+interested. After some delay, the first number appeared on October 10,
+1802, containing among its twenty-nine articles three by Brougham, five
+by Horner, six by Jeffrey<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxv" id="Page_xxv">[Pg xxv]</a></span> and nine by Smith. Although there was a
+slight feeling of disappointment over the mild political tone of the new
+review, its success was immediate. The edition of 750 copies was
+speedily disposed of, and within a month a second edition of equal size
+was printed. There was no regular editor at first, although the
+publication of the first three numbers was practically superintended by
+Smith. Afterwards Jeffrey became editor at a salary of &pound;300. He had
+previously written some articles (including a critique of Southey's
+<i>Thalaba</i>) for the <i>Monthly Review</i> and was pessimistic enough to
+anticipate an early failure for the new venture. However, at the time he
+assumed control (July, 1803) the circulation was 2500, and within five
+years it reached 8,000 or 9,000 copies. Jeffrey's articles were
+recognized and much admired; but the success of the <i>Edinburgh</i> was due
+to its independent tone and general excellence rather than to the
+individual contributions of its editor. Its prosperity enabled the
+publishers to offer the contributors attractive remuneration for their
+articles, thus assuring the co&ouml;peration of specialists and of the most
+capable men of letters of the day. At the outset, ten guineas per sheet
+were paid; later sixteen became the minimum, and the average ranged from
+twenty to twenty-five guineas. When we recall that the <i>Critical Review</i>
+paid two, and the <i>Monthly Review</i> sometimes four guineas per sheet, we
+can readily understand the distinctly higher standard of the <i>Edinburgh
+Review</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Horner left Scotland for London in 1803 to embark upon a political
+career. During the next six years occasional articles from his pen&mdash;less
+than a score in all&mdash;appeared in the review. Smith and Brougham likewise
+left Edinburgh in 1803 and 1805 respectively; but they ably supported
+Jeffrey by sending numerous contributions<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxvi" id="Page_xxvi">[Pg xxvi]</a></span> for many years. During the
+first quarter-century of the review's existence, this trio, with the
+co&ouml;peration of Sir James Mackintosh and a few others, constituted the
+mainstay of its success. Jeffrey's remarkable critical faculty was
+displayed to best advantage in the wide range of articles (two hundred
+in number) which he wrote during his editorship. It is true that his
+otherwise sound judgment was unable to grasp the significance of the new
+poetic movement of his day, and that his best remembered efforts are the
+diatribes against the Lake Poets. Hence, in the eyes of the modern
+literary dilettante, he figures as a misguided, domineering Zoilus whose
+mission in life was to heap ridicule upon the poetical efforts of
+Wordsworth, Coleridge and the lesser disciples of romanticism.</p>
+
+<p>There are in the early volumes of the <i>Edinburgh</i> no more conspicuous
+qualities than that air of vivacity and graceful wit, so thoroughly
+characteristic of Sydney Smith. The reader who turns to those early
+numbers may be disappointed in the literary quality of the average
+article, for he will instinctively and unfairly make comparison with
+more recent standards, instead of considering the immeasurably inferior
+conditions that had previously prevailed; but we may safely assert that
+the majority of Smith's articles can be read with interest to-day. He
+was sufficiently sedate and serious when occasion demanded; yet at all
+times he delighted in the display of his native and sparkling humor.
+Although most of his important articles have been collected, far too
+much of his work lies buried in that securest of literary
+sepulchres&mdash;the back numbers of a critical review.</p>
+
+<p>Henry Brougham at first wrote the scientific articles for the
+<i>Edinburgh</i>. Soon his ability to deal with a wide range of subjects was
+recognized and he proved the most versatile of the early reviewers. In
+the first twenty num<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxvii" id="Page_xxvii">[Pg xxvii]</a></span>bers are eighty articles from his pen. A story that
+does not admit of verification attributes to Brougham a whole number of
+the <i>Edinburgh</i>, including an article on lithotomy and another on
+Chinese music. Later he became especially distinguished for his
+political articles, and remained a contributor long after Jeffrey and
+Smith had withdrawn. A comparatively small portion of his <i>Edinburgh</i>
+articles was reprinted (1856) in three volumes.</p>
+
+<p>Although the young men who guided the early fortunes of the review were
+Whigs, the <i>Edinburgh</i> was not (as is generally believed) founded as a
+Whig organ. In fact, the political complexion of their articles was so
+subdued that even stalwart Tories like Walter Scott did not refrain from
+contributing to its pages. Scott's <i>Marmion</i> was somewhat sharply
+reviewed by Jeffrey in April, 1808, and in the following October
+appeared the article by Jeffrey and Brougham upon Don Pedro Cevallos'
+<i>French Usurpation of Spain</i>. The pronounced Whiggism of that critique
+led to an open rupture with the Tory contributors. Scott, who was no
+longer on the best terms with Constable, the publisher of the
+<i>Edinburgh</i>, declared that henceforth he could neither receive nor read
+the review. He proposed to John Murray&mdash;then of Fleet Street&mdash;the
+founding of a Tory quarterly in London as a rival to the northern review
+that had thus far enjoyed undisputed possession of the field, because it
+afforded "the only valuable literary criticism which can be met with."
+Murray, who had already entertained the idea of establishing such a
+review, naturally welcomed the prospect of so powerful an ally. Like a
+good Tory, Scott felt that the "flashy and bold character of the
+<i>Edinburgh's</i> politics was likely to produce an indelible impression
+upon the youth of the country." He ascertained that William Gifford,
+formerly editor of the <i>Anti-Jacobin</i> newspaper,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxviii" id="Page_xxviii">[Pg xxviii]</a></span> was willing to take
+charge of the new review, which Scott desired to be not exclusively nor
+principally political, but a "periodical work of criticism conducted
+with equal talent, but upon sounder principle than that which had gained
+so high a station in the world of letters."</p>
+
+<p>In February, 1809, appeared the first number of the <i>Quarterly Review</i>.
+Three of its articles were by Scott, who continued to contribute for
+some time and whose advice was frequently sought by both editor and
+publisher. Canning, Ellis, and others who had written for the then
+defunct <i>Anti-Jacobin</i> became interested in the <i>Quarterly</i>; but the
+principal contributors for many years were Robert Southey, John Wilson
+Croker and Sir John Barrow. This trio contributed an aggregate of almost
+five hundred articles to the <i>Quarterly</i>. In spite of its high standard,
+the new venture was a financial failure for at least the first two
+years; later, especially in the days of Tory triumph after the overthrow
+of Napoleon, the <i>Quarterly</i> flourished beyond all expectation.
+Gifford's salary as editor was raised from the original &pound;200 to &pound;900;
+for many years Southey was paid &pound;100 for each article. Gifford was
+distinctly an editor of the old school, with well-defined ideas of his
+official privilege of altering contributed articles to suit himself&mdash;a
+weakness that likewise afflicted Francis Jeffrey. While it appears that
+Gifford wrote practically nothing for the review and that the savage
+<i>Endymion</i> article so persistently attributed to him was really the work
+of Croker, he was an excellent manager and conducted the literary
+affairs of the <i>Quarterly</i> with considerable skill. His lack of system
+and of business qualifications, however, resulted in the frequently
+irregular appearance of the early numbers.</p>
+
+<p>On account of his failing health, Gifford resigned the editorship of the
+<i>Quarterly</i> in 1824, and was succeeded by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxix" id="Page_xxix">[Pg xxix]</a></span> John Taylor Coleridge, whose
+brief and unimportant administration served merely to fill the gap until
+an efficient successor for Gifford could be found. The choice fell upon
+Scott's son-in-law, John Gibson Lockhart, who, from 1825 to 1853, proved
+to be a most capable editor. The subsequent history of the review under
+Whitwell Elwin (1853-1860), William Macpherson (1860-1867), Sir William
+Smith (1867-1893), Mr. Rowland Prothero (1894-1899) and the latter's
+brother, Mr. George Prothero, the present editor, naturally lies beyond
+the purposes of this introduction.</p>
+
+<p>The period of Lockhart's editorship of the <i>Quarterly</i> was likewise the
+golden epoch of the <i>Edinburgh</i>. Sydney Smith's contributions ceased
+about 1828. In the following year Jeffrey was elected Dean of the
+Faculty of Advocates. He felt that the tenure of his new dignity
+demanded the relinquishment of the editorship of an independent literary
+and political review; accordingly, after editing the ninety-eighth
+number of the <i>Edinburgh</i>, he retired in favor of Macvey Napier, who had
+been a contributor since 1805. Napier conducted the review with great
+success from 1829 until his death in 1847. His policy was to prefer
+shorter articles than those printed when he assumed control. At first,
+each number contained from fifteen to twenty-five articles; but the
+growing length and importance of the political contributions had reduced
+the average to ten. The return to the original policy naturally resulted
+in a greater variety of purely literary articles.</p>
+
+<p>Macaulay had begun his association with the <i>Edinburgh</i> by his
+remarkable essay on <i>Milton</i> in 1825&mdash;a bold, striking piece of
+criticism, full of the fire of youth, which established his literary
+reputation and gave a renewed impetus to the already prosperous review.
+Dur<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxx" id="Page_xxx">[Pg xxx]</a></span>ing Napier's editorship he contributed his essays on <i>Croker's
+Boswell</i>, <i>Hampden</i>, <i>Burleigh</i>, <i>Horace Walpole</i>, <i>Lord Chatham</i>,
+<i>Bacon</i>, <i>Clive</i>, <i>Hastings</i> and many others. Napier experienced some
+difficulty in steering a middle course for the review between Lord
+Brougham, who sought to use its pages to further his own political
+ambitions, and Macaulay, who vigorously denounced the procedure. The
+<i>Edinburgh</i> was no longer conspicuous among its numerous contemporaries;
+but the literary quality was much higher than at first. Among the other
+famous contributors of this period were Carlyle, John Stuart Mill,
+Thackeray, Bulwer, Hallam, Sir William Hamilton and many others. This
+was undoubtedly the greatest period in the history of the review. Its
+power in Whig politics is shown by the fact that Lord Melbourne and Lord
+John Russell sought to make it the organ of the government.</p>
+
+<p>Napier's successor in 1847 was William Empson, who had contributed to
+the <i>Edinburgh</i> since 1823 and who held the editorship until his demise
+in 1852. Next followed Sir George Cornewall Lewis, who, however,
+resigned in 1855 to become Chancellor of the Exchequer in Lord
+Palmerston's cabinet. During his r&eacute;gime he wrote less than a score of
+articles for the review. His immediate successor was the late Henry
+Reeve, whose forty years of faithful service until his death in 1895
+brings the review practically to our own day. When Reeve began his
+duties by editing No. 206 (April, 1855) Lord Brougham was the only
+survivor of the contributors to the original number. In 1857, when a
+discussion arose between editor and publisher concerning the
+denunciatory attitude assumed by the review toward Lord Palmerston's
+ministry, Reeve drew up a list of his contributors at that time,
+including Bishop (afterwards Archbishop) Tait, George Grote,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxxi" id="Page_xxxi">[Pg xxxi]</a></span> John
+Forster, M. Guizot, the Duke of Argyll, Rev. Canon Moseley, George S.
+Venables, Richard Monckton Milnes and a score of others&mdash;most of them
+"names of the highest honour and the most consistent adherence to
+Liberal principles." Within the four decades that followed, the
+personnel of the review has made another almost complete change. A new
+group of contributors, under the editorship of Hon. Arthur R.D. Elliot,
+is now striving to maintain the standards of old "blue and yellow." A
+caustic note in the (1890) Annual Index of <i>Review of Reviews</i> said of
+the <i>Edinburgh</i>:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"It has long since subsided into a respectable exponent of high and
+dry Whiggery, which in these later days has undergone a further
+degeneration or evolution into Unionism.... Audacity, wit,
+unconventionality, enthusiasm&mdash;all these qualities have long since
+evaporated, and with them has disappeared the political influence
+of the <i>Edinburgh</i>."</p></div>
+
+<p>The two great rivals which are now reaching their centenary<a name="FNanchor_B_2" id="FNanchor_B_2"></a><a href="#Footnote_B_2" class="fnanchor">[B]</a> are still
+the most prominent, in fact the only well-known literary quarterlies of
+England. During their life-time many quarterlies have risen, flourished
+for a time and perished. The <i>Westminster Review</i>, founded 1824, by
+Jeremy Bentham, appeared under the editorship of Sir John Bowring and
+Henry Southern. As the avowed organ of the Radicals it lost no time in
+assailing (principally through the vigorous pens of James Mill and John
+Stuart Mill) both the <i>Edinburgh</i> and the <i>Quarterly</i>. In 1836 Sir
+William Molesworth's recently established <i>London Review</i> was united
+with the <i>Westminster</i>, and, after several changes of joint title,
+continued since 1851 as the <i>Westminster Review</i>. Since 1887 it has been
+pub<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxxii" id="Page_xxxii">[Pg xxxii]</a></span>lished as a monthly of Liberal policy and "high-class philosophy."
+The <i>Dublin Review</i> (London, 1836) still continues quarterly as a Roman
+Catholic organ; similarly the <i>London Quarterly Review</i>, a Wesleyan
+organ, has been published since 1853. Of the quarterlies now defunct, it
+will suffice to mention the dissenting <i>Eclectic Review</i> (1805-68) owned
+and edited for a time by Josiah Conder; the <i>British Review</i> (1811-25);
+the <i>Christian Remembrancer</i> (1819-68), which was a monthly during its
+early history; the <i>Retrospective Review</i> (1820-26, 1853-54) conducted
+by Henry Southern and afterwards Sir Nicholas Harris Nicolas as a
+critical review for old and curious books; the <i>English Review</i>
+(1844-53); and the <i>North British Review</i> (1844-71), published at
+Edinburgh. The impulse toward the study of continental literature during
+the third decade of the century gave rise to the <i>Foreign Quarterly
+Review</i> (1827-46); the <i>Foreign Review and Continental Miscellany</i>
+(1828-30) and the <i>British and Foreign Review</i> (1835-44), continued as
+the <i>British Quarterly Review</i> (1845-86).</p>
+
+<p>A most determined effort to rival the older quarterlies resulted in the
+<i>National Review</i>, founded in 1855 by Walter Bagehot and Richard Holt
+Hutton. Its articles were exhaustive, well-written and thoroughly
+characteristic of their class. In addition to the excellent work of both
+editors, there were contributions by James Martineau, Matthew Arnold,
+and Hutton's brother-in-law, William Caldwell Roscoe. Yet, in spite of
+the high standards maintained until the end, the <i>National</i> ceased
+publication in 1864. The many failures in this class of periodicals seem
+to indicate quite clearly that the spirit of the age no longer favors a
+quarterly. For our energetic and progressive era such an interval is too
+long. The confirmed admirer of the elaborate essays of the <i>Edin<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxxiii" id="Page_xxxiii">[Pg xxxiii]</a></span>burgh</i>
+and the <i>Quarterly</i> will continue to welcome their bulky numbers; but
+the average reader is strongly prejudiced in favor of the more frequent,
+more attractive and more thoroughly entertaining monthlies.</p>
+
+<p>It is one of the curiosities in the history of periodical literature
+that no popular monthly developed during the first half of the
+nineteenth century: the great quarterlies apparently usurped the entire
+field. We have already seen that the <i>Critical Review</i> came to an end in
+1817 whilst the <i>Monthly</i> continued until 1843. In both cases, however,
+the publication amounted to little more than a sheer struggle for
+existence. The <i>Monthly's</i> attempt to imitate in a smaller way the plan
+of the quarterlies proved an unqualified failure. Neither of the two
+periodicals established at the beginning of the century ever achieved a
+position of critical authority. The <i>Christian Observer</i>, started (1802)
+by Josiah Pratt and conducted by Zachary Macaulay until 1816, was
+devoted mainly to the abolition of the slave-trade. Its subsequent
+history until its demise in 1877 is confined almost wholly to the
+theological pale. The second periodical was the <i>Monthly Repository of
+Theology and General Literature</i> (1806-37), which achieved some literary
+prominence for a time under the editorship of W.J. Fox. During the last
+two years of its existence, Richard Hengist Horne and Leigh Hunt became
+its successive editors, but failed to avert the final collapse.</p>
+
+<p>It would be useless to enumerate the many short-lived attempts, such as
+the <i>Monthly Censor</i> (1822) and Longman's <i>Monthly Chronicle</i> (1838-41)
+that were made to provide a successful monthly review. The first of the
+modern literary monthlies was the <i>Fortnightly Review</i>, established in
+1865, evidently upon the model of <i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i>, which had
+been published at Paris<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxxiv" id="Page_xxxiv">[Pg xxxiv]</a></span> since 1831. Like the great French periodical,
+it was issued fortnightly (at first) and printed signed articles. It was
+Liberal in politics, agnostic in religion and abreast of the times in
+science. The publishers, Messrs. Chapman and Hall, secured an
+experienced editor in George Henry Lewes, who had contributed
+extensively to most of the reviews then in progress. The success of the
+new review was assured by the presence of such names as Walter Bagehot,
+George Eliot, Sir John Herschel, Mr. Frederic Harrison and Herbert
+Spencer on its list of contributors. It provided articles of timely
+interest in politics, literature, art and science; in its early volumes
+appeared serially Anthony Trollope's <i>Belton Estate</i> and Mr. George
+Meredith's <i>Vittoria</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Lewes edited the first six volumes, covering the years 1865-66. The
+review was then made a monthly without, however, changing its now
+inappropriate name, and the editorship was accepted by Mr. John Morley,
+who conducted the <i>Fortnightly</i> with great success for sixteen years.
+Most of the earlier contributors were retained; others like Mr.
+Swinburne, J.A. Symonds, Professor Edward Dowden and (Sir) Leslie
+Stephen established a standard of literary criticism that was
+practically unrivalled. The authority of its scientific and political
+writers was equally high; as for serial fiction, Mr. Morley published
+Mr. Meredith's <i>Beauchamp's Career</i> and <i>The Tragic Comedians</i>, besides
+less important novels by Trollope and others. More recently the
+publication of fiction has been exceptional. The (1890) <i>Review of
+Reviews</i> Index said of the <i>Fortnightly</i>:</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"While disclaiming 'party' or 'editorial consistency,' and
+proclaiming that its pages were open to all views, the
+<i>Fortnightly</i> seldom included the orthodox among its contributors.
+The articles which startled people and made small earthquakes
+beneath<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxxv" id="Page_xxxv">[Pg xxxv]</a></span> the crust of conventional orthodoxy, political and
+religious, usually appeared in the <i>Fortnightly</i>. It was here that
+Professor Huxley seemed to foreshadow the expulsion of the
+spiritual from the world, by his paper on 'The Physical Basis of
+Life,' and that Professor Tyndall propounded his famous suggestion
+for the establishment of a prayerless union or hospital as a
+scientific method for testing the therapeutic value of prayer. Mr.
+Frederic Harrison chanted in its pages the praises of the Commune,
+and prepared the old ladies of both sexes for the imminent advent
+of an English Terror by his plea for Trade Unionism. It was in the
+<i>Fortnightly</i> also that Mr. Chamberlain was introduced to the
+world, when he was permitted to explain his proposals for Free
+Labour, Free Land, Free Education, and Free Church. Mr. Morley's
+papers on the heroes and saints (Heaven save the mark!) of the
+French Revolution appeared here, and every month in an editorial
+survey he summed up the leading features of the progress of the
+world."</p></div>
+
+<p>Since Mr. Morley's retirement in 1883, the editors of the <i>Fortnightly</i>
+have been Mr. T.H.S. Escott (1883-86), Mr. Frank Harris (1886-94) and
+the present incumbent, Mr. W.L. Courtney.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Fortnightly</i> was not long permitted to enjoy undisputed possession
+of the field. In 1866, while it was still published semi-monthly, the
+<i>Contemporary Review</i> was launched. Alexander Strahan, the publisher,
+selected Dean Alford as its editor in order to assure a more reserved
+tone than that of its popular predecessor. Although Liberal in politics,
+like the <i>Fortnightly</i>, it assumed a very different and apparently
+corrective attitude in religious matters. Most of its articles for many
+years were upon theological subjects and were written by scholars
+comparatively unknown to the public. The gradual change in policy
+furthered by its later editors, especially Mr. James Knowles and Mr.
+Percy Bunting has brought the <i>Contemporary</i> nearer to the general type
+of popular monthlies. Its principles seem to tend toward "broad
+evangelical, semi-socialistic Liberalism."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxxvi" id="Page_xxxvi">[Pg xxxvi]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In 1877 Mr. Knowles found it impossible to conduct the <i>Contemporary</i>
+any longer in the independent manner that seemed essential to him;
+accordingly, he withdrew and established the <i>Nineteenth Century</i>, which
+in deference to the new era and a desire to be abreast of the times,
+recently adopted the somewhat awkward title of the <i>Nineteenth Century
+and After</i>. Like the <i>Fortnightly</i>, it presented a brilliant array of
+names from the first. The initial number contained a Prefatory Sonnet by
+Tennyson, and articles by Gladstone, Matthew Arnold, Cardinal Manning,
+and the Dean of Gloucester and Bristol. It is sufficient to state that
+this standard has since been maintained by Mr. Knowles and has made his
+<i>Nineteenth Century and After</i> the most popular of the monthlies.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>National Review</i> (not to be confounded with Bagehot and Hutton's
+quarterly of that name), is the youngest and least important of the
+monthly reviews. It was established in 1883 as a Conservative organ
+under the editorship of Mr. Alfred Austin and Professor W.J. Courthope.
+Well-known writers have contributed to its pages, yet it has never
+assumed a place of first importance in the periodical world. Its present
+editor is Mr. Louis J. Maxse.</p>
+
+<p>It is well to bear in mind that these reviews all seek to discuss the
+most important subjects of contemporary interest, and to secure the
+services of writers best qualified to treat those subjects. In the
+narrow sense of the term, they are not literary reviews; the function of
+periodicals that discuss present day politics, sociology, theology,
+history, science, art and numerous other generic subjects is more
+inclusive and appeals to a much larger audience than the periodical of
+literary criticism. In the quarterlies and monthlies we look for the
+most authoritative reviews of the important books of the day; but for
+general<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxxvii" id="Page_xxxvii">[Pg xxxvii]</a></span> literary review and gossip, a new class of monthlies, best
+represented by Dr. Robertson Nicoll's <i>Bookman</i> (1891) and the American
+<i>Bookman</i> (1895) and <i>The Critic</i> (1881) has appeared. These fill a gap
+between the more substantial monthlies and the very popular weekly
+papers.</p>
+
+<p>The last-mentioned class was practically developed during the nineteenth
+century. The frequency of publication forbade a strict devotion to the
+cause of <i>belles-lettres</i>; hence, in most cases, politics or music and
+art were included in the scheme. At first literature was granted meagre
+space in newspapers of the <i>Weekly Register</i> and <i>Examiner</i> type.
+William Cobbett, profiting by his previous experience with <i>Porcupine's
+Gazette</i> and the <i>Porcupine</i>, began his <i>Weekly Political Register</i> in
+1802 and continued its publication until his death in 1835. It was so
+thoroughly political in character that it hardly merits recognition as a
+literary periodical. The <i>Examiner</i>, begun in 1808 by John Hunt, enjoyed
+during the thirteen years of his brother Leigh's co&ouml;peration a wide
+reputation for the excellence of its political and literary criticism.
+Under Albany Fonblanque, John Forster and William Minto it continued
+with varying success until 1880.</p>
+
+<p>The first truly literary weekly review was the <i>Literary Gazette</i>,
+established in 1817 by Henry Colburn, of the <i>New Monthly Magazine</i>,
+under the joint editorship of Mr. H.E. Lloyd and Miss Ross. After the
+first half-year of its existence, Colburn sold a third share to the
+Messrs. Longman and another third to William Jerdan, who became sole
+editor and eventually (1842) sole proprietor. The original price of a
+shilling was soon reduced to eight pence. Jerdan set the prototype for
+later literary weeklies in his plan, which embraced "foreign and
+domestic correspondence, critical analyses of new publications,
+varieties connected with polite literature,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxxviii" id="Page_xxxviii">[Pg xxxviii]</a></span> philosophical researches,
+scientific inventions, sketches of society, biographical memoirs, essays
+on fine arts, and miscellaneous articles on drama, music and literary
+intelligence." Thus Jerdan followed his friend Canning's advice by
+avoiding "politics and polemics" and by aiming to present "a clear and
+instructive picture of the moral and literary improvement of the times,
+and a complete and authentic chronological literary record for general
+reference." He secured the services of Crabbe, Barry Cornwall, Maginn,
+Campbell, Mrs. Hemans and others: with such an array of contributors he
+was able to crush the several rival weeklies that soon entered the
+field.</p>
+
+<p>Toward the end of its prosperous first decade, however, the misfortunes
+of the <i>Literary Gazette</i> began. Colburn's publications had been roughly
+handled in its pages and he accordingly aided James Silk Buckingham in
+founding the <i>Athen&aelig;um</i>. The first number appeared on January 2, 1828,
+as an evident rival of the older weekly. For a time the new venture was
+on the verge of failure and the proprietors actually offered to sell it
+to Jerdan. Within half a year Buckingham was succeeded by John Sterling
+as editor. Frederic Denison Maurice's friends purchased the <i>Literary
+Chronicle and Weekly Review</i> (begun 1819) and merged it with the
+<i>Athen&aelig;um</i> in July, 1828. For a year Sterling and Maurice contributed
+some of the most brilliant critical articles that have appeared in its
+pages. The working editor at that time was Henry Stebbing who had been
+associated with the <i>Athen&aelig;um</i> since its inception and who was the only
+survivor<a name="FNanchor_C_3" id="FNanchor_C_3"></a><a href="#Footnote_C_3" class="fnanchor">[C]</a> of the original staff when the semi-centennial number was
+published on January 5, 1878.</p>
+
+<p>Even the high standards set by Maurice and Sterling<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xxxix" id="Page_xxxix">[Pg xxxix]</a></span> failed to win
+public favor. The crisis came about the middle of 1830 when Charles
+Wentworth Dilke became "supreme editor," enlisted Lamb, George Darley,
+Barry Cornwall and others on his staff, and reduced the price of the
+<i>Athen&aelig;um</i> from eightpence to fourpence. The apparent folly of reducing
+the price and increasing the expenses did not lead to the generally
+prophesied collapse; this first experiment in modern methods resulted in
+the rapid growth of the <i>Athen&aelig;um's</i> circulation, to the serious
+detriment of the <i>Literary Gazette</i>. Jerdan tried to stem the tide by
+publishing lampoons on the dullness of Dilke's paper; but when the
+<i>Athen&aelig;um</i> was enlarged in 1835 from sixteen to twenty-four pages
+Dilke's triumph was evident. The <i>Literary Gazette</i> was compelled to
+reduce its price to fourpence in its effort to regain the lost
+subscriptions. Dilke labored earnestly to improve his paper and when, in
+1846, he felt that it was established on a firm basis, he made Thomas
+Kibble Hervey editor and devoted his own time to furthering his
+journalistic enterprises. However, he continued to contribute to the
+weekly; his valuable articles on Junius and Pope together with several
+others were afterwards reprinted as <i>Papers of a Critic</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Jerdan withdrew from the <i>Literary Gazette</i> in 1850. The hopeless
+struggle with the <i>Athen&aelig;um</i>, involving a third reduction in price to
+threepence, lasted until 1862, when the <i>Gazette</i> was incorporated with
+the <i>Parthenon</i> and came to an end during the following year. Hervey
+edited the <i>Athen&aelig;um</i> until 1853 when ill-health necessitated his
+resignation. The later editors include William Hepworth Dixon, Norman
+MacColl and at present Mr. Vernon Rendall. After the withdrawal of Dixon
+in 1869 a reformation in the staff and management of the <i>Athen&aelig;um</i> took
+place.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xl" id="Page_xl">[Pg xl]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Some old writers were parted with, and a great many fresh
+contributors were found. While special departments, such as
+science, art, music and the drama, were of necessity entrusted to
+regular hands, indeed, the reviewing of books, now more than ever
+the principal business of 'The Athen&aelig;um,' was distributed over a
+very large staff, the plan being to assign each work to a writer
+familiar with its subject and competent to deal with it
+intelligently, but rigidly to exclude personal favouritism or
+prejudice, and to secure as much impartiality as possible. The rule
+of anonymity has been more carefully observed in 'The Athen&aelig;um'
+than in most other papers. Its authority as a literary censor is
+not lessened, however, and is in some respects increased, by the
+fact that the paper itself, and not any particular critic of great
+or small account, is responsible for the verdicts passed in its
+columns." (Fox Bourne.)</p></div>
+
+<p>Half a year after the inception of the <i>Athen&aelig;um</i>, the first number of
+the <i>Spectator</i> was issued (July 6, 1828) by Robert Stephen Rintoul, an
+experienced journalist who had launched the ill-fated semi-political
+<i>Atlas</i> two years before and therefore decided to confine his new
+venture to literary and social topics. The political excitement of the
+time soon aroused Rintoul's interest, and he undertook the advocacy of
+the Reform Bill with all possible ardor. From him emanated the famous
+battle-cry: "The Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill." He
+conducted the <i>Spectator</i> with great skill until 1858, when he sold it
+two months before his death. Although he wrote little for its pages,
+Rintoul made the <i>Spectator</i> a power in furthering all reforms. The
+literary standard, while somewhat obscured for a time by its politics,
+was high. In 1861 the <i>Spectator</i> passed into the hands of Mr. Meredith
+Townsend who sold a half share to the late Richard Holt Hutton with the
+understanding that they should act as political and literary editors
+respectively. During the four years of the American Civil War, the
+<i>Spectator</i> espoused the cause of the North and was con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xli" id="Page_xli">[Pg xli]</a></span>sequently
+unpopular; but the outcome turned the sentiment in England and likewise
+the fortunes of the <i>Spectator</i>. Hutton's contributions included his
+most memorable utterances upon theological and literary subjects. In the
+midst of religious controversy he was able to discuss delicate questions
+without giving offense, to enlist all parties by refraining from
+expressed allegiance to one. The <i>Spectator</i> of Hutton's day was, in
+Mrs. Oliphant's opinion, "specially distinguished by the thoughtful tone
+of its writing, the almost Quixotic fairness of its judgments, and the
+profoundly religious spirit which pervades its more serious articles."
+Hutton retired shortly before his death in 1897. The present editor is
+Mr. J. St. Loe Strachey.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Saturday Review</i> was established in November, 1855, by A.J.
+Beresford Hope. Its first editor was John Douglass Cook, who had indexed
+the early volumes of the <i>Quarterly</i> for Murray and had gained his
+journalistic experience with the <i>Times</i> and the <i>Morning Chronicle</i>.
+Though possessed of no great personal ability, Cook had the useful
+editorial faculty of recognizing talent, and consequently gathered about
+himself the most promising writers of the younger generation, including,
+among others, Robert Talbot Cecil, the late Lord Salisbury. The
+<i>Saturday Review</i> at once became the most influential and most energetic
+of the weekly papers. Its politics, independent at first, later assumed
+a pronounced Conservative complexion. Cook remained editor until his
+death (1868) when he was succeeded by his assistant, Philip Harwood.
+Since the latter's retirement in 1883 the more recent editors include
+Mr. Walter H. Pollock, Mr. Frank Harris and the present incumbent, Mr.
+Harold Hodge. Professor Saintsbury wrote of the <i>Saturday Review</i>:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xlii" id="Page_xlii">[Pg xlii]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>"Its staff was, as a rule, recruited from the two Universities
+(though there was no kind of exclusion for the unmatriculated; as a
+matter of fact, neither of its first two editors was a son either
+of Oxford or Cambridge), and it always insisted on the necessity of
+classical culture.... It observed, for perhaps a longer time than
+any other paper, the salutary principles of anonymity (real as well
+as ostensible) in regard to the authorship of particular articles;
+and those who knew were constantly amused at the public mistakes on
+this subject."</p></div>
+
+<p>Such "salutary principles of anonymity" were not observed by the
+<i>Academy, a Monthly Record of Literature, Learning, Science and Art</i>,
+which began to appear in October, 1869, and was published for a short
+time by John Murray. Its founder, Dr. Charles E. Appleton, edited the
+<i>Academy</i> until his death in 1879. All the leading articles bore the
+authors' signatures, and, following the example of the more ambitious
+monthlies, Dr. Appleton secured the best known writers as contributors.
+The first number opened with an interesting unpublished letter of Lord
+Byron's; its literary articles were by Matthew Arnold, Gustave Masson
+and Mr. Sidney Colvin, theology was represented by the Rev. T.K. Cheyne
+and J.B. Lightfoot (later Bishop of Durham), science by Thomas Huxley
+and Sir John Lubbock (now Lord Avebury), and classical learning by Mark
+Pattison and John Conington. This remarkable array of names did not
+diminish in subsequent numbers. Besides those mentioned Mr. W.M.
+Rossetti, Max M&uuml;ller, G. Maspero, J.A. Symonds, F.T. Palgrave and others
+contributed to the first volume. Later such names as William Morris,
+John Tyndall, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Walter Pater and Robert Louis
+Stevenson appeared in its pages.</p>
+
+<p>In spite of its brilliant program, the size of the <i>Academy</i>, even at
+its price of sixpence, was too slight to rank as a monthly. After four
+years' experience, first as a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xliii" id="Page_xliii">[Pg xliii]</a></span> monthly, then as a fortnightly, it became
+and has remained a weekly. The editorial succession since the death of
+Dr. Appleton has been C.E. Doble (1879-81); Mr. James Sutherland Cotton
+(1881-96); Mr. C. Lewis Hind (1896-1903); and Mr. W. Teignmouth Shore.
+The issue of November 7, 1896, announced Mr. Cotton's retirement and the
+inauguration of a new policy, which, in addition to technical
+improvements, promised the issue of occasional supplements of a purely
+academic and educational character, and the beginning of the series of
+<i>Academy Portraits</i> of men of letters. At the same time the publication
+of signed articles was abolished and the <i>Academy</i> remained anonymous
+until the recent editorial change. A new departure in October, 1898,
+made the <i>Academy</i> an illustrated paper&mdash;the most attractive though not
+the most authoritative of the weeklies. It has departed widely from the
+set traditions of Dr. Appleton, but most readers will agree that the
+departure has been justified by the needs of the hour. There is small
+satisfaction in reading a one-page review from the pen of an Arnold or a
+Pater; we feel that such authorities should express themselves at length
+in the pages of the literary monthlies; that the reader of the weekly
+should be content with the anonymous (and less expensive) review written
+by the staff-critic. Whatever the personal bias, it is at least certain
+that under present conditions the <i>Academy</i> appeals more generally to
+the popular taste. Its recent absorption of a younger periodical is
+indicated in the compounding of its title into the <i>Academy and
+Literature</i>&mdash;a change that does not commend itself on abstract grounds
+of literary fitness and tradition.</p>
+
+<p>A consideration of periodicals of the <i>Tatler</i>, <i>Spectator</i> and
+<i>Rambler</i> class evidently lies beyond our present purpose; though
+Addison's papers on <i>Paradise Lost</i> and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xliv" id="Page_xliv">[Pg xliv]</a></span> similar articles show an
+occasional critical intent. The magazines, however, have in various
+instances shown such an extensive interest in matters literary that a
+brief account of their development will not be amiss. The primary
+distinction between the review and the magazine is well understood; the
+former criticizes, the latter entertains. Hence fiction, poetry and
+essays are better adapted than book-reviews to the needs of the literary
+magazine. As already stated, Peter Motteux's <i>Gentleman's Journal</i>
+(1692-94) probably deserves recognition as the first English magazine,
+though its brief career is forgotten in the honor accorded to the
+<i>Gentleman's Magazine</i>, established in 1731 by Edward Cave and which,
+still under the editorship of "Sylvanus Urban, Gentleman," is now
+approaching its three hundredth volume. In the early days its lists of
+births, deaths, marriages, bankrupts, events, etc., must have made it a
+useful summary for the public. In literature it printed merely a
+"Register of New Books" without comment of any sort. It is exasperating
+to find such books as <i>Pamela</i> or <i>Tom Jones</i> listed among "New
+Publications" without a word of criticism or commendation. We could
+spare whole reams of pages devoted to "Army Promotions" and "Monthly
+Chronicle" for a few lines of literary review.</p>
+
+<p>Although the booksellers refused to aid Cave in establishing his
+magazine, the demonstration of its success brought forth numerous
+rivals. As they all followed Cave's precedent in ignoring literary
+criticism, it will suffice to mention merely the names of the <i>London
+Magazine</i> (1732-79); the <i>Scots Magazine</i> (1739-1817), continued as the
+<i>Edinburgh Magazine</i> until 1826; the <i>Universal Magazine</i> (1743-1815);
+the <i>British Magazine</i> (1746-50); the <i>Royal Magazine</i> (1759-71); and
+finally<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xlv" id="Page_xlv">[Pg xlv]</a></span> the <i>British Magazine, or Monthly Repository for Gentlemen and
+Ladies</i> (1760-67) edited by Tobias Smollett, who published his <i>Sir
+Launcelot Greaves</i> in its pages&mdash;perhaps the first instance of the
+serial publication of fiction. Goldsmith wrote some of his most
+interesting essays for Smollett's magazine.</p>
+
+<p>An important addition to the ranks was the <i>Monthly Magazine</i> begun in
+1796 by Sir Richard Phillips under the editorship of John Aikin. The
+principal contributor was William Taylor of Norwich who, during a period
+of thirty years, supplied to the <i>Monthly Magazine</i> and other
+periodicals a series of 1,750 articles of remarkable quality. His
+contributions gave the Magazine standing as a literary review. Hazlitt
+accorded to Taylor the honor of writing the first reviews in the style
+afterwards adopted by the Edinburgh Reviewers, which established their
+reputations as original and impartial critics. He is remembered to-day
+as the author of an unread <i>Historic Survey of German Poetry</i> which was
+vigorously assailed by Carlyle in the <i>Edinburgh Review</i>. The <i>New
+Monthly Magazine</i> was started in 1814 by Henry Colburn and Frederick
+Shoberl in opposition to Phillips' magazine. Its first editors were Dr.
+Watkins and Alaric A. Watts. At a later time Campbell, Bulwer, Theodore
+Hook and Harrison Ainsworth successively assumed charge. Under such
+capable direction the magazine naturally won a prominent place among the
+periodicals of the day. During its later years the <i>New Monthly</i> was
+obscured by more ambitious ventures and came to an inglorious end in
+1875&mdash;thirty-two years after the suspension of Phillips' <i>Monthly
+Magazine</i>.</p>
+
+<p>A most significant event in the history of the magazine was the founding
+of the <i>Edinburgh Monthly Magazine</i> in April, 1817, by William
+Blackwood. The new magazine<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xlvi" id="Page_xlvi">[Pg xlvi]</a></span> was projected to counteract the influence
+of the <i>Edinburgh Review</i>, but under its first editors, James Cleghorn
+and Thomas Pringle, it failed to win favor. After six numbers were
+issued, a final disagreement between Blackwood and the editors resulted
+in the withdrawal of the latter. The name of the monthly was changed to
+<i>Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine</i>&mdash;popularly <i>Blackwood's</i> or "Maga"&mdash;and
+henceforth until his death Blackwood was his own editor. John Wilson
+(Christopher North) and John Gibson Lockhart, the most important of the
+early contributors to <i>Blackwood's</i>, published in that famous seventh
+number the clever <i>Chaldee Manuscript</i>&mdash;an audacious satire upon the
+original editors, the rival publisher Constable, the <i>Edinburgh Review</i>
+and various literary personages under a thinly veiled allegory in
+apocalyptic style. It at once attracted wide attention (including a
+costly action for libel within a fortnight) and was suppressed in the
+second impression of the number. The same number of <i>Blackwood's</i> set
+the precedent for the subsequent critical vituperation that made the
+magazine notorious. It contained an abusive article on Coleridge's
+<i>Biographia Literaria</i> and the first of a series of virulent attacks on
+"The Cockney School of Poetry." Much of the literary criticism in the
+first few volumes is inexcusably brutal; fortunately, <i>Blackwood's</i> soon
+became less rampant in its critical outbursts. The co&ouml;peration of James
+Hogg and the ill-fated Maginn introduced new articles of varied
+interest, particularly the witty letters and the parodies of "Ensign
+O'Doherty." Wilson's <i>Noctes Ambrosian&aelig;</i> became a characteristic feature
+of <i>Blackwood's</i>; John Galt and Susan Ferrier won popularity among the
+novel readers of the day; and in the trenchant literary criticism of
+Lockhart, Wilson, Hogg and their confr&egrave;res an equally high standard was
+maintained.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xlvii" id="Page_xlvii">[Pg xlvii]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>After the death of the elder Blackwood in 1834, the management of the
+magazine passed to his sons successively. John Blackwood, the sixth son,
+enjoyed the distinction of "discovering" George Eliot and beginning, by
+the publication of her <i>Scenes of Clerical Life</i> in 1857, a relationship
+that was both pleasant and profitable to the firm. A few years earlier
+appeared the first contributions of another remarkable literary
+woman&mdash;Mrs. Margaret Oliphant, whose association with <i>Blackwood's</i>
+lasted over forty years. Her history of the house of Blackwood was
+published in the year of her death (1897).</p>
+
+<p><i>Blackwood's</i> is still a strong conservative organ. The already quoted
+Index of the <i>Review of Reviews</i> says of it: "With a rare consistency it
+has contrived to appear for over three score years and ten as a spirited
+and defiant advocate of all those who are at least five years behind
+their time. Sometimes <i>Blackwood</i> is fifty years in the rear, but that
+is a detail of circumstance. Five or fifty, it does not matter, so long
+as it is well in the rear." Such gentle sarcasm merely emphasizes the
+fact that <i>Blackwood's</i> has always aimed to be more than a magazine of
+<i>belles-lettres</i>. The publishers celebrated the appearance of the one
+thousandth number in February, 1899, by almost doubling its size to a
+volume of three hundred pages, including a latter-day addition to the
+<i>Noctes Ambrosian&aelig;</i> and other features.</p>
+
+<p>An important though short-lived venture was the <i>London Magazine</i>, begun
+in January, 1820, under the editorship of John Scott. By its editorial
+assaults upon the <i>Blackwood</i> criticisms of the "Cockney School," it
+became the recognized champion of that loosely defined coterie. The
+initial attack in the May number was further emphasized by more vigorous
+articles in November and Decem<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xlviii" id="Page_xlviii">[Pg xlviii]</a></span>ber of 1820, and January, 1821. Lockhart,
+who was the recipient of the worst abuse, demanded of Scott an apology
+or a hostile meeting. The outcome of the controversy was a duel on
+February 16th between Scott and Lockhart's intimate friend, Jonathan
+Henry Christie. Scott was mortally wounded, and died within a fortnight;
+the verdict of wilful murder brought against Christie and his second at
+the inquest resulted in their trial and acquittal at the old Bailey two
+months later. It would have been well for the <i>London Magazine</i> and for
+literature in general if that unfortunate duel could have been prevented
+or at least diverted into such a ludicrous affair as the meeting between
+Jeffrey and Tom Moore in 1806.</p>
+
+<p>The most famous contributions to the <i>London Magazine</i> during Scott's
+r&eacute;gime were Lamb's <i>Essays of Elia</i>. Those charming productions, now
+ranked among our dearly treasured classics, were not received at first
+with universal approbation. The long and justly forgotten Alaric A.
+Watts said of them: "Charles Lamb delivers himself with infinite pain
+and labour of a silly piece of trifling, every month, in this Magazine,
+under the signature of Elia. It is the curse of the Cockney School that,
+with all their desire to appear exceedingly off-hand and ready with all
+they have to say, they are constrained to elaborate every sentence, as
+though the web were woven from their own bowels. Charles Lamb says he
+can make no way in an article under at least a week." In July, 1821, the
+<i>London Magazine</i> was purchased by Taylor and Hessey. Although Thomas
+Hood was made working-editor, the <i>Blackwood</i> idea of retaining
+editorial supervision in the firm was followed. Within a few months De
+Quincey contributed his <i>Confessions of an English Opium-Eater</i>&mdash;the
+most famous of all the articles that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_xlix" id="Page_xlix">[Pg xlix]</a></span> appeared in the magazine. Lamb<a name="FNanchor_D_4" id="FNanchor_D_4"></a><a href="#Footnote_D_4" class="fnanchor">[D]</a>
+and De Quincey continued to write for the magazine for several years.
+Other contributors, especially of literary criticism, were Barry
+Cornwall, Carlyle, Hazlitt, Henry Cary and, toward the end, Walter
+Savage Landor. The magazine became less conspicuous after 1824 and
+dragged out an obscure existence until 1829; but it is probable that no
+other periodical achieved the standard of purely literary excellence
+represented by the <i>London Magazine</i> during the first five years of its
+existence.</p>
+
+<p>In February, 1830, James Fraser published the first number of <i>Fraser's
+Magazine for Town and Country</i>. The magazine was not named after the
+publisher but after its sponsor, Hugh Fraser, a "briefless barrister"
+and man about town. The latter enlisted the aid of Maginn who had
+severed his connection with <i>Blackwood's</i> in 1828. In general,
+<i>Fraser's</i> was modelled upon <i>Blackwood's</i>; but a unique and popular
+feature was the publication of the "Gallery of Illustrious Literary
+Characters" between 1830-38. This famous series of eighty-one caricature
+portraits chiefly by Daniel Maclise, with letter-press by Maginn, has
+been made accessible to present-day readers in William Bates' <i>Maclise
+Portrait Gallery</i> (1883) where much illustrative material has been added
+to the original articles. It is evident that the literary standard of
+<i>Fraser's</i> soon equalled and possibly surpassed that of <i>Blackwood's</i>.
+Among its writers were Carlyle (who contributed a critique to the first
+number, published <i>Sartor Resartus</i> in its pages, 1833-35, and, as late
+as 1875, his <i>Early Kings of Norway</i>), Thackeray, Father Prout and
+Thomas Love Peacock. Maclise's plate of "The Fraser<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_l" id="Page_l">[Pg l]</a></span>ians" also includes
+Allan Cunningham, Theodore Hook, William Jerdan, Lockhart, Hogg,
+Coleridge, Southey and several others. It is unlikely that all of them
+wrote much for <i>Fraser's</i>; but the staff was undoubtedly a brilliant
+assemblage. James Anthony Froude became editor in 1860 and was assisted
+for a time by Charles Kingsley and Sir Theodore Martin. He was succeeded
+by his sub-editor, William Allingham, during whose administration
+(1874-79) the fortunes of <i>Fraser's</i> suffered a decline. The gradual
+failure was due to the competition of the new shilling magazines rather
+than to incompetence on the part of the editor. The end came in October,
+1882, when <i>Fraser's</i> was succeeded by <i>Longman's Magazine</i> which is
+still in progress.</p>
+
+<p>The magazines established soon after <i>Fraser's</i> followed for the most
+part a policy that demands for them mere passing mention in the present
+connection. Literary criticism and reviews were largely abandoned in
+favor of lighter and more entertaining material. The <i>Dublin University
+Magazine</i> (1833-80) and <i>Tait's Edinburgh Magazine</i> (1832-61) best
+represent the transitional stage. During its early history, the latter
+employed prominent contributors, who gave it an important position. Such
+magazines as the <i>Metropolitan</i> (1831-50) and <i>Bentley's Miscellany</i>
+(1837-68) set the standards for similar periodicals since that time.
+Charles Dickens' experience with <i>Bentley's</i> led to the publication of
+his weeklies, <i>Household Words</i> (1850 to date) and <i>All the Year Round</i>
+(1859), which was incorporated in 1895 with the former. <i>Macmillan's
+Magazine</i>, first of the popular shilling monthlies, began in 1859 and
+was soon followed by Thackeray's <i>Cornhill Magazine</i> (1860) and <i>Temple
+Bar</i> (1860). All of these magazines are still in progress. The
+occasional publication of an article by a literary critic<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_li" id="Page_li">[Pg li]</a></span> hardly
+justifies their inclusion within the category of critical reviews, as
+their essential purpose is to instruct and entertain, rather than to sit
+in judgment upon contemporary letters.</p>
+
+<p>There are in course of publication to-day numerous literary periodicals
+of varying scope and importance that have not even been mentioned by
+title in our hasty survey. Enough has been said, however, to give some
+idea of the magnitude of the field, and to show that most of the great
+names of modern English literature have been more or less closely
+associated with the history of the literary reviews. Those reviews have
+usually sought to foster all that is highest and best in our
+intellectual development; and although English literary criticism has
+been, on the whole, less convincing, less brilliant and less
+authoritative than that of France, it has during the past century set a
+fairly high standard of excellence. It seems difficult to understand why
+the literary conditions in England, instead of developing critics like
+Sainte-Beuve, Gaston Paris, Bruneti&egrave;re and others whose utterances
+redound to the lasting glory of French criticism, should be steadily
+tending toward a lower and less influential level. Mr. Churton Collins
+in his pessimistic discussion of "The Present Functions of Criticism"
+deplores the spirit of tolerance and charity manifested toward the
+mediocre productions of contemporary writers; he attributes the
+degradation of criticism to the lack of critical standards and
+principles, and indirectly to the neglect of the study of literature at
+the English Universities. The plea for an English Academy has been made
+at different times and with different ends in view, but under modern
+conditions such an institution would hardly solve the problem. Mr.
+Collins shows how the intellectual aristocracy of the past has been
+superseded by the present<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_lii" id="Page_lii">[Pg lii]</a></span> omnivorous reading-public afflicted with a
+perpetual craving for literary novelty. The inevitable rapidity of
+production results in a deluge of poor books which are foisted upon
+readers by a "detestable system of mutual puffery." This condition of
+affairs naturally offers few opportunities for the development of
+critical ideals; but it hardly applies to the incorruptible reviews of
+recognized standing. The reasons for the lack of authority in modern
+English criticism are more deeply grounded in an inherent objection to
+the restraint imposed upon an artist by artificial canons of taste, and
+in a well-founded impression that many of the greatest literary
+achievements evince a violation of such canons.</p>
+
+<p>It is not to be inferred that criticism is thereby disdained and
+disregarded. The critical dicta of a Dryden or a Johnson, a Coleridge or
+a Hazlitt, and, more recently, an Arnold or a Pater, are valued and
+studied because they emphasize the vital elements essential to the
+proper appreciation of a literary product; and, moreover, because such
+critics, in transcending the limitations of their kind, establish higher
+and juster standards for the criticism of the future. On the other hand,
+the great majority of critical utterances must necessarily be ephemeral;
+they may exert considerable contemporary influence, but are usually
+forgotten long before the works that called them forth. Unless this
+criticism is more than a perfunctory examination of the merits and
+defects of the work under consideration, it cannot endure beyond its own
+brief day.</p>
+
+<p>Several fruitless attempts have been made to reduce criticism to an
+exact science, which, quite disregarding the factor of personal taste,
+could refer all literature to a more or less fixed and arbitrary set of
+critical principles. The champions of this objective criticism point to
+the occasionally ludicrous divergence of the views expressed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_liii" id="Page_liii">[Pg liii]</a></span> in
+criticism of certain poets or novelists, and insist that there is no
+occasion for such a bewildering difference of opinion. They seem to
+forget that the criticism which we esteem most highly at all times is
+the subjective criticism in which the personality of a competent and
+sincere critic is manifest. Literature, like music, painting and the
+other arts, has its own laws of technique&mdash;fundamental canons that must
+be observed in the successful pursuit of the art; but at a certain point
+difference of opinion is not only possible but profitable. The critics
+who would unite in condemning a thirteen-line sonnet or a ten-act
+tragedy could not be expected to agree on the relative merits of
+Milton's and Wordsworth's sonnets. Unanimity of opinion is as impossible
+and undesirable concerning the poetic achievement of Browning and
+Whitman as it is concerning the music of Brahms and Wagner, or the
+painting of Turner and Whistler. Great artists who have taken liberties
+with traditions and precedents have done much to prevent the critics
+from falling into a state of self-complacency over their scientific
+methods and formulas.</p>
+
+<p>The most helpful form of criticism is the interpretative variety, not
+necessarily the laudatory "appreciation" that is so popular in our day,
+but an honest effort to understand and elucidate the intention of the
+writer. The proper exercise of this art occasionally demands rare
+qualifications on the part of the critic; at the same time it adds
+dignity to his calling and value to his utterance. It serves to dispel
+the popular conception of a critic as a disappointed <i>litterateur</i> who
+begrudges his more brilliant fellow craftsmen their success and who dogs
+their triumphs with his ill-tempered snarling. Interpretative criticism
+needs few rules and no system; yet it serves a noble purpose as a guide
+and monitor for subsequent literary effort.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_liv" id="Page_liv">[Pg liv]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The question of anonymous criticism has occasioned much thoughtful
+discussion. In former times anonymity was often a shield for the
+slanderer who saw fit to abuse and assail his victim with the rancorous
+outburst of his malice; but it is also clear that the earlier reviewers
+were mere literary hacks whose names would have given no weight to the
+critique and hence could be omitted without much loss. The authorship of
+important <i>Edinburgh</i> and <i>Quarterly</i><a name="FNanchor_E_5" id="FNanchor_E_5"></a><a href="#Footnote_E_5" class="fnanchor">[E]</a> articles in the days of their
+greatness was usually an open secret. Later periodicals, like the
+<i>Fortnightly</i> and the <i>Academy</i> found it a profitable advertisement to
+publish the signatures of their eminent critics. The tendency of the
+present day is largely in favor of anonymity; no longer as a cover for
+the dispensation of malicious vituperation, but as a necessary
+safe-guard for the unbiased and untrammeled exercise of the critical
+function. Certain abuses of the privilege are inevitable. Mr. Sidney
+Colvin in looking over the criticisms of Mr. Stephen Phillips' poetry
+recently discovered in three periodicals convincing parallels that led
+Mr. Arthur Symons to confess to the authorship of all three critiques.
+The average reader would in most cases be strongly influenced by the
+united verdict of the critics of the <i>Saturday Review</i>, the <i>Athen&aelig;um</i>
+and the <i>Quarterly Review</i>; in this instance his convictions would
+undoubtedly be rudely shattered when he learned the truth. Under such
+conditions anonymous criticism is a menace, not an aid to the reader's
+judgment.</p>
+
+<p>In conclusion, it must be borne in mind that criticism is not an end but
+a means to an end. All the literary<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_lv" id="Page_lv">[Pg lv]</a></span> criticism ever uttered would be
+useless as such if it did not evince a desire to further the development
+of literary art. The <i>Iliad</i> and the <i>&#338;dipus</i> were written long
+before Aristotle's <i>Poetics</i>, and it is not likely that either Homer or
+Sophocles would have been a greater poet if he could have read the
+Stagirite's treatise. Yet the <i>Poetics</i>, as a summary of the essential
+features of that art, served an important purpose in later ages and
+exerted far-reaching influences. Criticism in all ages has necessarily
+been of less importance than art itself&mdash;it guides and suggests, but
+cannot create. Literary history shows that true criticism must be in
+conformity with the spirit of the age; it cannot oppose the trend of
+intelligent opinion. It may praise, censure, advise, interpret&mdash;but it
+will always remain subservient to the art that called it forth. There is
+no reason to believe that criticism can ever be established in the
+English-speaking world upon a basis that will subject to an arbitrary
+and irrevocable ruling the form and spirit of the artist's message to
+mankind.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_lvi" id="Page_lvi">[Pg lvi]</a></span></p>
+<h2>BIBLIOGRAPHY</h2>
+
+
+<p><b>British Museum.</b> Catalogue of Printed Books. Periodicals. (Revised ed.,
+1900.)</p>
+
+<p><b>Dictionary of National Biography.</b></p>
+
+<p><b>Encyclopedia Britannica.</b> Article on Periodicals, by H.R. Tedder.</p>
+
+<p><b>Barrow, Sir John.</b> Autobiography. London, 1847.</p>
+
+<p><b>Bourne, H.R. Fox.</b> English Newspapers. Chapters in the History of
+Journalism. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1887.</p>
+
+<p><b>Cockburn, Lord.</b> Life of Lord Jeffrey. With a Selection from his
+Correspondence. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1852.</p>
+
+<p><b>Copinger, W.A.</b> On the Authorship of the first Hundred Numbers of the
+"Edinburgh Review." (Privately Printed.) Manchester, 1895.</p>
+
+<p><b>Cross, Maurice.</b> Selections from the Edinburgh Review, etc. With a
+Preliminary Dissertation. 4 vols. 8vo. London, 1833.</p>
+
+<p><b>Gates, Lewis E.</b> Francis Jeffrey. In <i>Three Studies in Literature</i>. 12mo.
+New York, 1899.</p>
+
+<p><b>Horner, Leonard.</b> Memoirs and Correspondence of Francis Horner, M.P.
+Edited by his brother. 2 vols. 8vo. Boston, 1853.</p>
+
+<p><b>Jennings, Louis J.</b> The Correspondence and Diaries of John Wilson Croker.
+2 vols. 8vo. New York, 1884.</p>
+
+<p><b>Jerdan, William.</b> Autobiography. With his Literary, Political, and Social
+Reminiscences and Correspondence, etc. 4 vols. 12mo. London, 1852-53.</p>
+
+<p><b>Laughton, John Knox.</b> Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry
+Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1898.</p>
+
+<p><b>Napier, Macvey.</b> Selections from the Correspondence of the late Macvey
+Napier, Esq. Edited by his son. 8vo. London, 1879.</p>
+
+<p><b>Oliphant, Mrs. M.O.W., and Porter, Mrs. Gerald.</b> William Blackwood and
+his Sons, etc. 3 vols. 8vo. New York, 1897-98.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_lvii" id="Page_lvii">[Pg lvii]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><b>Paston, George.</b> The "Monthly Review." In <i>Side-Lights on the Georgian
+Period</i>. 8vo. London, 1903.</p>
+
+<p><b>Smiles, Samuel.</b> A Publisher and his Friends. Memoir and Correspondence
+of the late John Murray, etc. 2 vols. 8vo. London and New York, 1891.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><b>Last Century Magazines.</b> (By T.H.) <i>Fraser's Magazine</i>, XCIV (325-333).</p>
+
+<p><b>Layton, W.E.</b> Early Periodicals. In <i>The Bibliographer</i>, III (36-39).</p>
+
+<p><b>Lee, William.</b> Periodical Publications during the Twenty Years 1712 to
+1732. <i>Notes and Queries</i> (Third Series), IX (53-54, 72-75, 92-95). Cf.
+<i>ibid.</i>, pp. 164, 268, and X, p. 134.</p>
+
+<p><b>Niven, G.W.</b> On some Eighteenth Century Periodicals. In <i>The
+Bibliographer</i>, II (38-40).</p>
+
+<p><b>Parkes, Samuel.</b> An Account of the Periodical Literary Journals which
+were Published in Great Britain and Ireland, from the Year 1681 to the
+Commencement of the Monthly Review in the year 1749. In <i>The Quarterly
+Journal of Science, Literature and the Arts</i> (1822), XIII (36-58,
+289-312).</p>
+
+<p><b>Stephen, (Sir) Leslie.</b> The First Edinburgh Reviewers. In <i>Cornhill
+Magazine</i>, XXXVIII (218-234). Also in <i>Living Age</i>, CXXXVIII (643-653).</p>
+
+<p><b>Waugh, Arthur.</b> The English Reviewers. A Sketch of their History and
+Principles. In <i>The Critic</i>, XL (26-37).</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><b>Allingham, William.</b> Varieties in Prose. 3 vols. 12mo. London, 1893. Vol.
+III contains <i>Some Curiosities of Criticism</i>, reprinted from <i>Fraser's
+Magazine</i>, LXXXVII (43-51).</p>
+
+<p><b>Arnold, Matthew.</b> Essays in Criticism. First Series. 12mo. London, 1865.
+Contains <i>The Function of Criticism at the Present Time.</i></p>
+
+<p><b>Birrell, Augustine.</b> Men, Women, and Books. 16mo. London, 1894. Contains
+<i>Authors and Critics</i>.</p>
+
+<p><b>Collins, J. Churton.</b> Ephemera Critica, or Plain Truths about Current
+Literature. 12mo. Westminster and New York, 1901.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_lviii" id="Page_lviii">[Pg lviii]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><b>[Copleston, Edward.]</b> Advice to a Young Reviewer, with a Specimen of the
+Art. 8vo. Oxford and London, 1807. Reprinted in <i>An English Garner,
+Critical Essays and Literary Fragments</i>, ed. J.C. Collins. New York,
+1903.</p>
+
+<p><b>Disraeli, I.</b> Calamities and Quarrels of Authors. A New Edition, etc.
+12mo. London, n.d. Contains <i>Undue Severity of Criticism</i>.</p>
+
+<p><b>Gayley, C.M., and Scott, F.N.</b> An Introduction to the Methods and
+Materials of Literary Criticism, etc. 12mo. Boston, 1899.</p>
+
+<p><b>Jennings, Henry J.</b> Curiosities of Criticism. 12mo. London, 1881. See
+<i>Eclectic Magazine</i>, XCVII (420-423).</p>
+
+<p><b>Johnson, Charles F.</b> Elements of Literary Criticism. 12mo. New York,
+1898.</p>
+
+<p><b>Mabie, Hamilton W.</b> Essays in Literary Interpretation. 12mo. New York,
+1896. Contains <i>The Significance of Modern Criticism</i>.</p>
+
+<p><b>Matthews, William.</b> The Great Conversers, and other Essays. 12mo.
+Chicago, 1874. Contains <i>Curiosities of Criticism</i>.</p>
+
+<p><b>Repplier, Agnes.</b> Books and Men. 16mo. Boston, 1888. Contains
+<i>Curiosities of Criticism</i>.</p>
+
+<p><b>Robertson, John M.</b> Essays toward a Critical Method. Sm. 8vo. London,
+1889. Contains <i>Science in Criticism</i>.</p>
+
+<p><b>Robertson, John M.</b> New Essays toward a Critical Method. Sm. 8vo. London,
+1897.</p>
+
+<p><b>Sears, Lorenzo.</b> Principles and Methods of Literary Criticism. 12mo. New
+York and London, 1898.</p>
+
+<p><b>Stevenson, E.</b> Early Reviews of Great Writers (1786-1832): Selected and
+Edited with an Introduction. 12mo. London, n.d.</p>
+
+<p><b>Trent, W.P.</b> The Authority of Criticism and other Essays. 12mo. New York,
+1899.</p>
+
+<p><b>Winchester, C.T.</b> Some Principles of Literary Criticism. 12mo. New York,
+1899.</p>
+
+<p><b>Worsfold, W. Basil.</b> The Principles of Criticism. An Introduction to the
+Study of Literature. New Edition. 8vo. New York, 1902.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_lix" id="Page_lix">[Pg lix]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><b>Wylie, Laura Johnson.</b> Studies in the Evolution of English Criticism.
+16mo. Boston, 1894.</p>
+
+<p>&nbsp;</p>
+
+<p><b>Allen, Grant.</b> The Decay of Criticism. In <i>Fortnightly Review</i>, XXXVII
+(339-351).</p>
+
+<p><b>Clarke, Helen A.</b> The Value of Contemporary Judgment. In <i>Poet-Lore</i>, V
+(201-209).</p>
+
+<p><b>Critical Errors.</b> In <i>Chamber's Journal</i>, XLII (164-166).</p>
+
+<p><b>Criticism Extraordinary.</b> In <i>All the Year Round</i>, XXXIII (558-563).</p>
+
+<p><b>G.L.A.</b> Some Curiosities of Criticism. In <i>Temple Bar</i>, LXXX (241-247).</p>
+
+<p><b>Howe, Herbert Crombie.</b> The Contradictions of Literary Criticism. In
+<i>North American Review</i>, CLXXV (399-408).</p>
+
+<p><b>Hunt, T.W.</b> Critics and Criticism. In <i>Modern Language Notes</i>, IV, p.
+161.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_1" id="Page_1">[Pg 1]</a></span></p>
+<h2>EARLY REVIEWS OF ENGLISH POETS</h2>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" />
+<h2><span class="smcap">Thomas Gray</span></h2>
+
+
+<p class="bigcenter"><span class="smcap lowercase">ODES.</span> <i>By Mr.</i> Gray. 4to. 1s. Dodsley.</p>
+
+<p>As this publication seems designed for those who have formed their taste
+by the models of antiquity, the generality of Readers cannot be supposed
+adequate Judges of its merit; nor will the Poet, it is presumed, be
+greatly disappointed if he finds them backward in commending a
+performance not entirely suited to their apprehensions. We cannot,
+however, without some regret behold those talents so capable of giving
+pleasure to all, exerted in efforts that, at best, can amuse only the
+few; we cannot behold this rising Poet seeking fame among the learned,
+without hinting to him the same advice that Isocrates used to give his
+Scholars, <i>Study the People</i>. This study it is that has conducted the
+great Masters of antiquity up to immortality. Pindar himself, of whom
+our modern Lyrist is an imitator, appears entirely guided by it. He
+adapted his works exactly to the dispositions of his countrymen.
+Irregular[,] enthusiastic, and quick in transition,&mdash;he wrote for a
+people inconstant, of warm imaginations and exquisite sensibility. He
+chose the most popular subjects, and all his allusions are to customs
+well known, in his day, to the meanest person.<a name="FNanchor_F_6" id="FNanchor_F_6"></a><a href="#Footnote_F_6" class="fnanchor">[F]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_2" id="Page_2">[Pg 2]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>His English Imitator wants those advantages. He speaks to a people not
+easily impressed with new ideas; extremely tenacious of the old; with
+difficulty warmed; and as slowly cooling again.&mdash;How unsuited then to
+our national character is that species of poetry which rises upon us
+with unexpected flights! Where we must hastily catch the thought, or it
+flies from us; and, in short, where the Reader must largely partake of
+the Poet's enthusiasm, in order to taste his beauties. To carry the
+parallel a little farther; the Greek Poet wrote in a language the most
+proper that can be imagined for this species of composition; lofty,
+harmonious, and never needing rhyme to heighten the numbers. But, for
+us, several unsuccessful experiments seem to prove that the English
+cannot have Odes in blank Verse; while, on the other hand, a natural
+imperfection attends those which are composed in irregular rhymes:&mdash;the
+similar sound often recurring where it is not expected, and not being
+found where it is, creates no small confusion to the Reader,&mdash;who, as we
+have not seldom observed, beginning in all the solemnity of poetic
+elocution, is by frequent disappointments of the rhyme, at last obliged
+to drawl out the uncomplying numbers into disagreeable prose.</p>
+
+<p>It is, by no means, our design to detract from the merit of our Author's
+present attempt: we would only intimate, that an English Poet,&mdash;one whom
+the Muse has <i>mark'd for her own</i>, could produce a more luxuriant bloom
+of flowers, by cultivating such as are natives of the soil, than by
+endeavouring to force the exotics of another climate: or, to speak
+without a metaphor, such a genius as Mr. Gray might give greater
+pleasure, and acquire a larger portion of fame, if, instead of being an
+imitator, he did justice to his talents, and ventured to be more an
+original. These two Odes, it must be confessed, breath[e]<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_3" id="Page_3">[Pg 3]</a></span> much of the
+spirit of Pindar, but then they have caught the seeming obscurity, the
+sudden transition, and hazardous epithet, of his mighty master; all
+which, though evidently intended for beauties, will, probably, be
+regarded as blemishes, by the generality of his Readers. In short, they
+are in some measure, a representation of what Pindar now appears to be,
+though perhaps, not what he appeared to the States of Greece, when they
+rivalled each other in his applause, and when Pan himself was seen
+dancing to his melody.</p>
+
+<p>In conformity to the antients, these Odes consist of the <i>Strophe</i>,
+<i>Antistrophe</i>, and <i>Epode</i>, which, in each Ode, are thrice repeated. The
+Strophes have a correspondent resemblance in their str[u]cture and
+numbers: and the Antistrophe and Epode also bear the same similitude.
+The Poet seems, in the first Ode particularly, to design the Epode as a
+complete air to the Strophe and Antistrophe, which have more the
+appearance of Recitative. There was a necessity for these divisions
+among the antients, for they served as directions to the dancer and
+musician; but we see no reason why they should be continued among the
+moderns; for, instead of assisting, they will but perplex the Musician,
+as our music requires a more frequent transition from the Air to the
+Recitative than could agree with the simplicity of the antients.</p>
+
+<p>The first of these Poems celebrates the Lyric Muse. It seems the most
+laboured performance of the two, but yet we think its merit is not equal
+to that of the second. It seems to want that regularity of plan upon
+which the second is founded; and though it abounds with images that
+strike, yet, unlike the second, it contains none that are affecting.</p>
+
+<p>In the second Antistrophe the Bard thus marks the progress of Poetry.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_4" id="Page_4">[Pg 4]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">II. [2.]<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">In climes beyond the solar road,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where shaggy forms o'er ice-built mountains roam,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Muse has broke the twilight-gloom<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To cheer the shivering natives dull abode<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And oft beneath the od'rous shade<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of Chili's boundless forests laid,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She deigns to hear the savage youth repeat,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In loose numbers wildly sweet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Their feather-cinctured Chiefs, and dusky loves.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her track, where'er the Goddess roves,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Glory pursue, and generous shame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Th' unconquerable Mind, and Freedom's holy flame.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>There is great spirit in the irregularity of the numbers towards the
+conclusion of the foregoing stanza.</p>
+
+<p>[II, 3, and III, 2, of <i>The Progress of Poesy</i> are quoted without
+comment.]</p>
+
+<p>The second 'Ode is founded on a tradition current in Wales, that Edward
+the first, when he compleated the conquest of that country, ordered all
+the Bards that fell into his hands to be put to death.' The Author seems
+to have taken the hint of this subject from the fifteenth Ode of the
+first book of Horace. Our Poet introduces the only surviving Bard of
+that country in concert with the spirits of his murdered brethren, as
+prophetically denouncing woes upon the Conqueror and his posterity. The
+circumstances of grief and horror in which the Bard is represented,
+those of terror in the preparation of the votive web, and the mystic
+obscurity with which the prophecies are delivered, will give as much
+pleasure to those who relish this species of composition, as anything
+that has hitherto appeared in our language, the Odes of Dryden himself
+not excepted.</p>
+
+<p>[I, 2, I, 3, part of II, 1, and the conclusion of <i>The Bard</i> are
+quoted]&mdash;<i>The Monthly Review</i>.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_5" id="Page_5">[Pg 5]</a></span></p>
+<h2><span class="smcap">Oliver Goldsmith</span></h2>
+
+
+<p class="bigcenter"><i>The Traveller, or a Prospect of Society. A Poem</i>. <i>Inscribed to the
+Rev. Mr.</i> Henry Goldsmith. <i>By</i> <span class="smcap">Oliver Goldsmith</span>, <i>M.B. 4to. Pr. 1s.
+6d</i>. Newbery.</p>
+
+<p>The author has, in an elegant dedication to his brother, a country
+clergyman, given the design of his poem:&mdash;'Without espousing the cause
+of any party, I have attempted to moderate the rage of all. I have
+endeavoured to shew, that there may be equal happiness in other states,
+though differently governed from our own; that each state has a peculiar
+principle of happiness; and that this principle in each state,
+particularly in our own, may be carried to a mischievous excess.'</p>
+
+<p>That he may illustrate and enforce this important position, the author
+places himself on a summit of the Alps, and, turning his eyes around, in
+all directions, upon the different regions that lie before him,
+compares, not merely their situation or policy, but those social and
+domestic manners which, after a very few deductions, make the sum total
+of human life.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or by the lazy Scheld, or wandering Po;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or onward, where the rude Carinthian boor<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Against the houseless stranger shuts the door;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or where Campania's plain forsaken lies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A weary waste expanded to the skies.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where'er I roam, whatever realms to see,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My heart untravell'd fond turns to thee;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still to my brother turns with ceaseless pain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And drags at each remove a lengthening chain.&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Even now, where Alpine solitudes ascend,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I sit me down a pensive hour to spend;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, plac'd on high above the storm's career,<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_6" id="Page_6">[Pg 6]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Look downward where an hundred realms appear;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lakes, forests, cities, plains extended wide,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The pomp of kings, the shepherd's humbler pride.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">When thus creation's charms around combine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Amidst the store 'twere thankless to repine.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Twere affectation all, and school-taught pride,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To spurn the splendid things by heaven supply'd.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let school-taught pride dissemble all it can,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">These little things are great to little man;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And wiser he, whose sympathetic mind<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Exults in all the good of all mankind.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The author already appears, by his numbers, to be a versifier; and by
+his scenery, to be a poet; it therefore only remains that his sentiments
+discover him to be a just estimator of comparative happiness.</p>
+
+<p>The goods of life are either given by nature, or procured by ourselves.
+Nature has distributed her gifts in very different proportions, yet all
+her children are content; but the acquisitions of art are such as
+terminate in good or evil, as they are differently regulated or
+combined.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Yet, where to find that happiest spot below,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who can direct, when all pretend to know?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The shudd'ring tenant of the frigid zone<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Boldly asserts that country for his own,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Extols the treasures of his stormy seas,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And live-long nights of revelry and ease;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The naked Negro, panting at the line,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Boasts of his golden sands and palmy wine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Basks in the glare, or stems the tepid wave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And thanks his Gods for all the good they gave.&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Nature, a mother kind alike, to all,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still grants her bliss at Labour's earnest call;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And though rough rocks or gloomy summits frown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">These rocks, by custom, turn to beds of down.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">From Art more various are the blessings sent;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wealth, splendours, honor, liberty, content:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet these each other's power so strong contest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That either seems destructive of the rest.<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_7" id="Page_7">[Pg 7]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Hence every state, to one lov'd blessing prone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Conforms and models life to that alone.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Each to the favourite happiness attends,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And spurns the plan that aims at other ends;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till, carried to excess in each domain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This favourite good begets peculiar pain.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This is the position which he conducts through Italy, Swisserland,
+France, Holland, and England; and which he endeavours to confirm by
+remarking the manners of every country.</p>
+
+<p>Having censured the degeneracy of the modern Italians, he proceeds thus:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'My soul turn from them, turn we to survey<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where rougher climes a nobler race display,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where the bleak Swiss their stormy mansions tread,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And force a churlish soil for scanty bread;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No product here the barren hills afford,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But man and steel, the soldier and his sword.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No vernal blooms their torpid rocks array,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But winter lingering chills the lap of May;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No Zephyr fondly soothes the mountain's breast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But meteors glare, and stormy glooms invest.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet still, even here, content can spread a charm,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Redress the clime, and all its rage disarm.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though poor the peasant's hut, his feasts though small,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He sees his little lot, the lot of all;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">See no contiguous palace rear its head<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To shame the meanness of his humble shed;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No costly lord the sumptuous banquet deal<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To make him loath his vegetable meal;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But calm, and bred in ignorance and toil,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Each wish contracting, fits him to the soil.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But having found that the rural life of a Swiss has its evils as well as
+comforts, he turns to France.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'To kinder skies, where gentler manners reign,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We turn; and France displays her bright domain.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gay sprightly land of mirth and social ease,<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_8" id="Page_8">[Pg 8]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Pleas'd with thyself, whom all the world can please.&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Theirs are those arts that mind to mind endear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For honour forms the social temper here.&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From courts to camps, to cottages it strays,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all are taught an avarice of praise;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They please, are pleas'd, they give to get esteem,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till, seeming blest, they grow to what they seem.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Yet France has its evils:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'For praise too dearly lov'd, or warmly sought,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Enfeebles all internal strength of thought,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the weak soul, within itself unblest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Leans all for pleasure on another's breast.&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The mind still turns where shifting fashion draws,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor weighs the solid worth of self-applause.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Having then passed through Holland, he arrives in England, where,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Stern o'er each bosom reason holds her state,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With daring aims, irregularly great,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I see the lords of human kind pass by,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pride in their port, defiance in their eye,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Intent on high designs, a thoughtful band,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By forms unfashion'd, fresh from Nature's hand.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>With the inconveniences that harrass [<i>sic</i>] the sons of freedom, this
+extract shall be concluded.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'That independence Britons prize too high,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Keeps man from man, and breaks the social tie;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">See, though by circling deeps together held,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Minds combat minds, repelling and repell'd;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ferments arise, imprison'd factions roar,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Represt ambition struggles round her shore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whilst, over-wrought, the general system feels<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Its motions stopt, or phrenzy fires the wheels.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Nor this the worst. As social bonds decay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As duty, love, and honour fail to sway,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fictitious bonds, the bonds of wealth and law,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still gather strength, and force unwilling awe.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hence all obedience bows to these alone,<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_9" id="Page_9">[Pg 9]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">And talent sinks, and merit weeps unknown;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till time may come, when, stript of all her charms,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That land of scholars, and that nurse of arms;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where noble stems transmit the patriot flame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And monarchs toil, and poets pant for fame;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One sink of level avarice shall lie,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And scholars, soldiers, kings unhonor'd die.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Such is the poem, 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 any thing equal.&mdash;<i>The Critical Review</i>.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_10" id="Page_10">[Pg 10]</a></span></p>
+<h2><span class="smcap">William Cowper</span></h2>
+
+
+<p class="bigcenter"><i>Poems by William Cowper, of the Inner Temple, Esq.</i> <i>8vo. 5s.</i> Johnson.</p>
+
+<p>These Poems are written, as we learn from the title-page, by Mr. Cowper
+of the Inner Temple, who seems to be a man of a sober and religious turn
+of mind, with a benevolent heart, and a serious wish to inculcate the
+precepts of morality; he is not, however, possessed of any superior
+abilities, or powers of genius, requisite to so arduous an undertaking;
+his verses are, in general, weak and languid, and have neither novelty,
+spirit, or animation, to recommend them; that mediocrity so severely
+condemned by Horace,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Non Dii non homines, &amp;c.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>pervades the whole; and, whilst the author avoids every thing that is
+ridiculous or contemptible, he, at the same time, never rises to any
+thing that we can commend or admire. He says what is incontrovertible,
+and what has already been said over and over, with much gravity, but
+says nothing new, sprightly, or entertaining; travelling on in a plain,
+level, flat road, with great composure, almost through the whole long,
+and rather tedious volume, which is little better than a dull sermon, in
+very indifferent verse, on Truth, the Progress of Error, Charity, and
+some other grave subjects. If this author had followed the advice given
+by Caraccioli,<a name="FNanchor_G_7" id="FNanchor_G_7"></a><a href="#Footnote_G_7" class="fnanchor">[G]</a> and which he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_11" id="Page_11">[Pg 11]</a></span> has chosen for one of the mottos
+prefixed to these Poems, he would have clothed his indisputable truths
+in some becoming <i>disguise</i>, and rendered his work much more agreeable.
+In its present state, we cannot compliment him on its shape or beauty;
+for, as this bard himself <i>sweetly</i> sings,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'The clear harangue, and cold as it is clear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Falls soporific on the listless ear.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In his learned dissertation on <i>Hope</i>, we meet with the following lines</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">[Quotes some fifty lines from <i>Hope</i> beginning,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Build by whatever plan caprice decrees,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With what materials, on what ground you please, etc.]<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>All this is very true; but there needs no ghost, nor author, nor poet,
+to tell us what we knew before, unless he could tell it to us in a new
+and better manner. Add to this, that many of our author's expressions
+are coarse, vulgar, and unpoetical; such as <i>parrying</i>, <i>pushing by</i>,
+<i>spitting abhorrence</i>, &amp;c. The greatest part of Mr. Cowper's didactics
+is in the same strain. He attempts indeed sometimes to be lively,
+facetious, and satirical; but is seldom more successful in this, than in
+the serious and pathetic. In his poem on Conversation there are two or
+three faint attempts at humour; in one of them he tells us that</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'A story in which native humour reigns<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is often useful, always entertains,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A graver fact enlisted on your side,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">May furnish illustration, well applied;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But sedentary weavers of long tales,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Give me the fidgets and my patience fails.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Tis the most asinine employ on earth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To hear them tell of parentage and birth,<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_12" id="Page_12">[Pg 12]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">And echo conversations dull and dry,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Embellished with, <i>he said</i>, and <i>so said I</i>.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At ev'ry interview their route the same,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The repetition makes attention lame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We bustle up with unsuccessful speed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in the saddest part cry&mdash;droll indeed!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The path of narrative with care pursue,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still making probability your clue,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On all the vestiges of truth attend,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And let them guide you to a decent end.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of all ambitions man may entertain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The worst that can invade a sickly brain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is that which angles hourly for surprize,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And baits its hook with prodigies and lies.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Credulous infancy or age as weak<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Are fittest auditors for such to seek,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who to please others will themselves disgrace,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet please not, but affront you to your face.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In the passage above quoted, our readers will perceive that the wit is
+rather aukward, [<i>sic</i>] and the verses, especially the last, very
+prosaic.</p>
+
+<p>Toward the end of this volume are some little pieces of a lighter kind,
+which, after dragging through Mr. Cowper's long moral lectures, afforded
+us some relief. The fables of the Lily and the Rose, the Nightingale and
+Glow-worm, the Pine-apple and the Bee, with two or three others, are
+written with ease and spirit. It is a pity that our author had not
+confined himself altogether to this species of poetry, without entering
+into a system of ethics, for which his genius seems but ill
+adapted.&mdash;<i>The Critical Review</i>.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_13" id="Page_13">[Pg 13]</a></span></p>
+<h2><span class="smcap">Robert Burns</span></h2>
+
+
+<p class="bigcenter"><i>Poems, chiefly in the Scottish Dialect</i>. <i>By</i> <span class="smcap">Robert Burns</span>,
+<i>Kilmarnock</i>.</p>
+
+<p>When an author we know nothing of solicits our attention, we are but too
+apt to treat him with the same reluctant civility we show to a person
+who has come unbidden into company. Yet talents and address will
+gradually diminish the distance of our behaviour, and when the first
+unfavourable impression has worn off, the author may become a favourite,
+and the stranger a friend. The poems we have just announced may probably
+have to struggle with the pride of learning and the partiality of
+refinement; yet they are intitled to particular indulgence.</p>
+
+<p>Who are you, Mr. Burns? will some surly critic say. At what university
+have you been educated? what languages do you understand? what authors
+have you particularly studied? whether has Aristotle or Horace directed
+your taste? who has praised your poems, and under whose patronage are
+they published? In short, what qualifications intitle you to instruct or
+entertain us? To the questions of such a catechism, perhaps honest
+Robert Burns would make no satisfactory answers. 'My good Sir, he might
+say, I am a poor country man; I was bred up at the school of Kilmarnock;
+I understand no languages but my own; I have studied Allan Ramsay and
+Ferguson. My poems have been praised at many a fireside; and I ask no
+patronage for them, if they deserve none. I have not looked on mankind
+<i>through the spectacle of books</i>. An ounce of mother-wit, you know, is
+worth a pound of clergy; and Homer and Ossian, for any thing that I have
+heard, could neither write nor read.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_14" id="Page_14">[Pg 14]</a></span> The author is indeed a striking
+example of native genius bursting through the obscurity of poverty and
+the obstructions of laborious life. He is said to be a common ploughman;
+and when we consider him in this light, we cannot help regretting that
+wayward fate had not placed him in a more favoured situation. Those who
+view him with the severity of lettered criticism, and judge him by the
+fastidious rules of art, will discover that he has not the doric
+simplicity of Ramsay, nor the brilliant imagination of Ferguson; but to
+those who admire the exertions of untutored fancy, and are blind to many
+faults for the sake of numberless beauties, his poems will afford
+singular gratification. His observations on human characters are acute
+and sagacious, and his descriptions are lively and just. Of rustic
+pleasantry he has a rich fund; and some of his softer scenes are touched
+with inimitable delicacy. He seems to be a boon companion, and often
+startles us with a dash of libertinism, which will keep some readers at
+a distance. Some of his subjects are serious, but those of the humorous
+kind are the best. It is not meant, however, to enter into a minute
+investigation of his merits, as the copious extracts we have subjoined
+will enable our readers to judge for themselves. The Character Horace
+gives to Osellus is particularly applicable to him.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>Rusticus abnormis sapiens, crassaque Minerva.</i><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>[Quotes <i>Address to the Deil</i>, from the <i>Epistle to a Brother Bard</i>,
+from <i>Description of a Sermon in the Fields</i>, and from
+<i>Hallowe'en</i>.]&mdash;<i>The Edinburgh Magazine</i>.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 35%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_15" id="Page_15">[Pg 15]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="bigcenter"><i>Poems, chiefly in the Scottish Dialect</i>. <i>By Robert Burns.</i> Printed at
+Kilmarnock.</p>
+
+<p>We have had occasion to examine a number of poetical productions,
+written by persons in the lower rank of life, and who had hardly
+received any education; but we do not recollect to have ever met with a
+more signal instance of true and uncultivated genius, than in the author
+of these Poems. His occupation is that of a common ploughman; and his
+life has hitherto been spent in struggling with poverty. But all the
+rigours of fortune have not been able to repress the frequent efforts of
+his lively and vigorous imagination. Some of these poems are of a
+serious cast; but the strain which seems most natural to the author, is
+the sportive and humorous. It is to be regretted, that the Scottish
+dialect, in which these poems are written, must obscure the native
+beauties with which they appear to abound, and renders the sense often
+unintelligible to an English reader. Should it, however, prove true,
+that the author has been taken under the patronage of a great lady in
+Scotland, and that a celebrated professor has interested himself in the
+cultivation of his talents, there is reason to hope, that his
+distinguished genius may yet be exerted in such a manner as to afford
+more general delight. In the meantime, we must admire the generous
+enthusiasm of his untutored muse; and bestow the tribute of just
+applause on one whose name will be transmitted to posterity with
+honour.&mdash;<i>The Critical Review</i>.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_16" id="Page_16">[Pg 16]</a></span></p>
+<h2><span class="smcap">William Wordsworth</span></h2>
+
+
+<p class="bigcenter"><i>Descriptive Sketches</i>, in Verse. Taken during a Pedestrian Tour in the
+Italian, Grison, Swiss and Savoyard Alps. By <span class="smcap">W. Wordsworth</span>, B.A. of St.
+John's, Cambridge. 4to. pp. 55. 3s. Johnson. 1793.</p>
+
+<p>More descriptive poetry! (See page 166, &amp;c.) Have we not yet enough?
+Must eternal changes be rung on uplands and lowlands, and nodding
+forests, and brooding clouds, and cells, and dells, and dingles? Yes;
+more, and yet more: so it is decreed.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Wordsworth begins his descriptive sketches with the following
+exordium:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Were there, below, a spot of holy ground,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By Pain and her sad family <i>un</i>found,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sure, Nature's God that spot to man had giv'n,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where murmuring <i>rivers join</i> the song of <i>ev'n</i>!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where <i>falls</i> the purple morning far and wide<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>In flakes</i> of light upon the mountain side;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where summer suns in ocean sink to rest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or moonlight upland lifts her hoary breast;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where Silence, on her night of wing, o'er-broods<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Unfathom'd dells and undiscover'd woods;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where rocks and groves the <i>power</i> of waters <i>shakes</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In cataracts, or sleeps in quiet lakes.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>May we ask, how it is that rivers join the song of ev'n? or, in plain
+prose, the evening! but, if they do, is it not true that they equally
+join the song of morning, noon, and night? The <i>purple morning falling
+in flakes</i> of light is a bold figure: but we are told, it falls far and
+wide&mdash;Where?&mdash;On the mountain's <i>side</i>. We are sorry to see the purple
+morning confined so like a maniac in a straight waistcoat. What the
+night of wing of silence is,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_17" id="Page_17">[Pg 17]</a></span> we are unable to comprehend: but the
+climax of the passage is, that, were there such a spot of holy ground as
+is here so sublimely described, <i>unfound</i> by Pain and her sad family,
+Nature's God had surely given that spot to man, though its <i>woods</i> were
+<i>undiscovered</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Let us proceed,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'But doubly pitying Nature loves to show'r<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Soft on his <i>wounded heart</i> her healing pow'r,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who <i>plods</i> o'er hills and vales his road <i>forlorn</i>,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wooing her varying charms from eve to morn.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>No sad vacuities</i> his heart <i>annoy</i>,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Blows</i> not a Zephyr but it <i>whispers joy</i>;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For him <i>lost</i> flowers their <i>idle</i> sweets <i>exhale</i>;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He <i>tastes</i> the meanest <i>note</i> that swells the gale;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For him sod-seats the cottage-door adorn,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And <i>peeps</i> the far-off <i>spire</i>, his evening bourn!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dear is the forest <i>frowning</i> o'er his head,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And dear the green-sward to his <i>velvet tread</i>;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Moves there a <i>cloud</i> o'er mid-day's flaming eye?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Upwards he looks&mdash;and calls it luxury;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Kind Nature's <i>charities</i> his steps attend,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In every babbling brook he finds a friend.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Here we find that <i>doubly</i> pitying Nature is very kind to the traveller,
+but that this traveller has a <i>wounded heart</i> and <i>plods</i> his road
+<i>forlorn</i>. In the next line but one we discover that&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'No <i>sad vacuities</i> his heart <i>annoy</i>;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Blows not a Zephyr but it whispers <i>joy</i>.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The flowers, though they have lost themselves, or are lost, exhale their
+idle sweets for him; the <i>spire peeps</i> for him; sod-seats, forests,
+clouds, nature's charities, and babbling brooks, all are to him luxury
+and friendship. He is the happiest of mortals, and plods, is forlorn,
+and has a wounded heart. How often shall we in vain advise<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_18" id="Page_18">[Pg 18]</a></span> those, who
+are so delighted with their own thoughts that they cannot forbear from
+putting them into rhyme, to examine those thoughts till they themselves
+understand them? No man will ever be a poet, till his mind be
+sufficiently powerful to sustain this labour.&mdash;<i>The Monthly Review</i>.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 35%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_19" id="Page_19">[Pg 19]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="bigcenter"><i>An Evening Walk</i>. An Epistle; in Verse. Addressed to a Young Lady, from
+the Lakes of the North of England. By W. Wordsworth, B.A. of St. John's,
+Cambridge. 4to. pp. 27. 2s. Johnson. 1793.</p>
+
+<p>In this Epistle, the subject and the manner of treating it vary but
+little from the former poem. We will quote four lines from a passage
+which the author very sorrowfully apologizes for having omitted:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Return delights! with whom my road beg<i>un</i>,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When <i>Life-rear'd</i> laughing <i>up her</i> morning <i>sun</i>;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When Transport kiss'd away my April tear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Rocking as in a dream the tedious year."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Life <i>rearing</i> up the sun! Transport kissing away an <i>April</i> tear and
+<i>rocking</i> the year as in a dream! Would the cradle had been specified!
+Seriously, these are figures which no poetical license can justify. If
+they can possibly give pleasure, it must be to readers whose habits of
+thinking are totally different from ours. Mr. Wordsworth is a scholar,
+and, no doubt, when reading the works of others, a critic. There are
+passages in his poems which display imagination, and which afford hope
+for the future: but, if he can divest himself of all partiality, and
+will critically question every line that he has written, he will find
+many which, he must allow, call loudly for amendment.&mdash;<i>The Monthly
+Review</i>.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 35%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_20" id="Page_20">[Pg 20]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="bigcenter"><i>Lyrical Ballads, with a few other Poems</i>. <i>Small 8vo. 5s. Boards.</i>
+Arch. 1798.</p>
+
+<p>The majority of these poems, we are informed in the advertisement, are
+to be considered as experiments.</p>
+
+<p>'They were written chiefly with a view to ascertain how far the language
+of conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to
+the purposes of poetic pleasure.' P. i.</p>
+
+<p>Of these experimental poems, the most important is the Idiot Boy, the
+story of which is simply this. Betty Foy's neighbour Susan Gale is
+indisposed; and no one can conveniently be sent for the doctor but
+Betty's idiot boy. She therefore puts him upon her poney, at eight
+o'clock in the evening, gives him proper directions, and returns to take
+care of her sick neighbour. Johnny is expected with the doctor by
+eleven; but the clock strikes eleven, and twelve, and one, without the
+appearance either of Johnny or the doctor. Betty's restless fears become
+insupportable; and she now leaves her friend to look for her idiot son.
+She goes to the doctor's house, but hears nothing of Johnny. About five
+o'clock, however, she finds him sitting quietly upon his feeding poney.
+As they go home they meet old Susan, whose apprehensions have cured her,
+and brought her out to seek them; and they all return merrily together.</p>
+
+<p>Upon this subject the author has written nearly five hundred lines. With
+what spirit the story is told, our extract will evince.</p>
+
+<p>[Quotes lines (322-401) of <i>The Idiot Boy</i>.]</p>
+
+<p>No tale less deserved the labour that appears to have been bestowed upon
+this. It resembles a Flemish picture in the worthlessness of its design
+and the excellence of its<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_21" id="Page_21">[Pg 21]</a></span> execution. From Flemish artists we are
+satisfied with such pieces: who would not have lamented, if Corregio or
+Rafaelle had wasted their talents in painting Dutch boors or the humours
+of a Flemish wake?</p>
+
+<p>The other ballads of this kind are as bald in story, and are not so
+highly embellished in narration. With that which is entitled the Thorn,
+we were altogether displeased. The advertisement says, it is not told in
+the person of the author, but in that of some loquacious narrator. The
+author should have recollected that he who personates tiresome
+loquacity, becomes tiresome himself. The story of a man who suffers the
+perpetual pain of cold, because an old woman prayed that he might never
+be warm, is perhaps a good story for a ballad, because it is a
+well-known tale: but is the author certain that it is '<i>well
+authenticated?</i>' and does not such an assertion promote the popular
+superstition of witchcraft?</p>
+
+<p>In a very different style of poetry, is the Rime of the Ancyent
+Marinere; a ballad (says the advertisement) 'professedly written in
+imitation of the <i>style</i>, as well as of the spirit of the elder poets.'
+We are tolerably conversant with the early English poets; and can
+discover no resemblance whatever, except in antiquated spelling and a
+few obsolete words. This piece appears to us perfectly original in style
+as well as in story. Many of the stanzas are laboriously beautiful; but
+in connection they are absurd or unintelligible. Our readers may
+exercise their ingenuity in attempting to unriddle what follows.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'The roaring wind! it roar'd far off,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">It did not come anear;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But with its sound it shook the sails<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That were so thin and sere.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The upper air bursts into life,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And a hundred fire-flags sheen<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_22" id="Page_22">[Pg 22]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">To and fro they are hurried about;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And to and fro, and in and out<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The stars dance on between.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The coming wind doth roar more loud;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The sails do sigh, like sedge:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The rain pours down from one black cloud,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And the moon is at its edge.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Hark! hark! the thick black cloud is cleft,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And the moon is at its side:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like waters shot from some high crag,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The lightning falls with never a jag<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A river steep and wide.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The strong wind reach'd the ship: it roar'd<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And dropp'd down, like a stone!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beneath the lightning and the moon<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The dead men gave a groan.' P. 27.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>We do not sufficiently understand the story to analyse it. It is a Dutch
+attempt at German sublimity. Genius has here been employed in producing
+a poem of little merit.</p>
+
+<p>With pleasure we turn to the serious pieces, the better part of the
+volume. The Foster-Mother's Tale is in the best style of dramatic
+narrative. The Dungeon, and the Lines upon the Yew-tree Seat, are
+beautiful. The Tale of the Female Vagrant is written in the stanza, not
+the style, of Spenser. We extract a part of this poem.</p>
+
+<p>[Quotes lines (91-180) of <i>The Female Vagrant</i>.]</p>
+
+<p>Admirable as this poem is, the author seems to discover still superior
+powers in the Lines written near Tintern Abbey. On reading this
+production, it is impossible not to lament that he should ever have
+condescended to write such pieces as the Last of the Flock, the Convict,
+and most of the ballads. In the whole range of English<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_23" id="Page_23">[Pg 23]</a></span> poetry, we
+scarcely recollect anything superior to a part of the following passage.</p>
+
+<p>[Quotes lines (66-112) of <i>Lines Written a few Miles above Tintern
+Abbey</i>.]</p>
+
+<p>The 'experiment,' we think, has failed, not because the language of
+conversation is little adapted to 'the purposes of poetic pleasure' but
+because it has been tried upon uninteresting subjects. Yet every piece
+discovers genius; and, ill as the author has frequently employed his
+talents, they certainly rank him with the best of living poets.&mdash;<i>The
+Critical Review</i>.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 35%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_24" id="Page_24">[Pg 24]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="bigcenter"><i>Poems, in Two Volumes</i>. <i>By</i> <span class="smcap">William Wordsworth</span>, <i>Author of the Lyrical
+Ballads.</i> 8vo. pp. 320. London, 1807.</p>
+
+<p>This author is known to belong to a certain brotherhood of poets, who
+have haunted for some years about the Lakes of Cumberland; and is
+generally looked upon, we believe, as the purest model of the
+excellences and peculiarities of the school which they have been
+labouring to establish. Of the general merits of that school, we have
+had occasion to express our opinion pretty freely, in more places than
+one, and even to make some allusion to the former publications of the
+writer now before us. We are glad, however, to have found an opportunity
+of attending somewhat more particularly to his pretensions.</p>
+
+<p>The Lyrical Ballads were unquestionably popular; and, we have no
+hesitation in saying, deservedly popular; for in spite of their
+occasional vulgarity, affectation, and silliness, they were undoubtedly
+characterised by a strong spirit of originality, of pathos, and natural
+feeling; and recommended to all good minds by the clear impression which
+they bore of the amiable dispositions and virtuous principles of the
+author. By the help of these qualities, they were enabled, not only to
+recommend themselves to the indulgence of many judicious readers, but
+even to beget among a pretty numerous class of persons, a sort of
+admiration of the very defects by which they were attended. It was upon
+this account chiefly, that we thought it necessary to set ourselves
+against this alarming innovation. Childishness, conceit, and
+affectation, are not of themselves very popular or attractive; and
+though mere novelty has sometimes been found sufficient to give them<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_25" id="Page_25">[Pg 25]</a></span> a
+temporary currency, we should have had no fear of their prevailing to
+any dangerous extent, if they had been graced with no more seductive
+accompaniments. It was precisely because the perverseness and bad taste
+of this new school was combined with a great deal of genius and of
+laudable feeling, that we were afraid of their spreading and gaining
+ground among us, and that we entered into the discussion with a degree
+of zeal and animosity which some might think unreasonable toward
+authors, to whom so much merit had been conceded. There were times and
+moods indeed, in which we were led to suspect ourselves of unjustifiable
+severity, and to doubt, whether a sense of public duty had not carried
+us rather too far in reprobation of errors, that seemed to be atoned
+for, by excellences of no vulgar description. At other times, the
+magnitude of these errors&mdash;the disgusting absurdities into which they
+led their feebler admirers, and the derision and contempt which they
+drew from the more fastidious, even upon the merits with which they were
+associated, made us wonder more than ever at the perversity by which
+they were retained, and regret that we had not declared ourselves
+against them with still more formidable and decided hostility.</p>
+
+<p>In this temper of mind, we read the <i>annonce</i> of Mr Wordsworth's
+publication with a good deal of interest and expectation, and opened his
+volumes with greater anxiety, than he or his admirers will probably give
+us credit for. We have been greatly disappointed certainly as to the
+quality of the poetry; but we doubt whether the publication has afforded
+so much satisfaction to any other of his readers:&mdash;it has freed us from
+all doubt or hesitation as to the justice of our former censures, and
+has brought the matter to a test, which we cannot help hoping may be
+convincing to the author himself.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_26" id="Page_26">[Pg 26]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Mr Wordsworth, we think, has now brought the question, as to the merit
+of his new school of poetry, to a very fair and decisive issue. The
+volumes before us are much more strongly marked by all its peculiarities
+than any former publication of the fraternity. In our apprehension, they
+are, on this very account, infinitely less interesting or meritorious;
+but it belongs to the public, and not to us, to decide upon their merit,
+and we will confess, that so strong is our conviction of their obvious
+inferiority, and the grounds of it, that we are willing for once to
+wa[i]ve our right of appealing to posterity, and to take the judgment of
+the present generation of readers, and even of Mr Wordsworth's former
+admirers, as conclusive on this occasion. If these volumes, which have
+all the benefit of the author's former popularity, turn out to be nearly
+as popular as the lyrical ballads&mdash;if they sell nearly to the same
+extent&mdash;or are quoted and imitated among half as many individuals, we
+shall admit that Mr Wordsworth has come much nearer the truth in his
+judgment of what constitutes the charm of poetry, than we had previously
+imagined&mdash;and shall institute a more serious and respectful inquiry into
+his principles of composition than we have yet thought necessary. On the
+other hand,&mdash;if this little work, selected from the compositions of five
+maturer years, and written avowedly for the purpose of exalting a
+system, which has already excited a good deal of attention, should be
+generally rejected by those whose prepossessions were in its favour,
+there is room to hope, not only that the system itself will meet with no
+more encouragement, but even that the author will be persuaded to
+abandon a plan of writing, which defrauds his industry and talents of
+their natural reward.</p>
+
+<p>Putting ourselves thus upon our country, we certainly look for a verdict
+against this publication; and have little<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_27" id="Page_27">[Pg 27]</a></span> doubt indeed of the result,
+upon a fair consideration of the evidence contained in these
+volumes.&mdash;To accelerate that result, and to give a general view of the
+evidence, to those into whose hands the record may not have already
+fallen, we must now make a few observations and extracts.</p>
+
+<p>We shall not resume any of the particular discussions by which we
+formerly attempted to ascertain the value of the improvements which this
+new school had effected in poetry;<a name="FNanchor_H_8" id="FNanchor_H_8"></a><a href="#Footnote_H_8" class="fnanchor">[H]</a> but shall lay the grounds of our
+opposition, for this time, a little more broadly. The end of poetry, we
+take it, is to please&mdash;and the name, we think, is strictly applicable to
+every metrical composition from which we receive pleasure, without any
+laborious exercise of the understanding. This pleasure, may, in general,
+be analyzed into three parts&mdash;that which we receive from the excitement
+of Passion or emotion&mdash;that which is derived from the play of
+Imagination, or the easy exercise of Reason&mdash;and that which depends on
+the character and qualities of the Diction. The two first are the vital
+and primary springs of poetical delight, and can scarcely require
+explanation to any one. The last has been alternately overrated and
+undervalued by the professors of the poetical art, and is in such low
+estimation with the author now before us and his associates, that it is
+necessary to say a few words in explanation of it.</p>
+
+<p>One great beauty of diction exists only for those who have some degree
+of scholarship or critical skill. This is what depends on the exquisite
+<i>propriety</i> of the words employed, and the delicacy with which they are
+adapted to the meaning which is to be expressed. Many of the finest
+passages in Virgil and Pope derive their principal charm from the fine
+propriety of their diction. Another<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_28" id="Page_28">[Pg 28]</a></span> source of beauty, which extends
+only to the more instructed class of readers, is that which consists in
+the judicious or happy application of expressions which have been
+sanctified by the use of famous writers, or which bear the stamp of a
+simple or venerable antiquity. There are other beauties of diction,
+however, which are perceptible by all&mdash;the beauties of sweet sound and
+pleasant associations. The melody of words and verses is indifferent to
+no reader of poetry; but the chief recommendation of poetical language
+is certainly derived from those general associations, which give it a
+character of dignity or elegance, sublimity or tenderness. Every one
+knows that there are low and mean expressions, as well as lofty and
+grave ones; and that some words bear the impression of coarseness and
+vulgarity, as clearly as others do of refinement and affection. We do
+not mean, of course, to say anything in defence of the hackneyed
+common-places of ordinary versemen. Whatever might have been the
+original character of these unlucky phrases, they are now associated
+with nothing but ideas of schoolboy imbecility and vulgar affectation.
+But what we do maintain is, that much of the most popular poetry in the
+world owes its celebrity chiefly to the beauty of its diction; and that
+no poetry can be long or generally acceptable, the language of which is
+coarse, inelegant, or infantine.</p>
+
+<p>From this great source of pleasure, we think the readers of Mr
+Wordsworth are in a great measure cut off. His diction has no where any
+pretensions to elegance or dignity; and he has scarcely ever
+condescended to give the grace of correctness or melody to his
+versification. If it were merely slovenly and neglected, however, all
+this might be endured. Strong sense and powerful feeling will ennoble
+any expressions; or, at least, no one who is capable of estimating those
+higher merits, will be dis<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_29" id="Page_29">[Pg 29]</a></span>posed to mark these little defects. But, in
+good truth, no man, now-a-days, composes verses for publication with a
+slovenly neglect of their language. It is a fine and laborious
+manufacture, which can scarcely ever be made in a hurry; and the faults
+which it has, may, for the most part, be set down to bad taste or
+incapacity, rather than to carelessness or oversight. With Mr Wordsworth
+and his friends, it is plain that their peculiarities of diction are
+things of choice, and not of accident. They write as they do, upon
+principle and system; and it evidently costs them much pains to keep
+<i>down</i> to the standard which they have proposed to themselves. They are,
+to the full, as much mannerists, too, as the poetasters who ring changes
+on the common-places of magazine versification; and all the difference
+between them is, that they borrow their phrases from a different and a
+scantier <i>gradus ad Parnassum</i>. If they were, indeed, to discard all
+imitation and set phraseology, and to bring in no words merely for show
+or for metre,&mdash;as much, perhaps, might be gained in freedom and
+originality, as would infallibly be lost in allusion and authority; but,
+in point of fact, the new poets are just as great borrowers as the old;
+only that, instead of borrowing from the more popular passages of their
+illustrious predecessors, they have preferred furnishing themselves from
+vulgar ballads and plebeian nurseries.</p>
+
+<p>Their peculiarities of diction alone, are enough, perhaps, to render
+them ridiculous; but the author before us really seems anxious to court
+this literary martyrdom by a device still more infallible,&mdash;we mean,
+that of connecting his most lofty, tender, or impassioned conceptions,
+with objects and incidents, which the greater part of his readers will
+probably persist in thinking low, silly, or uninteresting. Whether this
+is done from affectation and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_30" id="Page_30">[Pg 30]</a></span> conceit alone, or whether it may not
+arise, in some measure, from the self-illusion of a mind of
+extraordinary sensibility, habituated to solitary meditation, we cannot
+undertake to determine. It is possible enough, we allow, that the sight
+of a friend's garden-spade, or a sparrow's nest, or a man gathering
+leeches, might really have suggested to such a mind a train of powerful
+impressions and interesting reflections; but it is certain, that, to
+most minds, such associations will always appear forced, strained, and
+unnatural; and that the composition in which it is attempted to exhibit
+them, will always have the air of parody, or ludicrous and affected
+singularity. All the world laughs at Elegiac stanzas to a sucking-pig&mdash;a
+Hymn on Washing-day&mdash;Sonnets to one's grandmother&mdash;or Pindarics on
+gooseberry-pye; and yet, we are afraid, it will not be quite easy to
+convince Mr Wordsworth, that the same ridicule must infallibly attach to
+most of the pathetic pieces in these volumes. To satisfy our readers,
+however, as to the justice of this and our other anticipations, we shall
+proceed, without further preface, to lay before them a short view of
+their contents.</p>
+
+<p>The first is a kind of ode 'to the Daisy,'&mdash;very flat, feeble, and
+affected; and in a diction as artificial, and as much encumbered with
+heavy expletives, as the theme of an unpractised schoolboy. The two
+following stanzas will serve as a specimen.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'When soothed a while by milder airs,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thee Winter in the garland wears<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That thinly shades his few grey hairs;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2"><i>Spring cannot shun thee</i>;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whole summer fields are thine by right;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And Autumn, melancholy Wight!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Doth in thy crimson head delight<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">When rains are on thee.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In shoals and bands, a morrice train,<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_31" id="Page_31">[Pg 31]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou greet'st the Traveller in the lane;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If welcome once thou count'st it gain;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2"><i>Thou art not daunted</i>,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor car'st if thou be set at naught;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And oft alone in nooks remote<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We meet thee, like a pleasant thought,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2"><i>When such are wanted</i>.' I. p. 2.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The scope of the piece is to say, that the flower is found everywhere;
+and that it has suggested many pleasant thoughts to the author&mdash;some
+chime of fancy '<i>wrong or right</i>'&mdash;some feeling of devotion 'more or
+less'&mdash;and other elegancies of the same stamp. It ends with this
+unmeaning prophecy.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Thou long the poet's praise shalt gain;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou wilt be more beloved by men<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In times to come; thou not in vain<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Art Nature's favourite.' I. 6.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The next is called 'Louisa,' and begins in this dashing and affected
+manner.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'I met Louisa in the shade;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, having seen that lovely maid,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Why should I fear to say</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That she is ruddy, fleet, and <i>strong</i>;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>And down the rocks can leap</i> along,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like rivulets in May?' I. 7.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Does Mr Wordsworth really imagine that this is at all more natural or
+engaging than the ditties of our common song writers?</p>
+
+<p>A little farther on we have another original piece, entitled, 'The
+Redbreast and the Butterfly,' of which our readers will probably be
+contented with the first stanza.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Art thou the bird whom man loves best,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The pious bird with the scarlet breast,<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_32" id="Page_32">[Pg 32]</a></span>
+<span class="i2">Our little English Robin;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The bird that comes about our doors<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When autumn winds are sobbing?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Art thou the Peter of Norway Boors?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Their Thomas in Finland,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And Russia far inland?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The bird, whom <i>by some name or other</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All men who know thee call their brother,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The darling of children and men?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Could Father Adam open his eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And see this sight beneath the skies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He'd wish to close them again.' I. 16.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This, it must be confessed, is 'Silly Sooth' in good earnest. The three
+last [<i>sic</i>] lines seem to be downright raving.</p>
+
+<p>By and by, we have a piece of namby-pamby 'to the Small Celandine,'
+which we should almost have taken for a professed imitation of one of Mr
+Philip's prettyisms. Here is a page of it.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Comfort have thou of thy merit,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Kindly, unassuming spirit!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Careless of thy neighbourhood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou dost show thy pleasant face<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On the moor, and in the wood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the lane;&mdash;there's not a place,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Howsoever mean it be,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But 'tis good enough for thee.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ill befal the yellow flowers,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Children of the flaring hours!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Buttercups, that will be seen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whether we will see or no;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Others, too, of lofty mien;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They have done as worldlings do,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Taken praise that should be thine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Little, humble, Celandine!' I. 25.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>After talking of its 'bright coronet,'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_33" id="Page_33">[Pg 33]</a></span> the ditty is wound up with this
+piece of babyish absurdity.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Thou art not beyond the moon,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But a thing "beneath our shoon;"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Let, as old Magellan did,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Others roam about the sea;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Build who will a pyramid;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Praise it is enough for me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If there be but three or four<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who will love my little flower.' I. 30.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>After this come some more manly lines on 'The Character of the Happy
+Warrior,' and a chivalrous legend on 'The Horn of Egremont Castle,'
+which, without being very good, is very tolerable, and free from most of
+the author's habitual defects. Then follow some pretty, but professedly
+childish verses, on a kitten playing with the falling leaves. There is
+rather too much of Mr Ambrose Philips here and there in this piece also;
+but it is amiable and lively.</p>
+
+<p>Further on, we find an 'Ode to Duty,' in which the lofty vein is very
+unsuccessfully attempted. This is the concluding stanza.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Stern lawgiver! yet thou dost wear<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Godhead's most benignant grace;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor know we anything so fair<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As is the smile upon thy face;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Flowers laugh before thee on their beds;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And fragrance in thy footing treads;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the most ancient heavens through thee are fresh and strong.' I. 73.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The two last [<i>sic</i>] lines seem to be utterly without meaning; at least
+we have no sort of conception in what<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_34" id="Page_34">[Pg 34]</a></span> sense <i>Duty</i> can be said to keep
+the old skies <i>fresh</i>, and the stars from wrong.</p>
+
+<p>The next piece, entitled 'The Beggars,' may be taken, we fancy, as a
+touchstone of Mr Wordsworth's merit. There is something about it that
+convinces us it is a favourite of the author's; though to us, we will
+confess, it appears to be a very paragon of silliness and affectation.
+Our readers shall have the greater part of it. It begins thus.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">'She had a tall man's height, or more;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">No bonnet screen'd her from the heat;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A long drab-coloured cloak she wore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A mantle reaching to her feet:<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">What other dress she had I could not know;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Only she wore a cap that was as white as snow.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">'Before me begging did she stand,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Pouring out sorrows like a sea;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Grief after grief:&mdash;on English land<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Such woes I knew could never be;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And yet a boon I gave her; for the creature<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was beautiful to see; a weed of glorious feature!' I. 77, 78.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The poet, leaving this interesting person, falls in with two ragged boys
+at play, and 'like that woman's face as gold is like to gold.' Here is
+the conclusion of this memorable adventure.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">'They bolted on me thus, and lo!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Each ready with a plaintive whine;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Said I, "Not half an hour ago<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Your mother has had alms of mine."<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">"That cannot be," one answered, "She is dead."<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Nay but I gave her pence, and she will buy you bread."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">"She has been dead, Sir, many a day."<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">"Sweet boys, you're telling me a lie";<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">"It was your mother, as I say&mdash;"<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_35" id="Page_35">[Pg 35]</a></span>
+<span class="i2">And in the twinkling of an eye,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">"Come, come!" cried one; and, without more ado,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Off to some other play they both together flew.' I. 79.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>'Alice Fell' is a performance of the same order. The poet, driving into
+Durham in a postchaise, hears a sort of scream; and, calling to the
+post-boy to stop, finds a little girl crying on the back of the vehicle.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"My cloak!" the word was last and first,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And loud and bitterly she wept,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As if her very heart would burst;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And down from off the chaise she leapt.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"What ails you, child?" she sobb'd, "Look here!"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I saw it in the wheel entangled,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A weather beaten rag as e'er<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From any garden scarecrow dangled.' I. 85, 86.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>They then extricate the torn garment, and the good-natured bard takes
+the child into the carriage along with him. The narrative proceeds&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"My child, in Durham do you dwell?"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She check'd herself in her distress,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And said, "My name is Alice Fell;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I'm fatherless and motherless.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">And I to Durham, Sir, belong."<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And then, as if the thought would choke<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her very heart, her grief grew strong;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all was for her tatter'd cloak.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The chaise drove on; our journey's end<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was nigh; and, sitting by my side,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As if she'd lost her only friend<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She wept, nor would be pacified.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Up to the tavern-door we post;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of Alice and her grief I told;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And I gave money to the host,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To buy a new cloak for the old.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_36" id="Page_36">[Pg 36]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">"And let it be of duffil grey,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As warm a cloak as man can sell!"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Proud creature was she the next day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The little orphan, Alice Fell!' I. p. 87, 88.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>If the printing of such trash as this be not felt as an insult on the
+public taste, we are afraid it cannot be insulted.</p>
+
+<p>After this follows the longest and most elaborate poem in the volume,
+under the title of 'Resolution and Independence.' The poet, roving about
+on a common one fine morning, falls into pensive musings on the fate of
+the sons of song, which he sums up in this fine distich.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'We poets in our youth begin in gladness;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But thereof comes in the end despondency and madness.' I. p. 92.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In the midst of his meditations&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'I saw a man before me unawares;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The oldest man he seemed that ever wore grey hairs.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Motionless as a cloud the old man stood;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That heareth not the loud winds when they call;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And moveth altogether, if it move at all.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At length, himself unsettling, he the pond<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stirred with his staff, and fixedly did look<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Upon the muddy water, which he conn'd,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As if he had been reading in a book:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And now such fre[e]dom as I could I took;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And, drawing to his side, to him did say,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"This morning gives us promise of a glorious day."<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"What kind of work is that which you pursue?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This is a lonesome place for one like you."<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He answer'd me <i>with pleasure and surprise</i>;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And there was, while he spake, a fire about his eyes.<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_37" id="Page_37">[Pg 37]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">He told me <i>that he to this pond had come</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>To gather leeches</i>, being old and poor:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Employment hazardous and wearisome!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And he had many hardships to endure:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From pond to pond he roam'd, from moor to moor,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Housing, with God's good help, by choice or chance:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in this way he gain'd an honest maintenance.' I. p. 92-95.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Notwithstanding the distinctness of this answer, the poet, it seems, was
+so wrapped up in his own moody fancies, that he could not attend to it.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'And now, not knowing what the old man had said,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My question eagerly did I renew,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"How is it that you live, and what is it you do?"<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He with a smile did then his words repeat;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And said, that, <i>gathering leeches</i>, far and wide<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He travelled; stirring thus <i>about his feet</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The waters of the ponds where they abide.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"<i>Once I could meet with them on every side</i>;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But they have dwindled long by slow decay;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet still I persevere, and find them where I may." I. p. 96, 97.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This very interesting account, which he is lucky enough at last to
+comprehend, fills the poet with comfort and admiration; and, quite glad
+to find the old man so cheerful, he resolves to take a lesson of
+contentedness from him; and the poem ends with this pious ejaculation&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"God," said I, "be my help and stay secure;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I'll think of the leech-gatherer on the lonely moor." I. p. 97.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>We defy the bitterest enemy of Mr Wordsworth to produce anything at all
+parallel to this from any collection of English poetry, or even from the
+specimens of his friend Mr Southey. The volume ends with some<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_38" id="Page_38">[Pg 38]</a></span> sonnets,
+in a very different measure, of which we shall say something by and by.</p>
+
+<p>The first poems in the second volume were written during a tour in
+Scotland. The first is a very dull one about Rob Roy; but the title that
+attracted us most was 'an Address to the Sons of <i>Burns</i>, after visiting
+their Father's Grave.' Never was anything, however, more miserable. This
+is one of the four stanzas.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Strong bodied if ye be to bear<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Intemperance with less harm, beware!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But if your father's wit ye share,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Then, then indeed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ye sons of Burns! for watchful care<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">There will be need.' II. p. 29.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The next is a very tedious, affected performance, called 'the Yarrow
+Unvisited.' The drift of it is, that the poet refused to visit this
+celebrated stream, because he had 'a vision of his own' about it, which
+the reality might perhaps undo; and, for this no less fantastical
+reason&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Should life be dull, and spirits low,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Twill soothe us in our sorrow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That earth has something yet to show,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The bonny holms of Yarrow!" II. p. 35.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>After this we come to some ineffable compositions which the poet has
+simply entitled, 'Moods of my own Mind.' One begins&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'O Nightingale! thou surely art<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A creature of a fiery heart&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou sing'st as if the god of wine<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had help'd thee to a valentine.' II. p. 42.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This is the whole of another&mdash;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_39" id="Page_39">[Pg 39]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'My heart leaps up when I behold<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A rainbow in the sky:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So was it when my life began;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So is it now I am a man;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So be it when I shall grow old,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or let me die!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The child is father of the man;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And I could wish my days to be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bound each to each by natural piety.' II. p. 44.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>A third, 'on a Sparrow's Nest,' runs thus&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Look, five blue eggs are gleaming there!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Few visions have I seen more fair,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Nor many prospects of delight</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">More pleasing than that simple sight.' II. p. 53.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The charm of this fine prospect, however, was, that it reminded him of
+another nest which his sister Emmeline and he had visited in their
+childhood.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'She look'd at it as if she fear'd it;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still wishing, dreading to be near it:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Such heart was in her, being then<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A little prattler among men,' &amp;c., &amp;c. II. p. 54.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>We have then a rapturous mystical ode to the Cuckoo; in which the
+author, striving after force and originality, produces nothing but
+absurdity.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'O cuckoo! shall I call thee bird,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or but a wandering voice?' II. p. 57.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And then he says, that the said voice seemed to pass from hill to hill,
+'about and all about!'&mdash;Afterwards he assures us, it tells him 'in the
+vale of visionary hours,' and calls it a darling; but still insists,
+that it is</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'No bird; but an invisible thing,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A voice,&mdash;a mystery.' II. p. 58.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_40" id="Page_40">[Pg 40]</a></span>It is afterwards 'a hope;' and 'a love;' and, finally,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'O blessed <i>bird</i>! the earth we pace<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Again appears to be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">An unsubstantial, faery place,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That is fit home for thee!' II. p. 59.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>After this there is an address to a butterfly, whom he invites to visit
+him, in these simple strains&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'This plot of orchard-ground is ours;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My trees they are, my sister's flowers;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Stop here whenever you are weary.' II. p. 61.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>We come next to a long story of a 'Blind Highland Boy,' who lived near
+an arm of the sea, and had taken a most unnatural desire to venture on
+that perilous element. His mother did all she could to prevent him; but
+one morning, when the good woman was out of the way, he got into a
+vessel of his own, and pushed out from the shore.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'In such a vessel ne'er before<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Did human creature leave the shore.' II. p. 72.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And then we are told, that if the sea should get rough, 'a bee-hive
+would be ship as safe.' 'But say, what is it?' a poetical interlocutor
+is made to exclaim most naturally; and here followeth the answer, upon
+which all the pathos and interest of the story depend.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'A <span class="smcap">Household Tub</span>, like one of those<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which women use to wash their clothes!!' II. p. 72.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This, it will be admitted, is carrying the matter as far as it will well
+go; nor is there anything,&mdash;down to the wiping of shoes, or the
+evisceration of chickens,&mdash;which may not be introduced in poetry, if
+this is tolerated. A boat is sent out and brings the boy ashore, who
+being<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_41" id="Page_41">[Pg 41]</a></span> tolerably frightened we suppose, promises to go to sea no more;
+and so the story ends.</p>
+
+<p>Then we have a poem, called 'the Green Linnet,' which opens with the
+poet's telling us;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'A whispering leaf is now my joy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And then a bird will be the <i>toy</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That doth my fancy <i>tether</i>.' II. p. 79.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and closes thus&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'While thus before my eyes he gleams,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A brother of the leaves he seems;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When in a moment forth <i>he teems</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i2">His little song in gushes:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As if it pleas'd him to disdain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And mock the form which he did feign,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">While he was dancing with the train<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of leaves among the bushes.' II. p. 81.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The next is called 'Star Gazers.' A set of people peeping through a
+telescope, all seem to come away disappointed with the sight; whereupon
+thus sweetly moralizeth our poet.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Yet, showman, where can lie the cause? Shall thy implement have blame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A boaster, that when he is tried, fails, and is put to shame?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or is it good as others are, and be their eyes in fault?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Their eyes, or minds? or, finally, is this resplendent vault?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Or, is it rather, that conceit rapacious is and strong,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And bounty never yields so much but it seems to do her wrong?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or is it, that when human souls a journey long have had,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And are returned into themselves, they cannot but be sad?' II. p. 88.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>There are then some really sweet and amiable verses on a French lady,
+separated from her own children, fondling the baby of a neighbouring
+cottager;&mdash;after which we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_42" id="Page_42">[Pg 42]</a></span> have this quintessence of unmeaningness,
+entitled, 'Foresight.'</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'That is work which I am rueing&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Do as Charles and I are doing!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Strawberry-blossoms, one and all,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We must spare them&mdash;here are many:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Look at it&mdash;the flower is small,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Small and low, though fair as any:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Do not touch it! Summers two<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I am older, Anne, than you.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pull the primrose, sister Anne!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Pull as many as you can.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Primroses, the spring may love them&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Summer knows but little of them:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Violets, do what they will,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wither'd on the ground must lie:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Daisies will be daisies still;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Daisies they must live and die:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fill your lap, and fill your bosom,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Only spare the strawberry-blossom!' II. p. 115, 116.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Afterwards come some stanzas about an echo repeating a cuckoo's voice;
+here is one for a sample&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Whence the voice? from air or earth?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>This the cuckoo cannot tell</i>;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But a startling sound had birth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>As the bird must know full well</i>.' II. p. 123.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Then we have Elegiac stanzas 'to the Spade of a friend,' beginning&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Spade! with which Wilkinson hath till'd his lands,'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>&mdash;but too dull to be quoted any further.</p>
+
+<p>After this there is a Minstrel's Song, on the Restoration of Lord
+Clifford the Shepherd, which is in a very different strain of poetry;
+and then the volume is wound up with an 'Ode,' with no other title but
+the motto, <i>Paulo majora<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_43" id="Page_43">[Pg 43]</a></span> canamus</i>. This is, beyond all doubt, the most
+illegible and unintelligible part of the publication. We can pretend to
+give no analysis or explanation of it;&mdash;our readers must make what they
+can of the following extracts.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'&mdash;&mdash;But there's a tree, of many one,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A single field which I have look'd upon,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Both of them speak of something that is gone:<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">The pansy at my feet<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Doth the same tale repeat:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whither is fled the visionary gleam?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where is it now, the glory and the dream?' II. 150.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">O joy! that in our embers<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Is something that doth live,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">That nature yet remembers<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">What was so fugitive!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The thought of our past years in me doth breed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Perpetual benedictions: not indeed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For that which is most worthy to be blest:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Delight and liberty, the simple creed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of childhood, whether fluttering or at rest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With new-born hope forever in his breast:&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Not for these I raise<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">The song of thanks and praise;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But for those obstinate questionings<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of sense and outward things,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Fallings from us, vanishings;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Blank misgivings of a creature<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Moving about in worlds not realiz'd,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">High instincts, before which our mortal nature<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Did tremble like a guilty thing surpriz'd:<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But for those first affections,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Those shadowy recollections,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Which be they what they may,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Are yet the fountain light of all our day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Are yet a master light of all our feeling<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Uphold us, cherish us, and make<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our noisy years seem moments in the being<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_44" id="Page_44">[Pg 44]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Of the eternal silence: truths that wake,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">To perish never;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Nor man nor boy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor all that is at enmity with joy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Can utterly abolish or destroy!<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Hence, in a season of calm weather,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Though inland far we be,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Our souls have sight of that immortal sea<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Which brought us hither,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Can in a moment travel thither,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And see the children sport upon the shore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.' II. 154-6.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>We have thus gone through this publication, with a view to enable our
+readers to determine, whether the author of the verses which have now
+been exhibited, is entitled to claim the honours of an improver or
+restorer of our poetry, and to found a new school to supersede or
+new-model all our maxims on this subject. If we were to stop here, we do
+not think that Mr Wordsworth, or his admirers, would have any reason to
+complain; for what we have now quoted is undeniably the most peculiar
+and characteristic part of his publication, and must be defended and
+applauded if the merit or originality of his system is to be seriously
+maintained. In our own opinion, however, the demerit of that system
+cannot be fairly appreciated, until it be shown, that the author of the
+bad verses which we have already extracted, can write good verses when
+he pleases; and that, in point of fact, he does always write good
+verses, when, by any accident, he is led to abandon his system, and to
+transgress the laws of that school which he would fain establish on the
+ruin of all existing authority.</p>
+
+<p>The length to which our extracts and observations have already extended,
+necessarily restrains us within more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_45" id="Page_45">[Pg 45]</a></span> narrow limits in this part of our
+citations; but it will not require much labour to find a pretty decided
+contrast to some of the passages we have already detailed. The song on
+the restoration of Lord Clifford is put into the mouth of an ancient
+minstrel of the family; and in composing it, the author was led,
+therefore, almost irresistibly to adopt the manner and phraseology that
+is understood to be connected with that sort of composition, and to
+throw aside his own babyish incidents and fantastical sensibilities. How
+he has succeeded, the reader will be able to judge from the few
+following extracts.</p>
+
+<p>[Quotes fifty-six lines of <i>Lord Clifford</i>.]</p>
+
+<p>All English writers of sonnets have imitated Milton; and, in this way,
+Mr Wordsworth, when he writes sonnets, escapes again from the trammels
+of his own unfortunate system; and the consequence is, that his sonnets
+are as much superior to the greater part of his other poems, as Milton's
+sonnets are superior to his.</p>
+
+<p>[Quotes the sonnets <i>On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic</i>,
+<i>London</i>, and <i>I griev'd for Buonaparte</i>.]</p>
+
+<p>When we look at these, and many still finer passages, in the writings of
+this author, it is impossible not to feel a mixtures of indignation and
+compassion, at that strange infatuation which has bound him up from the
+fair exercise of his talents, and withheld from the public the many
+excellent productions that would otherwise have taken the place of the
+trash now before us. Even in the worst of these productions, there are,
+no doubt, occasional little traits of delicate feeling and original
+fancy; but these are quite lost and obscured in the mass of childishness
+and insipidity with which they are incorporated; nor can any thing give
+us a more melancholy view of the debasing<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_46" id="Page_46">[Pg 46]</a></span> effects of this miserable
+theory, than that it has given ordinary men a right to wonder at the
+folly and presumption of a man gifted like Mr Wordsworth, and made him
+appear, in his second avowed publication, like a bad imitator of the
+worst of his former productions.</p>
+
+<p>We venture to hope, that there is now an end of this folly; and that,
+like other follies, it will be found to have cured itself by the
+extravagances resulting from its unbridled indulgence. In this point of
+view, the publication of the volumes before us may ultimately be of
+service to the good cause of literature. Many a generous rebel, it is
+said, has been reclaimed to his allegiance by the spectacle of lawless
+outrage and excess presented in the conduct of the insurgents; and we
+think there is every reason to hope, that the lamentable consequences
+which have resulted from Mr Wordsworth's open violation of the
+established laws of poetry, will operate as a wholesome warning to those
+who might otherwise have been seduced by his example, and be the means
+of restoring to that antient and venerable code its due honour and
+authority.&mdash;<i>The Edinburgh Review</i>.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_47" id="Page_47">[Pg 47]</a></span></p>
+<h2><span class="smcap">Samuel Taylor Coleridge</span></h2>
+
+
+<p class="bigcenter"><i>Christabel: Kubla Khan, a Vision. The Pains of Sleep</i>. By <span class="smcap">S.T. Coleridge, Esq</span>. London, Murray, 1816.</p>
+
+<p>The advertisement by which this work was announced to the publick,
+carried in its front a recommendation from Lord Byron,&mdash;who, it seems,
+has somewhere praised Christabel, as 'a wild and singularly original and
+beautiful poem.' Great as the noble bard's merits undoubtedly are in
+poetry, some of his latest <i>publications</i> dispose us to distrust his
+authority, where the question is what ought to meet the public eye; and
+the works before us afford an additional proof, that his judgment on
+such matters is not absolutely to be relied on. Moreover, we are a
+little inclined to doubt the value of the praise which one poet lends
+another. It seems now-a-days to be the practice of that once irritable
+race to laud each other without bounds; and one can hardly avoid
+suspecting, that what is thus lavishly advanced may be laid out with a
+view to being repaid with interest. Mr Coleridge, however, must be
+judged by his own merits.</p>
+
+<p>It is remarked, by the writers upon the Bathos, that the true <i>profound</i>
+is surely known by one quality&mdash;its being wholly bottomless; insomuch,
+that when you think you have attained its utmost depth in the work of
+some of its great masters, another, or peradventure the same, astonishes
+you, immediately after, by a plunge so much more vigorous, as to outdo
+all his former outdoings. So it seems to be with the new school, or, as
+they may be termed, the wild or lawless poets. After we had been
+admiring their extravagance for many years, and marvelling at the ease
+and rapidity with which one exceeded<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_48" id="Page_48">[Pg 48]</a></span> another in the unmeaning or
+infantine, until not an idea was left in the rhyme&mdash;or in the insane,
+until we had reached something that seemed the untamed effusion of an
+author whose thoughts were rather more free than his actions&mdash;forth
+steps Mr Coleridge, like a giant refreshed with sleep, and as if to
+redeem his character after so long a silence, ('his poetic powers having
+been, he says, from 1808 till very lately, in a state of suspended
+animation,' p. v.) and breaks out in these precise words&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">''Tis the middle of night by the castle clock,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And the owls have awaken'd the crowing cock;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tu &mdash;&mdash; whit! &mdash;&mdash; Tu &mdash;&mdash; whoo!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And hark, again! the crowing cock,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How drowsily it crew.'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Sir Leoline, the Baron rich,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hath a toothless mastiff bitch;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From her kennel beneath the rock<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She makes answer to the clock,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Four for the quarters, and twelve for the hour:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ever and aye, moonshine or shower,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sixteen short howls, not over loud;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some say she sees my lady's shroud.'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Is the night chilly and dark?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The night is chilly, but not dark.' p. 3, 4.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It is probable that Lord Byron may have had this passage in his eye,
+when he called the poem 'wild' and 'original;' but how he discovered it
+to be 'beautiful,' is not quite so easy for us to imagine.</p>
+
+<p>Much of the art of the wild writers consists in sudden
+transitions&mdash;opening eagerly upon some topic, and then flying from it
+immediately. This indeed is known to the medical men, who not
+unfrequently have the care of them, as an unerring symptom. Accordingly,
+here we take leave of the Mastiff Bitch, and lose sight of her entirely,
+upon the entrance of another personage of a higher degree,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_49" id="Page_49">[Pg 49]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'The lovely Lady Christabel,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whom her father loves so well'&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And who, it seems, has been rambling about all night, having, the night
+before, had dreams about her lover, which 'made her moan and <i>leap</i>.'
+While kneeling, in the course of her rambles, at an old oak, she hears a
+noise on the other side of the stump, and going round, finds, to her
+great surprize, another fair damsel in white silk, but with her dress
+and hair in some disorder; at the mention of whom, the poet takes
+fright, not, as might be imagined, because of her disorder, but on
+account of her beauty and her fair attire&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'I guess, 'twas frightful there to see<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A lady so richly clad as she&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beautiful exceedingly!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Christabel naturally asks who she is, and is answered, at some length,
+that her name is Geraldine; that she was, on the morning before, seized
+by five warriors, who tied her on a white horse, and drove her on, they
+themselves following, also on white horses; and that they had rode all
+night. Her narrative now gets to be a little contradictory, which gives
+rise to unpleasant suspicions. She protests vehemently, and with oaths,
+that she has no idea who the men were; only that one of them, the
+tallest of the five, took her and placed her under the tree, and that
+they all went away, she knew not whither; but how long she had remained
+there she cannot tell&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Nor do I know how long it is,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For I have lain in fits, I <i>wis</i>;'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>&mdash;although she had previously kept a pretty exact account of the time.
+The two ladies then go home together, after this satisfactory
+explanation, which appears to have con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_50" id="Page_50">[Pg 50]</a></span>veyed to the intelligent mind of
+Lady C. every requisite information. They arrive at the castle, and pass
+the night in the same bed-room; not to disturb Sir Leoline, who, it
+seems, was poorly at the time, and, of course, must have been called up
+to speak to the chambermaids, and have the sheets aired, if Lady G. had
+had a room to herself. They do not get to their bed, however in the
+poem, quite so easily as we have carried them. They first cross the
+moat, and Lady C. 'took the key that fitted well,' and opened a little
+door, 'all in the middle of the gate.' Lady G. then sinks down 'belike
+through pain;' but it should seem more probably from laziness; for her
+fair companion having lifted her up, and carried her a little way, she
+then walks on 'as she were not in pain.' Then they cross the court&mdash;but
+we must give this in the poet's words, for he seems so pleased with
+them, that he inserts them twice over in the space of ten lines.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'So free from danger, free from fear,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They crossed the court&mdash;right glad they were.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Lady C. is desirous of a little conversation on the way, but Lady G.
+will not indulge her Ladyship, saying she is too much tired to speak. We
+now meet our old friend, the mastiff bitch, who is much too important a
+person to be slightly passed by&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Outside her kennel, the mastiff old<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lay fast asleep, in moonshine cold.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The mastiff old did not awake,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet she an angry moan did make!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And what can ail the mastiff bitch?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Never till now she uttered yell<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beneath the eye of Christabel.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Perhaps it is the owlet's scritch:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For what can ail the mastiff bitch?'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_51" id="Page_51">[Pg 51]</a></span>Whatever it may be that ails the bitch, the ladies pass forward, and
+take off their shoes, and tread softly all the way upstairs, as
+Christabel observes that her father is a bad sleeper. At last, however,
+they do arrive at the bed-room, and comfort themselves with a dram of
+some homemade liquor, which proves to be very old; for it was made by
+Lady C.'s mother; and when her new friend asks if she thinks the old
+lady will take her part, she answers, that this is out of the question,
+in as much as she happened to die in childbed of her. The mention of the
+old lady, however, gives occasion to the following pathetic
+couplet.&mdash;Christabel says,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'O mother dear, that thou wert here!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I would, said Geraldine, she were!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>A very mysterious conversation next takes place between Lady Geraldine
+and the old gentlewoman's ghost, which proving extremely fatiguing to
+her, she again has recourse to the bottle&mdash;and with excellent effect, as
+appears by these lines.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Again the wild-flower wine she drank;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her fair large eyes 'gan glitter bright,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'And from the floor whereon she sank,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The lofty Lady stood upright:<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">She was most beautiful to see,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Like a Lady of a far countr&eacute;e.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>&mdash;From which, we may gather among other points, the exceeding great
+beauty of all women who live in a distant place, no matter where. The
+effects of the cordial speedily begin to appear; as no one, we imagine,
+will doubt, that to its influence must be ascribed the following
+speech<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_52" id="Page_52">[Pg 52]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'And thus the lofty lady spake&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All they, who live in the upper sky,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Do love you, holy Christabel!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And you love them&mdash;and for their sake<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And for the good which me befel,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even I in my degree will try,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fair maiden, to requite you well.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Before going to bed, Lady G. kneels to pray, and desires her friend to
+undress, and lie down; which she does 'in her loveliness;' but being
+curious, she leans 'on her elbow,' and looks toward the fair
+devotee,&mdash;where she sees something which the poet does not think fit to
+tell us very explicitly.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Her silken robe, and inner vest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dropt to her feet, and full in view,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Behold! her bosom and half her side&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A sight to dream of, not to tell!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And she is to sleep by Christabel.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>She soon rises, however, from her knees; and as it was not a
+double-bedded room, she turns in to Lady Christabel, taking only 'two
+paces and a stride.' She then clasps her tight in her arms, and mutters
+a very dark spell, which we apprehend the poet manufactured by shaking
+words together at random; for it is impossible to fancy that he can
+annex any meaning whatever to it. This is the end of it.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">'But vainly thou warrest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">For this is alone in<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Thy power to declare,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">That in the dim forest<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Thou heard'st a low moaning,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And found'st a bright lady, surpassingly fair:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And didst bring her home with thee in love and in charity,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To shield her and shelter her from the damp air.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_53" id="Page_53">[Pg 53]</a></span>The consequence of this incantation is, that Lady Christabel has a
+strange dream&mdash;and when she awakes, her first exclamation is, 'Sure I
+have sinn'd'&mdash;'Now heaven be praised if all be well!' Being still
+perplexed with the remembrance of her 'too lively' dream&mdash;she then
+dresses herself, and modestly prays to be forgiven for 'her sins
+unknown.' The two companions now go to the Baron's parlour, and
+Geraldine tells her story to him. This, however, the poet judiciously
+leaves out, and only signifies that the Baron recognized in her the
+daughter of his old friend Sir Roland, with whom he had had a deadly
+quarrel. Now, however, he despatches his tame poet, or laureate, called
+Bard Bracy, to invite him and his family over, promising to forgive
+every thing, and even make an apology for what had passed. To understand
+what follows, we own, surpasses our comprehension. Mr Bracy, the poet,
+recounts a strange dream he has just had, of a dove being almost
+strangled by a snake; whereupon the Lady Geraldine falls a hissing, and
+her eyes grow small, like a serpent's,&mdash;or at least so they seem to her
+friend; who begs her father to 'send away that woman.' Upon this the
+Baron falls into a passion, as if he had discovered that his daughter
+had been seduced; at least, we can understand him in no other sense,
+though no hint of such a kind is given; but on the contrary, she is
+painted to the last moment as full of innocence and
+purity.&mdash;Nevertheless,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'His heart was cleft with pain and rage,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His cheeks they quiver'd, his eyes were wild,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dishonour'd thus in his old age;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dishonour'd by his only child;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all his hospitality<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To th' insulted daughter of his friend<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By more than woman's jealousy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Brought thus to a disgraceful end.&mdash;'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_54" id="Page_54">[Pg 54]</a></span>Nothing further is said to explain the mystery; but there follows
+incontinently, what is termed '<i>The conclusion of Part the Second</i>.' And
+as we are pretty confident that Mr Coleridge holds this passage in the
+highest estimation; that he prizes it more than any other part of 'that
+wild, and singularly original and beautiful poem Christabel,' excepting
+always the two passages touching the 'toothless mastiff bitch;' we shall
+extract it for the amazement of our readers&mdash;premising our own frank
+avowal that we are wholly unable to divine the meaning of any portion of
+it.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'A little child, a limber elf,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Singing, dancing to itself,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A fairy thing with red round cheeks,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That always finds and never seeks;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Makes such a vision to the sight<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As fills a father's eyes with light;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And pleasures flow in so thick and fast<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Upon his heart, that he at last<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Must needs express his love's excess<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With words of unmeant bitterness.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Perhaps 'tis pretty to force together<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thoughts so all unlike each other;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To mutter and mock a broken charm,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To dally with wrong that does no harm<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Perhaps 'tis tender too, and pretty,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At each wild word to feel within<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A sweet recoil of love and pity.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And what if in a world of sin<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(O sorrow and shame should this be true!)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Such giddiness of heart and brain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Comes seldom save from rage and pain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So talks as it's most used to do.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Hence endeth the Second Part, and, in truth, the 'singular' poem itself;
+for the author has not yet written, or, as he phrases it, 'embodied in
+verse,' the 'three parts yet to come;'&mdash;though he trusts he shall be
+able to do so' in the course of the present year.'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_55" id="Page_55">[Pg 55]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>One word as to the metre of Christabel, or, as Mr Coleridge terms it,
+'<i>the</i> Christabel'&mdash;happily enough; for indeed we doubt if the peculiar
+force of the definite article was ever more strongly exemplified. He
+says, that though the reader may fancy there prevails a great
+<i>irregularity</i> in the metre, some lines being of four, others of twelve
+syllables, yet in reality it is quite regular; only that it is 'founded
+on a new principle, namely, that of counting in each line the accents,
+not the syllables.' We say nothing of the monstrous assurance of any man
+coming forward coolly at this time of day, and telling the readers of
+English poetry, whose ear has been tuned to the lays of Spenser, Milton,
+Dryden, and Pope, that he makes his metre 'on a new principle!' but we
+utterly deny the truth of the assertion, and defy him to show us <i>any</i>
+principle upon which his lines can be conceived to tally. We give two or
+three specimens to confound at once this miserable piece of coxcombry
+and shuffling. Let our 'wild, and singularly original and beautiful'
+author, show us how these lines agree either in number of accents or of
+feet.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">'Ah wel-a-day!'<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">'For this is alone in&mdash;'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'And didst bring her home with thee in love and in charity'&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">'I pray you drink this cordial wine'&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">'Sir Leoline'&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">'And found a bright lady surpassingly fair'&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">'Tu&mdash;whit!&mdash;--Tu&mdash;whoo!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><i>Kubla Khan</i> is given to the public, it seems, 'at the request of a poet
+of great and deserved celebrity;'&mdash;but whether Lord Byron, the praiser
+of 'the Christabel,' or the Laureate, the praiser of Princes, we are not
+informed. As far as Mr Coleridge's 'own opinions are concerned,' it is
+published, 'not upon the ground of any <i>poetic</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_56" id="Page_56">[Pg 56]</a></span> merits,' but 'as a
+<span class="smcap lowercase">PSYCHOLOGICAL CURIOSITY</span>!' In these opinions of the candid author, we
+entirely concur; but for this reason we hardly think it was necessary to
+give the minute detail which the Preface contains, of the circumstances
+attending its composition. Had the question regarded '<i>Paradise Lost</i>,'
+or '<i>Dryden's Ode</i>,' we could not have had a more particular account of
+the circumstances in which it was composed. It was in the year 1797, and
+in the summer season. Mr Coleridge was in bad health;&mdash;the particular
+disease is not given; but the careful reader will form his own
+conjectures. He had retired very prudently to a lonely farm-house; and
+whoever would see the place which gave birth to the 'psychological
+curiosity,' may find his way thither without a guide; for it is situated
+on the confines of Somerset and Devonshire, and on the Exmoor part of
+the boundary; and it is, moreover, between Porlock and Linton. In that
+farm-house, he had a slight indisposition, and had taken an anodyne,
+which threw him into a deep sleep in his chair (whether after dinner or
+not he omits to state), 'at the moment that he was reading a sentence in
+Purchas's Pilgrims,' relative to a palace of Kubla Khan. The effects of
+the anodyne, and the sentence together, were prodigious: They produced
+the 'curiosity' now before us; for, during his three-hours sleep, Mr
+Coleridge 'has the most vivid confidence that he could not have composed
+less than from two to three hundred lines.' On awaking, he 'instantly
+and eagerly' wrote down the verses here published; when he was (he says,
+'<i>unfortunately</i>') called out by a 'person on business from Porlock, and
+detained by him above an hour;' and when he returned the vision was
+gone. The lines here given smell strongly, it must be owned, of the
+anodyne; and, but that an under dose of a sedative produces contrary
+effects, we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_57" id="Page_57">[Pg 57]</a></span> should inevitably have been lulled by them into
+forgetfulness of all things. Perhaps a dozen more such lines as the
+following would reduce the most irritable of critics to a state of
+inaction.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">'A damsel with a dulcimer<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">In a vision once I saw:<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">It was an Abyssinian maid<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">And on her dulcimer she play'd,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Singing of Mount Abora.<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Could I revive within me<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Her symphony and song,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">To such a deep delight 'twould win me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That with music loud and long,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I would build that dome in air,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That sunny dome! those caves of ice!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all who heard should see them there,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all should cry, Beware! Beware!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His flashing eyes, his floating hair!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Weave a circle round him thrice,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And close your eyes with holy dread:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For he on honey-dew hath fed,' &amp;c. &amp;c.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>There is a good deal more altogether as exquisite&mdash;and in particular a
+fine description of a wood, 'ancient as the hills;' and 'folding sunny
+spots of <i>greenery</i>!' But we suppose this specimen will be sufficient.</p>
+
+<p>Persons in this poet's unhappy condition, generally feel the want of
+sleep as the worst of their evils; but there are instances, too, in the
+history of the disease, of sleep being attended with new agony, as if
+the waking thoughts, how wild and turbulent soever, had still been under
+some slight restraint, which sleep instantly removed. Mr Coleridge
+appears to have experienced this symptom, if we may judge from the title
+of his third poem, '<i>The Pains of Sleep</i>;' and, in truth, from its
+composition&mdash;which is mere raving, without any thing more affecting than
+a num<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_58" id="Page_58">[Pg 58]</a></span>ber of incoherent words, expressive of extravagance and
+incongruity.&mdash;We need give no specimen of it.</p>
+
+<p>Upon the whole, we look upon this publication as one of the most notable
+pieces of impertinence of which the press has lately been guilty; and
+one of the boldest experiments that has yet been made on the patience or
+understanding of the public. It is impossible, however, to dismiss it,
+without a remark or two. The other productions of the Lake School have
+generally exhibited talents thrown away upon subjects so mean, that no
+power of genius could ennoble them; or perverted and rendered useless by
+a false theory of poetical composition. But even in the worst of them,
+if we except the White Doe of Mr Wordsworth and some of the laureate
+odes, there were always some gleams of feeling or of fancy. But the
+thing now before us is utterly destitute of value. It exhibits from
+beginning to end not a ray of genius; and we defy any man to point out a
+passage of poetical merit in any of the three pieces which it contains,
+except, perhaps, the following lines in p. 32, and even these are not
+very brilliant; nor is the leading thought original&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Alas! they had been friends in youth;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But whispering tongues can poison truth;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And constancy lives in realms above;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And life is thorny; and youth is vain;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And to be wroth with one we love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Doth work like madness in the brain.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>With this one exception, there is literally not one couplet in the
+publication before us which would be reckoned poetry, or even sense,
+were it found in the corner of a newspaper or upon the window of an inn.
+Must we then be doomed to hear such a mixture of raving and driv'ling,
+extolled as the work of a '<i>wild and original</i>' genius, simply because
+Mr Coleridge has now and then written<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_59" id="Page_59">[Pg 59]</a></span> fine verses, and a brother poet
+chooses, in his milder mood, to laud him from courtesy or from interest?
+And are such panegyrics to be echoed by the mean tools of a political
+faction, because they relate to one whose daily prose is understood to
+be dedicated to the support of all that courtiers think should be
+supported? If it be true that the author has thus earned the patronage
+of those liberal dispensers of bounty, we can have no objection that
+they should give him proper proofs of their gratitude; but we cannot
+help wishing, for his sake, as well as our own, that they would pay in
+solid pudding instead of empty praise; and adhere, at least in this
+instance, to the good old system of rewarding their champions with
+places and pensions, instead of puffing their bad poetry, and
+endeavouring to cram their nonsense down the throats of all the loyal
+and well affected.&mdash;<i>The Edinburgh Review</i>.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_60" id="Page_60">[Pg 60]</a></span></p>
+<h2><span class="smcap">Robert Southey</span></h2>
+
+
+<p class="bigcenter"><i>Madoc</i>, by <span class="smcap">Robert Southey</span>. 4to. pp. 560. 2l. 2s. Boards. Printed at
+Edinburgh, for Longman and Co., London. 1805.</p>
+
+<p>It has fallen to the lot of this writer to puzzle our critical
+discernment more than once. In the <i>Annual Anthology</i> we had reason to
+complain that it was difficult to distinguish his jocular from his
+serious poetry; and sometimes indeed to know his poetry from his prose.
+He has now contrived to manufacture a large quarto, which he has styled
+a poem, but of what description it is no easy matter to decide. The
+title of epic, which he indignantly disclaims, we might have been
+inclined to refuse his production, had it been claimed; and we suppose
+that Mr. Southey would not suffer it to be classed under the
+mock-heroic. The poem of Madoc is not didactic, nor elegiac, nor
+classical, in any respect. Neither is it <i>Macphersonic</i>, nor
+<i>Klopstockian</i>, nor <i>Darwinian</i>,&mdash;we beg pardon, we mean <i>Brookian</i>. To
+conclude, according to a phrase of the last century, which was applied
+to ladies of ambiguous character, <i>it is what it is</i>.&mdash;As Mr. Southey
+has set the rules of Aristotle at defiance in his preface, we hope that
+he will feel a due degree of gratitude for this appropriate definition
+of his work. It is an old saying, thoroughly descriptive of such an old
+song as this before us.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Southey, however, has not disdained all ancient precedents in his
+poem, for he introduces it with this advertisement:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Come, listen to a tale of times of old!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Come, for ye know me! I am he who sung<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The maid of Arc; and I am he who framed<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_61" id="Page_61">[Pg 61]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Of Thalaba the wild and wonderous song.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Come, listen to my lay, and ye shall hear<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How Madoc from the shores of Britain spread<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The adventurous sail, explored the ocean ways,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And quelled barbarian power, and overthrew<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The bloody altars of idolatry,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And planted in its fanes triumphantly<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The cross of Christ. Come, listen to my lay!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This <i>modest ostentation</i> was certainly derived from the verses imputed
+to Virgil;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Ille ego, qui quondam gracili modulatus avena<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Carmen; et egressus sylvis, vicina co&euml;gi<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ut quamvis avido parerent arva colono,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gratum opus agricolis: at nunc horrentia Martis, &amp;c."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In the very first part of the poem, also, we find Mr. Southey pursuing
+the Horatian precept, "<i>prorumpere in medias res</i>;" for he commences
+with the <i>return</i> of Madoc to his native country. It is true that, like
+the Messenger in Macklin's tragedy, he "goes but to return;" and the
+critic is tempted to say, with Martial, <i>toto carere possum</i>.&mdash;Thus the
+grand interest of the work, which ought to consist in exploring a new
+world, is destroyed at once, by the reader at his outset encountering
+the heroes returning "sound, wind and limb," to their native country. It
+may be said that Cam&#339;ns has thrown a great part of Da Gama's Voyage
+into the form of a narrative: but he has also given much in description;
+enough, at least, to have justified Mr. Southey in commencing rather
+nearer the commencement of his tale.</p>
+
+<p>That he might withdraw himself entirely from the yoke of Aristotle, Mr.
+Southey has divided his poem into two parts, instead of giving it a
+beginning, a middle and an end. One of these parts is concisely
+entitled, 'Madoc in Wales;' the other, 'Madoc in Aztlan.' A <i>middle</i>
+might,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_62" id="Page_62">[Pg 62]</a></span> however, have been easily found, by adding, <i>Madoc on
+Shipboard</i>.&mdash;The first of these Anti Peripatetic parts contains 18
+divisions; the second, 27 which include every incident, episode, &amp;c.
+introduced into the poem. This arrangement gives it very much the
+appearance of a journal versified, and effectually precludes any
+imputation of luxuriance of fancy in the plot.</p>
+
+<p>Respecting the manners, Mr. Southey appears to have been more successful
+than in his choice of the story. He has adhered to history where he
+could discover any facts adapted to his purpose; and when history failed
+him, he has had recourse to probability. Yet we own that the
+nomenclature of his heroes has shocked what Mr. S. would call our
+prejudices. <i>Goervyl</i> and <i>Ririd</i> and <i>Rodri</i> and <i>Llaian</i> may have
+charms for Cambrian ears, but who can feel an interest in <i>Tezozomoc</i>,
+<i>Tlalala</i>, or <i>Ocelopan</i>? Or, should</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&mdash;&mdash;'Tyneio, Merini,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Boda and Brenda and Aelgyvarch,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gwynon and Celynin and Gwynodyl,' (p. 129.)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Those rugged names to our like mouths grow sleek,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That would have made Quintilian stare and gasp<a name="FNanchor_I_9" id="FNanchor_I_9"></a><a href="#Footnote_I_9" class="fnanchor">[I]</a>,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>how could we swallow <i>Yuhidthiton</i>, <i>Coanocotzin</i>, and, above all, the
+yawning jaw-dislocating <i>Ayayaca</i>?&mdash;These torturing words, particularly
+the latter, remind us so strongly of the odious cacophony of the Nurse
+and Child, that they really are not to be tolerated. Mr. Southey's
+defence (for he has partially anticipated this objection) is that the
+names are conformable to history or analogy, which we are not inclined
+to dispute: but it is not requisite to tread so closely in the traces of
+barbarity. Truth does not constitute the essence of poetry: but it is
+indispensably necessary that the lines should be agreeable to the ear,
+as well<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_63" id="Page_63">[Pg 63]</a></span> as to the sense. Sorry, indeed, we are to complain that Mr.
+Southey, in attempting a new method of writing,&mdash;in professing to set
+aside the old models, and to promote his own work to a distinguished
+place in the library,&mdash;has failed to interest our feelings, or to excite
+our admiration. The dull tenor of mediocrity, which characterizes his
+pages, is totally unsuitable to heroic poetry, regular or irregular.
+Instead of viewing him on a <i>fiery Pegasus</i>, and "snatching a grace
+beyond the reach of art," we behold the author mounted on a strange
+animal, something between a rough Welsh poney and a Peruvian sheep,
+whose utmost capriole only tends to land him in the mud. We may indeed
+safely compliment Mr. Southey, by assuring him that there is nothing in
+Homer, Virgil, or Milton, in any degree resembling the beauties of
+Madoc.</p>
+
+<p>Whether the expedition of Madoc, and the existence of a Welsh tribe in
+America, be historically true, it is not our present business to
+examine. It is obvious, however, that one great object of the poem, the
+destruction of the altars of idolatry, had failed; for it is not
+pretended that the supposed descendants of Madoc remained Christians.</p>
+
+<p>We shall now make some extracts from this poem, which will enable our
+readers to judge whether we have spoken too severely of Mr. Southey's
+labours.</p>
+
+<p>[Quotes 270 lines of <i>Madoc</i> with interpolated comments.]</p>
+
+<p>If the perusal of these and the preceding verses should tempt any of our
+readers to purchase Mr. Southey's volume, we can warrant equal
+entertainment in all its other parts, and shall heartily wish the
+gentleman all happiness with his poet.&mdash;To us, there appears a thorough
+perversion of taste, in the conception and execution of the whole; and
+we are disgusted with the tameness of the verse, the vulgarity of the
+thoughts, and the barbarity of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_64" id="Page_64">[Pg 64]</a></span> the manners. If this style of writing be
+continued, we may expect not only the actions of Vindomarus or
+Ariovistus to be celebrated, but we may perhaps see the history of the
+Cherokees, Choctaws, and Catabaws, versified in quarto. The name of
+Atakulla-kulla would not be inharmonious, compared with some of Mr.
+Southey's heroes. Indeed, a very interesting poem might be founded on
+the story of Pocahuntas, as it is detailed by Smith, in his History of
+the Settlement of Virginia; and if Mr. Southey should meditate another
+irruption into the territories of the Muse, we would recommend this
+subject to his attention.</p>
+
+<p>It must be remarked that this is a very handsome and elegantly printed
+book, with engraved title-pages, vignettes, &amp;c. and had the poet
+equalled the printer, his work might have stood on the same shelf with
+those of our most admired writers.&mdash;<i>The Monthly Review</i>.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_65" id="Page_65">[Pg 65]</a></span></p>
+<h2><span class="smcap">Charles Lamb</span></h2>
+
+
+<p class="bigcenter"><i>Blank Verse</i>, by <span class="smcap">Charles Lloyd</span>, and <span class="smcap">Charles Lamb</span>. 12mo. 2s. 6d. Boards.
+Arch. 1798.</p>
+
+<p>Dr. Johnson, speaking of blank verse, seemed to have adopted the opinion
+of some great man,&mdash;we forget whom,&mdash;that it is only "<i>poetry to the
+eye</i>." On perusing the works of several modern bards of our own country,
+we have sometimes rather inclined to the same idea, but the recollection
+of Milton and Thomson presently banished it.</p>
+
+<p>We have more than once delivered our sentiments respecting the poetry of
+Mr. Charles Lloyd. To what we have formerly remarked, in general on this
+head, we have little to add on the present occasion; except that we
+begin to grow weary of his continued <b>melancholy</b> strains. Why is this
+ingenious writer so uncomfortably constant to the <i>mournful</i> Muse? If he
+has any taste for variety, he has little to fear from <i>jealousy</i> in the
+sacred sisterhood.&mdash;Then why not sometimes make his bow to <span class="smcap">Thalia</span>?</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Lamb, the joint author of this little volume, seems to be very
+properly associated with his plaintive companion.&mdash;<i>The Monthly
+Review</i>.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 35%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_66" id="Page_66">[Pg 66]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="bigcenter"><i>Album Verses, with a few others</i>. By <span class="smcap">Charles Lamb</span>. 12mo. pp. 150.
+London, 1830. Moxon.</p>
+
+<p>If any thing could prevent our laughing at the present collection of
+absurdities, it would be a lamentable conviction of the blinding and
+engrossing nature of vanity. We could forgive the folly of the original
+composition, but cannot but marvel at the egotism which has preserved,
+and the conceit which has published. What exaggerated notion must that
+man entertain of his talents, who believes their slightest efforts
+worthy of remembrance; one who keeps a copy of the verses he writes in
+young ladies' albums, the proverbial receptacles for trash! Here and
+there a sweet and natural thought intervenes; but the chief part is best
+characterized by that expressive though ungracious word "rubbish." And
+what could induce our author to trench on the masculine and vigorous
+Crabbe? did he think his powerful and dark outlines might with advantage
+be turned to "prettiness and favour?" But let our readers judge from the
+following specimens. The first is from the album of Mrs. Jane Towers.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Conjecturing, I wander in the dark,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I know thee only sister to Charles Clarke!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Directions for a picture&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"You wished a picture, cheap, but good;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The colouring? decent; clear, not muddy;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To suit a poet's quiet study."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The subject is a child&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Thrusting his fingers in his ears,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like Obstinate, that perverse funny one,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In honest parable of Bunyan."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_67" id="Page_67">[Pg 67]</a></span>We were not aware of "Obstinate's" fun before.</p>
+
+<p>An epitaph:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"On her bones the turf lie lightly,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And her rise again be brightly!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No dark stain be found upon her&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No, there will not, on mine honour&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Answer that at least I can."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Or what is the merit of the ensuing epicedium?</p>
+
+<p>[Quotes 48 lines beginning:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">There's rich Kitty Wheatley,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With footing it featly, etc.]<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Mr. Lamb, in his dedication, says his motive for publishing is to
+benefit his publisher, by affording him an opportunity of shewing how he
+means to bring out works. We could have dispensed with the specimen;
+though it is but justice to remark on the neat manner in which the work
+is produced: the title-page is especially pretty.&mdash;<i>The Literary
+Gazette</i>.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_68" id="Page_68">[Pg 68]</a></span></p>
+<h2><span class="smcap">Walter Savage Landor</span></h2>
+
+
+<p class="bigcenter"><i>Gebir; a Poem, in Seven Books</i>. 12mo. 74 pp. Rivingtons. 1798.</p>
+
+<p>How this Poem, which appears to issue from the same publishers as our
+own work, so long escaped our notice, we cannot say. Still less are we
+able to guess at the author, or his meaning. In a copy lately lent to
+us, as a matter we had overlooked, we observe the following very
+apposite quotation, inscribed on the title-page, by some unknown hand:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Some love the verse&mdash;&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which read, and read, you raise your eyes in doubt,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And gravely wonder what it is about.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Among persons of that turn of mind, the author must look for the <i>ten</i>
+admirers who, as he says, would satisfy his ambition; but whether they
+could have the qualities of taste and genius, which he requires, is with
+us a matter of doubt. Turgid obscurity is the general character of the
+composition, with now and then a gleam of genuine poetry, irradiating
+the dark profound. The effect of the perusal is to give a kind of whirl
+to the brain, more like distraction than pleasure; and something
+analogous to the sensation produced, when the end of the finger is
+rubbed against the parchment of the tambourine.&mdash;<i>The British Critic</i>.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 35%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_69" id="Page_69">[Pg 69]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="bigcenter"><i>Gebir</i>; a Poem, in Seven Books. 8vo. pp. 74. 2s. 6d. Rivingtons. 1798.</p>
+
+<p>An unpractised author has attempted, in this poem, the difficult task of
+relating a romantic story in blank-verse. His performance betrays all
+the incorrectness and abruptness of inexperience, but it manifests
+occasionally some talent for description. He has fallen into the common
+error of those who aspire to the composition of blank-verse, by
+borrowing too many phrases and epithets from our incomparable Milton. We
+give the following extract, as affording a fair specimen:</p>
+
+<p>[Quotes about 60 lines from the beginning of the fifth and sixth books
+of <i>Gebir</i>.]</p>
+
+<p>We must observe that the story is told very obscurely, and should have
+been assisted by an <i>Argument</i> in prose. Young writers are often
+astonished to find that passages, which seem very clear to their own
+heated imaginations, appear very dark to their readers.&mdash;The author of
+the poem before us may produce something worthy of more approbation, if
+he will labour hard, and delay for a few years the publication of his
+next performance.&mdash;<i>The Monthly Review</i>.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_70" id="Page_70">[Pg 70]</a></span></p>
+<h2><span class="smcap">Sir Walter Scott</span></h2>
+
+
+<p class="bigcenter"><i>Marmion; a Tale of Flodden Field</i>. By <span class="smcap">Walter Scott</span>, Esq. 4to. pp. 500.
+Edinburgh and London, 1808.</p>
+
+<p>There is a kind of right of primogeniture among books, as well as among
+men; and it is difficult for an author, who has obtained great fame by a
+first publication, not to appear to fall off in a second&mdash;especially if
+his original success could be imputed, in any degree, to the novelty of
+his plan of composition. The public is always indulgent to untried
+talents; and is even apt to exaggerate a little the value of what it
+receives without any previous expectation. But, for this advance of
+kindness, it usually exacts a most usurious return in the end. When the
+poor author comes back, he is no longer received as a benefactor, but a
+debtor. In return for the credit it formerly gave him, the world now
+conceives that it has a just claim on him for excellence, and becomes
+impertinently scrupulous as to the quality of the coin in which it is to
+be paid.</p>
+
+<p>The just amount of this claim plainly cannot be for more than the rate
+of excellence which he had reached in his former production; but, in
+estimating this rate, various errors are perpetually committed, which
+increase the difficulties of the task which is thus imposed on him. In
+the <i>first</i> place, the comparative amount of his past and present merits
+can only be ascertained by the uncertain standard of his reader's
+feelings; and these must always be less lively with regard to a second
+performance; which, with every other excellence of the first, must
+necessarily want the powerful recommendations of novelty and surprise,
+and consequently fall very far short of the effect produced by their
+strong co&ouml;peration. In the <i>second</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_71" id="Page_71">[Pg 71]</a></span> place, it may be observed, in
+general, that wherever our impression of any work is favourable on the
+whole, its excellence is constantly exaggerated, in those vague and
+habitual recollections which form the basis of subsequent comparisons.
+We readily drop from our memory the dull and bad passages, and carry
+along with us the remembrance of those only which had afforded us
+delight. Thus, when we take the merit of any favourite poem as a
+standard of comparison for some later production of the same author, we
+never take its true average merit, which is the only fair standard, but
+the merit of its most striking and memorable passages, which naturally
+stand forward in our recollection, and pass upon our hasty retrospect as
+just and characteristic specimens of the whole work; and this high and
+exaggerated standard we rigorously apply to the first, and perhaps the
+least interesting parts of the second performance. Finally, it deserves
+to be noticed, that where a first work, containing considerable
+blemishes, has been favourably received, the public always expects this
+indulgence to be repaid by an improvement that ought not to be always
+expected. If a second performance appear, therefore, with the same
+faults, they will no longer meet with the same toleration. Murmurs will
+be heard about indolence, presumption, and abuse of good nature; while
+the critics, and those who had gently hinted at the necessity of
+correction, will be more out of humour than the rest at this apparent
+neglect of their admonitions.</p>
+
+<p>For these, and for other reasons, we are inclined to suspect, that the
+success of the work now before us will be less brilliant than that of
+the author's former publication, though we are ourselves of opinion,
+that its intrinsic merits are nearly, if not altogether, equal; and
+that, if it had had the fortune to be the elder born, it would have
+inherited as fair a portion of renown as has fallen to the lot of its
+pre<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_72" id="Page_72">[Pg 72]</a></span>decessor. It is a good deal longer, indeed, and somewhat more
+ambitious; and it is rather clearer that it has greater faults, than
+that it has greater beauties; though, for our own parts, we are inclined
+to believe in both propositions. It has more tedious and flat passages,
+and more ostentation of historical and antiquarian lore; but it has also
+greater richness and variety, both of character and incident; and if it
+has less sweetness and pathos in the softer passages, it has certainly
+more vehemence and force of colouring in the loftier and busier
+representations of action and emotion. The place of the prologuizing
+minstrel is but ill supplied, indeed, by the epistolary dissertations
+which are prefixed to each book of the present poem; and the ballad
+pieces and mere episodes which it contains, have less finish and
+poetical beauty; but there is more airiness and spirit in the lighter
+delineations; and the story, if not more skilfully conducted, is at
+least better complicated, and extended through a wider field of
+adventure. The characteristics of both, however, are evidently the
+same;&mdash;a broken narrative&mdash;a redundancy of minute description&mdash;bursts of
+unequal and energetic poetry&mdash;and a general tone of spirit and
+animation, unchecked by timidity or affectation, and unchastised by any
+great delicacy of taste, or elegance of fancy.</p>
+
+<p>But though we think this last romance of Mr Scott's about as good as the
+former, and allow that it affords great indications of poetical talent,
+we must remind our readers, that we never entertained much partiality
+for this sort of composition, and ventured on a former occasion to
+express our regret, that an author endowed with such talents should
+consume them in imitations of obsolete extravagance, and in the
+representation of manners and sentiments in which none of his readers
+can be supposed to take much interest, except the few who can judge of
+their<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_73" id="Page_73">[Pg 73]</a></span> exactness. To write a modern romance of chivalry, seems to be
+much such a fantasy as to build a modern abbey, or an English pagoda.
+For once, however, it may be excused as a pretty caprice of genius; but
+a second production of the same sort is entitled to less indulgence, and
+imposes a sort of duty to drive the author from so idle a task, by a
+fair exposition of the faults which are in a manner inseparable from its
+execution. To enable our readers to judge fairly of the present
+performance, we shall first present them with a brief abstract of the
+story; and then endeavour to point out what seems to be exceptionable,
+and what is praiseworthy, in the execution.</p>
+
+<p>[Here follows a detailed outline of the plot of <i>Marmion</i>.]</p>
+
+<p>Now, upon this narrative, we are led to observe, in the first place,
+that it forms a very scanty and narrow foundation for a poem of such
+length as is now before us. There is scarcely matter enough in the main
+story for a ballad of ordinary dimensions; and the present work is not
+so properly diversified with episodes and descriptions, as made up and
+composed of them. No long poem, however, can maintain its interest
+without a connected narrative. It should be a grand historical picture,
+in which all the personages are concerned in one great transaction, and
+not a mere gallery of detailed groups and portraits. When we accompany
+the poet in his career of adventure, it is not enough that he points out
+to us, as we go along, the beauties of the landscape, and the costumes
+of the inhabitants. The people must do something after they are
+described, and they must do it in concert, or in opposition to each
+other; while the landscape, with its castles and woods and defiles, must
+serve merely as the scene of their exploits, and the field of their
+conspiracies and contentions. There is too little connected incident in
+Marmion, and a great deal too much gratuitous description.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_74" id="Page_74">[Pg 74]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>In the second place, we object to the whole plan and conception of the
+fable, as turning mainly upon incidents unsuitable for poetical
+narrative, and brought out in the denouement in a very obscure,
+laborious, and imperfect manner. The events of an epic narrative should
+all be of a broad, clear, and palpable description; and the difficulties
+and embarrassments of the characters, of a nature to be easily
+comprehended and entered into by readers of all descriptions. Now, the
+leading incidents in this poem are of a very narrow and peculiar
+character, and are woven together into a petty intricacy and
+entanglement which puzzles the reader instead of interesting him, and
+fatigues instead of exciting his curiosity. The unaccountable conduct of
+Constance, in first ruining De Wilton in order to forward Marmion's suit
+with Clara, and then trying to poison Clara, because Marmion's suit
+seemed likely to succeed with her&mdash;but, above all, the paltry device of
+the forged letters, and the sealed packet given up by Constance at her
+condemnation, and handed over by the abbess to De Wilton and Lord Angus,
+are incidents not only unworthy of the dignity of poetry, but really
+incapable of being made subservient to its legitimate purposes. They are
+particularly unsuitable, too, to the age and character of the personages
+to whom they relate; and, instead of forming the instruments of knightly
+vengeance and redress, remind us of the machinery of a bad German novel,
+or of the disclosures which might be expected on the trial of a
+pettifogging attorney. The obscurity and intricacy which they
+communicate to the whole story, must be very painfully felt by every
+reader who tries to comprehend it; and is prodigiously increased by the
+very clumsy and inartificial manner in which the denouement is
+ultimately brought about by the author. Three several attempts are made
+by three several persons to beat into the head of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_75" id="Page_75">[Pg 75]</a></span> reader the
+evidence of De Wilton's innocence, and of Marmion's guilt; first, by
+Constance in her dying speech and confession; secondly, by the abbess in
+her conference with De Wilton; and, lastly, by this injured innocent
+himself, on disclosing himself to Clara in the castle of Lord Angus.
+After all, the precise nature of the plot and the detection is very
+imperfectly explained, and we will venture to say, is not fully
+understood by one half those who have fairly read through every word of
+the quarto now before us. We would object, on the same grounds, to the
+whole scenery of Constance's condemnation. The subterranean chamber,
+with its low arches, massive walls, and silent monks with smoky
+torches,&mdash;its old chandelier in an iron chain,&mdash;the stern abbots and
+haughty prioresses, with their flowing black dresses, and book of
+statutes laid on an iron table, are all images borrowed from the novels
+of Mrs Ratcliffe [<i>sic</i>] and her imitators. The public, we believe, has
+now supped full of this sort of horrors; or, if any effect is still to
+be produced by their exhibition, it may certainly be produced at too
+cheap a rate, to be worthy the ambition of a poet of original
+imagination.</p>
+
+<p>In the third place, we object to the extreme and monstrous improbability
+of almost all the incidents which go to the composition of this fable.
+We know very well that poetry does not describe what is ordinary; but
+the marvellous, in which it is privileged to indulge, is the marvellous
+of performance, and not of accident. One extraordinary rencontre or
+opportune coincidence may be permitted, perhaps, to bring the parties
+together, and wind up matters for the catastrophe; but a writer who gets
+through the whole business of his poem, by a series of lucky hits and
+incalculable chances, certainly manages matters in a very economical way
+for his judgment and invention, and will probably be found to have
+consulted<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_76" id="Page_76">[Pg 76]</a></span> his own ease, rather than the delight of his readers. Now,
+the whole story of Marmion seems to us to turn upon a tissue of such
+incredible accidents. In the first place, it was totally beyond all
+calculation, that Marmion and De Wilton should meet, by pure chance, at
+Norham, on the only night which either of them could spend in that
+fortress. In the next place, it is almost totally incredible that the
+former should not recognize his antient rival and antagonist, merely
+because he had assumed a palmer's habit, and lost a little flesh and
+colour in his travels. He appears unhooded, and walks and speaks before
+him; and, as near as we can guess, it could not be more than a year
+since they had entered the lists against each other. Constance, at her
+death, says she had lived but three years with Marmion; and, it was not
+till he tired of her, that he aspired to Clara, or laid plots against De
+Wilton. It is equally inconceivable that De Wilton should have taken
+upon himself the friendly office of a guide to his arch enemy, and
+discharged it quietly and faithfully, without seeking, or apparently
+thinking of any opportunity of disclosure or revenge. So far from
+meditating anything of the sort, he makes two several efforts to leave
+him, when it appears that his services are no longer indispensable. If
+his accidental meeting, and continued association with Marmion, be
+altogether unnatural, it must appear still more extraordinary, that he
+should afterwards meet with the Lady Clare, his adored mistress, and the
+Abbess of Whitby, who had in her pocket the written proofs of his
+innocence, in consequence of an occurrence equally accidental. These two
+ladies, the only two persons in the universe whom it was of any
+consequence to him to meet, are captured in their voyage from Holy Isle,
+and brought to Edinburgh, by the luckiest accident in the world, the
+very day that De Wilton and Marmion make their entry into it.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_77" id="Page_77">[Pg 77]</a></span> Nay, the
+king, without knowing that they are at all of his acquaintance, happens
+to appoint them lodgings in the same stair-case, and to make them travel
+under his escort! We pass the night combat at Gifford, in which Marmion
+knows his opponent by moonlight, though he never could guess at him in
+sunshine; and all the inconsistencies of his dilatory wooing of Lady
+Clare. Those, and all the prodigies and miracles of the story, we can
+excuse, as within the privilege of poetry; but, the lucky chances we
+have already specified, are rather too much for our patience. A poet, we
+think, should never let his heroes contract such great debts to fortune;
+especially when a little exertion of his own might make them independent
+of her bounty. De Wilton might have been made to seek and watch his
+adversary, from some moody feeling of patient revenge; and it certainly
+would not have been difficult to discover motives which might have
+induced both Clara and the Abbess to follow and relieve him, without
+dragging them into his presence by the clumsy hands of a cruizer from
+Dunbar.</p>
+
+<p>In the <i>fourth</i> place, we think we have reason to complain of Mr Scott
+for having made his figuring characters so entirely worthless, as to
+excite but little of our sympathy, and at the same time keeping his
+virtuous personages so completely in the back ground, that we are
+scarcely at all acquainted with them when the work is brought to a
+conclusion. Marmion is not only a villain, but a mean and sordid
+villain; and represented as such, without any visible motive, and at the
+evident expense of characteristic truth and consistency. His elopement
+with Constance, and his subsequent desertion of her, are knightly vices
+enough, we suppose; but then he would surely have been more interesting
+and natural, if he had deserted her for a brighter beauty, and not
+merely for a richer bride. This<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_78" id="Page_78">[Pg 78]</a></span> was very well for Mr Thomas Inkle, the
+young merchant of London; but for the valiant, haughty, and liberal Lord
+Marmion of Fontenaye and Lutterward, we do think it was quite
+unsuitable. Thus, too, it was very chivalrous and orderly perhaps, for
+him to hate De Wilton, and to seek to supplant him in his lady's love;
+but, to slip a bundle of forged letters into his bureau, was cowardly as
+well as malignant. Now, Marmion is not represented as a coward, nor as
+at all afraid of De Wilton; on the contrary, and it is certainly the
+most absurd part of the story, he fights him fairly and valiantly after
+all, and overcomes him by mere force of arms, as he might have done at
+the beginning, without having recourse to devices so unsuitable to his
+general character and habits of acting. By the way, we have great doubts
+whether a <i>convicted</i> traitor, like De Wilton, whose guilt was
+established by written evidence under his own hand, was ever allowed to
+enter the lists, as a knight, against his accuser. At all events, we are
+positive, that an accuser, who was as ready and willing to fight as
+Marmion, could never have condescended to forge in support of his
+accusation; and that the author has greatly diminished our interest in
+the story, as well as needlessly violated the truth of character, by
+loading his hero with the guilt of this most revolting and improbable
+proceeding. The crimes of Constance are multiplied in like manner to
+such a degree, as both to destroy our interest in her fate, and to
+violate all probability. Her elopement was enough to bring on her doom;
+and we should have felt more for it, if it had appeared a little more
+unmerited. She is utterly debased, when she becomes the instrument of
+Marmion's murderous perfidy, and the assassin of her unwilling rival.</p>
+
+<p>De Wilton, again, is too much depressed throughout the poem. It is
+rather dangerous for a poet to chuse a<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_79" id="Page_79">[Pg 79]</a></span> hero who has been beaten in fair
+battle. The readers of romance do not like an unsuccessful warrior; but
+to be beaten in a judicial combat, and to have his arms reversed and
+tied on the gallows, is an adventure which can only be expiated by
+signal prowess and exemplary revenge, achieved against great odds, in
+full view of the reader. The unfortunate De Wilton, however, carries the
+stain upon him from one end of the poem to the other. He wanders up and
+down, a dishonoured fugitive, in the disguise of a palmer, through the
+five first books; and though he is knighted and mounted again in the
+last, yet we see nothing of his performances; nor is the author merciful
+enough to afford him one opportunity of redeeming his credit by an
+exploit of gallantry or skill. For the poor Lady Clare, she is a
+personage of still greater insipidity and insignificance. The author
+seems to have formed her upon the principle of Mr Pope's maxim, that
+women have no characters at all. We find her every where, where she has
+no business to be; neither saying nor doing any thing of the least
+consequence, but whimpering and sobbing over the Matrimony in her prayer
+book, like a great miss from a boarding school; and all this is the more
+inexcusable, as she is altogether a supernumerary person in the play,
+who should atone for her intrusion by some brilliancy or novelty of
+deportment. Matters would have gone on just as well, although she had
+been left behind at Whitby till after the battle of Flodden; and she is
+daggled about in the train, first of the Abbess and then of Lord
+Marmion, for no purpose, that we can see, but to afford the author an
+opportunity for two or three pages of indifferent description.</p>
+
+<p>Finally, we must object, both on critical and on national grounds, to
+the discrepancy between the title and the substance of the poem, and the
+neglect of Scotish feelings<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_80" id="Page_80">[Pg 80]</a></span> and Scotish character that is manifested
+throughout. Marmion is no more a tale of Flodden Field, than of Bosworth
+Field, or any other field in history. The story is quite independent of
+the national feuds of the sister kingdoms; and the battle of Flodden has
+no other connexion with it, than from being the conflict in which the
+hero loses his life. Flodden, however, is mentioned; and the
+preparations for Flodden, and the consequences of it, are repeatedly
+alluded to in the course of the composition. Yet we nowhere find any
+adequate expressions of those melancholy and patriotic sentiments which
+are still all over Scotland the accompaniment of those allusions and
+recollections. No picture is drawn of the national feelings before or
+after that fatal encounter; and the day that broke for ever the pride
+and the splendour of his country, is only commemorated by a Scotish poet
+as the period when an English warrior was beaten to the ground. There is
+scarcely one trait of true Scotish nationality or patriotism introduced
+into the whole poem; and Mr Scott's only expression of admiration or
+love for the beautiful country to which he belongs, is put, if we
+rightly remember, into the mouth of one of his Southern favourites.
+Independently of this, we think that too little pains is taken to
+distinguish the Scotish character and manners from the English, or to
+give expression to the general feeling of rivalry and mutual jealousy
+which at that time existed between the two countries.</p>
+
+<p>If there be any truth in what we have now said, it is evident that the
+merit of this poem cannot consist in the story. And yet it has very
+great merit, and various kinds of merit,&mdash;both in the picturesque
+representation of visible objects, in the delineation of manners and
+characters, and in the description of great and striking events. After
+having detained the reader so long with our own dull re<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_81" id="Page_81">[Pg 81]</a></span>marks, it will
+be refreshing to him to peruse a few specimens of Mr Scott's more
+enlivening strains.</p>
+
+<p>[Quotes over six hundred lines of <i>Marmion</i> with brief comment.]</p>
+
+<p>The powerful poetry of these passages can receive no illustration from
+any praises or observations of ours. It is superior, in our
+apprehension, to all that this author has hitherto produced; and, with a
+few faults of diction, equal to any thing that has <i>ever</i> been written
+upon similar subjects. Though we have extended our extracts to a very
+unusual length, in order to do justice to these fine conceptions, we
+have been obliged to leave out a great deal, which serves in the
+original to give beauty and effect to what we have actually cited. From
+the moment the author gets in sight of Flodden Field, indeed, to the end
+of the poem, there is no tame writing, and no intervention of ordinary
+passages. He does not once flag or grow tedious; and neither stops to
+describe dresses and ceremonies, nor to commemorate the harsh names of
+feudal barons from the Border. There is a flight of five or six hundred
+lines, in short, in which he never stoops his wing, nor wavers in his
+course; but carries the reader forward with a more rapid, sustained, and
+lofty movement, than any Epic bard that we can at present remember.</p>
+
+<p>From the contemplation of such distinguished excellence, it is painful
+to be obliged to turn to the defects and deformities which occur in the
+same composition. But this, though a less pleasing, is a still more
+indispensable part of our duty; and one, from the resolute discharge of
+which, much more beneficial consequences may be expected. In the work
+which contains the fine passages we have just quoted, and many of nearly
+equal beauty, there is such a proportion of tedious, hasty, and
+injudicious<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_82" id="Page_82">[Pg 82]</a></span> composition, as makes it questionable with us, whether it
+is entitled to go down to posterity as a work of classical merit, or
+whether the author will retain, with another generation, that high
+reputation which his genius certainly might make coeval with the
+language. These are the authors, after all, whose faults it is of most
+consequence to point out; and criticism performs her best and boldest
+office,&mdash;not when she tramples down the weed, or tears up the
+bramble,&mdash;but when she strips the strangling ivy from the oak, or cuts
+out the canker from the rose. The faults of the fable we have already
+noticed at sufficient length. Those of the execution we shall now
+endeavour to enumerate with greater brevity.</p>
+
+<p>And, in the <i>first</i> place, we must beg leave to protest, in the name of
+a very numerous class of readers, against the insufferable number, and
+length and minuteness of those descriptions of antient dresses and
+manners, and buildings; and ceremonies, and local superstitions; with
+which the whole poem is overrun,&mdash;which render so many notes necessary,
+and are, after all, but imperfectly understood by those to whom
+chivalrous antiquity has not hitherto been an object of peculiar
+attention. We object to these, and to all such details, because they
+are, for the most part, without dignity or interest in themselves;
+because, in a modern author, they are evidently unnatural; and because
+they must always be strange, and, in a good degree, obscure and
+unintelligible to ordinary readers.</p>
+
+<p>When a great personage is to be introduced, it is right, perhaps, to
+give the reader some notion of his external appearance; and when a
+memorable event is to be narrated, it is natural to help the imagination
+by some picturesque representation of the scenes with which it is
+connected. Yet, even upon such occasions, it can seldom be advisable to
+present the reader with a full inventory of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_83" id="Page_83">[Pg 83]</a></span> the hero's dress, from his
+shoebuckle to the plume in his cap, or to enumerate all the drawbridges,
+portcullisses, and diamond cut stones in the castle. Mr Scott, however,
+not only draws out almost all his pictures in these full dimensions, but
+frequently introduces those pieces of Flemish or Chinese painting to
+represent persons who are of no consequence, or places and events which
+are of no importance to the story. It would be endless to go through the
+poem for examples of this excess of minute description; we shall merely
+glance at the First Canto as a specimen. We pass the long description of
+Lord Marmion himself, with his mail of Milan steel; the blue ribbons on
+his horse's mane; and his blue velvet housings. We pass also the two
+gallant squires who ride behind him. But our patience is really
+exhausted, when we are forced to attend to the black stockings and blue
+jerkins of the inferior persons in the train, and to the whole process
+of turning out the guard with advanced arms on entering the castle.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Four men-at-arms came <i>at their backs</i>,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With halberd, bill, and battle-axe:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They bore Lord Marmion's lance so strong,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And led his sumpter mules along,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And ambling palfrey, <i>when at need</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Him listed ease his battle-steed.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The last, and trustiest of the four,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On high his forky pennon bore;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like swallow's tail, in shape and hue,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Flutter'd the streamer glossy blue,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where, blazoned sable, as before,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The towering falcon seemed to soar.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Last, twenty yeomen, two and two,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In hosen black, and jerkins blue,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With falcons broider'd on each breast,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Attended on their lord's behest.<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_84" id="Page_84">[Pg 84]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">'Tis meet that I should tell you now,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How fairly armed, and ordered how,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The soldiers of the guard,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With musquet, pike, and morion,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To welcome noble Marmion,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Stood in the Castle-yard;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Minstrels and trumpeters were there,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The gunner held his <i>linstock yare</i>,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">For welcome-shot prepared&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The guards their morrice pikes advanced,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The trumpets flourished brave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The cannon from the ramparts glanced,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And thundering welcome gave.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Two pursuivants, whom tabards deck,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With silver scutcheon round their neck,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Stood on the steps of stone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By which you reach the Donjon gate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And there, with herald pomp and state,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">They hailed Lord Marmion.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And he, their courtesy to requite,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gave them a chain of twelve marks weight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">All as he lighted down.' p. 29-32.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Sir Hugh the Heron then orders supper&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Now broach ye a pipe of Malvoisie,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bring pasties of the doe.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>&mdash;And after the repast is concluded, they have some mulled wine, and
+drink good night very ceremoniously.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Lord Marmion drank a fair good rest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Captain pledged his noble guest,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The cup went round among the rest.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In the morning, again, we are informed that they had prayers, and that
+knight and squire</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&mdash;&mdash;'broke their fast<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On rich substantial repast.'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Then came the stirrup-cup in course,' &amp;c., &amp;c.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_85" id="Page_85">[Pg 85]</a></span>And thus a whole Canto is filled up with the account of a visit and a
+supper, which lead to no consequences whatever, and are not attended
+with any circumstances which must not have occurred at every visit and
+supper among persons of the same rank at that period. Now, we are really
+at a loss to know, why the mere circumstance of a moderate antiquity
+should be supposed so far to ennoble those details, as to entitle them
+to a place in poetry, which certainly never could be claimed for a
+description of more modern adventures. Nobody, we believe, would be bold
+enough to introduce into a serious poem a description of the hussar
+boots and gold epaulets of a commander in chief, and much less to
+particularize the liveries and canes of his servants, or the order and
+array of a grand dinner, given even to the cabinet ministers. Yet these
+things are, in their own nature, fully as picturesque, and as
+interesting, as the ribbons at the mane of Lord Marmion's horse, or his
+supper and breakfast at the castle of Norham. We are glad, indeed, to
+find these little details in <i>old</i> books, whether in prose or verse,
+because they are there authentic and valuable documents of the usages
+and modes of life of our ancestors; and we are thankful when we light
+upon this sort of information in an antient romance, which commonly
+contains matter much more tedious. Even there, however, we smile at the
+simplicity which could mistake such naked enumerations for poetical
+description; and reckon them as nearly on a level, in point of taste,
+with the theological disputations that are sometimes introduced in the
+same meritorious compositions. In a <i>modern</i> romance, however, these
+details being no longer authentic, are of no value in point of
+information; and as the author has no claim to indulgence on the ground
+of simplicity, the smile which his predecessors excited is in some
+danger of being turned into a yawn. If he wishes sincerely to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_86" id="Page_86">[Pg 86]</a></span> follow
+their example, he should describe the manners of his own time, and not
+of theirs. They painted from observation, and not from study; and the
+familiarity and <i>na&iuml;vet&eacute;</i> of their delineations, transcribed with a
+slovenly and hasty hand from what they saw daily before them, is as
+remote as possible from the elaborate pictures extracted by a modern
+imitator from black-letter books, and coloured, not from the life, but
+from learned theories, or at best from mouldy monkish illuminations, and
+mutilated fragments of painted glass.</p>
+
+<p>But the times of chivalry, it may be said, were more picturesque than
+the present times. They are better adapted to poetry; and everything
+that is associated with them has a certain hold on the imagination, and
+partakes of the interest of the period. We do not mean utterly to deny
+this; nor can we stop, at present, to assign exact limits to our assent:
+but this we will venture to observe, in general, that if it be true that
+the interest which we take in the contemplation of the chivalrous era,
+arises from the dangers and virtues by which it was distinguished,&mdash;from
+the constant hazards in which its warriors passed their days, and the
+mild and generous valour with which they met those hazards,&mdash;joined to
+the singular contrast which it presented between the ceremonious polish
+and gallantry of the nobles, and the brutish ignorance of the body of
+the people:&mdash;if these are, as we conceive they are, the sources of the
+charm which still operates in behalf of the days of knightly adventure,
+then it should follow, that nothing should interest us, by association
+with that age, but what serves naturally to bring before us those
+hazards and that valour, and gallantry, and aristocratical superiority.
+Any description, or any imitation of the exploits in which those
+qualities were signalized, will do this most effectually.
+Battles,&mdash;tournaments,&mdash;penances,&mdash;deliver<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_87" id="Page_87">[Pg 87]</a></span>ance of damsels,&mdash;instalments
+of knights, &amp;c.&mdash;and, intermixed with these, we must admit some
+description of arms, armorial bearings, castles, battlements, and
+chapels: but the least and lowest of the whole certainly is the
+description of servants' liveries, and of the peaceful operations of
+eating, drinking, and ordinary salutation. These have no sensible
+connexion with the qualities or peculiarities which have conferred
+certain poetical privileges on the manners of chivalry. They do not
+enter either necessarily or naturally into our conception of what is
+interesting in those manners; and, though protected, by their
+strangeness, from the ridicule which would infallibly attach to their
+modern equivalents, are substantially as unpoetic, and as little
+entitled to indulgence from impartial criticism.</p>
+
+<p>We would extend this censure to a larger proportion of the work before
+us than we now choose to mention&mdash;certainly to all the stupid monkish
+legends about St Hilda and St Cuthbert&mdash;to the ludicrous description of
+Lord Gifford's habiliments of divination&mdash;and to all the various scraps
+and fragments of antiquarian history and baronial biography, which are
+scattered profusely through the whole narrative. These we conceive to be
+put in purely for the sake of displaying the erudition of the author;
+and poetry, which has no other recommendation, but that the substance of
+it has been gleaned from rare or obscure books, has, in our estimation,
+the least of all possible recommendations. Mr Scott's great talents, and
+the novelty of the style in which his romances are written, have made
+even these defects acceptable to a considerable part of his readers. His
+genius, seconded by the omnipotence of fashion, has brought chivalry
+again into temporary favour; but he ought to know, that this is a taste
+too evidently unnatural to be long prevalent in the mod<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_88" id="Page_88">[Pg 88]</a></span>ern world. Fine
+ladies and gentlemen now talk, indeed, of donjons, keeps, tabards,
+scutcheons, tressures, caps of maintenance, portcullisses, wimples, and
+we know not what besides; just as they did, in the days of Dr Darwin's
+popularity, of gnomes, sylphs, oxygen, gossamer, polygynia, and
+polyandria. That fashion, however, passed rapidly away; and if it be now
+evident to all the world, that Dr Darwin obstructed the extension of his
+fame, and hastened the extinction of his brilliant reputation, by the
+pedantry and ostentatious learning of his poems, Mr Scott should take
+care that a different sort of pedantry does not produce the same
+effects. The world will never be long pleased with what it does not
+readily understand; and the poetry which is destined for immortality,
+should treat only of feelings and events which can be conceived and
+entered into by readers of all descriptions.</p>
+
+<p>What we have now mentioned is the cardinal fault of the work before us;
+but it has other faults, of too great magnitude to be passed altogether
+without notice. There is a debasing lowness and vulgarity in some
+passages, which we think must be offensive to every reader of delicacy,
+and which are not, for the most part, redeemed by any vigour or
+picturesque effect. The venison pasties, we think, are of this
+description; and this commemoration of Sir Hugh Heron's troopers, who</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Have drunk the monks of St Bothan's ale,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And driven the beeves of Lauderdale;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Harried the wives of Greenlaw's goods,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And given them light to set their hoods.' p. 41.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The long account of Friar John, though not without merit, offends in the
+same sort; nor can we easily conceive, how any one could venture, in a
+serious poem, to speak of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_89" id="Page_89">[Pg 89]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&mdash;&mdash;'the wind that blows,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And <i>warms itself against his nose</i>.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The speeches of squire Blount, too, are a great deal too unpolished for
+a noble youth aspiring to knighthood. On two occasions, to specify no
+more, he addresses his brother squire in these cacophonous lines&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'<i>St Anton' fire thee!</i> wilt thou stand<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All day with bonnet in thy hand?'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'<i>Stint in thy prate</i>,' quoth Blount, '<i>thou'dst best</i>,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And listen to our Lord's behest.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Neither can we be brought to admire the simple dignity of Sir Hugh the
+Heron, who thus encourageth his nephew,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&mdash;&mdash;'<i>By my fay</i>,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Well hast thou spoke&mdash;say forth thy say.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>There are other passages in which the flatness and tediousness of the
+narrative is relieved by no sort of beauty, nor elegance of diction, and
+which form an extraordinary contrast with the more animated and finished
+portions of the poem. We shall not afflict our readers with more than
+one specimen of this falling off. We select it from the Abbess's
+explanation to De Wilton.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'De Wilton and Lord Marmion wooed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Clara de Clare, of Gloster's blood;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(Idle it were of Whitby's dame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To say of that same blood I came;)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And once, when jealous rage was high,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lord Marmion said despiteously,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wilton was traitor in his heart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And had made league with Martin Swart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When he came here on Simnel's part;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And only cowardice did restrain<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_90" id="Page_90">[Pg 90]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">His rebel aid on Stokefield's plain,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And down he threw his glove:&mdash;the thing<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was tried, as wont, before the king;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where frankly did De Wilton own,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That Swart in Guelders he had known;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And that between them then there went<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some scroll of courteous compliment.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For this he to his castle sent;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But when his messenger returned,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Judge how De Wilton's fury burned!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For in his packet there were laid<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Letters that claimed disloyal aid,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And proved King Henry's cause betrayed.' p. 272-274.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In some other places, Mr Scott's love of variety has betrayed him into
+strange imitations. This is evidently formed on the school of Sternhold
+and Hopkins.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Of all the palaces so fair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Built for the royal dwelling,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In Scotland, far beyond compare,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Linlithgow is excelling.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The following is a sort of mongrel between the same school, and the
+later one of Mr Wordsworth.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'And Bishop Gawin, as he rose,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Said&mdash;Wilton, grieve not for thy woes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Disgrace, and trouble;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For He, who honour best bestows,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">May give thee double.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>There are many other blemishes, both of taste and of diction, which we
+had marked for reprehension, but now think it unnecessary to specify;
+and which, with some of those we have mentioned, we are willing to
+ascribe to the haste in which much of the poem seems evidently to have
+been composed. Mr Scott knows too well what is due to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_91" id="Page_91">[Pg 91]</a></span> the public, to
+make any boast of the rapidity with which his works are written; but the
+dates and the extent of his successive publications show sufficiently
+how short a time could be devoted to each; and explain, though they do
+not apologize for, the many imperfections with which they have been
+suffered to appear. He who writes for immortality should not be sparing
+of time; and if it be true, that in every thing which has a principle of
+life, the period of gestation and growth bears some proportion to that
+of the whole future existence, the author now before us should tremble
+when he looks back on the miracles of his own facility.</p>
+
+<p>We have dwelt longer on the beauties and defects of this poem, than we
+are afraid will be agreeable either to the partial or the indifferent;
+not only because we look upon it as a misapplication, in some degree, of
+very extraordinary talents, but because we cannot help considering it as
+the foundation of a new school, which may hereafter occasion no little
+annoyance both to us and to the public. Mr Scott has hitherto filled the
+whole stage himself; and the very splendour of his success has probably
+operated, as yet, rather to deter, than to encourage, the herd of rivals
+and imitators: but if, by the help of the good parts of his poem, he
+succeeds in suborning the verdict of the public in favour of the bad
+parts also, and establishes an indiscriminate taste for chivalrous
+legends and romances in irregular rhime, he may depend upon having as
+many copyists as Mrs Radcliffe or Schiller, and upon becoming the
+founder of a new schism in the catholic poetical church, for which, in
+spite of all our exertions, there will probably be no cure, but in the
+extravagance of the last and lowest of its followers. It is for this
+reason that we conceive it to be our duty to make one strong effort to
+bring back the great apostle of the heresy to the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_92" id="Page_92">[Pg 92]</a></span> wholesome creed of
+his instructors, and to stop the insurrection before it becomes
+desperate and senseless, by persuading the leader to return to his duty
+and allegiance. We admire Mr Scott's genius as much as any of those who
+may be misled by its perversion; and, like the curate and the barber in
+Don Quixote, lament the day when a gentleman of such endowments was
+corrupted by the wicked tales of knight-errantry and enchantment.</p>
+
+<p>We have left ourselves no room to say any thing of the epistolary
+effusions which are prefixed to each of the cantos. They certainly are
+not among the happiest productions of Mr Scott's muse. They want
+interest in the subjects, and finish in the execution. There is too much
+of them about the personal and private feelings and affairs of the
+author; and too much of the remainder about the most trite commonplaces
+of politics and poetry. There is a good deal of spirit, however, and a
+good deal of nature intermingled. There is a fine description of St
+Mary's loch, in that prefixed to the second canto; and a very pleasing
+representation of the author's early tastes and prejudices, in that
+prefixed to the third. The last, which is about Christmas, is the worst;
+though the first, containing a threnody on Nelson, Pitt, and Fox,
+exhibits a more remarkable failure. We are unwilling to quarrel with a
+poet on the score of politics; but the manner in which he has chosen to
+praise the last of these great men, is more likely, we conceive, to give
+offence to his admirers, than the most direct censure. The only deed for
+which he is praised, is for having broken off the negotiation for peace;
+and for this act of firmness, it is added, Heaven rewarded him with a
+share in the honoured grave of Pitt! It is then said, that his errors
+should be forgotten, and that he <i>died</i> a Briton&mdash;a pretty plain
+insinuation, that, in the author's opinion, he did not live one; and
+just such an<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_93" id="Page_93">[Pg 93]</a></span> encomium as he himself pronounces over the grave of his
+villain hero Marmion. There was no need, surely, to pay compliments to
+ministers or princesses, either in the introduction or in the body of a
+romance of the 16th century. Yet we have a laboured lamentation over the
+Duke of Brunswick, in one of the epistles; and in the heart of the poem,
+a triumphant allusion to the siege of Copenhagen&mdash;the last exploit,
+certainly, of British valour, on which we should have expected a
+chivalrous poet to found his patriotic gratulations. We have no
+business, however, on this occasion, with the political creed of the
+author; and we notice these allusions to objects of temporary interest,
+chiefly as instances of bad taste, and additional proofs that the author
+does not always recollect, that a poet should address himself to more
+than one generation.&mdash;<i>The Edinburgh Review</i>.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_94" id="Page_94">[Pg 94]</a></span></p>
+<h2><span class="smcap">George Gordon, Lord Byron</span></h2>
+
+
+<p class="bigcenter"><i>Hours of Idleness: A Series of Poems, Original and Translated</i>. By
+<span class="smcap">George Gordon</span>, Lord Byron, a Minor. 8vo. pp. 200. Newark. 1807.</p>
+
+<p>The poesy of this young lord belongs to the class which neither gods nor
+men are said to permit. Indeed, we do not recollect to have seen a
+quantity of verse with so few deviations in either direction from that
+exact standard. His effusions are spread over a dead flat, and can no
+more get above or below the level, than if they were so much stagnant
+water. As an extenuation of this offence, the noble author is peculiarly
+forward in pleading minority. We have it in the title-page, and on the
+very back of the volume; it follows his name like a favourite part of
+his <i>style</i>. Much stress is laid upon it in the preface, and the poems
+are connected with this general statement of his case, by particular
+dates, substantiating the age at which each was written. Now, the law
+upon the point of minority, we hold to be perfectly clear. It is a plea
+available only to the defendant; no plaintiff can offer it as a
+supplementary ground of action. Thus, if any suit could be brought
+against Lord Byron, for the purpose of compelling him to put into court
+a certain quantity of poetry; and if judgment were given against him; it
+is highly probable that an exception would be taken, were he to deliver
+<i>for poetry</i>, the contents of this volume. To this he might plead
+<i>minority</i>; but as he now makes voluntary tender of the article, he hath
+no right to sue, on that ground, for the price in good current praise,
+should the goods be unmarketable. This is our view of the law on the
+point, and, we dare to say, so will it be ruled. Perhaps, how<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_95" id="Page_95">[Pg 95]</a></span>ever, in
+reality, all that he tells us about his youth, is rather with a view to
+increase our wonder, than to soften our censures. He possibly means to
+say, 'See how a minor can write! This poem was actually composed by a
+young man of eighteen, and this by one of only sixteen!'&mdash;But, alas, we
+all remember the poetry of Cowley at ten, and Pope at twelve; and so far
+from hearing, with any degree of surprise, that very poor verses were
+written by a youth from his leaving school to his leaving college,
+inclusive, we really believe this to be the most common of all
+occurrences; that it happens in the life of nine men in ten who are
+educated in England; and that the tenth man writes better verse than
+Lord Byron.</p>
+
+<p>His other plea of privilege, our author rather brings forward in order
+to wa[i]ve it. He certainly, however, does allude frequently to his
+family and ancestors&mdash;sometimes in poetry, sometimes in notes; and while
+giving up his claim on the score of rank, he takes care to remember us
+of Dr Johnson's saying, that when a nobleman appears as an author, his
+merit should be handsomely acknowledged. In truth, it is this
+consideration only, that induces us to give Lord Byron's poems a place
+in our review, beside our desire to counsel him, that he do forthwith
+abandon poetry, and turn his talents, which are considerable, and his
+opportunities, which are great, to better account.</p>
+
+<p>With this view, we must beg leave seriously to assure him, that the mere
+rhyming of the final syllable, even when accompanied by the presence of
+a certain number of feet,&mdash;nay, although (which does not always happen)
+those feet should scan regularly, and have been all counted accurately
+upon the fingers,&mdash;is not the whole art of poetry. We would entreat him
+to believe, that a certain portion of liveliness, somewhat of fancy, is
+necessary to constitute a poem; and that a poem in the present day, to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_96" id="Page_96">[Pg 96]</a></span>
+be read, must contain at least one thought, either in a little degree
+different from the ideas of former writers, or differently expressed. We
+put it to his candour, whether there is any thing so deserving the name
+of poetry in verses like the following, written in 1806, and whether, if
+a youth of eighteen could say any thing so uninteresting to his
+ancestors, a youth of nineteen should publish it.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Shades of heroes, farewell! your descendant, departing<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">From the seat of his ancestors, bids you, adieu!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Abroad, or at home, your remembrance imparting<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">New courage, he'll think upon glory, and you.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Though a tear dim his eye, at this sad separation,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">'Tis nature, not fear, that excites his regret:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Far distant he goes, with the same emulation;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The fame of his fathers he ne'er can forget.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">That fame, and that memory, still will he cherish,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">He vows, that he ne'er will disgrace your renown;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like you will he live, or like you will he perish;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">When decay'd, may he mingle his dust with your own.' p. 3.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Now we positively do assert, that there is nothing better than these
+stanzas in the whole compass of the noble minor's volume.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Byron should also have a care of attempting what the greatest poets
+have done before him, for comparisons (as he must have had occasion to
+see at his writing-master's) are odious.&mdash;Gray's Ode on Eton College,
+should really have kept out the ten hobbling stanzas 'on a distant view
+of the village and school of Harrow.'</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Where fancy, yet, joys to retrace the resemblance,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of comrades, in friendship and mischief allied;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How welcome to me, your ne'er fading remembrance,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Which rests in the bosom, though hope is deny'd.' p. 4.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_97" id="Page_97">[Pg 97]</a></span>In like manner the exquisite lines of Mr Rogers, '<i>On a Tear</i>,' might
+have warned the noble author off those premises, and spared us a whole
+dozen such stanzas as the following.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">'Mild Charity's glow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">To us mortals below,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shows the soul from barbarity clear;<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Compassion will melt,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Where this virtue is felt,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And its dew is diffus'd in a Tear.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">The man doom'd to sail,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">With the blast of the gale,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through billows Atlantic to steer,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">As he bends o'er the wave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i4">Which may soon be his grave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The green sparkles bright with a Tear.' p. 11.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And so of instances in which former poets had failed. Thus, we do not
+think Lord Byron was made for translating, during his non-age, Adrian's
+Address to his Soul, when Pope succeeded so indifferently in the
+attempt. If our readers, however, are of another opinion, they may look
+at it.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Ah! gentle, fleeting, wav'ring sprite,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Friend and associate of this clay!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To what unknown region borne,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wilt thou now wing thy distant flight?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No more, with wonted humour gay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But pallid, cheerless, and forlorn.' p. 72.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>However, be this as it may, we fear his translations and imitations are
+great favourites with Lord Byron. We have them of all kinds, from
+Anacreon to Ossian; and, viewing them as school exercises, they may
+pass. Only, why print them after they have had their day and served
+their turn? And why call the thing in p. 79 a translation,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_98" id="Page_98">[Pg 98]</a></span> where <i>two</i>
+words (&#952;&#949;&#955;&#959; &#955;&#949;&#947;&#949;&#953;&#957;) of the original are expanded into four
+lines, and the other thing in p. 81, where &#956;&#949;&#963;&#959;&#957;&#965;&#967;&#964;&#953;&#959;&#953;&#962; &#960;&#959;&#952;' &#8001; &#961;&#945;&#953;&#962;,
+is rendered by means of six hobbling verses?&mdash;As to his
+Ossianic poesy, we are not very good judges, being, in truth, so
+moderately skilled in that species of composition, that we should, in
+all probability be criticizing some bit of the genuine Macpherson
+itself, were we to express our opinion of Lord Byron's rhapsodies. <i>If</i>,
+then, the following beginning of a 'Song of bards,' is by his Lordship,
+we venture to object to it, as far as we can comprehend it. 'What form
+rises on the roar of clouds, whose dark ghost gleams on the red stream
+of tempests? His voice rolls on the thunder; 'tis Orla, the brown chief
+of Otihoma. He was,' &amp;c. After detaining this 'brown chief' some time,
+the bards conclude by giving him their advice to 'raise his fair locks;'
+then to 'spread them on the arch of the rainbow;' and 'to smile through
+the tears of the storm.' Of this kind of thing there are no less than
+<i>nine</i> pages; and we can so far venture an opinion in their favour, that
+they look very like Macpherson; and we are positive they are pretty
+nearly as stupid and tiresome.</p>
+
+<p>It is a sort of privilege of poets to be egotists; but they should 'use
+it as not abusing it;' and particularly one who piques himself (though
+indeed at the ripe age of nineteen), of being 'an infant bard,'&mdash;('The
+artless Helicon I boast is youth;')&mdash;should either not know, or should
+seem not to know, so much about his own ancestry. Besides a poem above
+cited on the family seat of the Byrons, we have another of eleven pages,
+on the self-same subject, introduced with an apology, 'he certainly had
+no intention of inserting it;' but really, 'the particular request of
+some friends,' &amp;c., &amp;c. It concludes with five stanzas on himself, 'the
+last and youngest of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_99" id="Page_99">[Pg 99]</a></span> a noble line.' There is a good deal also about his
+maternal ancestors, in a poem on Lachin-y-gair, a mountain where he
+spent part of his youth, and might have learned that <i>pibroch</i> is not a
+bagpipe, any more than duet means a fiddle.</p>
+
+<p>As the author has dedicated so large a part of his volume to immortalize
+his employments at school and college, we cannot possibly dismiss it
+without presenting the reader with a specimen of these ingenious
+effusions. In an ode with a Greek motto, called Granta, we have the
+following magnificent stanzas.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'There, in apartments small and damp,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The candidate for college prizes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sits poring by the midnight lamp,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Goes late to bed, yet early rises.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Who reads false quantities in Sele,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Or puzzles o'er the deep triangle;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Depriv'd of many a wholesome meal,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In barbarous Latin doom'd to wrangle.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Renouncing every pleasing page,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">From authors of historic use;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Preferring to the lettered sage,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The square of the hypothenuse.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Still harmless are these occupations,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">That hurt none but the hapless student,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Compar'd with other recreations<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Which bring together the imprudent.' p. 123, 124, 125.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>We are sorry to hear so bad an account of the college psalmody as is
+contained in the following Attic stanzas.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Our choir would scarcely be excus'd.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Even as a band of new beginners;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All mercy, now, must be refus'd<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To such a set of croaking sinners.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_100" id="Page_100">[Pg 100]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">If David, when his toils were ended,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Had heard these blockheads sing before him<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To us, his psalms had ne'er descended,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In furious mood, he would have tore 'em.' p. 126, 127.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But whatever judgment may be passed on the poems of this noble minor, it
+seems we must take them as we find them, and be content; for they are
+the last we shall ever have from him. He is at best, he says, but an
+intruder into the groves of Parnassus; he never lived in a garret, like
+thorough-bred poets; and 'though he once roved a careless mountaineer in
+the Highlands of Scotland,' he has not of late enjoyed this advantage.
+Moreover, he expects no profit from his publication; and whether it
+succeeds or not 'it is highly improbable, from his situation and
+pursuits hereafter,' that he should again condescend to become an
+author. Therefore, let us take what we get and be thankful. What right
+have we poor devils to be nice? We are well off to have got so much from
+a man of this Lord's station, who does not live in a garret, but 'has
+the sway' of Newstead Abbey. Again we say, let us be thankful; and, with
+honest Sancho, bid God bless the giver, nor look the gift horse in the
+mouth.&mdash;<i>The Edinburgh Review</i>.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 35%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_101" id="Page_101">[Pg 101]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="bigcenter"><i>Childe Harolde's Pilgrimage. A Romaunt</i>. <i>By</i> <span class="smcap">Lord Byron</span>. The Second
+Edition. London: Murray, Fleet Street. 1812. 8vo. pp. 300. Price 12s.</p>
+
+<p>If the object of poetry is to instruct by pleasing, then every poetical
+effort has a double claim upon the attention of the Christian observer.
+For we are anxious that the world should be instructed at all rates, and
+that they should be pleased where they innocently may. We are,
+therefore, by no means among those spectators who view the occasional
+ascent of a poetic luminary upon the horizon of literature, as a
+meteoric flash which has no relation to ourselves; but we feel instantly
+an eager desire to find its altitude, to take its bearings, to trace its
+course, and to calculate its influence upon surrounding bodies. When
+especially it is no more an "oaten reed" that is blown; or a "simple
+shepherd" who blows it; but when the song involves many high and solemn
+feelings, and a man of rank and notoriety strikes his golden harp, we
+feel, at once, that the increased influence of the song demands the more
+rigid scrutiny of the critic.</p>
+
+<p>Lord Byron is the author, beside the book before us, of a small volume
+of poems, which gave little promise, we think, of the present work; and
+of a satyrical poem, which, as far as temper is concerned, did give some
+promise of it. It had pleased more than one critic to treat his
+Lordship's first work in no very courtier-like manner; and especially
+the Lion of the north had let him feel the lashing of his angry tail.
+Not of a temperament to bear calmly even a "look that threatened him
+with insult," his Lordship seized the tomahawk of satire, mounted the
+fiery wings of his muse, and, like Bonaparte, spared neither rank, nor<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_102" id="Page_102">[Pg 102]</a></span>
+sex, nor age, but converted the republic of letters into one universal
+field of carnage. The volume called English Bards and Scotch Reviewers
+is, in short, to be considered, among other works, as one of those
+playful vessels which are said to have accompanied the Spanish armada,
+manned by executioners, and loaded with nothing but instruments of
+torture.</p>
+
+<p>This second work was of too sanguinary a complexion to beget a very
+pleasant impression upon the public mind; and all men, who wished well
+to peace, politeness and literature, joined in the p&aelig;an sung by the
+immediate victims of his Lordship's wrath, when he embarked to soften
+his manners, and, as it were, oil his tempers, amidst the gentler
+spirits of more southern climes. Travelling, indeed, through any climes,
+may be expected to exert this mitigating influence upon the mind. Nature
+is so truly gentle, or, to speak more justly, the God of nature displays
+so expansive a benevolence in all his works; so prodigally sheds his
+blessings "upon the evil and the good;" builds up so many exquisite
+fabrics to delight the eyes of his creatures; tinges the flowers with
+such colours, and fills the grove with such music; that anyone who
+becomes familiar with nature, can scarcely remain angry with man. With
+what mitigating touches the scenery of Europe has visited our author,
+remains to be seen. That he did not disarm it of its force by regarding
+it with a cold or contemptuous eye, he himself teaches us&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Dear Nature is the kindest mother still,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though always changing in her aspect mild;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From her bare bosom let me take my fill,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her never-weaned, though not her favoured child.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O she is fairest in her features wild,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where nothing polished dares pollute her path;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To me by day or night she ever smiled,<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_103" id="Page_103">[Pg 103]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Though I have marked her when none other hath,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And sought her more and more, and loved her most in wrath." p. 79.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Our author having re-landed upon his native shores, his first deed is to
+present to his country the work before us, as the fruits of his travels.
+It is a kind of poetical journal of journeys and voyages through Spain
+and Portugal, along the shores of the Mediterranean and Archipelago, and
+through the states of ancient Greece. When we speak of journal, we mean
+rather to designate the topics of the work than the manner of its
+execution; for it is highly poetical. Most contrary to the spirit of
+those less fanciful records, his Lordship sublimely discards all facts
+and histories; all incidents; A.M. and P.M.; and bad inns and worse
+winds; and battles and feasts. Seizing merely upon the picturesque
+features in every object and event before him, he paints and records
+them with such reflections, moral or immoral, as arise in his ardent
+mind.</p>
+
+<p>The "Childe Harolde" is the traveller; and as he is a mighty surly
+fellow, neither loves nor is loved by any one; "through sin's long
+labyrinth had run, nor made atonement when he did amiss;" as, moreover,
+he is licentious and sceptical; Lord Byron very naturally, and
+creditably to himself, sets out in his Preface with disclaiming any
+connection with this imaginary personage. It is somewhat singular,
+however, that most of the offensive reflections in the poem are made,
+not by the "Childe," but the poet.</p>
+
+<p>[Here follows a summary of the two cantos, with extensive quotations.]</p>
+
+<p>Having by these extracts endeavoured to put our readers in possession of
+some of the finest parts of this poem,<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_104" id="Page_104">[Pg 104]</a></span> and also of those passages which
+determine its moral complexion, we shall proceed to offer a few remarks
+upon its character and pretensions in both points of view.</p>
+
+<p>The poem is in the stanza of Spenser&mdash;a stanza of which we think it
+difficult to say whether the excellencies or defects are the greatest.
+The paramount advantage is the variety of tone and pause of which it
+admits. The great disadvantages are, the constraint of such complicated
+rhymes, and the long suspension of the sense, especially in the latter
+half of the stanza. The noblest conception and most brilliant diction
+must be sacrificed, if four words in one place, and three in another
+cannot be found rhyming to each other. And as to the suspension of the
+sense, we are persuaded that no man reads a single stanza without
+feeling a sort of strain upon the intellect and lungs&mdash;a kind of
+suffocation of mind and body, before he can either discover the
+lingering meaning, or pronounce the nine lines. To us, we confess that
+the rhyming couplets of Mr. Scott, sometimes deviating into alternate
+rhymes, are, on both accounts, infinitely preferable. One of the ends of
+poetry is to relax, and the artificial and elaborate stanza of Spenser
+costs us too much trouble, even in the reading, to accomplish this end.
+To effect this, the sense should come to us, instead of our going far
+and wide in quest of the sense. In our conception also, the heroic line
+of ten syllables, though favourable to the most dignified order of
+poetry, appears to limp when forced into the service of sonneteers: and
+poems in the metre before us, are, after all, little better than a
+string of sonnets; of which it is the constituent principle to be rather
+pretty than grand&mdash;rather tender than martial&mdash;rather conceited than
+wise&mdash;to keep the sense suspended for eight lines, and to discharge it
+with a point in the ninth. These observations are by no means designed
+to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_105" id="Page_105">[Pg 105]</a></span> apply especially to the author&mdash;the extreme gravity of whose general
+manner and matter, in a measure covet the dignity of the heroic line.
+But it is this discordancy of measure and subject, together with the
+obviously laboured rhymes and the halting of the sense, which in
+general, we think, have shut out the Spenserian school from popular
+reading, and have caused a distinguished critic<a name="FNanchor_J_10" id="FNanchor_J_10"></a><a href="#Footnote_J_10" class="fnanchor">[J]</a> to say, that the
+"Faiery Queen will not often be read through;" and that, although it
+maintains its place upon the shelf, it is seldom found on the table of
+the modern library.</p>
+
+<p>Whilst, however, Lord Byron participates in this defect of his great
+original, he is to be congratulated, as a poet, but alas! in his
+poetical character alone, on much happy deviation from him. In the first
+place, he has altogether washed his hands of allegory; a species of
+fiction open to a thousand objections. In the next place, he is
+infinitely more brief than his prototype. And in the third place, he
+philosophizes and moralizes (though not indeed in a very sound strain),
+as well as paints&mdash;provides food for the mind as well as the
+eye&mdash;kindles the feeling as well as gratifies the sense. Thus far, then,
+we are among the admirers of his Lordship. But it is to be lamented,
+that what was well conceived is, from the temperament of his mind, ill
+executed; that his philosophy is, strictly speaking, "only philosophy so
+called;" that the moral emotions he feels, and is likely to communicate,
+are of a character rather to offend and pollute the mind, than to sooth
+or to improve it. This defect, however, we fear, is to be charged, not
+upon the poet, but upon the man, at least upon his principles. But,
+whatever be the cause, the consequences are dreadful. Indeed, we do not
+hesitate to say, that the temperament of his mind is the ruin of his
+poem. We shall take the liberty, as we have intimated, of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_106" id="Page_106">[Pg 106]</a></span> touching upon
+these defects as moral delinquincies, under another head; but for the
+present we wish to notice them merely as poetical errors.</p>
+
+<p>The legitimate object, then, of poetry, as we have said, is to
+<i>instruct</i> by <i>pleasing</i>; and, c&aelig;teris paribus, that poem is the best
+which conveys the noblest lessons in the most attractive form. If, in
+reply to this, it is urged that the heathen poets, and especially Homer,
+taught no lesson to his readers; we answer, that he taught all the
+lessons which, in his own days, were deemed of highest importance to his
+country. The first object of philosophers and other teachers, in those
+days, was to make good soldiers, and therefore to condemn the vices
+which interfered with successful warfare. Now be it remembered, that the
+grand topic of the Iliad is the fatal influence of the wrath of kings on
+the success of armies. Its first words are &#924;&#919;&#925;&#921;&#925; &#945;&#949;&#953;&#948;&#949;. Besides
+this, the Iliad upholds the national mythology, or the only accredited
+religion; and by a bold fiction, bordering upon truth, displays in an
+Elysium and Tartarus, the eternal mansions of the good and bad, the
+strongest incentive to virtue and penalty to vice. Indeed, that both
+this and the Odyssey had a moral object, and that this object was
+recognized by the ancients, may be inferred from Horace, who says of
+Homer, in reference to the first poem:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Qui, quid sit pulchrum, quid turpe, quid utile, quid non,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Plenius ac melius Chrysippo aut Crantore dicit."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And as to the second:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Rursum&mdash;quid virtus, et quid sapientia possit,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Utile proposuit nobis exemplar Ulyssem." Epist. I. 2.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Many of the Odes of Horace had a patriotic subject&mdash;his Epistles and
+Satires, with those of Juvenal and Per<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_107" id="Page_107">[Pg 107]</a></span>sius, were the sermons of the
+day. Virgil chiefly proposed to himself to exalt in his hero the
+character of a patriot, and, in his fictitious history, the dignity of
+his country. If the lessons they taught were of small importance or
+doubtful value, or if they often forget to "teach" in their ambition to
+"please," this is to be charged rather on the age than on the poet. They
+taught the best lessons they knew; and were satisfied to please only
+when they had nothing better to do. In modern times, it will not be
+questioned that the greatest poets have ever endeavoured to enshrine
+some moral or intellectual object in their verse. Milton calls Spenser
+"our sage serious Spenser, whom I dare be known to think a better
+teacher than Scotus or Aquinas." In like manner, the Absalom and
+Achitophel, the Hind and Panther of Dryden, the philosophic strain of
+Pope, the immortal page of Milton, and the half-inspired numbers of the
+Task, are all, in their various ways, attempts of poets to improve or
+reform the world. Every species of poetry, indeed, has received fresh
+lustre, and even taken a new place in Parnassian dignity, by a larger
+infusion of moral sentiment into its numbers. The ancient ballad has
+arisen to new dignity through the moral touches, we wish they had been
+less rare, of a Scott; and the stanza of Spenser has acquired new
+interest in the hands of Lord Byron, from the philosophical air which it
+wears. Numbers without morals are the man without "the glory." We
+sincerely wish that the moral tone of his Lordship's poem had been less
+liable to exception.</p>
+
+<p>His Lordship, we believe, is acquainted with ancient authors. Let him
+turn to Quinctilian, and he will find a whole chapter to prove that a
+great writer must be a good man. Let him go to Longinus, and he will
+read that a man who would write sublimely, "must spare no labour<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_108" id="Page_108">[Pg 108]</a></span> to
+educate his soul to grandeur, and impregnate it with great and generous
+ideas"&mdash;that "the faculties of the soul will then grow stupid, their
+spirit will be lost, and good sense and genius lie in ruins, when the
+care and study of man is engaged about the mortal, the worthless part of
+himself, and he has ceased to cultivate virtue, and polish his nobler
+part, his soul." Or, if poetical authority alone will satisfy a poet,
+let him learn from one of the finest of our modern poems:</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"But of our souls the high-born loftier part,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Th' ethereal energies that touch the heart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Conceptions ardent, laboring thought intense,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Creative fancy's wild magnificence,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all the dread sublimities of song:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">These, Virtue, these to thee alone belong:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Chill'd, by the breath of vice, their radiance dies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And brightest burns when lighted at the skies:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like vestal flames to purest bosoms given,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And kindled only by a ray from heaven."<a name="FNanchor_K_11" id="FNanchor_K_11"></a><a href="#Footnote_K_11" class="fnanchor">[K]</a><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>That the object of poetry, however, is not simply to instruct, but to
+"instruct by <i>pleasing</i>," is too obvious to need a proof. However the
+original object of measure and rhythm may have been to graft truth on
+the memory, and associate it with music; they are perpetuated by the
+universal conviction that they delight the ear. Like the armour which
+adorns the modern hall, they were contrived for use, but are continued
+for ornament.</p>
+
+<p>Assuming this, then, to be a just definition of poetry, we repeat our
+assertion, that, in the work before us, the temperament of mind in the
+poet creates the grand defect of the poetry. If poetry should instruct,
+then he is a defective poet whose lessons rather revolt than improve the
+mind. If poetry should please, then he is a bad poet<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_109" id="Page_109">[Pg 109]</a></span> who offends the
+eye by calling up the most hideous images&mdash;who shews the world through a
+discoloured medium&mdash;who warms the heart by no generous feelings&mdash;who
+uniformly turns to us the worst side of men and things&mdash;who goes on his
+way grumbling, and labours hard to make his readers as peevish and
+wretched as himself. The tendency of the strain of Homer is to transform
+us for the moment into heroes; of Cowper, into saints; of Milton, into
+angels: but Lord Byron would almost degrade us into a Thersites or a
+Caliban; or lodge us, as fellow-grumblers, in the style of Diogenes, or
+any of his two or four-footed snarling or moody posterity. Now his
+Lordship, we trust, is accessible upon much higher grounds; but he will
+perceive that mere regard for his poetical reputation ought to induce
+him to change his manner. If, as Longinus instructs us, a man must feel
+sublimely to write sublimely, a poet must find pleasure in the objects
+of nature before him, if he hope to give pleasure to others. Let him
+remember, that not merely his conceptions, but his mind and character
+are to be imparted to us in his verse. He will, in a measure, "stamp an
+image of himself!" The fire with which we are to glow must issue from
+him. Till this change take place in him, then, he can be no great poet.
+It is Heraclitus who mourns in his pages, or Zeno who scolds, or Zoilus
+who lashes; but we look in vain for the poet, for the living fountain of
+our innocent pleasures, for the artificer of our literary delight, for
+the hand which, as by enchantment, snatches us from the little cares of
+life, whirls us into the boundless regions of imagination, "exhausting"
+one "world," and imagining others, to supply pictures which may refresh
+and charm the mind.<a name="FNanchor_L_12" id="FNanchor_L_12"></a><a href="#Footnote_L_12" class="fnanchor">[L]</a><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_110" id="Page_110">[Pg 110]</a></span> Lord Byron shews us man and nature, like the
+phantasmagoria, <i>in shade</i>; whereas, in poetry at least, we desire to
+see them illuminated by all the friendly rays which a benevolent
+imagination can impart.</p>
+
+<p>We have hitherto confined ourselves to an examination of the influence
+of the principles and temper of this work upon its literary pretensions;
+but his Lordship will forgive us if we now put off the mere critic for a
+moment, and address him in that graver character which we assume to
+ourselves in the title of our work. In truth, we are deeply affected by
+the spectacle his poem presents to us. As the minor poems at the
+conclusion of the work breathe the same spirit, suggest the same doubts,
+and employ the same language with the "Childe Harold" we are compelled
+to recognise the author in the hero whom he has painted. In fact, the
+disclaimer, already noticed in the Preface, seems merely like one of
+those veils worn to draw attention to the face rather than to baffle it:
+and in the work before us we are forced to recognise a character, which,
+since Rousseau gave his Confessions to the public, has scarcely ever, we
+think, darkened the horizon of letters. The reader of the "Confessions"
+is dismayed to find a man frankly avowing the most disgraceful vices;
+abandoning them, not upon principle, but merely because they have ceased
+to gratify; prepared to return to them if they promise to reward him
+better; without natural affection, neither loving, nor beloved by any;
+without peace, without hope, "without God in the world." When we search
+into the mysterious cause of this autobiographical phenomenon, we at
+once discover that Rousseau's immeasurable vanity betrayed him into a
+belief, that even his vices would vanish in the blaze of his
+excellencies; and that the world would worship him, as idolaters do
+their mishapen gods, in spite of their ugliness. The confes<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_111" id="Page_111">[Pg 111]</a></span>sions of
+Lord Byron, we regret to say, bear something of an analogy to those of
+the philosopher of Geneva. Are they, then, to be traced to the <i>same
+source</i>? He plainly is far from indifferent to the opinion of
+by-standers: can he, then, conceive that this peep into the window of
+his breast must not revolt every virtuous eye? Can he boldly proclaim
+his violations of decency and of sobriety; his common contempt for all
+modifications of religion; his monstrous belief in the universal rest or
+annihilation of man in a future state; and forget that he is one of
+those who</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Play such tricks before high heaven,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As make the angels weep;"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>as offend against all moral taste; as attempt to shake the very pillars
+of domestic happiness and of public security?</p>
+
+<p>It is, however, a matter of congratulation, that his Lordship, in common
+with the republican Confessor, has not revealed his creed without very
+honestly displaying the influence of this creed upon his own mind. We
+should not, indeed, have credited a man of his sentiments, had he
+assured us he was happy: happiness takes no root in such soils. But it
+is still better to have his own testimony to the unmixed misery of
+licentiousness and unbelief. It is almost comforting to be told, if we
+dared to draw comfort out of the well of another man's miseries, that</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Though gay companions o'er the bowl<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Dispel awhile the sense of ill;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Though pleasure fires the maddening soul,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The heart&mdash;the heart is lonely still."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It is consolatory also to contrast the peace and triumph of the dying
+Christian, with the awful uncertainty, or rather the sullen despair,
+which breathe in these verses.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_112" id="Page_112">[Pg 112]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"'Aye&mdash;but to die and go'&mdash;alas,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Where all have gone, and all must go;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To be the nothing that I was,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Ere born to life and living woe.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Count o'er the joys thine hours have seen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Count o'er thy days from anguish free;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And know, whatever thou hast been,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">'Tis something better not to be."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Nor can religion be more powerfully recommended than by the following
+avowal of an apostle of the opposite system.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"No, for myself, so dark my fate<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Through every turn of life has been,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Man and the world I so much hate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I care not when I quit the scene."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But whilst, for the benefit of others, we thus avail ourselves of the
+antidote supplied by his Lordship to his own poison, we would wish also
+that he might feel the efficacy of it himself. Could we hope that so
+humble a work as this would reach the lofty sphere in which he moves, we
+would solemnly say to him: "You are wretched, but will nothing make you
+happy? You hate all men; will nothing warm you with new feelings? You
+are (as you say) hated by all; will nothing make you an object of
+affection? Suppose yourself the victim of some disease, which resisted
+many ordinary applications; but that all who used one medicine uniformly
+pronounced themselves cured:&mdash;would it be worthy of a philosopher not
+merely to neglect the remedy, but to traduce it? Such, however, my Lord,
+is the fatuity of your own conduct as to the religion of Christ.
+Thousands, as wretched as yourself, have found 'a Comforter' in Him;
+thousands, having stepped into these waters, have been healed of their
+disease; thousands, touching the hem of His garment, have found 'virtue
+go<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_113" id="Page_113">[Pg 113]</a></span> out of it.' Beggared then of every other resource, try this.
+'Acquaint yourself with God, and be at peace.'" His Lordship may
+designate this language by that expressive monosyllable, cant; and may
+possibly, before long, hunt us down, as a sort of mad March hare, with
+the blood-hounds of his angry muse. But we hope better things of him. We
+assure him, that, whatever may be true of others, we do not "hate him."
+As Christians, even he who professes to be unchristian is dear to us. We
+regard the waste of his fine talents, and the laboured suppression and
+apparent extinction of his better feelings, with the deepest
+commiseration and sorrow. We long to see him escape from the black cloud
+which, by what may fairly be called his "black art," he has conjured up
+around himself. We hope to know him as a future buttress of his shaken
+country, and as a friend of his yet "unknown God." Should this change,
+by the mercy of God, take place, what pangs would many passages of his
+present work cost him! Happy should we be, could we persuade him, in the
+bare anticipation of such a change, even now to contrive for his future
+happiness, by expunging sentiments that would then so much embitter it.
+Should he never change; yet, such an act would prove, that, at least, he
+meditated no cruel invasion upon the joys of others. Even Rousseau
+taught his child religion, as a delusion essential to happiness. The
+philosophic Tully also, if a belief in futurity were an error, deemed it
+one with which it was impossible to part. Let the author then, at all
+events, leave us in unmolested possession of our supposed privileges.
+<i>He</i> plainly knows no noble or "royal way" to happiness. <i>We</i> find in
+religion a bark that rides the waves in every storm; a sun that never
+goes down; a living fountain of waters. Religion is suffered to change
+its aspect and influence according to the eye<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_114" id="Page_114">[Pg 114]</a></span> and faith of the
+examiner. Like one side of the pillar of the wilderness, it may merely
+darken and perplex his Lordship's path: to millions it is like the
+opposite side of that pillar to the Israelites, the symbol of Deity; the
+pillar of hallowed flame, which lights and guides, and cheers them as
+they toil onward through the pilgrimage of life. Could we hear any voice
+proclaim of him, as of one reclaimed from as inveterate, though more
+honest, prejudices, "behold, he prayeth;" we should hope that here also
+the scales would drop from the eyes, and his Lordship become an eloquent
+defender and promulgator of the religion which he now scorns.&mdash;<i>The
+Christian Observer</i>.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_115" id="Page_115">[Pg 115]</a></span></p>
+<h2><span class="smcap">Percy Bysshe Shelley</span></h2>
+
+
+<p class="bigcenter"><i>Alastor</i>; or, The Spirit of Solitude; and other Poems. By Percy Bysshe
+Shelley. Crown 8vo. pp. 101. Baldwin, and Co. 1816.</p>
+
+<p>We must candidly own that these poems are beyond our comprehension; and
+we did not obtain a clue to their sublime obscurity, till an address to
+Mr. Wordsworth explained in what school the author had formed his taste.
+We perceive, through the "darkness visible" in which Mr. Shelley veils
+his subject, some beautiful imagery and poetical expressions: but he
+appears to be a poet "whose eye, in a fine phrenzy rolling," seeks only
+such objects as are "above this visible diurnal sphere;" and therefore
+we entreat him, for the sake of his reviewers as well as of his other
+readers, (if he has any,) to subjoin to his next publication an <i>ordo</i>,
+a glossary, and copious notes, illustrative of his allusions and
+explanatory of his meaning.&mdash;<i>The Monthly Review</i>.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 35%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_116" id="Page_116">[Pg 116]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="bigcenter"><i>The Cenci. A Tragedy, in Five Acts</i>. By <span class="smcap">Percy Bysshe Shell[e]y</span>. Italy.
+1819. pp. 104.</p>
+
+<p>There has lately arisen a new-fangled style of poetry, facetiously
+yclept the Cockney School, that it would really be worth any one's while
+to enter as a candidate. The qualifications are so easy, that he need
+never doubt the chance of his success, for he has only to knock, and it
+shall be opened unto him. The principal requisites for admission, in a
+literary point of view, are as follows. First, an inordinate share of
+affectation and conceit, with a few occasional good things sprinkled,
+like green spots of verdure in a wilderness, with a "parc&acirc; quod satis
+est manu." Secondly, a prodigious quantity of assurance, that neither
+God nor man can daunt, founded on the honest principle of "who is like
+unto me?" and lastly, a contempt for all institutions, moral and divine,
+with secret yearnings for aught that is degrading to human nature, or
+revolting to decency. These qualifications ensured, a regular initiation
+into the Cockney mysteries follows as a matter of course, and the novice
+enlists himself under their banners, proud of his newly-acquired honors,
+and starched up to the very throat in all the prim stiffness of his
+intellect. A few symptoms of this literary malady appeared as early as
+the year 1795, but it then assumed the guise of simplicity and pathos.
+It was a poetical Lord Fanny. It wept its pretty self to death by
+murmuring brooks, and rippling cascades, it heaved delicious sighs over
+sentimental lambs, and love-lorn sheep, apostrophized donkies in the
+innocence of prim&aelig;val nature; sung tender songs to tender nightingales;
+went to bed without a candle, that it might gaze on the chubby faces of
+the stars;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_117" id="Page_117">[Pg 117]</a></span> discoursed sweet nothings to all who would listen to its
+nonsense; and displayed (<i>horrendum dictu</i>) the acute profundity of its
+grief in ponderous folios and spiral duodecimos. The literary world,
+little suspecting the dangerous consequences of this distressing malady,
+suffered it to germinate in silence; and not until they became
+thoroughly convinced that the disorder was of an epidemical nature, did
+they start from their long continued lethargy. But it was then too late!
+The evil was incurable; it branched out into the most vigorous
+ramifications, and following the scriptural admonition, "Increase and
+multiply," disseminated its poetry and its prose throughout a great part
+of England. As a dog, when once completely mad, is never satisfied until
+he has bitten half a dozen more, so the Cockney professors, in laudable
+zeal for the propagation of their creed, were never at rest until they
+had spread their own doctrines around them. They stood on the house tops
+and preached, 'till of a verity they were black in the face with the
+heating quality of their arguments; they stationed themselves by the bye
+roads and hedges, to discuss the beauties of the country; they looked
+out from their garrett [<i>sic</i>] windows in Grub-street, and exclaimed,
+"<i>O! rus, quando ego te aspiciam</i>;" and gave such afflicting tokens of
+insanity, that the different reviewers and satirists of the day kindly
+laced them in the strait jackets of their criticism. "But all this
+availeth <i>us</i> nothing," exclaimed the critics, "so long as <i>we</i> see
+Mordecai the Jew sitting at the gate of the Temple; that is to say, as
+long as there is one Cockney pericranium left unscalped by the tomahawks
+of our satire." But notwithstanding the strenuous exertions of all those
+whose brains have not been cast in the mould of this new species of
+intellectual dandyism, the evil has been daily and even hourly
+increasing; and so prodigious is the progressive<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_118" id="Page_118">[Pg 118]</a></span> ratio of its march,
+that the <i>worthy</i> Society for the Suppression of Vice should be called
+upon to eradicate it. It now no longer masks its real intentions under
+affected purity of sentiment; its countenance has recently acquired a
+considerable addition of brass, the glitter of which has often been
+mistaken for sterling coin, and incest, adultery, murder, blasphemy, are
+among other favorite topics of its discussion. It seems to delight in an
+utter perversion of all moral, intellectual, and religious qualities. It
+gluts over the monstrous deformities of nature; finds gratification in
+proportion to the magnitude of the crime it extolls; and sees no virtue
+but in vice; no sin, but in true feeling. Like poor Tom, in Lear, whom
+the foul fiend has possessed for many a day, it will run through
+ditches, through quagmires, and through bogs, to see a man stand on his
+head for the exact space of half an hour. Ask the reason of this raging
+appetite for eccentricity, the answer is, such a thing is out of the
+beaten track of manhood, <i>ergo</i>, it is praiseworthy.</p>
+
+<p>Among the professors of the Cockney school, Mr. Percy Bysshe Shell[e]y
+is one of the most conspicuous. With more fervid imagination and
+splendid talents than nine-tenths of the community, he yet prostitutes
+those talents by the utter degradation to which he unequivocally
+consigns them. His Rosalind and Helen, his Revolt of Islam, and his
+Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude, while they possess beauties of a
+superior order, are lamentably deficient in morality and religion. The
+doctrines they inculcate are of the most evil tendency; the characters
+they depict are of the most horrible description; but in the midst of
+these disgraceful passages, there are beauties of such exquisite, such
+redeeming qualities, that we adore while we pity&mdash;we admire while we
+execrate&mdash;and are tempted to exclaim with the last of the Romans, "Oh!<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_119" id="Page_119">[Pg 119]</a></span>
+what a fall is <i>here</i>, my countrymen." In the modern Eclogue of Rosalind
+and Helen in particular, there is a pensive sadness, a delicious
+melancholy, nurst in the purest, the deepest recesses of the heart, and
+springing up like a fountain in the desert, that pervades the poem, and
+forms its principal attraction. The rich yet delicate imagery that is
+every where scattered over it, is like the glowing splendor of the
+setting sun, when he retires to rest, amid the blessings of exulting
+nature. It is the balmy breath of the summer breeze, the twilight's last
+and holiest sigh. In the dramatic poem before us, the interest is of a
+different nature; it is dark&mdash;wild, and unearthly. The characters that
+appear in it are of no mortal stamp; they are d&aelig;mons in human guise,
+inscrutable in their actions, subtle in their revenge. Each has his
+smile of awful meaning&mdash;his purport of hellish tendency. The tempest
+that rages in his bosom is irrepressible but by death. The phrenzied
+groan that diseased imagination extorts from his perverted soul, is as
+the thunder-clap that reverberates amid the cloud-capt summits of the
+Alps. It is the storm that convulses all nature&mdash;that lays bare the face
+of heaven, and gives transient glimpses of destruction yet to be. Then
+in the midst of all these accumulated horrors comes the gentle Beatrice,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Who in the gentleness of thy sweet youth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hast never trodden on a worm, or bruised<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A living flower, but thou hast pitied it<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With needless tears." Page 50.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>She walks in the light of innocence; in the unclouded sunshine of
+loveliness and modesty; but her felicity is transient as the calm that
+precedes the tempest; and in the very whispers of her virtue, you hear
+the indistinct muttering of the distant thunder. She is conceived in
+the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_120" id="Page_120">[Pg 120]</a></span> true master spirit of genius; and in the very instant of her
+parricide, comes home to our imagination fresh in the spring time of
+innocence&mdash;hallowed in the deepest recesses of melancholy. But
+notwithstanding all these transcendant qualities, there are numerous
+passages that warrant our introductory observations respecting the
+Cockney school, and plunge "full fathom five," into the profoundest
+depths of the Bathos. While, therefore, we do justice to the abilities
+of the author, we shall bestow a passing smile or two on his unfortunate
+Cockney propensities.</p>
+
+<p>The following are the principal incidents of the play. Count Cenci, the
+<i>d&aelig;mon</i> of the piece, delighted with the intelligence of the death of
+two of his sons, recounts at a large assembly, specially invited for the
+purpose, the circumstances of the dreadful transaction. Lucretia, his
+wife, Beatrice, his daughter, and the other guests, are of course
+startled at his transports; but when they hear his awful imprecations,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Oh, thou bright wine whose purple splendor leaps<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And bubbles gaily in this golden bowl<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Under the lamp light, as my spirits do,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To hear the death of my accursed sons!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Could I believe thou wert their mingled blood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then would I taste thee like a sacrament,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And pledge with thee the mighty Devil in Hell,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who, if a father's curses, as men say,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Climb with swift wings after their children's souls,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And drag them from the very throne of Heaven,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now triumphs in my triumph!&mdash;But thou art<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Superfluous; I have drunken deep of joy<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And I will taste no other wine tonight&mdash;"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>their horror induces them to leave the room. Beatrice, in the meantime,
+who has been rating her parent for his cruelty, is subjected to every
+species of insult; and he<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_121" id="Page_121">[Pg 121]</a></span> sends her to her own apartment, with the
+hellish intention of prostituting her innocence, and contaminating, as
+he pithily expresses it, "both body and soul." The second act introduces
+us to a t&ecirc;te-a-t&ecirc;te between Bernardo (another of Cenci's sons) and
+Lucretia; when their conference is suddenly broken off, by the abrupt
+entrance of Beatrice, who has escaped from the pursuit of the Count. She
+recapitulates the injuries she has received from her father, the most
+atrocious of which appear to be, that he has given them all "ditch
+water" to drink, and "buffalos" to eat. But before we proceed further,
+we have a word or two respecting this same ditch water, and buffalo's
+flesh, which we shall mention, as a piece of advice to the author. It is
+well known, we believe, in a case of lunacy, that the first thing
+considered is, whether the patient has done any thing sufficiently
+foolish, to induce his relatives to apply for a statute against him: now
+any malicious, evil-minded person, were he so disposed, might make
+successful application to the court against the luckless author of the
+<i>Cenci, a tragedy in five acts</i>. Upon which the judge with all the
+solemnity suitable to so melancholy a circumstance as the decay of the
+mental faculties, would ask for proofs of the defendant's lunacy; upon
+which the plaintiff would produce the affecting episode of the ditch
+water and buffalo flesh; upon which the judge would shake his head, and
+acknowledge the insanity; upon which the defendant would be incarcerated
+in Bedlam.</p>
+
+<p>To return from this digression, we are next introduced to Giacomo,
+another of Cenci's hopeful progeny, who, like the rest, has a dreadful
+tale to unfold of his father's cruelty towards him. Orsino, the favored
+lover of Beatrice, enters at the moment of his irritation; and by the
+most artful pleading ultimately incites him to the murder<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_122" id="Page_122">[Pg 122]</a></span> of his
+father, in which he is to be joined by the rest of the family. The plot,
+after one unlucky attempt, succeeds; and at the moment of its
+accomplishment, is discovered by a messenger, who is despatched to the
+lonely castle of Petrella (one of the Count's family residences), with a
+summons of attendance from the Pope. We need hardly say that the
+criminals are condemned; and not even the lovely Beatrice is able to
+escape the punishment of the law. The agitation she experiences after
+the commission of the incest, is powerfully descriptive.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">"How comes this hair undone?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Its wandering strings must be what blind me so,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And yet I tied it fast.&mdash;O, horrible!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The pavement sinks under my feet! The walls<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Spin round! I see a woman weeping there,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And standing calm and motionless, whilst I<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Slide giddily as the world reels&mdash;My God!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The beautiful blue heaven is flecked with blood!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The sunshine on the floor is black! The air<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is changed to vapours such as the dead breathe<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In charnel pits! Pah! I am choaked! There creeps<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A clinging, black, contaminating mist<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">About me&mdash;'tis substantial, heavy, thick,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I cannot pluck it from me, for it glues<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My fingers and my limbs to one another,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And eats into my sinews, and dissolves<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My flesh to a pollution, poisoning<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The subtle, pure, and inmost spirit of life!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>At first she concludes that she is mad; but then pathetically checks
+herself by saying, "No, I am dead." Lucretia naturally enough inquires
+into the cause of her disquietude, and but too soon discovers, by the
+broken hints of the victim, the source of her mental agitation.
+Terrified at their defenceless state, they then mutually conspire with
+Orsino against the Count; and Beatrice pro<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_123" id="Page_123">[Pg 123]</a></span>poses to way-lay him (a plot,
+however, which fails) in a <i>deep and dark ravine</i>, as he journeys to
+Petrella.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">"But I remember<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Two miles on this side of the fort, the road<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Crosses a deep ravine; 'tis rough and narrow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And winds with short turns down the precipice;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in its depth there is a mighty rock,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which has, from unimaginable years,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sustained itself with terror and with toil<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Over a gulph, and with the agony<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With which it clings seems slowly coming down;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even as a wretched soul hour after hour,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Clings to the mass of life; yet clinging, leans;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And leaning, makes more dark the dread abyss<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In which it fears to fall: beneath this crag<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Huge as despair, as if in weariness,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The melancholy mountain yawns&mdash;below,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You hear but see not an impetuous torrent<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Raging among the caverns, and a bridge<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Crosses the chasm; and high above there grow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With intersecting trunks, from crag to crag,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cedars, and yews, and pines; whose tangled hair<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is matted in one solid roof of shade<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By the dark ivy's twine. At noon day here<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Tis twilight, and at sunset blackest night."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Giacomo, meanwhile, who was privy to the transaction, awaits the arrival
+of Orsino, with intelligence of the murder, in a state of the most
+fearful torture and suspence.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">"Tis midnight, and Orsino comes not yet.<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">(<i>Thunder, and the sound of a storm.</i>)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What! can the everlasting elements<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Feel with a worm like man? If so, the shaft<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of mercy-winged lightning would not fall<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On stones and trees. My wife and children sleep:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They are now living in unmeaning dreams:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But I must wake, still doubting if that deed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Be just which was most necessary. O,<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_124" id="Page_124">[Pg 124]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou unreplenished lamp! whose narrow fire<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is shaken by the wind, and on whose edge<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Devouring darkness hovers! Thou small flame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which, as a dying pulse rises and falls,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Still flickerest up and down, how very soon,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Did I not feed thee, thou wouldst fail and be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As thou hadst never been! So wastes and sinks<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even now, perhaps, the life that kindled mine:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But that no power can fill with vital oil<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That broken lamp of flesh. Ha! 'tis the blood<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which fed these veins that ebbs till all is cold:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It is the form that moulded mine that sinks<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Into the white and yellow spasms of death:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It is the soul by which mine was arrayed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In God's immortal likeness which now stands<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Naked before Heaven's judgment seat!<br /></span>
+<span class="i10">(<i>a bell strikes</i>)<br /></span>
+<span class="i8">One! Two!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The hours crawl on; and when my hairs are white<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My son will then perhaps be waiting thus.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tortured between just hate and vain remorse;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Chiding the tardy messenger of news<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like those which I expect. I almost wish<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He be not dead, although my wrongs are great;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet&mdash;'tis Orsino's step."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>We envy not the feelings of any one who can read the curses that Cenci
+invokes on his daughter, when she refuses to repeat her guilt, without
+the strongest disgust, notwithstanding the intense vigor of the
+imprecations</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">"<i>Cen.</i> (<i>Kneeling</i>) God!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hear me! If this most specious mass of flesh,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which thou hast made my daughter; this my blood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This particle of my divided being;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or rather, this my bane and my disease,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose sight infects and poisons me; this devil<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which sprung from me as from a hell, was meant<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To aught good use; if her bright loveliness<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was kindled to illumine this dark world;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If nursed by thy selectest dew of love<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_125" id="Page_125">[Pg 125]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Such virtues blossom in her as should make<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The peace of life, I pray thee for my sake<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As thou the common God and Father art<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of her, and me, and all; reverse that doom!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Earth, in the name of God, let her food be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Poison, until she be encrusted round<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With leprous stains! Heaven, rain upon her head<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The blistering drops of the Maremma's dew,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till she be speckled like a toad; parch up<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Those love-enkindled lips, warp those fine limbs<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To loathed lameness! All beholding sun,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Strike in thine envy those life darting eyes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With thine own blinding beams!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2"><i>Lucr.</i> Peace! Peace!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For thine own sake unsay those dreadful words.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When high God grants he punishes such prayers.<br /></span>
+<span class="i2"><i>Cen.</i> (<i>Leaping up, and throwing his right hand toward Heaven</i>)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He does his will, I mine! This in addition,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That if she have a child&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2"><i>Lucr.</i> Horrible thought!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2"><i>Cen.</i> That if she ever have a child; and thou,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Quick Nature! I adjure thee by thy God,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That thou be fruitful in her, and encrease<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And multiply, fulfilling his command,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And my deep imprecation! May it be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A hideous likeness of herself, that as<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From a distorting mirror, she may see<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her image mixed with what she most abhors,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Smiling upon her from her nursing breast.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And that the child may from its infancy<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Grow, day by day, more wicked and deformed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Turning her mother's love to misery:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And that both she and it may live until<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It shall repay her care and pain with hate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or what may else be more unnatural.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So he may hunt her thro' the clamorous scoffs<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of the loud world to a dishonoured grave.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shall I revoke this curse? Go, bid her come,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Before my words are chronicled in Heaven.<br /></span>
+<span class="i10">(<i>Exit</i> <span class="smcap">Lucretia</span>.)<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_126" id="Page_126">[Pg 126]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">I do not feel as if I were a man,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But like a fiend appointed to chastise<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The offences of some unremembered world.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My blood is running up and down my veins;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A fearful pleasure makes it prick and tingle:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I feel a giddy sickness of strange awe;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My heart is beating with an expectation<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of horrid joy."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><i>Oh&eacute;! jam satis est!!</i>&mdash;The <i>minuti&aelig;</i> of this <i>affectionate</i> parent's
+curses forcibly remind us of the equally minute excommunication so
+admirably recorded in Tristram Shandy. But Sterne has the start of him;
+for though Percy Bysshe Shell[e]y, Esquire, has contrived to include in
+the imprecations of Cenci, the eyes, head, lips, and limbs of his
+daughter, the other has anticipated his measures, in formally and
+specifically anathematizing the lights, lungs, liver, and <i>all odd
+joints</i>, without excepting even the great toe of his victim.&mdash;To proceed
+in our review; the dying expostulations of poor Beatrice, are beautiful
+and affecting, though occasionally tinged with the Cockney style of
+burlesque; for instance, Bernado asks, when they tear him from the
+embraces of his sister,</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Would ye divide body from soul?"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>On which the judge sturdily replies&mdash;"That is the headsman's business."
+The idea of approaching execution paralyses the soul of Beatrice, and
+she thus frantically expresses her horror.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">"<i>Beatr.</i> (<i>Wildly</i>) Oh,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My God! Can it be possible I have<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To die so suddenly? So young to go<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Under the obscure, cold, rotting, wormy ground!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To be nailed down into a narrow place;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To see no more sweet sunshine; hear no more<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_127" id="Page_127">[Pg 127]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Blithe voice of living thing; muse not again<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Upon familiar thoughts, sad, yet thus lost.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">How fearful! to be nothing! Or to be&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What? O, where am I? Let me not go mad!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sweet Heaven, forgive weak thoughts! If there should be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No God, no Heaven, no Earth in the void world;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The wide, grey, lampless, deep, unpeopled world!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If all things then should be&mdash;my father's spirit<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His eye, his voice, his touch surrounding me;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The atmosphere and breath of my dead life!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If sometimes, as a shape more like himself,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even the form which tortured me on earth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Masked in grey hairs and wrinkles, he should come<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And wind me in his hellish arms, and fix<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His eyes on mine, and drag me down, down, down!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The author, in his preface, observes that he has committed only one
+plagiarism in his play. But with all the triumph of vanity, we here
+stoutly convict him of having wilfully, maliciously and despitefully
+stolen, the pleasing idea of the repetition of "down, down, down," from
+the equally pathetic and instructive ditty of "up, up, up," in Tom
+Thumb; the exordium or prolegomena to which floweth <i>sweetly</i> and
+<i>poetically</i> thus:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Here we go up, up, up,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And here we go <i>down, down, down</i>!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In taking leave of Mr. Shelley, we have a few observations to whisper in
+his ear. That he has the seedlings of poetry in his composition no one
+can deny, after the perusal of many of our extracts; that he employs
+them worthily, is more than can be advanced. His style, though disgraced
+by occasional puerilities, and simpering affectations, is in general
+bold, vigorous, and manly; but the disgraceful fault to which we object
+in his writings, is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_128" id="Page_128">[Pg 128]</a></span> the scorn he every where evinces for all that is
+moral or religious. If he must be skeptical&mdash;if he must be lax in his
+human codes of excellence, let him be so; but in God's name let him not
+publish his principles, and cram them down the throats of others.
+Existence in its present state is heavy enough; and if we take away the
+idea of eternal happiness, however visionary it may appear to some, who
+or what is to recompence us for the loss we have sustained? Will
+scepticism lighten the bed of death?&mdash;Will vice soothe the pillow of
+declining age? If so! let us all be sceptics, let us all be vicious; but
+until their admirable efficacy is proved, let us jog on the beaten
+course of life, neither influenced by the scoff of infidelity, nor
+fascinated by the dazzling but flimsy garb of licentiousness and
+immorality.&mdash;<i>The London Magazine</i>.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 35%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_129" id="Page_129">[Pg 129]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="bigcenter"><span class="smcap">Adonais</span>. <i>An Elegy, on the Death of Mr. John Keats</i>. By P.B. Shelley.</p>
+
+<p>We have already given some of our columns to this writer's merits, and
+we will not now repeat our convictions of his incurable absurdity. On
+the last occasion of our alluding to him, we were compelled to notice
+his horrid licentiousness and profaneness, his fearful offences to all
+the maxims that honorable minds are in the habit of respecting, and his
+plain defiance of Christianity. On the present occasion we are not met
+by so continued and regular a determination of insult, though there are
+atrocities to be found in the poem quite enough to make us caution our
+readers against its pages. Adonais is an elegy after <i>the manner of
+Moschus</i>, on a foolish young man, who, after writing some volumes of
+very weak, and, in the greater part, of very indecent poetry, died some
+time since of a consumption: the breaking down of an infirm constitution
+having, in all probability, been accelerated by the discarding his neck
+cloth, a practice of the cockney poets, who look upon it as essential to
+genius, inasmuch as neither Michael Angelo, Raphael or Tasso are
+supposed to have worn those antispiritual incumbrances. In short, as the
+vigour of Sampson lay in his hair, the secret of talent with these
+persons lies in the neck; and what aspirations can be expected from a
+mind enveloped in muslin. Keats caught cold in training for a genius,
+and, after a lingering illness, died, to the great loss of the
+Independents of South America, whom he had intended to visit with an
+English epic poem, for the purpose of exciting them to liberty. But
+death, even the death of the radically presumptuous profligate, is a
+serious thing; and as we<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_130" id="Page_130">[Pg 130]</a></span> believe that Keats was made presumptuous
+chiefly by the treacherous puffing of his cockney fellow gossips, and
+profligate in his poems merely to make them saleable, we regret that he
+did not live long enough to acquire common sense, and abjure the
+pestilent and perfidious gang who betrayed his weakness to the grave,
+and are now panegyrising his memory into contempt. For what is the
+praise of cockneys but disgrace, or what honourable inscription can be
+placed over the dead by the hands of notorious libellers, exiled
+adulterers, and avowed atheists.</p>
+
+<p>Adonais, an Elegy, is the form in which Mr. Shelley puts forth his woes.
+We give a verse at random, premising that there is no story in the
+elegy, and that it consists of fifty-five stanzas, which are, to our
+seeming, altogether unconnected, interjectional, and nonsensical. We
+give one that we think among the more comprehensible. An address to
+Urania:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">"Most musical of mourners, weep anew!<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Not all to that bright station dared to climb;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And <i>happier they their happiness who knew</i>,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Whose <i>tapers yet burn thro' that night of time</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>In which suns perish'd</i>; Others more sublime,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Struck by the <i>envious</i> wroth of man or <span class="smcap">God</span>!!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Have sunk extinct in their refulgent prime</i>;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And some yet live," &amp;c.&mdash;&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Now what is the meaning of this, or of any sentence of it, except indeed
+that horrid blasphemy which attributes crime to the Great Author of all
+virtue! The rest is mere empty absurdity. If it were worth our while to
+dilate on the folly of the production, we might find examples of every
+species of the ridiculous within those few pages.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Shelley summons all kinds of visions round the grave of this young
+man, who, if he has now any feeling<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_131" id="Page_131">[Pg 131]</a></span> of the earth, must shrink with
+shame and disgust from the touch of the hand that could have written
+that impious sentence. These he classifies under names, the greater
+number as new we believe to poetry as strange to common sense. Those
+are&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">&mdash;&mdash;"Desires and <i>Adorations</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Winged <i>Persuasions</i> and veiled Destinies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Splendours</i>, and <i>Glooms</i>, and glimmering <i>Incarnations</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of hopes and fears and twilight Phantasies,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And Sorrow with her family of <i>Sighs</i>,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And Pleasure, <i>blind with tears</i>! led by the <i>gleam</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of her own <i>dying</i> <span class="smcap lowercase">SMILE</span> instead of eyes!!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Let our readers try to imagine these weepers, and close with "<i>blind</i>
+Pleasure led," by what? "by the <i>light</i> of <i>her own dying
+smile</i>&mdash;instead of <i>eyes</i>!!!"</p>
+
+<p>We give some specimens of Mr. S.'s</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6"><i>Nonsense&mdash;pastoral.</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i2">"<i>Lost Echo</i> sits amid the <i>voiceless mountains</i>,<a name="FNanchor_M_13" id="FNanchor_M_13"></a><a href="#Footnote_M_13" class="fnanchor">[M]</a><br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And feeds her grief with his remember'd lay,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>And will no more reply</i> to winds and fountains."<br /></span>
+<span class="i6"><i>Nonsense&mdash;physical.</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;"for whose disdain she (Echo) pin'd away<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Into a <i>shadow</i> of all <i>sounds</i>!"<br /></span>
+<span class="i6"><i>Nonsense&mdash;vermicular.</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Flowers springing from the corpse<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;illumine death<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And <i>mock</i> the <i>merry</i> worm that wakes beneath."<br /></span>
+<span class="i6"><i>Nonsense&mdash;pathetic.</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i2">"Alas! that all we lov'd of him should be<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But for our grief, as if it had not been,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And <i>grief itself be mortal</i>! <span class="smcap lowercase">WOE IS ME</span>!"<br /></span>
+<span class="i6"><i>Nonsense&mdash;nondescript.</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i2">"In the death chamber for a moment Death,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Blush'd to annihilation</i>!"<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_132" id="Page_132">[Pg 132]</a></span>
+<span class="i6"><i>Nonsense&mdash;personal.</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"A pardlike spirit, beautiful and swift&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">A love in <i>desolation mask'd</i>;&mdash;a Power<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Girt <i>round with weakness</i>;&mdash;it can scarce <i>uplift</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The <i>weight</i> of the <i>superincumbent hour</i>!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>We have some idea that this fragment of character is intended for Mr.
+Shelley himself. It closes with a passage of memorable and ferocious
+blasphemy:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;-"He with a sudden hand<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Made bare his branded and ensanguin'd brow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which was like Cain's or <span class="smcap">Christ's</span>!!!"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>What can be said to the wretched person capable of this daring
+profanation. The name of the first murderer&mdash;the accurst of God&mdash;brought
+into the same aspect image with that of the Saviour of the World! We are
+scarcely satisfied that even to quote such passages may not be criminal.
+The subject is too repulsive for us to proceed even in expressing our
+disgust for the general folly that makes the Poem as miserable in point
+of authorship, as in point of principle. We know that among a certain
+class this outrage and this inanity meet with some attempt at
+palliation, under the idea that frenzy holds the pen. That any man who
+insults the common order of society, and denies the being of God, is
+essentially mad we never doubted. But for the madness, that retains
+enough of rationality to be wilfully mischievous, we can have no more
+lenity than for the appetites of a wild beast. The poetry of the work is
+<i>contemptible</i>&mdash;a mere collection of bloated words heaped on each other
+without order, harmony, or meaning; the refuse of a schoolboy's
+common-place book, full of the vulgarisms of pastoral poetry, yellow
+gems and blue stars, bright Phoebus and rosy-fingered Aurora; and of
+this stuff is Keats's wretched Elegy compiled.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_133" id="Page_133">[Pg 133]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We might add instances of like incomprehensible folly from every stanza.
+A heart <i>keeping</i>, a mute <i>sleep</i>, and death <i>feeding</i> on a mute
+<i>voice</i>, occur in one verse (page 8); Spring in despair "throws down her
+<i>kindling</i> buds as if she Autumn were," a thing we never knew Autumn do
+with buds of any sort, the kindling kind being unknown to our botany; a
+<i>green lizard</i> is like an <i>unimprisoned flame</i>, <i>waking</i> out of its
+<i>trance</i> (page 13). In the same page the <i>leprous corpse</i> touched by the
+tender spirit of Spring, so as to exhale itself in flowers, is compared
+to "<i>incarnations of the stars, when splendour is changed to
+fragrance</i>!!!" Urania (page 15) <i>wounds</i> the "invisible palms" of her
+tender feet by treading on human hearts as she journeys to see the
+corpse. Page 22, somebody is asked to "clasp with panting soul the
+pendulous earth," an image which, we take it, exceeds that of
+Shakespeare, to "put a girdle about it in forty minutes."</p>
+
+<p>It is so far a fortunate thing that this piece of impious and utter
+absurdity can have little circulation in Britain. The copy in our hands
+is one of some score sent to the Author's intimates from Pisa, where it
+has been printed in a quarto form "with the types of Didot," and two
+learned Epigraphs from Plato and Moschus. Solemn as the subject is, (for
+in truth we must grieve for the early death of any youth of literary
+ambition,) it is hardly possible to help laughing at the mock solemnity
+with which Shelley charges the Quarterly Review for having murdered his
+friend with&mdash;a critique!<a name="FNanchor_N_14" id="FNanchor_N_14"></a><a href="#Footnote_N_14" class="fnanchor">[N]</a> If criticism killed the disciples of that
+school, Shelley would not have been alive to write an Elegy on
+another:&mdash;but the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_134" id="Page_134">[Pg 134]</a></span> whole is most farcical from a pen which on other
+occasions, has treated of the soul, the body, life and death agreeably
+to the opinions, the principles, and the practice of Percy Bysshe
+Shelley.&mdash;<i>The Literary Gazette</i>.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_135" id="Page_135">[Pg 135]</a></span></p>
+<h2><span class="smcap">John Keats</span></h2>
+
+
+<p class="bigcenter"><i>Endymion: A Poetic Romance</i>. By John Keats. London. 1818. pp. 207.</p>
+
+<p>Reviewers have been sometimes accused of not reading the works which
+they affected to criticise. On the present occasion we shall anticipate
+the author's complaint, and honestly confess that we have not read his
+work. Not that we have been wanting in our duty&mdash;far from it&mdash;indeed, we
+have made efforts almost as superhuman as the story itself appears to
+be, to get through it; but with the fullest stretch of our perseverance,
+we are forced to confess that we have not been able to struggle beyond
+the first of the four books of which this Poetic Romance consists. We
+should extremely lament this want of energy, or whatever it may be, on
+our parts, were it not for one consolation&mdash;namely, that we are no
+better acquainted with the meaning of the book through which we have so
+painfully toiled, than we are with that of the three which we have not
+looked into.</p>
+
+<p>It is not that Mr. Keats, (if that be his real name, for we almost doubt
+that any man in his senses would put his real name to such a rhapsody,)
+it is not, we say, that the author has not powers of language, rays of
+fancy, and gleams of genius&mdash;he has all these; but he is unhappily a
+disciple of the new school of what has been somewhere called Cockney
+poetry; which may be defined to consist of the most incongruous ideas in
+the most uncouth language.</p>
+
+<p>Of this school, Mr. Leigh Hunt, as we observed in a former Number,
+aspires to be the hierophant. Our readers will recollect the pleasant
+recipes for harmonious and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_136" id="Page_136">[Pg 136]</a></span> sublime poetry which he gave us in his
+preface to 'Rimini,' and the still more facetious instances of his
+harmony and sublimity in the verses themselves; and they will recollect
+above all the contempt of Pope, Johnson, and such like poetasters and
+pseudo-critics, which so forcibly contrasted itself with Mr. Leigh
+Hunt's self-complacent approbation of</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&mdash;'all the things itself had wrote,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of special merit though of little note.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This author is a copyist of Mr. Hunt; but he is more unintelligible,
+almost as rugged, twice as diffuse, and ten times more tiresome and
+absurd than his prototype, who, though he impudently presumed to seat
+himself in the chair of criticism, and to measure his own poetry by his
+own standard, yet generally had a meaning. But Mr. Keats has advanced no
+dogmas which he was bound to support by examples; his nonsense therefore
+is quite gratuitous; he writes it for its own sake, and, being bitten by
+Mr. Leigh Hunt's insane criticism, more than rivals the insanity of his
+poetry.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Keats's preface hints that his poem was produced under peculiar
+circumstances.</p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'Knowing within myself (he says) the manner in which this Poem has
+been produced, it is not without a feeling of regret that I make it
+public.&mdash;What manner I mean, will be <i>quite clear</i> to the reader,
+who must soon perceive great inexperience, immaturity, and every
+error denoting a feverish attempt, rather than a deed
+accomplished.'&mdash;<i>Preface</i>, p. vii.</p></div>
+
+<p>We humbly beg his pardon, but this does not appear to us to be <i>quite so
+clear</i>&mdash;we really do not know what he means&mdash;but the next passage is
+more intelligible.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_137" id="Page_137">[Pg 137]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="blockquot"><p>'The two first books, and indeed the two last, I feel sensible are
+not of such completion as to warrant their passing the
+press.'&mdash;<i>Preface</i>, p. vii.</p></div>
+
+<p>Thus 'the two first books' are, even in his own judgment, unfit to
+appear, and 'the two last' are, it seems, in the same condition&mdash;and as
+two and two make four, and as that is the whole number of books, we have
+a clear and, we believe, a very just estimate of the entire work.</p>
+
+<p>Mr. Keats, however, deprecates criticism on this 'immature and feverish
+work' in terms which are themselves sufficiently feverish; and we
+confess that we should have abstained from inflicting upon him any of
+the tortures of the '<i>fierce hell</i>' of criticism, which terrify his
+imagination, if he had not begged to be spared in order that he might
+write more; if we had not observed in him a certain degree of talent
+which deserves to be put in the right way, or which, at least, ought to
+be warned of the wrong; and if, finally, he had not told us that he is
+of an age and temper which imperiously require mental discipline.</p>
+
+<p>Of the story we have been able to make out but little; it seems to be
+mythological, and probably relates to the loves of Diana and Endymion;
+but of this, as the scope of the work has altogether escaped us, we
+cannot speak with any degree of certainty; and must therefore content
+ourselves with giving some instances of its diction and
+versification:&mdash;and here again we are perplexed and puzzled.&mdash;At first
+it appeared to us, that Mr. Keats had been amusing himself and wearying
+his readers with an immeasurable game at <i>bouts-rim&eacute;s</i>; but, if we
+recollect rightly, it is an indispensable condition at this play, that
+the rhymes when filled up shall have a meaning; and our author, as we
+have already hinted, has no meaning. He seems to us to write a line at
+random, and then he follows not the thought excited by this line, but
+that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_138" id="Page_138">[Pg 138]</a></span> suggested by the <i>rhyme</i> with which it concludes. There is hardly
+a complete couplet enclosing a complete idea in the whole book. He
+wanders from one subject to another, from the association, not of the
+ideas but of sounds, and the work is composed of hemistichs which, it is
+quite evident, have forced themselves upon the author by the mere force
+of the catchwords on which they turn.</p>
+
+<p>We shall select, not as the most striking instance, but as that least
+liable to suspicion, a passage from the opening of the poem.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&mdash;&mdash;'Such the sun, the moon,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For simple sheep; and such are daffodils<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With the green world they live in; and clear rills<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That for themselves a cooling covert make<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Gainst the hot season; the mid forest brake,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And such too is the grandeur of the dooms<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We have imagined for the mighty dead; &amp;c. &amp;c.'&mdash;pp. 3, 4.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Here it is clear that the word, and not the idea, <i>moon</i> produces the
+simple sheep and their shady <i>boon</i>, and that 'the <i>dooms</i> of the mighty
+dead' would never have intruded themselves but for the '<i>fair musk-rose
+blooms</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>Again.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'For 'twas the morn: Apollo's upward fire<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Made every eastern cloud a silvery pyre<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of brightness so unsullied, that therein<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A melancholy spirit well might win<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Oblivion, and melt out his essence fine<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Into the winds: rain-scented eglantine<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gave temperate sweets to that well-wooing sun;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The lark was lost in him; cold springs had run<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To warm their chilliest bubbles in the grass;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Man's voice was on the mountains; and the mass<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of nature's lives and wonders puls'd tenfold,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To feel this sun-rise and its glories old.'&mdash;p. 8.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_139" id="Page_139">[Pg 139]</a></span>Here Apollo's <i>fire</i> produces a <i>pyre</i>, a silvery pyre of clouds,
+<i>wherein</i> a spirit may <i>win</i> oblivion and melt his essence <i>fine</i>, and
+scented <i>eglantine</i> gives sweets to the <i>sun</i>, and cold springs had
+<i>run</i> into the <i>grass</i>, and then the pulse of the <i>mass</i> pulsed
+<i>tenfold</i> to feel the glories <i>old</i> of the new-born day, &amp;c.</p>
+
+<p>One example more.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Be still the unimaginable lodge<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For solitary thinkings; such as dodge<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Conception to the very bourne of heaven,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Then leave the naked brain: be still the leaven,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That spreading in this dull and clodded earth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gives it a touch ethereal&mdash;a new birth.'&mdash;p. 17.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><i>Lodge, dodge</i>&mdash;<i>heaven, leaven</i>&mdash;<i>earth, birth</i>; such, in six words, is
+the sum and substance of six lines.</p>
+
+<p>We come now to the author's taste in versification. He cannot indeed
+write a sentence, but perhaps he may be able to spin a line. Let us see.
+The following are specimens of his prosodial notions of our English
+heroic metre.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Dear as the temple's self, so does the moon,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The passion poesy, glories infinite.'&mdash;p. 4.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'So plenteously all weed-hidden roots.'&mdash;p. 6.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Of some strange history, potent to send.'&mdash;p. 18.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Before the deep intoxication.'&mdash;p. 27.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Her scarf into a fluttering pavilion.'&mdash;p. 33.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'The stubborn canvass for my voyage prepared&mdash;.'&mdash;p. 39.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'"Endymion! the cave is secreter<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than the isle of Delos. Echo hence shall stir<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No sighs but sigh-warm kisses, or light noise<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of thy combing hand, the while it travelling cloys<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And trembles through my labyrinthine hair."'&mdash;p. 48.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_140" id="Page_140">[Pg 140]</a></span>By this time our readers must be pretty well satisfied as to the meaning
+of his sentences and the structure of his lines: we now present them
+with some of the new words with which, in imitation of Mr. Leigh Hunt,
+he adorns our language.</p>
+
+<p>We are told that 'turtles <i>passion</i> their voices,' (p. 15); that 'an
+arbour was <i>nested</i>,' (p. 23); and a lady's locks '<i>gordian'd</i> up,' (p.
+32); and to supply the place of the nouns thus verbalized Mr. Keats,
+with great fecundity, spawns new ones; such as 'men-slugs and human
+<i>serpentry</i>,' (p. 41); the '<i>honey-feel</i> of bliss,' (p. 45); 'wives
+prepare <i>needments</i>,' (p. 13)&mdash;and so forth.</p>
+
+<p>Then he has formed new verbs by the process of cutting off their natural
+tails, the adverbs, and affixing them to their foreheads; thus, 'the
+wine out-sparkled,' (p. 10); the 'multitude up-followed,' (p. 11); and
+'night up-took,' (p. 29). 'The wind up-blows,' (p. 32); and the 'hours
+are down-sunken,' (p. 36.)</p>
+
+<p>But if he sinks some adverbs in the verbs, he compensates the language
+with adverbs and adjectives which he separates from the parent stock.
+Thus, a lady 'whispers <i>pantingly</i> and close,' makes '<i>hushing</i> signs,'
+and steers her skiff into a '<i>ripply</i> cove,' (p. 23); a shower falls
+'<i>refreshfully</i>,' (45); and a vulture has a '<i>spreaded</i> tail,' (p. 44.)</p>
+
+<p>But enough of Mr. Leigh Hunt and his simple neophyte.&mdash;If any one should
+be bold enough to purchase this 'Poetic Romance,' and so much more
+patient, than ourselves, as to get beyond the first book, and so much
+more fortunate as to find a meaning, we entreat him to make us
+acquainted with his success; we shall then return to the task which we
+now abandon in despair, and endeavour to make all due amends to Mr.
+Keats and to our readers.&mdash;<i>The Quarterly Review</i>.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 35%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_141" id="Page_141">[Pg 141]</a></span></p>
+<p class="bigcenter"><span class="smcap">Cockney School of Poetry.</span></p>
+
+
+<p class="bigcenter">No[.] IV.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8"><span class="smcap">&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;Of Keats,</span><br /></span>
+<span class="i8"><span class="smcap">The Muses' son of promise, and what feats</span><br /></span>
+<span class="i8"><span class="smcap">He yet may do, &amp;c.</span><br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p class="bigcenter"><span class="smcap">Cornelius Webb.</span></p>
+
+<p>Of all the manias of this mad age, the most incurable as well as the
+most common, seems to be no other than the <i>Metromanie</i>. The just
+celebrity of Robert Burns and Miss Baillie has had the melancholy effect
+of turning the heads of we know not how many farm-servants and unmarried
+ladies; our very footmen compose tragedies, and there is scarcely a
+superannuated governess in the island that does not leave a roll of
+lyrics behind her in her band-box. To witness the disease of any human
+understanding, however feeble, is distressing; but the spectacle of an
+able mind reduced to a state of insanity is of course ten times more
+afflicting. It is with such sorrow as this that we have contemplated the
+case of Mr John Keats. This young man appears to have received from
+nature talents of an excellent, perhaps even of a superior
+order&mdash;talents which, devoted to the purposes of any useful profession,
+must have rendered him a respectable, if not an eminent citizen. His
+friends, we understand, destined him to the career of medicine, and he
+was bound apprentice some years ago to a worthy apothecary in town. But
+all has been undone by a sudden attack of the malady to which we have
+alluded. Whether Mr John had been sent home with a diuretic or composing
+draught<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_142" id="Page_142">[Pg 142]</a></span> to some patient far gone in the poetical mania, we have not
+heard. This much is certain, that he has caught the infection, and that
+thoroughly. For some time we were in hopes, that he might get off with a
+violent fit or two; but of late the symptoms are terrible. The phrenzy
+of the "Poems" was bad enough in its way; but it did not alarm us half
+so seriously as the calm, settled, imperturbable, drivelling idiocy of
+"Endymion." We hope, however, that in so young a person, and with a
+constitution originally so good, even now the disease is not utterly
+incurable. Time, firm treatment, and rational restraint, do much for
+many apparently hopeless invalids; and if Mr Keats should happen, at
+some interval of reason, to cast his eye upon our pages, he may perhaps
+be convinced of the existence of his malady, which, in such cases, is
+often all that is necessary to put the patient in a fair way of being
+cured.</p>
+
+<p>The readers of the Examiner newspaper were informed, some time ago, by a
+solemn paragraph, in Mr Hunt's best style, of the appearance of two new
+stars of glorious magnitude and splendour in the poetical horizon of the
+land of Cockaigne. One of these turned out, by and by, to be no other
+than Mr John Keats. This precocious adulation confirmed the wavering
+apprentice in his desire to quit the gallipots, and at the same time
+excited in his too susceptible mind a fatal admiration for the character
+and talents of the most worthless and affected of all the versifiers of
+our time. One of his first productions was the following sonnet,
+"<i>written on the day when Mr Leigh Hunt left prison</i>." It will be
+recollected, that the cause of Hunt's confinement was a series of libels
+against his sovereign, and that its fruit was the odious and incestuous
+"Story of Rimini."<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_143" id="Page_143">[Pg 143]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"What though, for shewing truth to flattered state,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Kind Hunt</i> was shut in prison, yet has he,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In his immortal spirit been as free<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As the sky-searching lark and as elate.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Minion of grandeur! think you he did wait?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Think you he nought but prison walls did see,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till, so unwilling, thou unturn'dst the key?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ah, no! far happier, nobler was his fate!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>In Spenser's halls!</i> he strayed, and bowers fair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Culling enchanted flowers; and he flew<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>With daring Milton!</i> through the fields of air;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To regions of his own his genius true<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Took happy flights. Who shall his fame impair<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When thou art dead, and all thy wretched crew?"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The absurdity of the thought in this sonnet is, however, if possible,
+surpassed in another, "<i>addressed to Haydon</i>" the painter, that clever,
+but most affected artist, who as little resembles Raphael in genius as
+he does in person, notwithstanding the foppery of having his hair curled
+over his shoulders in the old Italian fashion. In this exquisite piece
+it will be observed, that Mr Keats classes together <span class="smcap">Wordsworth, Hunt</span>,
+and <span class="smcap">Haydon</span>, as the three greatest spirits of the age, and that he
+alludes to himself, and some others of the rising brood of Cockneys, as
+likely to attain hereafter an equally honourable elevation. Wordsworth
+and Hunt! what a juxta-position! The purest, the loftiest, and, we do
+not fear to say it, the most classical of living English poets, joined
+together in the same compliment with the meanest, the filthiest, and the
+most vulgar of Cockney poetasters. No wonder that he who could be guilty
+of this should class Haydon with Raphael, and himself with Spencer
+[<i>sic</i>].</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Great spirits now on earth are sojourning;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He of the cloud, the cataract, the lake,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who on Helvellyn's summit, wide awake,<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_144" id="Page_144">[Pg 144]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Catches his freshness from Archangel's wing:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>He of the rose, the violet, the spring,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>The social smile, the chain for Freedom's sake</i>:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And lo!&mdash;whose steadfastness would never take<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A meaner sound than Raphael's whispering.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And other spirits there are standing apart<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Upon the forehead of the age to come;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">These, these will give the world another heart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And other pulses. <i>Hear ye not the hum</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Of mighty workings?&mdash;&mdash;</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Listen awhile ye nations, and be dumb.</i>"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The nations are to listen and be dumb! and why, good Johnny Keats?
+because Leigh Hunt is editor of the Examiner, and Haydon has painted the
+judgment of Solomon, and you and Cornelius Webb, and a few more city
+sparks, are pleased to look upon yourselves as so many future
+Shakespeares and Miltons! The world has really some reason to look to
+its foundations! Here is a <i>tempestas in matul&acirc;</i> with a vengeance. At
+the period when these sonnets were published Mr Keats had no hesitation
+in saying that he looked on himself as "<i>not yet</i> a glorious denizen of
+the wide heaven of poetry," but he had many fine soothing visions of
+coming greatness, and many rare plans of study to prepare him for it.
+The following we think is very pretty raving.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">"Why so sad a moan?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Life is the rose's hope while yet unblown;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The reading of an ever-changing tale;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The light uplifting of a maiden's veil;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A pigeon tumbling in clear summer air;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A laughing school-boy, without grief or care,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Riding the springing branches of an elm.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"O for ten years, that I may overwhelm<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Myself in poesy; so I may do the deed<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That my own soul has to itself decreed.<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_145" id="Page_145">[Pg 145]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Then will I pass the countries that I see<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In long perspective, and continually<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Taste their pure fountains. First the realm I'll pass<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of Flora, and old Pan: sleep in the grass,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Feed on apples red, and strawberries,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And choose each pleasure that my fancy sees.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Catch the white-handed nymphs in shady places,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To woo sweet kisses from averted faces,&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Play with their fingers, touch their shoulders white<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Into a pretty shrinking with a bite<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As hard as lips can make it: till agreed,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A lovely tale of human life we'll read.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And one will teach a tame dove how it best<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">May fan the cool air gently o'er my rest;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Another, bending o'er her nimble tread,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Will set a green robe floating round her head,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And still will dance with ever varied ease,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Smiling upon the flowers and the trees:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Another will entice me on, and on<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through almond blossoms and rich cinnamon;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till in the bosom of a leafy world<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We rest in silence, like two gems upcurl'd<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the recesses of a pearly shell."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Having cooled a little from this "fine passion," our youthful poet
+passes very naturally into a long strain of foaming abuse against a
+certain class of English Poets, whom, with Pope at their head, it is
+much the fashion with the ignorant unsettled pretenders of the present
+time to undervalue. Begging these gentlemens' pardon, although Pope was
+not a poet of the same high order with some who are now living, yet, to
+deny his genius, is just about as absurd as to dispute that of
+Wordsworth, or to believe in that of Hunt. Above all things, it is most
+pitiably ridiculous to hear men, of whom their country will always have
+reason to be proud, reviled by uneducated and flimsy striplings, who are
+not capable of understanding either their merits, or those of any other
+<i>men of power</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_146" id="Page_146">[Pg 146]</a></span>&mdash;fanciful dreaming tea-drinkers, who, without logic
+enough to analyze a single idea, or imagination enough to form one
+original image, or learning enough to distinguish between the written
+language of Englishmen and the spoken jargon of Cockneys, presume to
+talk with contempt of some of the most exquisite spirits the world ever
+produced, merely because they did not happen to exert their faculties in
+laborious affected descriptions of flowers seen in window-pots, or
+cascades heard at Vauxhall; in short, because they chose to be wits,
+philosophers, patriots, and poets, rather than to found the Cockney
+school of versification, morality and politics, a century before its
+time. After blaspheming himself into a fury against Boileau, &amp;c. Mr
+Keats comforts himself and his readers with a view of the present more
+promising aspect of affairs; above all, with the ripened glories of the
+poet of Rimini. Addressing the manes of the departed chiefs of English
+poetry, he informs them, in the following clear and touching manner, of
+the existence of "him of the Rose," &amp;c.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">"From a thick brake,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nested and quiet in a valley mild,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bubbles a pipe; fine sounds are floating wild<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">About the earth. Happy are ye and glad."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>From this he diverges into a view of "things in general." We smile when
+we think to ourselves how little most of our readers will understand of
+what follows.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Yet I rejoice: a myrtle fairer than<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">E'er grew in Paphos, from the bitter weeds<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lifts its sweet head into the air, and feeds<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A silent space with ever sprouting green.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All tenderest birds there find a pleasant screen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Creep through the shade with jaunty fluttering,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nibble the little cupped flowers and sing.<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_147" id="Page_147">[Pg 147]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Then let us clear away the choaking <i>thorns</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From round its gentle stem; let the young <i>fawns</i>,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yeaned in after times, when we are flown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Find a fresh sward beneath it, overgrown<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With simple flowers: let there nothing be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">More boisterous than a lover's bended knee;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nought more ungentle than the placid look<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of one who leans upon a closed book;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nought more untranquil than the grassy slopes<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Between two hills. All hail delightful hopes!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As she was wont, th' imagination<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Into most lovely labyrinths will be gone,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And they shall be accounted poet kings<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Who simply tell the most heart-easing things.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O may these joys be ripe before I die.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Will not some say that I presumptuously<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Have spoken? that from hastening disgrace<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Twere better far to hide my foolish face?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That whining boyhood should with reverence bow<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ere the dreadful thunderbolt could reach? How!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If I do hide myself, it sure shall be<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the very fane, the light of poesy."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>From some verses addressed to various amiable individuals of the other
+sex, it appears, notwithstanding all this gossamer-work, that Johnny's
+affections are not entirely confined to objects purely etherial. Take,
+by way of specimen, the following prurient and vulgar lines, evidently
+meant for some young lady east of Temple-bar.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">"Add too, the sweetness<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of thy honied voice; the neatness<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of thine ankle lightly turn'd:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With those beauties, scarce discern'd,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Kept with such sweet privacy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That they seldom meet the eye<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of the little loves that fly<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Round about with eager pry.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Saving when, with freshening lave,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Thou dipp'st them in the taintless wave;<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_148" id="Page_148">[Pg 148]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Like twin water lilies, born<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the coolness of the morn<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O, if thou hadst breathed then,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Now the Muses had been ten.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Couldst thou wish for lineage <i>higher</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Than twin sister of <i>Thalia</i>?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At last for ever, evermore,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Will I call the Graces four."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Who will dispute that our poet, to use his own phrase (and rhyme),</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Can mingle music fit for the soft <i>ear</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of Lady <i>Cytherea</i>."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>So much for the opening bud; now for the expanded flower. It is time to
+pass from the juvenile "Poems," to the mature and elaborate "Endymion, a
+Poetic Romance." The old story of the moon falling in love with a
+shepherd, so prettily told by a Roman Classic, and so exquisitely
+enlarged and adorned by one of the most elegant of German poets, has
+been seized upon by Mr John Keats, to be done with as might seem good
+unto the sickly fancy of one who never read a single line either of Ovid
+or of Wieland. If the quantity, not the quality, of the verses dedicated
+to the story is to be taken into account, there can be no doubt that Mr
+John Keats may now claim Endymion entirely to himself. To say the truth,
+we do not suppose either the Latin or the German poet would be very
+anxious to dispute about the property of the hero of the "Poetic
+Romance." Mr Keats has thoroughly appropriated the character, if not the
+name. His Endymion is not a Greek shepherd, loved by a Grecian goddess;
+he is merely a young Cockney rhymester, dreaming a phantastic dream at
+the full of the moon. Costume, were it worth while to notice such a
+trifle, is violated in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_149" id="Page_149">[Pg 149]</a></span> every page of this goodly octavo. From his
+prototype Hunt, John Keats has acquired a sort of vague idea, that the
+Greeks were a most tasteful people, and that no mythology can be so
+finely adapted for the purposes of poetry as theirs. It is amusing to
+see what a hand the two Cockneys make of this mythology; the one
+confesses that he never read the Greek Tragedians, and the other knows
+Homer only from Chapman; and both of them write about Apollo, Pan,
+Nymphs, Muses, and Mysteries, as might be expected from persons of their
+education. We shall not, however, enlarge at present upon this subject,
+as we mean to dedicate an entire paper to the classical attainments and
+attempts of the Cockney poets. As for Mr Keats' "Endymion," it has just
+as much to do with Greece as it has with "old Tartary the fierce;" no
+man, whose mind has ever been imbued with the smallest knowledge or
+feeling of classical poetry or classical history, could have stooped to
+profane and vulgarise every association in the manner which has been
+adopted by this "son of promise." Before giving any extracts, we must
+inform our readers, that this romance is meant to be written in English
+heroic rhyme. To those who have read any of Hunt's poems, this hint
+might indeed be needless. Mr Keats has adopted the loose, nerveless
+versification, and the Cockney rhymes of the poet of Rimini; but in
+fairness to that gentleman, we must add, that the defects of the system
+are tenfold more conspicuous in his disciple's work than in his own. Mr
+Hunt is a small poet, but he is a clever man. Mr Keats is a still
+smaller poet, and he is only a boy of pretty abilities, which he has
+done everything in his power to spoil.</p>
+
+<p>[Quotes almost two hundred lines of <i>Endymion</i> with brief interpolated
+comment.]<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_150" id="Page_150">[Pg 150]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>And now, good-morrow to "the Muses' son of Promise;" as for "the feats
+he yet may do," as we do not pretend to say, like himself, "Muse of my
+native land am I inspired," we shall adhere to the safe old rule of
+<i>pauca verba</i>. We venture to make one small prophecy, that his
+bookseller will not a second time venture &pound;50 upon any thing he can
+write. It is a better and a wiser thing to be a starved apothecary than
+a starved poet; so back to the shop Mr John, back to "plasters, pills,
+and ointment boxes," &amp;c. But, for Heaven's sake, young Sangrado, be a
+little more sparing of extenuatives and soporifics in your practice than
+you have been in your poetry.</p>
+
+<p class="right"><span style="margin-right: 10em;">Z.</span></p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 6em;">&mdash;<i>Blackwood's Magazine</i>.</span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_151" id="Page_151">[Pg 151]</a></span></p>
+<h2><span class="smcap">Alfred Lord Tennyson</span></h2>
+
+
+<p class="bigcenter"><i>Timbuctoo: a Poem, which obtained the Chancellor's Medal at the
+Cambridge Commencement</i>, <i>by A. Tennyson, of Trinity College,
+Cambridge.</i></p>
+
+<p>We have accustomed ourselves to think, perhaps without any good reason,
+that poetry was likely to perish among us for a considerable period
+after the great generation of poets which is now passing away. The age
+seems determined to contradict us, and that in the most decided manner,
+for it has put forth poetry by a young man, and that where we should
+least expect it, namely, in a prize-poem. These productions have often
+been ingenious and elegant, but we have never before seen one of them
+which indicated really first-rate poetical genius, and which would have
+done honour to any man that ever wrote. Such, we do not hesitate to
+affirm, is the little work before us; and the examiners seem to have
+felt about it like ourselves, for they have assigned the prize to its
+author, though the measure in which he writes was never before (we
+believe) thus selected for honour. We extract a few lines to justify our
+admiration.</p>
+
+<p>[Quotes fifty lines beginning:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"A curve of whitening, flashing, ebbing light!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A rustling of white wings! the bright descent," etc.]<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>How many men have lived for a century who could equal this?&mdash;<i>The
+Athen&aelig;um</i>.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 35%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_152" id="Page_152">[Pg 152]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="bigcenter"><i>Poems by Alfred Tennyson</i>. pp. 163. London. 12mo. 1833.</p>
+
+<p>This is, as some of his marginal notes intimate, Mr. Tennyson's second
+appearance. By some strange chance we have never seen his first
+publication, which, if it at all resembles its younge[r] brother, must
+be by this time so popular that any notice of it on our part would seem
+idle and presumptuous; but we gladly seize this opportunity of repairing
+an unintentional neglect, and of introducing to the admiration of our
+more sequestered readers a new prodigy of genius&mdash;another and a brighter
+star of that galaxy or <i>milky way</i> of poetry of which the lamented Keats
+was the harbinger; and let us take this occasion to sing our palinode on
+the subject of 'Endymion.' We certainly did not<a name="FNanchor_O_15" id="FNanchor_O_15"></a><a href="#Footnote_O_15" class="fnanchor">[O]</a> discover in that poem
+the same degree of merit that its more clear-sighted and prophetic
+admirers did. We did not foresee the unbounded popularity which has
+carried it through we know not how many editions; which has placed it on
+every table; and, what is still more unequivocal, familiarized it in
+every mouth. All this splendour of fame, however, though we had not the
+sagacity to anticipate, we have the candour to acknowledge: and we
+request that the publisher of the new and beautiful edition of Keats's
+works now in the press, with graphic illustrations by Calcott and
+Turner, will do us the favour and the justice to notice our conversion
+in his prolegomena.</p>
+
+<p>Warned by our former mishap, wiser by experience, and improved, as we
+hope, in taste, we have to offer Mr. Tennyson our tribute of unmingled
+approbation, and it is<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_153" id="Page_153">[Pg 153]</a></span> very agreeable to us, as well as to our readers,
+that our present task will be little more than the selection, for their
+delight, of a few specimens of Mr. Tennyson's singular genius, and the
+venturing to point out, now and then, the peculiar brilliancy of some of
+the gems that irradiate his poetical crown.</p>
+
+<p>A prefatory sonnet opens to the reader the aspirations of the young
+author, in which, after the manner of sundry poets, ancient and modern,
+he expresses his own peculiar character, by wishing himself to be
+something that he is not. The amorous Catullus aspired to be a sparrow;
+the tuneful and convivial Anacreon (for we totally reject the
+supposition that attributes the &#7960;&#953;&#952;&#949; &#955;&#8059;&#961;&#951; &#967;&#945;&#955;&#951; &#947;&#949;&#957;&#959;&#953;&#956;&#951;&#957; to
+Alc&aelig;us) wished to be a lyre and a great drinking cup; a crowd of more
+modern sentimentalists have desired to approach their mistresses as
+flowers, tunicks, sandals, birds, breezes, and butterflies;&mdash;all poor
+conceits of narrow-minded poetasters! Mr. Tennyson (though he, too,
+would, as far as his true love is concerned, not unwillingly 'be an
+earring,' 'a girdle,' and 'a necklace,' p. 45) in the more serious and
+solemn exordium of his works ambitions a bolder metamorphosis&mdash;he wishes
+to be&mdash;<i>a river</i>!</p>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 12em;"><b>SONNET.</b></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Mine be the strength of spirit fierce and free,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like some broad river rushing down <i>alone</i>'&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>rivers that travel in company are too common for his taste&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'With the self-same impulse wherewith he was thrown'&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>a beautiful and harmonious line&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'From his loud fount upon the echoing lea:&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which, with <i>increasing</i> might, doth <i>forward flee</i>'&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_154" id="Page_154">[Pg 154]</a></span>Every word of this line is valuable&mdash;the natural progress of human
+ambition is here strongly characterized&mdash;two lines ago he would have
+been satisfied with the <i>self-same</i> impulse&mdash;but now he must have
+<i>increasing</i> might; and indeed he would require all his might to
+accomplish his object of <i>fleeing forward</i>, that is, going backwards and
+forwards at the same time. Perhaps he uses the word <i>flee</i> for <i>flow</i>;
+which latter he could not well employ in <i>this</i> place, it being, as we
+shall see, essentially necessary to rhyme to <i>Mexico</i> towards the end of
+the sonnet&mdash;as an equivalent to <i>flow</i> he has, therefore, with great
+taste and ingenuity, hit on the combination of <i>forward flee</i>&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;&mdash;'doth forward flee<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By town, and tower, and hill, and cape, and isle,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And in the middle of the green <i>salt</i> sea<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Keeps his blue waters fresh for many a mile.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>A noble wish, beautifully expressed, that he may not be confounded with
+the deluge of ordinary poets, but, amidst their discoloured and briny
+ocean, still preserve his own bright tints and sweet savor. He may be at
+ease on this point&mdash;he never can be mistaken for any one else. We have
+but too late become acquainted with him, yet we assure ourselves that if
+a thousand anonymous specimens were presented to us, we should
+unerringly distinguish his by the total absence of any particle of
+<i>salt</i>. But again, his thoughts take another turn, and he reverts to the
+insatiability of human ambition:&mdash;we have seen him just now content to
+be a river, but as he <i>flees forward</i>, his desires expand into
+sublimity, and he wishes to become the great Gulfstream of the Atlantic.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Mine be the power which ever to its sway<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Will win <i>the wise at once</i>&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_155" id="Page_155">[Pg 155]</a></span>We, for once, are wise, and he has won <i>us</i>&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Will win the wise at once; and by degrees<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">May into uncongenial spirits flow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Even as the great gulphstream of Flori<i>da</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Floats far away into the Northern seas<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The lavish growths of southern Mexi<i>co</i>!'&mdash;p. 1.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And so concludes the sonnet.</p>
+
+<p>The next piece is a kind of testamentary paper, addressed 'To &mdash;&mdash;,' a
+friend, we presume, containing his wishes as to what his friend should
+do for him when he (the poet) shall be dead&mdash;not, as we shall see, that
+he quite thinks that such a poet can die outright.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Shake hands, my friend, across the brink<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of that deep grave to which I go.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shake hands once more; I cannot sink<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">So far&mdash;far down, but I shall know<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Thy voice, and answer from below!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Horace said 'non omnis moriar,' meaning that his fame should
+survive&mdash;Mr. Tennyson is still more vivacious, 'non <i>omnino</i>
+moriar,'&mdash;'I will not die at all; my body shall be as immortal as my
+verse, and however <i>low I may go</i>, I warrant you I shall keep all my
+wits about me,&mdash;therefore'</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'When, in the darkness over me,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The four-handed mole shall scrape,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Plant thou no dusky cypress tree,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Nor wreath thy cap with doleful crape,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">But pledge me in the flowing grape.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Observe how all ages become present to the mind of a great poet; and
+admire how naturally he combines the funeral cypress of classical
+antiquity with the crape hat-band of the modern undertaker.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_156" id="Page_156">[Pg 156]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>He proceeds:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'And when the sappy field and wood<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Grow green beneath the <i>showery gray</i>,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And rugged barks begin to bud,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And through damp holts, newflushed with May,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Ring sudden <i>laughters</i> of the jay!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Laughter, the philosophers tell us, is a peculiar attribute of man&mdash;but
+as Shakespeare found 'tongues in trees and sermons in stones,' this true
+poet endows all nature not merely with human sensibilities but with
+human functions&mdash;the jay <i>laughs</i>, and we find, indeed, a little further
+on, that the woodpecker <i>laughs</i> also; but to mark the distinction
+between their merriment and that of men, both jays and woodpeckers laugh
+upon melancholy occasions. We are glad, moreover, to observe, that Mr.
+Tennyson is prepared for, and therefore will not be disturbed by, human
+laughter, if any silly reader should catch the infection from the
+woodpeckers and the jays.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Then let wise Nature work her will,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And on my clay her darnels grow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Come only when the days are still,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And at my head-stone whisper low,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And tell me'&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Now, what would an ordinary bard wish to be told under such
+circumstances?&mdash;why, perhaps, how his sweetheart was, or his child, or
+his family, or how the Reform Bill worked, or whether the last edition
+of his poems had been sold&mdash;<i>pap&aelig;</i>! our genuine poet's first wish is</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'And tell me&mdash;<i>if the woodbines blow</i>!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>When, indeed, he shall have been thus satisfied as to the <i>woodbines</i>,
+(of the blowing of which in their due sea<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_157" id="Page_157">[Pg 157]</a></span>son he may, we think, feel
+pretty secure,) he turns a passing thought to his friend&mdash;and another to
+his mother&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'If <i>thou</i> art blest, my <i>mother's</i> smile<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Undimmed'&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>but such inquiries, short as they are, seem too common-place, and he
+immediately glides back into his curiosity as to the state of the
+weather and the forwardness of the spring&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'If thou art blessed&mdash;my mother's smile<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Undimmed&mdash;<i>if bees are on the wing</i>?'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>No, we believe the whole circle of poetry does not furnish such another
+instance of enthusiasm for the sights and sounds of the vernal
+season!&mdash;The sorrows of a bereaved mother rank <i>after</i> the blossoms of
+the <i>woodbine</i>, and just before the hummings of the <i>bee</i>; and this is
+<i>all</i> that he has any curiosity about; for he proceeds:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Then cease, my friend, a little while<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That I may'&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>'send my love to my mother,' or 'give you some hints about bees, which I
+have picked up from Arist&aelig;us, in the Elysian Fields,' or 'tell you how I
+am situated as to my own personal comforts in the world below'?&mdash;oh no&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'That I may&mdash;hear the <i>throstle sing</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His bridal song&mdash;the boast of spring.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Sweet as the noise, in parch&egrave;d plains,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Of bubbling wells that fret the stones,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(<i>If any sense in me remains</i>)<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Thy words will be&mdash;thy cheerful tones<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">As welcome to&mdash;my <i>crumbling bones</i>!'&mdash;p. 4.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_158" id="Page_158">[Pg 158]</a></span>'<i>If any sense in me remains!</i>'&mdash;This doubt is inconsistent with the
+opening stanza of the piece, and, in fact, too modest; we take upon
+ourselves to re-assure Mr. Tennyson, that, even after he shall be dead
+and buried, as much '<i>sense</i>' will still remain as he has now the good
+fortune to possess.</p>
+
+<p>We have quoted these first two poems in <i>extenso</i>, to obviate any
+suspicion of our having made a partial or delusive selection. We cannot
+afford space&mdash;we wish we could&mdash;for an equally minute examination of the
+rest of the volume, but we shall make a few extracts to show&mdash;what we
+solemnly affirm&mdash;that every page teems with beauties hardly less
+surprising.</p>
+
+<p><i>The Lady of Shalott</i> is a poem in four parts, the story of which we
+decline to maim by such an analysis as we could give, but it opens
+thus&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'On either side the river lie<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Long fields of barley and of rye,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That clothe the wold and <i>meet the sky</i>&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And <i>through</i> the field the road runs <i>by</i>.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The Lady of Shalott was, it seems, a spinster who had, under some
+unnamed penalty, a certain web to weave.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Underneath the bearded barley,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The reaper, reaping late and early,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hears her ever chanting cheerly,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like an angel singing clearly....<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'No time has she for sport or play,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A charm&egrave;d web she weaves alway;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A curse is on her if she stay<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Her weaving either night or day....<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'She knows not'&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Poor lady, nor we either&mdash;<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_159" id="Page_159">[Pg 159]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'She knows not what that curse may be,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Therefore she weaveth steadily;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Therefore no other care has she<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">The Lady of Shalott.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>A knight, however, happens to ride past her window, coming</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i4">&mdash;&mdash;'from Camelot;<a name="FNanchor_P_16" id="FNanchor_P_16"></a><a href="#Footnote_P_16" class="fnanchor">[P]</a><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From the bank, and <i>from</i> the <i>river</i>,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He flashed <i>into</i> the crystal <i>mirror</i>&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">"Tirra lirra, tirra <i>lirra</i>," (<i>lirrar</i>?)<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Sang Sir Launcelot.'&mdash;p. 15.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The lady stepped to the window to look at the stranger, and forgot for
+an instant her web:&mdash;the curse fell on her, and she died; why, how, and
+wherefore, the following stanzas will clearly and pathetically
+explain:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'A long drawn carol, mournful, holy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She chanted loudly, chanted lowly,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till her eyes were darkened <i>wholly</i>,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And her smooth face sharpened <i>slowly</i>,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">Turned to towered Camelot.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For ere she reached upon the tide<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The first house on the water side,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Singing in her song she died,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">The Lady of Shalott!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Knight and burgher, lord and dame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the plank&egrave;d wharfage came;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Below <i>the stern</i> they read her name,<br /></span>
+<span class="i6">The Lady of Shalott.'&mdash;p. 19.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>We pass by two&mdash;what shall we call them?&mdash;tales, or odes, or sketches,
+entitled 'Mariana in the South' and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_160" id="Page_160">[Pg 160]</a></span> 'Ele&auml;nore,' of which we fear we
+could make no intelligible extract, so curiously are they run together
+into one dreamy tissue&mdash;to a little novel in rhyme, called 'The Miller's
+Daughter.' Millers' daughters, poor things, have been so generally
+betrayed by their sweethearts, that it is refreshing to find that Mr.
+Tennyson has united himself to <i>his</i> miller's daughter in lawful
+wedlock, and the poem is a history of his courtship and wedding. He
+begins with a sketch of his own birth, parentage, and personal
+appearance&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'My father's mansion, mounted high,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Looked down upon the village-spire;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I was a long and listless boy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And son and heir unto the Squire.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>But the son and heir of Squire Tennyson often descended from the
+'mansion mounted high;' and</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'I met in all the close green ways,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">While walking with my line and rod,'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>A metonymy for 'rod and line'&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'The wealthy miller's mealy face,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Like the <i>moon in an ivytod</i>.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'He looked so jolly and so good&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">While fishing in the mill-dam water,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I laughed to see him as he stood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And dreamt not of the miller's daughter.'&mdash;p. 33.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>He, however, soon saw, and, need we add, loved the miller's daughter,
+whose countenance, we presume, bore no great resemblance either to the
+'mealy face' of the miller, or 'the moon in an ivy-tod;' and we think
+our readers will be delighted at the way in which the im<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_161" id="Page_161">[Pg 161]</a></span>passioned
+husband relates to his wife how his fancy mingled enthusiasm for rural
+sights and sounds, with a prospect of the less romantic scene of her
+father's occupation.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'How dear to me in youth, my love,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Was everything about the mill;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The black, the silent pool above,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The pool beneath that ne'er stood still;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The meal-sacks on the whitened floor,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The dark round of the dripping wheel,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>The very air about the door,</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i2"><i>Made misty with the floating meal!</i>'&mdash;p. 36.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The accumulation of tender images in the following lines appears not
+less wonderful:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Remember you that pleasant day<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">When, after roving in the woods,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">('Twas April then) I came and lay<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Beneath those <i>gummy</i> chestnut-buds?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'A water-rat from off the bank<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Plunged in the stream. With idle care,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Downlooking through the sedges rank,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I saw your troubled image there.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'If you remember, you had set,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Upon the narrow casement-edge,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A <i>long green box</i> of mignonette<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And you were leaning on the ledge.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The poet's truth to Nature in his 'gummy' chestnut-buds, and to Art in
+the 'long green box' of mignonette&mdash;and that masterful touch of likening
+the first intrusion of love into the virgin bosom of the Miller's
+daughter to the plunging of a water-rat into the mill-dam&mdash;these are
+beauties which, we do not fear to say, equal anything even in Keats.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_162" id="Page_162">[Pg 162]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We pass by several songs, sonnets, and small pieces, all of singular
+merit, to arrive at a class, we may call them, of three poems derived
+from mythological sources&mdash;&#338;none, the Hesperides, and the
+Lotos-eaters. But though the subjects are derived from classical
+antiquity, Mr. Tennyson treats them with so much originality that he
+makes them exclusively his own. &#338;none, deserted by</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Beautiful Paris, evilhearted Paris,'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>sings a kind of dying soliloquy addressed to Mount Ida, in a formula
+which is <i>sixteen</i> times repeated in this short poem.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Dear mother Ida, hearken ere I die.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>She tells her 'dear mother Ida,' that when evilhearted Paris was about
+to judge between the three goddesses, he hid her (&#338;none) behind a
+rock, whence she had a full view of the <i>naked</i> beauties of the rivals,
+which broke her heart.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'<i>Dear mother Ida, hearken ere I die</i>:&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">It was the deep mid noon: one silvery cloud<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Had <i>lost his way</i> among the pined hills:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They came&mdash;<i>all three</i>&mdash;the Olympian goddesses.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Naked they came&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">* &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; * &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; * &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; * &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; * &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; *<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">How beautiful they were! too beautiful<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To look upon; but Paris was to me<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>More lovelier</i> than all the world beside.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>O mother Ida, hearken ere I die.</i>'&mdash;p. 56.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>In the place where we have indicated a pause, follows a description,
+long, rich, and luscious&mdash;Of the three naked goddesses? Fye for
+shame&mdash;no&mdash;of the 'lily flower violet-eyed,' and the 'singing pine,' and
+the 'overwandering ivy and vine,' and 'festoons,' and 'gnarl&egrave;d boughs,'
+and 'tree<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_163" id="Page_163">[Pg 163]</a></span> tops,' and 'berries,' and 'flowers,' and all the <i>inanimate</i>
+beauties of the scene. It would be unjust to the <i>ingenuus pudor</i> of the
+author not to observe the art with which he has veiled this ticklish
+interview behind such luxuriant trellis-work, and it is obvious that it
+is for our special sakes he has entered into these local details,
+because if there was one thing which 'mother Ida' knew better than
+another, it must have been her own bushes and brakes. We then have in
+detail the tempting speeches of, first&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">'The imperial Olympian,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With arch&egrave;d eyebrow smiling sovranly,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Full-ey&egrave;d Here;'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>secondly of Pallas&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">'Her clear and bar&egrave;d limbs<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O'er-thwarted with the brazen-headed spear,'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>and thirdly&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">'Idalian Aphrodite ocean-born,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fresh as the foam, new-bathed in Paphian <i>wells</i>&mdash;'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>for one dip, or even three dips in one well, would not have been enough
+on such an occasion&mdash;and her succinct and prevailing promise of&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'The fairest and most loving <i>wife</i> in Greece;'&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>upon evil-hearted Paris's catching at which prize, the tender and chaste
+&#338;none exclaims her indignation, that she herself should not be
+considered fair enough, since only yesterday her charms had struck awe
+into&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">'A wild and wanton pard,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Eyed like the evening-star, with playful tail&mdash;'<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_164" id="Page_164">[Pg 164]</a></span></div></div>
+
+<p>and proceeds in this anti-Martineau rapture&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">'<i>Most</i> loving is <i>she</i>?'<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'Ah me! my mountain shepherd, that my arms<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Were wound about thee, and my hot lips prest<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Close&mdash;close to thine in that quick-falling dew<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of <i>fruitful</i> kisses ...<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dear mother Ida! hearken ere I die!&mdash;p. 62.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>After such reiterated assurances that she was about to die on the spot,
+it appears that &#338;none thought better of it, and the poem concludes
+with her taking the wiser course of going to town to consult her swain's
+sister, Cassandra&mdash;whose advice, we presume, prevailed upon her to live,
+as we can, from other sources, assure our readers she did to a good old
+age.</p>
+
+<p>In the 'Hesperides' our author, with great judgment, rejects the common
+fable, which attributes to Hercules the slaying of the dragon and the
+plunder of the golden fruit. Nay, he supposes them to have existed to a
+comparatively recent period&mdash;namely, the voyage of Hanno, on the coarse
+canvas of whose log-book Mr. Tennyson has judiciously embroidered the
+Hesperian romance. The poem opens with a geographical description of the
+neighbourhood, which must be very clear and satisfactory to the English
+reader; indeed, it leaves far behind in accuracy of topography and
+melody of rhythm the heroics of Dionysius <i>Periegetes</i>.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'The north wind fall'n, in the new-starr&egrave;d night.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Here we must pause to observe a new species of <i>metabol&eacute;</i> with which Mr.
+Tennyson has enriched our language. He suppresses the E in <i>fallen</i>,
+where it is usually written and where it must be pronounced, and
+transfers it to the word <i>new-starr&egrave;d</i>, where it would not be
+pro<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_165" id="Page_165">[Pg 165]</a></span>nounced if he did not take due care to superfix a <i>grave</i> accent.
+This use of the grave accent is, as our readers may have already
+perceived, so habitual with Mr. Tennyson, and is so obvious an
+improvement, that we really wonder how the language has hitherto done
+without it. We are tempted to suggest, that if analogy to the accented
+languages is to be thought of, it is rather the acute ([&acute;]) than the
+grave ([`]) which should be employed on such occasions; but we speak
+with profound diffidence; and as Mr. Tennyson is the inventor of the
+system, we shall bow with respect to whatever his final determination
+may be.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'The north wind fall'n, in the new-starr&egrave;d night<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Zidonian Hanno, voyaging beyond<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The hoary promontory of Solo&euml;,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Past Thymiaterion in calm&egrave;d bays.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>We must here note specially the musical flow of this last line, which is
+the more creditable to Mr. Tennyson, because it was before the tuneless
+names of this very neighbourhood that the learned continuator of
+Dionysius retreated in despair&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&mdash;&mdash;&#949;&#960;&#969;&#957;&#965;&#956;&#8055;&#945;&#962; &#957;&#965;&#957; &#7956;&#955;&#955;&#945;&#967;&#949;&#957; &#7940;&#955;&#955;&#945;&#962;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&#913;&#7984;&#952;&#8055;&#959;&#960;&#969;&#957; &#947;&#945;&#8055;&#957;, &#948;&#965;&#963;&#966;&#969;&#957;&#959;&#965;&#962; &#959;&#965;&#948;' &#949;&#960;&#953;&#8053;&#961;&#959;&#957;&#962;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">&#924;&#959;&#965;&#963;&#945;&#953;&#962; &#8004;&#965;&#957;&#949;&#954;&#945; &#964;&#945;&#963;&#948;' &#7952;&#947;&#969; &#959;&#965;&#954; &#945;&#947;&#959;&#961;&#949;&#965;&#963;&#959;&#956;' &#945;&#960;&#945;&#963;&#945;&#962;.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>but Mr. Tennyson is bolder and happier&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Past Thymiaterion in calm&egrave;d bays,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Between the southern and the western Horn,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Heard neither'&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>We pause for a moment to consider what a sea-captain might have expected
+to hear, by night, in the Atlantic ocean&mdash;he heard</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">&mdash;'neither the warbling of the <i>nightingale</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor melody o' the Libyan lotusflute,'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_166" id="Page_166">[Pg 166]</a></span>but he did hear the three daughters of Hesper singing the following
+song:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'The golden apple, the golden apple, the hallow&egrave;d fruit,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Guard it well, guard it warily,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Singing airily,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Standing about the charm&egrave;d root,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Round about all is mute'&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><i>mute</i>, though they sung so loud as to be heard some leagues out at
+sea&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">&mdash;&mdash;'all is mute<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As the snow-field on mountain peaks,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As the sand-field at the mountain foot.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Crocodiles in briny creeks<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sleep, and stir not: all is mute.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>How admirably do these lines describe the peculiarities of this charm&egrave;d
+neighbourhood&mdash;fields of snow, so talkative when they happen to lie at
+the foot of the mountain, are quite out of breath when they get to the
+top, and the sand, so noisy on the summit of a hill, is dumb at its
+foot. The very crocodiles, too, are <i>mute</i>&mdash;not dumb but <i>mute</i>. The
+'red-comb&egrave;d dragon curl'd' is next introduced&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Look to him, father, lest he wink, and the golden apple be stolen away,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For his ancient heart is drunk with overwatchings night and day,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sing away, sing aloud evermore, in the wind, without stop.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The north wind, it appears, has by this time awaked again&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Lest his scal&egrave;d eyelid drop,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For he is older than the world'&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>older than the <i>hills</i>, besides not rhyming to 'curl'd,' would<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_167" id="Page_167">[Pg 167]</a></span> hardly
+have been a sufficiently venerable phrase for this most harmonious of
+lyrics. It proceeds&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'If ye sing not, if ye make false measure,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We shall lose eternal pleasure,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Worth eternal want of rest.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Laugh not loudly: watch the treasure<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of the wisdom of the west.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In <i>a corner</i> wisdom whispers. Five and three<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(<i>Let it not be preached abroad</i>) make an awful mystery.'&mdash;p. 102.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This recipe for keeping a secret, by singing it so loud as to be heard
+for miles, is almost the only point, in all Mr. Tennyson's poems, in
+which we can trace the remotest approach to anything like what other men
+have written, but it certainly does remind us of the 'chorus of
+conspirators' in the Rovers.</p>
+
+<p>Hanno, however, who understood no language but Punic&mdash;(the Hesperides
+sang, we presume, either in Greek or in English)&mdash;appears to have kept
+on his way without taking any notice of the song, for the poem
+concludes,&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'The apple of gold hangs over the sea,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Five links, a gold chain, are we,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hesper, the Dragon, and sisters three;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Daughters three,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bound about<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All around about<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The gnarl&egrave;d bole of the charm&egrave;d tree,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The golden apple, the golden apple, the hallow&egrave;d fruit,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Guard it well, guard it warily,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Watch it warily,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Singing airily<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Standing about the charm&egrave;d root.'&mdash;p. 107.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>We hardly think that, if Hanno had translated it into Punic, the song
+would have been more intelligible.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_168" id="Page_168">[Pg 168]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>The 'Lotuseaters'&mdash;a kind of classical opium-eaters&mdash;are Ulysses and his
+crew. They land on the 'charm&egrave;d island,' and 'eat of the charm&egrave;d root,'
+and then they sing&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Long enough the winedark wave our weary bark did carry.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">This is lovelier and sweeter,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Men of Ithaca, this is meeter,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the hollow rosy vale to tarry,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like a dreamy Lotuseater&mdash;a delicious Lotuseater!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We will eat the Lotus, sweet<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As the yellow honeycomb;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In the valley some, and some<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On the ancient heights divine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And no more roam,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">On the loud hoar foam,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To the melancholy home,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At the limits of the brine,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The little isle of Ithaca, beneath the day's decline.'&mdash;p. 116.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Our readers will, we think, agree that this is admirably characteristic,
+and that the singers of this song must have made pretty free with the
+intoxicating fruit. How they got home you must read in Homer:&mdash;Mr.
+Tennyson&mdash;himself, we presume, a dreamy lotus-eater, a delicious
+lotus-eater&mdash;leaves them in full song.</p>
+
+<p>Next comes another class of poems,&mdash;Visions. The first is the 'Palace of
+Art,' or a fine house, in which the poet <i>dreams</i> that he sees a very
+fine collection of well-known pictures. An ordinary versifier would, no
+doubt, have followed the old routine, and dully described himself as
+walking into the Louvre, or Buckingham Palace, and there seeing certain
+masterpieces of painting:&mdash;a true poet dreams it. We have not room to
+hang many of these <i>chefs-d'&#339;uvre</i>, but for a few we must find
+space.&mdash;'The Madonna'<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_169" id="Page_169">[Pg 169]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'The maid mother by a crucifix,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">In yellow pastures sunny warm,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beneath branch work of costly sardonyx<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Sat smiling&mdash;<i>babe in arm</i>.'&mdash;p. 72.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The use of the latter, apparently, colloquial phrase is a deep stroke of
+art. The form of expression is always used to express an habitual and
+characteristic action. A knight is described '<i>lance in rest</i>'&mdash;a
+dragoon, '<i>sword in hand</i>'&mdash;so, as the idea of the Virgin is inseparably
+connected with her child, Mr. Tennyson reverently describes her
+conventional position&mdash;'<i>babe in arm</i>.'</p>
+
+<p>His gallery of illustrious portraits is thus admirably arranged:&mdash;The
+Madonna&mdash;Ganymede&mdash;St. Cecilia&mdash;Europa&mdash;Deep-haired
+Milton&mdash;Shakspeare&mdash;Grim Dante&mdash;Michael Angelo&mdash;Luther&mdash;Lord
+Bacon&mdash;Cervantes&mdash;Calderon&mdash;King David&mdash;'the Halicarnass&euml;an' (<i>quaere</i>,
+which of them?)&mdash;Alfred, (not Alfred Tennyson, though no doubt in any
+other man's gallery <i>he</i> would have a place) and finally&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Isa&iuml;ah, with fierce Ezekiel,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Swarth Moses by the Coptic sea,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Plato, <i>Petrarca</i>, Livy, and Rapha&euml;l,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And eastern Confutzee!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>We can hardly suspect the very original mind of Mr. Tennyson to have
+harboured any recollections of that celebrated Doric idyll, 'The groves
+of Blarney,' but certainly there is a strong likeness between Mr.
+Tennyson's list of pictures and the Blarney collection of statutes&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Statues growing that noble place in,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">All heathen goddesses most rare,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Homer, Plutarch, and Nebuchadnezzar,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">All standing naked in the open air!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_170" id="Page_170">[Pg 170]</a></span>In this poem we first observed a stroke of art (repeated afterwards)
+which we think very ingenious. No one who has ever written verse but
+must have felt the pain of erasing some happy line, some striking
+stanza, which, however excellent in itself, did not exactly suit the
+place for which it was destined. How curiously does an author mould and
+remould the plastic verse in order to fit in the favourite thought; and
+when he finds that he cannot introduce it, as Corporal Trim says, <i>any
+how</i>, with what reluctance does he at last reject the intractable, but
+still cherished offspring of his brain! Mr. Tennyson manages this
+delicate matter in a new and better way; he says, with great candour and
+simplicity, 'If this poem were not already too long, <i>I should have
+added</i> the following stanzas,' and <i>then he adds them</i>, (p. 84;)&mdash;or,
+'the following lines are manifestly superfluous, as a part of the text,
+but they may be allowed to stand as a separate poem,' (p. 121,) <i>which
+they do</i>;&mdash;or, 'I intended to have added something on statuary, but I
+found it very difficult;'&mdash;(he had, moreover, as we have seen, been
+anticipated in this line by the Blarney poet)&mdash;'but I have finished the
+statues of <i>Elijah</i> and <i>Olympias</i>&mdash;judge whether I have succeeded,' (p.
+73)&mdash;and then we have these two statues. This is certainly the most
+ingenious device that has ever come under our observation, for
+reconciling the rigour of criticism with the indulgence of parental
+partiality. It is economical too, and to the reader profitable, as by
+these means</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'We lose no drop of the immortal man.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The other vision is 'A Dream of Fair Women,' in which the heroines of
+all ages&mdash;some, indeed, that belong to the times of 'heathen goddesses
+most rare'&mdash;pass before his view. We have not time to notice them all,
+but<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_171" id="Page_171">[Pg 171]</a></span> the second, whom we take to be Iphigenia, touches the heart with a
+stroke of nature more powerful than even the veil that the Grecian
+painter threw over the head of her father.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">&mdash;&mdash;'dimly I could descry<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The stern blackbearded kings with wolfish eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Watching to see me die.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">The tall masts quivered as they lay afloat;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The temples, and the people, and the shore;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One drew a sharp knife through my tender throat&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Slowly,&mdash;and <i>nothing more</i>!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>What touching simplicity&mdash;what pathetic resignation&mdash;he cut my
+throat&mdash;'<i>nothing more</i>!' One might indeed ask, 'what <i>more</i>' she would
+have?</p>
+
+<p>But we must hasten on; and to tranquillize the reader's mind after this
+last affecting scene, shall notice the only two pieces of a lighter
+strain which the volume affords. The first is elegant and playful; it is
+a description of the author's study, which he affectionately calls his
+<i>Darling Room</i>.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'O darling room, my heart's delight;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Dear room, the apple of my sight;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With thy two couches, soft and white,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">There is no room so exquis<i>ite</i>;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No little room so warm and bright,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wherein to read, wherein to write.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>We entreat our readers to note how, even in this little trifle, the
+singular taste and genius of Mr. Tennyson break forth. In such a dear
+<i>little</i> room a narrow-minded scribbler would have been content with
+<i>one</i> sofa, and that one he would probably have covered with black
+mohair, or red cloth, or a good striped chintz; how infinitely more<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_172" id="Page_172">[Pg 172]</a></span>
+characteristic is white dimity!&mdash;'tis as it were a type of the purity of
+the poet's mind. He proceeds&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'For I the Nonnenwerth have seen,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And Oberwinter's vineyards green,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Musical Lurlei; and between<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The hills to Bingen I have been,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Bingen in Darmstadt, where the <i>Rhene</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Curves toward Mentz, a woody scene.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Yet never did there meet my sight,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In any town, to left or right,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A little room so exquis<i>ite</i>,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With <i>two</i> such couches soft and white;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor any room so warm and bright,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Wherein to read, wherein to write.'&mdash;p. 153.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>A common poet would have said that he had been in London or in Paris&mdash;in
+the loveliest villa on the banks of the Thames, or the most gorgeous
+chateau on the Loire&mdash;that he has reclined in Madame de Sta&euml;l's boudoir,
+and mused in Mr. Roger's comfortable study; but the <i>darling room</i> of
+the poet of nature (which we must suppose to be endued with sensibility,
+or he would not have addressed it) would not be flattered with such
+common-place comparisons;&mdash;no, no, but it is something to have it said
+that there is no such room in the ruins of the Drachenfels, in the
+vineyard of Oberwinter, or even in the rapids of the <i>Rhene</i>, under the
+Lurleyberg. We have ourselves visited all these celebrated spots, and
+can testify in corroboration of Mr. Tennyson, that we did not see in any
+of them anything like <i>this little room so exquis</i><span class="smcap lowercase">ITE</span>.</p>
+
+<p>The second of the lighter pieces, and the last with which we shall
+delight our readers, is a severe retaliation on the editor of the
+Edinburgh Magazine, who, it seems, had not treated the first volume of
+Mr. Tennyson with the same respect that we have, we trust, evinced for
+the second.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_173" id="Page_173">[Pg 173]</a></span></p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">'To <span class="smcap">Christopher North</span>.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You did late review my lays,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Crusty Christopher;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">You did mingle blame and praise<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Rusty Christopher.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When I learnt from whom it came<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I forgave you all the blame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Musty Christopher;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I could <i>not</i> forgive the praise,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Fusty Christopher.'&mdash;p. 153.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Was there ever anything so genteelly turned&mdash;so terse&mdash;so sharp&mdash;and the
+point so stinging and <i>so true</i>?</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'I could not forgive the <i>praise</i>,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Fusty Christopher!'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This leads us to observe on a phenomenon which we have frequently seen,
+but never been able to explain. It has been occasionally our painful lot
+to excite the displeasure of authors whom we have reviewed, and who have
+vented their dissatisfaction, some in prose, some in verse, and some in
+what we could not distinctly say whether it was verse or prose; but we
+have invariably found that the common formula of retort was that adopted
+by Mr. Tennyson against his northern critic, namely, that the author
+would always</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">&mdash;Forgive us all the <i>blame</i>,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But could <i>not</i> forgive the <i>praise</i>.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Now this seems very surprising. It has sometimes, though we regret to
+say rarely, happened, that, as in the present instance, we have been
+able to deal out unqualified praise, but never found that the dose in
+this case disagreed with the most squeamish stomach; on the con<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_174" id="Page_174">[Pg 174]</a></span>trary,
+the patient has always seemed exceedingly comfortable after he had
+swallowed it. He has been known to take the 'Review' home and keep his
+wife from a ball, and his children from bed, till he could administer it
+to them, by reading the article aloud. He has even been heard to
+recommend the 'Review' to his acquaintance at the clubs, as the best
+number which has yet appeared, and one, who happened to be an M.P. as
+well as an author, gave a <i>conditional</i> order, that in case his last
+work should be favourably noticed, a dozen copies should be sent down by
+the mail to the borough of &mdash;&mdash;. But, on the other hand, when it has
+happened that the general course of our criticism has been unfavourable,
+if by accident we happened to introduce the smallest spice of <i>praise</i>,
+the patient immediately fell into paroxysms&mdash;declaring that the part
+which we foolishly thought might offend him had, on the contrary, given
+him pleasure&mdash;positive pleasure, but <i>that</i> which he could not possibly
+either forget or forgive, was the grain of praise, be it ever so small,
+which we had dropped in, and for which, and <i>not for our censure</i>, he
+felt constrained, in honour and conscience, to visit us with his extreme
+indignation. Can any reader or writer inform us how it is that praise in
+the wholesale is so very agreeable to the very same stomach that rejects
+it with disgust and loathing, when it is scantily administered; and
+above all, can they tell us why it is, that the indignation and nausea
+should be in the exact inverse ratio to the quantity of the ingredient?
+These effects, of which we could quote several cases much more violent
+than Mr. Tennyson's, puzzle us exceedingly; but a learned friend, whom
+we have consulted, has, though he could not account for the phenomenon,
+pointed out what he thought an analogous case. It is related of Mr.
+Alderman Faulkner, of convivial memory, that one night when he expected
+his<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_175" id="Page_175">[Pg 175]</a></span> guests to sit late and try the strength of his claret and his head,
+he took the precaution of placing in his wine-glass a strawberry, which
+his doctor, he said, had recommended to him on account of its cooling
+qualities: on the faith of this specific, he drank even more deeply,
+and, as might be expected, was carried away at an earlier period and in
+rather a worse state, than was usual with him. When some of his friends
+condoled with him next day, and attributed his misfortune to six bottles
+of claret which he had imbibed, the Alderman was extremely
+indignant&mdash;'the claret,' he said, 'was sound, and never could do any man
+any harm&mdash;his discomfiture was altogether caused by that damned single
+strawberry' which he had kept all night at the bottom of his
+glass.&mdash;<i>The Quarterly Review</i>.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 35%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_176" id="Page_176">[Pg 176]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="bigcenter"><i>The Princess; a Medley</i>. By Alfred Tennyson. Moxon.</p>
+
+<p>That we are behind most even of our heaviest and slowest contemporaries
+in the notice of this volume, is a fact for which we cannot
+satisfactorily account to ourselves, and can therefore hardly hope to be
+able to make a valid excuse to our readers. The truth is, that whenever
+we turned to it we became, like the needle between positive and negative
+electric poles, so attracted and repelled, that we vibrated too much to
+settle to any fixed condition. Vacillation prevented criticism, and we
+had to try the experiment again and again before we could arrive at the
+necessary equipose to indicate the right direction of taste and opinion.
+We will now, however, note our variations, and leave them to the public
+judgment.</p>
+
+<p>The first lines of the prologue were repulsive, as a specimen of the
+poorest Wordsworth manner and style&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Sir Walter Vivian all a summer's day<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gave his broad lawns until the set of sun<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Up to his people: thither flock'd at noon<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His tenants, wife and child, and thither half<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The neighbouring borough with their Institute<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of which he was the patron. I was there<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From college, visiting the son,&mdash;the son<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A Walter too,&mdash;with others of our set."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The "wife and child" of the tenants is hardly intelligible; and the
+"set" is but a dubious expression. Nor can we clearly comprehend the
+next line and a half&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"And me that morning Walter show'd the house,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Greek, set with busts:"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_177" id="Page_177">[Pg 177]</a></span>Does this mean that Sir Walter Vivian inhabited a Greek house, and that
+the college "set" were guests in that dwelling "set with busts"? To say
+the least, this is inelegant, and the affectations proceed&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">"From vases in the hall<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Flowers of all heavens, and lovelier than their names</i>,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Grew side by side."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Persons conversant with the botanical names of flowers will hardly be
+able to realize (as the Yankees have it) the idea of their loveliness;
+the loveliness of Hippuris, Dolichos, Syngenesia, Cheiranthus,
+Artocarpus, Arum dracunculus, Ampelopsis hederaca, Hexandria, Monogynea,
+and the rest.</p>
+
+<p>A good description of the demi-scientific sports of the Institute
+follows; but the house company and inmates retire to a ruined abbey:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">"High-arch'd and ivy-claspt,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of finest Gothic, lighter than a fire."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This is a curious jumble in company, two lights of altogether a
+different nature; but the party get into a rattling conversation, in
+which the noisy babble of the College Cubs is satirically characterized:
+we</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i14">"Told<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of college: he had climb'd across the spikes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And he had squeez'd himself betwixt the bars,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And he had breathed the Proctor's dogs; and one<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Discuss'd his tutor, rough to common men<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But honeying at the whisper of a lord;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And one the Master, as a rogue in grain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Veneer'd with sanctimonious theory."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The dialogue happily takes a turn, and the task of writing the
+<i>Princess</i> is assigned to the author, as one of<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_178" id="Page_178">[Pg 178]</a></span> the tales in the
+Decameron of Boccaccio. A neighbouring princess of the south (so the
+story runs as the prince tells it) is in childhood betrothed to a like
+childish prince of the north:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">"She to me<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was proxy-wedded with a <i>bootless calf</i> [?]<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At eight years old."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Both grew up, the prince, all imaginative, filling his mind with
+pictures of her perfections; but she turning a female reformer of the
+Wolstencroft [<i>sic</i>] school, resolved never to wed till woman was raised
+to an equality with men, and establishing a strange female colony and
+college to carry this vast design into effect. In consequence of this
+her father is obliged to violate the contract, and his indignant father
+prepares for war to enforce it. The prince, with two companions, flies
+to the south, to try what he can do for himself; and in the disguise of
+ladies they obtain admission to the guarded precincts of the new
+Amazonian league. He, meanwhile, sings sweetly of his mistress&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"And still I wore her picture by my heart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And one dark tress; and all around them both<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sweet thoughts would swarm as bees about their queen."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And of his friend&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">"My other heart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">My shadow, my half-self, for still we moved<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Together, kin as horse's ear and eye."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>His evasion is also finely told&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">"But when the council broke, I rose and past<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Through the wild woods that hang about the town;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Found a still place, and pluck'd her likeness out:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Laid it on flowers, and watch'd it lying bathed<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_179" id="Page_179">[Pg 179]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">In the green gleam of dewy-tassell'd trees:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">What were those fancies? wherefore break her troth?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Proud look'd the lips: but while I meditated<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A wind arose and rush'd upon the South,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And shook the songs, the whispers, and the shrieks<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of the wild woods together; and a Voice<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Went with it 'Follow, follow, thou shalt win!'"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Almost in juxtaposition with these beauties, we find one of the
+disagreeable blots, so offensive to good taste, which disfigure the
+poem. The travellers are interrogating the host of an inn close to the
+liberties where the princess holds her petticoated sway:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">"And at the last&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The summer of the vine in all his veins&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">'No doubt that we might make it worth his while.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For him, he reverenced his liege-lady there;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">He always made a point to post with mares;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">His daughter and his housemaid were the boys.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The land, he understood, for miles about<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Was till'd by women; all the swine were sows,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all the dogs'"&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>This is too bad, even for medley; but proceed we into the interior of
+the grand and luxurious feminine institution, where their sex is
+speedily discovered, but for certain reasons concealed by the
+discoverers. Lectures on the past and what might be done to accomplish
+female equality, and description of the boundaries, the dwelling place,
+and the dwellers therein, fill many a page of mingled excellence and
+defects. Here is a sample of both in half a dozen lines:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">"We saw<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The Lady Blanche's daughter where she stood,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Melissa, with her hand upon the lock,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A rosy blonde, and in a college gown<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>That clad her like an April daffodilly</i><br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_180" id="Page_180">[Pg 180]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">(Her mother's colour) with her lips apart,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And all her thoughts as fair within her eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>As bottom agates seem to wave and float</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>In crystal currents of clear morning seas</i>."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Curious contradictions in mere terms, also occasionally occur. Thus, of
+a frightened girl, we are told that&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">"<i>Light</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As flies the <i>shadow</i> of a bird she fled."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Events move on. The prince reasons as a man in a colloquy with the
+princess, and speaks of the delights of maternal affections, and she
+replies&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">"We are not talk'd to thus:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yet will we say for children, would they grew<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like field-flowers everywhere! we like them well:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But children die; and let me tell you, girl,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Howe'er you babble, great deeds cannot die:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They with the sun and moon renew their light<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Forever, blessing those that look on them:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Children&mdash;that men may pluck them from our hearts,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Kill us with pity, break us with ourselves&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">O&mdash;children&mdash;there is nothing upon earth<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">More miserable than she that has a son<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And sees him err:"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>A song on "The days that are no more," seems to us to be too laboured,
+nor is the other lyric introduced, "The Swallow," much more to our
+satisfaction. It is a mixture of prettinesses: the first four triplets
+run thus, ending in a poetic beauty&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"O Swallow, Swallow, flying, flying South,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fly to her, and fall upon her gilded eaves,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And tell her, tell her what I tell to thee.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_181" id="Page_181">[Pg 181]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">"O tell her, Swallow, thou that knowest each,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That bright and fierce and fickle is the South,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And <i>dark</i> and true and tender is the North.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"O Swallow, Swallow, if I could follow, and light<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Upon her lattice, I would pipe and trill,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And <i>cheep and twitter twenty million loves</i>.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"O were I thou that she might take me in,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And lay me on her bosom, <i>and her heart</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>Would rock the snowy cradle till I died</i>."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The prince saves the princess from being drowned, when the secret
+explodes like a roll of gun cotton, and a grand turmoil ensues. The
+rival kings approach to confines in battle array, and the princess
+resumes the declaration of war:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i10">"A tide of fierce<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Invective seem'd to wait behind her lips,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As waits a river level with the dam<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ready to burst and flood the world with foam:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And so she would have spoken, but there rose<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A hubbub in the court of half the maids<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Gather'd together; from the illumin'd hall<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Long lanes of splendour slanted o'er a press<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of snowy shoulders, thick as herded ewes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And rainbow robes, and gems and gemlike eyes,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And gold and golden heads; they to and fro<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fluctuated, as flowers in storm, some red, same pale,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All open-mouth'd, all gazing to the light,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some crying there was an army in the land,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And some that men were in the very walls,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And some they cared not; till a clamour grew<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As of a new-world Babel, woman-built,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And worse-confounded: high above them stood<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The placid marble Muses, looking peace."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>She denounces the perils outside and in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_182" id="Page_182">[Pg 182]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i14">"I dare<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All these male thunderbolts: what is it ye fear?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Peace! there are those to avenge us and they come:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If not,&mdash;myself were like enough, O girls,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To unfurl the maiden banner of our rights,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And clad in iron burst the ranks of war,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or, falling, protomartyr of our cause,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Die: yet I blame ye not so much for fear;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Six thousand years of fear have made ye that<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From which I would redeem ye: but for those<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That stir this hubbub&mdash;you and you&mdash;I know<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Your faces there in the crowd&mdash;to-morrow morn<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">We meet to elect new tutors; then shall they<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That love their voices more than duty, learn<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">With whom they deal, dismiss'd in shame to live<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No wiser than their mothers, household stuff,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Live chattels, mincers of each other's fame,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Full of weak poison, turnspits for the clown,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The drunkard's football, laughing-stocks of Time,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whose brains are in their hands and in their heels,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But fit to flaunt, to dress, to dance, to thrum,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To tramp, to scream, to burnish, and to scour<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">For ever slaves at home and fools abroad."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Ay, just as Shakspere hath it&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"To suckle fools and chronicle small beer."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The hero also meets the shock, at least in poetic grace:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">"Upon my spirits<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Settled a gentle cloud of melancholy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Which I shook off, for I was young, and one<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">To whom the shadow of all mischance but came<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As night to him that sitting on a hill<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sees the midsummer, midnight, Norway sun,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Set into sunrise."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>It is agreed to decide the contest by a combat of fifty on each
+side&mdash;the one led by the prince, and the other by<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_183" id="Page_183">[Pg 183]</a></span> Arac, the brother of
+the princess. And clad in "harness"&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">"Issued in the sun that now<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Leapt from the dewy shoulders of the Earth,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And hit the northern hills."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>To the fight&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Then rode we with the old king across the lawns<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Beneath huge trees, a thousand rings of Spring<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In every bole, a song on every spray<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of birds that piped their Valentines."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The prince and his companions are defeated; and he, wounded almost to
+the death, is consigned at her own request to be nursed by the
+princess:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"So was their sanctuary violated,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">So their fair college turn'd to hospital;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">At first with all confusion; by and by<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Sweet order lived again with other laws;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">A kindlier influence reign'd; and everywhere<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Low voices with the ministering hand<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Hung round the sick."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The result may be foreseen&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"From all a closer interest flourish'd up.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Tenderness touch by touch, and last, to these,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Love, like an Alpine harebell hung with tears<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">By some cold morning glacier; frail at first<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And feeble, all unconscious of itself,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But such as gather'd colour day by day."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And the agreement is filled up:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">"Dear, but let us type them now<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In our lives, and this proud watchword rest<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of equal; seeing either sex alone<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is half itself, and in true marriage lies<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_184" id="Page_184">[Pg 184]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor equal, nor unequal: each fulfils<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Defect in each, and always thought in thought,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Purpose in purpose, will in will, they grow,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The single pure and perfect animal,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The two-cell'd heart beating with one full stroke<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Life"<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i6">"O we will walk this world,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yoked in all exercise of noble end,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And so through those dark gates across the wild<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That no man knows. Indeed I love thee; come,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Yield thyself up; my hopes and thine are one;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Accomplish thou my manhood and thyself<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Lay thy sweet hands in mine and trust to me."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Who will question the true poetry of this production, or who will deny
+the imperfections, (mostly of affectation, though some of tastelessness)
+which obscure it? Who will wonder at our confessed wavering when they
+have read this course of alternate power, occasionally extravagant, and
+feebleness as in the long account of the <i>emeute</i>? Of the extravagant,
+the description of the princess, on receiving the declaration of war, is
+an example:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i8">"She read, till over brow<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And cheek and bosom brake the wrathful bloom<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As of some fire against a stormy cloud,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">When the wild peasant rights himself, and the rick<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Flames, and his anger reddens in the heavens."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The heroine, it must be acknowledged, is much of the virago throughout,
+and the prince rather of the softest; but the tale could not be
+otherwise told. We add four examples&mdash;two to be admired, and two to be
+contemned, in the fulfilment of our critique.</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"For was, and is, and will be, are but is,"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>is a noble line; and the following, on the promised restoration of a
+child to its mother, is very touching<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_185" id="Page_185">[Pg 185]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Again she veiled her brows, and prone she sank, and so<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Like tender things that being caught feign death,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Spoke not, nor stirr'd."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Not so the burlesque eight daughters of the plough, the brawny ministers
+of the princess' executive, and their usage of a herald. They were&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Eight daughters of the plough, stronger than men,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Huge women blowzed with health, and wind, and rain<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And labour. Each was like a Druid rock;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Or like a spire of land that stands apart<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Cleft from the main, and clang'd about with mews."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>And they&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"Came sallying through the gates, and caught his hair,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And so belabour'd him on rib and cheek<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They made him wild."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Nor the following&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"When the man wants weight the woman takes it up,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And topples down the scales; but this is fixt<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">As are the roots of earth and base of all.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Man for the field and woman for the hearth;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Man for the sword and for the needle she;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Man with the head and woman with the heart;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Man to command and woman to obey;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All else confusion. Look to it; the gray mare<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is ill to live with, when her whinny shrills<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">From tile to scullery, and her small goodman<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Shrinks in his arm-chair while the fires of Hell<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mix with his hearth; but take and break her, you!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She's yet a colt. Well groom'd and strongly curb'd<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">She might not rank with those detestable<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">That to the hireling leave their babe, and brawl<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Their rights or wrongs like potherbs in the street.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">They say she's comely; there's the fairer chance:<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_186" id="Page_186">[Pg 186]</a></span>
+<span class="i0"><i>I</i> like her none the less for rating at her!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Besides, the woman wed is not as we,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But suffers change of frame. A lusty brace<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Of twins may weed her of her folly. Boy,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The bearing and the training of a child<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Is woman's wisdom."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p><span style="margin-left: 10em;">&mdash;<i>The Literary Gazette</i>.</span></p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_187" id="Page_187">[Pg 187]</a></span></p>
+<h2><span class="smcap">Robert Browning</span></h2>
+
+
+<p class="bigcenter"><i>Paracelsus</i>. By Robert Browning.</p>
+
+<p>There is talent in this dramatic poem, (in which is attempted a picture
+of the mind of this celebrated character,) but it is dreamy and obscure.
+Writers would do well to remember, (by way of example,) that though it
+is not difficult to imitate the mysticism and vagueness of Shelley, we
+love him and have taken him to our hearts as a poet, not <i>because</i> of
+these characteristics&mdash;but <i>in spite</i> of them.&mdash;<i>The Athen&aelig;um</i>.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 35%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_188" id="Page_188">[Pg 188]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="bigcenter"><i>Sordello</i>. By Robert Browning. London: Moxon. 1840.</p>
+
+<p>The scene of this poem is laid in Italy, when the Ghibelline and Guelph
+factions were in hottest contest. The author's style is rather peculiar,
+there being affectations of language and invertions of thought, and
+other causes of obscurity in the course of the story which detract from
+the pleasure of perusing it. But after all, we are much mistaken if Mr.
+Browning does not prove himself a poet of a right stamp,&mdash;original,
+vigorous, and finely inspired. He appears to us to possess a true sense
+of the dignity and sacredness of the poet's kingdom; and his imagination
+wings its way with a boldness, freedom and scope, as if he felt himself
+at home in that sphere, and was resolved to put his allegiance to the
+test.&mdash;<i>The Monthly Review</i>.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 35%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_189" id="Page_189">[Pg 189]</a></span></p>
+
+<p class="bigcenter"><i>Men and Women</i>. By Robert Browning. Two Volumes. Chapman and Hall.</p>
+
+<p>It is really high time that this sort of thing should, if possible, be
+stopped. Here is another book of madness and mysticism&mdash;another
+melancholy specimen of power wantonly wasted, and talent deliberately
+perverted&mdash;another act of self-prostration before that demon of bad
+taste who now seems to hold in absolute possession the fashionable
+masters of our ideal literature. It is a strong case for the
+correctional justice of criticism, which has too long abdicated its
+proper functions. The Della Crusca of Sentimentalism perished under the
+<i>Baviad</i>&mdash;is there to be no future Gifford for the Della Crusca of
+Transcendentalism? The thing has really grown to a lamentable head
+amongst us. The contagion has affected not only our sciolists and our
+versifiers, but those whom, in the absence of a mightier race, we must
+be content to accept as the poets of our age. Here is Robert Browning,
+for instance&mdash;no one can doubt that he is capable of better things&mdash;no
+one, while deploring the obscurities that deface the <i>Paracelsus</i> and
+the <i>Dramatic Lyrics</i>, can deny the less questionable qualities which
+characterized those remarkable poems&mdash;but can any of his devotees be
+found to uphold his present elaborate experiment on the patience of the
+public? Take any of his worshippers you please&mdash;let him be "well up" in
+the transcendental poets of the day&mdash;take him fresh from Alexander
+Smith, or Alfred Tennyson's <i>Maud</i>, or the <i>Mystic</i> of Bailey&mdash;and we
+will engage to find him at least ten passages in the first ten pages of
+<i>Men and Women</i>, some of which, even after profound study, he will not
+be able to construe at all, and<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_190" id="Page_190">[Pg 190]</a></span> not one of which he will be able to
+read off at sight. Let us take one or two selections at random from the
+first volume, and try. What, for instance, is the meaning of these four
+stanzas from the poem entitled "By the Fireside"?&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">My perfect wife, my Leonor,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Oh, heart my own, oh, eyes, mine too,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Whom else could I dare look backward for,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With whom beside should I dare pursue<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">The path grey heads abhor?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">For it leads to a crag's sheer edge with them;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Youth, flowery all the way, there stops&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Not they; age threatens and they contemn,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Till they reach the gulf wherein youth drops,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One inch from our life's safe hem!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">With me, youth led&mdash;I will speak now,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">No longer watch you as you sit<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Reading by fire-light, that great brow<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">And the spirit-small hand propping it<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Mutely&mdash;my heart knows how&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">When, if I think but deep enough,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">You are wont to answer, prompt as rhyme;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And you, too, find without a rebuff<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The response your soul seeks many a time<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Piercing its fine flesh-stuff&mdash;<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>We really should think highly of the powers of any interpreter who could
+"pierce" the obscurity of such "stuff" as this. One extract more and we
+have done. A gold medal in the department of Hermeneutical Science to
+the ingenious individual, who, after any length of study, can succeed in
+unriddling this tremendous passage from "Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha,"
+the organist:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_191" id="Page_191">[Pg 191]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">First you deliver your phrase<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">&mdash;Nothing propound, that I see,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fit in itself for much blame or much praise&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Answered no less, where no answer needs be:<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Off start the Two on their ways!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Straight must a Third interpose,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Volunteer needlessly help&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">In strikes a Fourth, a Fifth thrusts in his nose,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">So the cry's open, the kennel's a-yelp,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Argument's hot to the close!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">One disertates, he is candid&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Two must dicept,&mdash;has distinguished!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Three helps the couple, if ever yet man did:<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Four protests, Five makes a dart at the thing wished&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Back to One, goes the case bandied!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">One says his say with a difference&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">More of expounding, explaining!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All now is wrangle, abuse, and vociferance&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Now there's a truce, all's subdued, self-restraining&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Five, though, stands out all the stiffer hence.<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">One is incisive, corrosive&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Two retorts, nettled, curt, crepitant&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Three makes rejoinder, expansive, explosive&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Four overbears them all, strident and strepitant&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Five ... O Danaides, O Sieve!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Now, they ply axes and crowbars&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Now they prick pins at a tissue<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Fine as a skein of the casuist Escobar's<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Worked on the bone of a lie. To what issue?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Where is our gain at the Two-bars?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0"><i>Est fuga, volvitur rota!</i><br /></span>
+<span class="i2">On we drift. Where looms the dim port?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">One, Two, Three, Four, Five, contribute their quota&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Something is gained, if one caught but the import&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Show it us, Hugues of Saxe-Gotha!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_192" id="Page_192">[Pg 192]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">What [with] affirming, denying,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Holding, risposting, subjoining,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">All's like ... it's like ... for an instance I'm trying ...<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">There! See our roof, its gilt moulding and groining<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Under those spider-webs lying?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">So your fugue broadens and thickens,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Greatens and deepens and lengthens,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Till one exclaims&mdash;"But where's music, the dickens?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Blot ye the gold, while your spider-web strengthens,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Blacked to the stoutest of tickens?"<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>Do our readers exclaim, "But where's poetry&mdash;the dickens&mdash;in all this
+rigmarole?" We confess we can find none&mdash;we can find nothing but a set
+purpose to be obscure, and an idiot captivity to the jingle of
+Hudibrastic rhyme. This idle weakness really appears to be at the bottom
+of half the daring nonsense in this most daringly nonsensical book.
+Hudibras Butler told us long ago that "rhyme the rudder is of verses;"
+and when, as in his case, or in that of Ingoldsby Barham, or
+Whims-and-Oddities Hood, the rudder guides the good ship into tracks of
+fun and fancy she might otherwise have missed, we are grateful to the
+double-endings, not on their own account, but for what they have led us
+to. But Mr. Browning is the mere thrall of his own rudder, and is
+constantly being steered by it into whirlpools of the most raging
+absurdity. This morbid passion for double rhymes, which is observable
+more or less throughout the book, reaches its climax in a long copy of
+verses on the "Old Pictures of Florence," which, with every disposition
+to be tolerant of the frailties of genius, we cannot hesitate to
+pronounce a masterpiece of absurdity. Let the lovers of the Hudibrastic
+admire these <i>tours de force</i>:<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_193" id="Page_193">[Pg 193]</a></span>&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Not that I expect the great Bigordi<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Nor Sandro to hear me, chivalric, bellicose;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Nor wronged Lippino&mdash;and not a word I<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Say of a scrap of Fra Angelico's.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">But you are too fine, Taddeo Gaddi,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">So grant me a taste of your intonaco&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Some Jerome that seeks the heaven with a sad eye?<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">No churlish saint, Lorenzo Monaco?<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i2">* &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; * &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; * &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; * &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; * &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; * &nbsp; &nbsp; &nbsp; *<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Margheritone of Arezzo,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">With the grave-clothes garb and swaddling barret,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(Why purse up mouth and beak in a pet so,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">You bald, saturnine, poll-clawed parrot?)<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">No poor glimmering Crucifixion,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Where in the foreground kneels the donor?<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">If such remain, as is my conviction,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The hoarding does you but little honour.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The conclusion of this poem rises to a climax:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">How shall we prologuise, how shall we perorate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Say fit things upon art and history&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Set truth at blood-heat and the false at zero rate,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Make of the want of the age no mystery!<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Contrast the fructuous and sterile eras,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Show, monarchy its uncouth cub licks<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Out of the bear's shape to the chim&aelig;ra's&mdash;<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Pure Art's birth being still the republic's!<br /></span>
+</div><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">Then one shall propose (in a speech, curt Tuscan,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Sober, expurgate, spare of an "<i>issimo</i>,")<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Ending our half-told tale of Cambuscan,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Turning the Bell-tower's altaltissimo.<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">And fine as the beak of a young beccaccia<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">The Campanile, the Duomo's fit ally,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Soars up in gold its full fifty braccia,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Completing Florence, as Florence, Italy.<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>How really deplorable is all this! On what theory of art can it possibly
+be defended? In all the fine arts alike<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_194" id="Page_194">[Pg 194]</a></span>&mdash;poetry, painting, sculpture,
+music&mdash;the master works have this in common, that they please in the
+highest degree the most cultivated, and to the widest extent the less
+cultivated. <i>Lear</i> and the <i>Divine Comedy</i> exhaust the thinking of the
+profoundest student, yet subdue to hushed and breathless attention the
+illiterate minds that know not what study means. The "Last Judgment,"
+the "Transfiguration," the "Niobe," and the "Dying Gladiator" excite
+alike the intelligent rapture of artists, and the unintelligent
+admiration of those to whom art and its principles are a sealed book.
+Handel's <i>Israel in Egypt</i>&mdash;the wonder of the scientific musician in his
+closet&mdash;yet sways to and fro, like a mighty wind upon the waters, the
+hearts of assembled thousands at an Exeter Hall oratorio. To take an
+instance more striking still, Beethoven, the sublime, the rugged, the
+austere, is also, as even Mons. Jullien could tell us, fast becoming a
+popular favourite. Now why is this? Simply because these master minds,
+under the divine teaching of genius, have known how to clothe their
+works in a beauty of form incorporate with their very essence&mdash;a beauty
+of form which has an elective affinity with the highest instincts of
+universal humanity. And it is on this beauty of form, this exquisite
+perfection of style, that the Baileys and the Brownings would have us
+believe that they set small account, that they purposely and scornfully
+trample. We do not believe it. We believe that it is only because they
+are half-gifted that they are but half-intelligible. Their mysticism is
+weakness&mdash;weakness writhing itself into contortions that it may ape the
+muscles of strength. Artistic genius, in its higher degrees, necessarily
+involves the power of beautiful self-expression. It is but a weak and
+watery sun that allows the fogs to hang heavy between the objects on
+which it shines and the eyes it would enlighten; the true<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_195" id="Page_195">[Pg 195]</a></span> day-star
+chases the mists at once, and shows us the world at a glance.</p>
+
+<p>Our main object has been to protest against what we feel to be the false
+teachings of a perverted school of art; and we have used this book of
+Mr. Browning's chiefly as a means of showing the extravagant lengths of
+absurdity to which the tenets of that school can lead a man of admitted
+powers. We should regret, however in the pursuit of this object to
+inflict injustice on Mr. Browning. This last book of his, like most of
+its predecessors, contains some undeniable beauties&mdash;subtle thoughts,
+graceful fancies, and occasionally a strain of music, which only makes
+the chaos of surrounding discords jar more harshly on the ear. The
+dramatic scenes "In a Balcony" are finely conceived and vigorously
+written; "Bishop Blougram's Apology," and "Cleon," are well worth
+reading and thinking over; and there is a certain grace and beauty in
+several of the minor poems. That which, on the whole, has pleased us
+most&mdash;really, perhaps, because we could read it off-hand&mdash;is "The Statue
+and the Bust," of which we give the opening stanzas:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>[Quotes fourteen stanzas of <i>The Statue and the Bust</i>.]</p>
+
+<p>Why should a man, who, with so little apparent labour, can write
+naturally and well, take so much apparent labour to write affectedly and
+ill? There can be but one of two solutions. Either he goes wrong from
+want of knowledge, in which case it is clear that he wants the highest
+intuitions of genius; or he sins against knowledge, in which case he
+must have been misled by the false promptings of a morbid vanity, eager
+for that applause of fools which always waits on quackery, and which is
+never refused to extravagance when tricked out in the guise of
+originality. It is difficult, from the internal evidence<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_196" id="Page_196">[Pg 196]</a></span> supplied by
+his works, to know which of these two theories to adopt. Frequently the
+conclusion is almost irresistible, that Mr. Browning's mysticism must be
+of <i>malice prepense</i>: on the whole, however, we are inclined to clear
+his honesty at the expense of his powers, and to conclude that he is
+obscure, not so much because he has the vanity to be thought original,
+as because he lacks sufficient genius to make himself clear.&mdash;<i>The
+Saturday Review</i>.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_197" id="Page_197">[Pg 197]</a></span></p>
+<h2>NOTES</h2>
+
+
+<p class="bigcenter"><span class="smcap">Thomas Gray</span></p>
+
+<p>When Gray's <i>Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard</i> appeared in 1751,
+the <i>Monthly Rev.</i>, IV, p. 309, gave it the following curious
+notice:&mdash;"The excellence of this little piece amply compensates for its
+want of quantity." The immediate success and popularity of the <i>Elegy</i>
+established Gray's poetical reputation; hence his <i>Odes</i> (1757) were
+received and criticized as the work of a poet of whom something entirely
+different was expected. The thin quarto volume containing <i>The Progress
+of Poesy</i> and <i>The Bard</i> (entitled merely Ode I and Ode II in that
+edition) was printed for Dodsley by Horace Walpole at Strawberry Hill,
+and was published on August 8, 1757. Within a fortnight Gray wrote to
+Thomas Warton that the poems were not at all popular, the great
+objection being their obscurity; a week later he wrote to Hurd:&mdash;"Even
+my friends tell me they [the Odes] do not succeed ... in short, I have
+heard nobody but a player [Garrick] and a doctor of divinity [Warburton]
+that profess their esteem for them." For further comment, see Gray's
+<i>Works</i>, ed. Gosse, II, pp. 321-328.</p>
+
+<p>Our review, which is reprinted from <i>Monthly Rev.</i>, XVII (239-243)
+(September, 1757), was written by Oliver Goldsmith, and is included in
+most of the collected editions of his works. Although it was practically
+wrung from Goldsmith while he was the unwilling thrall of Griffiths, it
+is a noteworthy piece of criticism for its time&mdash;certainly far superior
+to the general standard of the <i>Monthly Review</i>. While recognizing the
+scholarly merit of the poet's work, Goldsmith showed clearly why the
+Odes could not become popular. A more favorable notice of the volume
+appeared in the <i>Critical Rev.</i>, IV, p. 167.</p>
+
+<p>In reprinting this review, the long quotations from both odes have been
+omitted. This precedent is followed in all cases where the quotations
+are of inordinate length, or are offered merely as "specimens" without
+specific criticism. No useful end would be served in reprinting numerous
+pages of classic extracts that are<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_198" id="Page_198">[Pg 198]</a></span> readily accessible to every student.
+All omissions are, of course, properly indicated.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_1">1</a>. <i>Quinault</i>. Philippe Quinault (1635-1688), a popular French dramatist
+and librettist.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_2">2</a>. <i>Mark'd for her own</i>. An allusion to the line in the Epitaph appended
+to the <i>Elegy</i>: "And Melancholy marked him for her own."</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 35%;" />
+
+<p class="bigcenter"><span class="smcap">Oliver Goldsmith</span></p>
+
+<p>Goldsmith's <i>Traveller</i> (1764) was begun as early as 1755&mdash;before he had
+expressed what Professor Dowden calls his "qualified enthusiasm" and
+"official admiration" for Gray's <i>Odes</i>. In criticizing Gray, he quoted
+Isocrates' advice&mdash;<i>Study the people</i>&mdash;and properly bore that precept in
+mind while he was shaping his own verses. The <i>Odes</i> and the <i>Traveller</i>
+are respectively characteristic utterances of their authors&mdash;of the
+academic recluse, and of the warm-hearted lover of humanity.</p>
+
+<p>The review, quoted from the <i>Critical Rev.</i>, XVIII (458-462) (December,
+1764), is from the pen of Dr. Samuel Johnson. Apart from its
+distinguished authorship and the strong words of commendation in the
+final sentence, it possesses slight interest as literary criticism. It
+is, in fact, little more than a brief summary of the poem, enriched by a
+few well-chosen illustrative extracts. The fact that Johnson contributed
+nine or ten lines to the poem (see Boswell, ed. Hill, I, p. 441, n. 1,
+and II, p. 6) may account partly for the character of the review.
+Johnson's quotations from the poem are not continuous and show several
+variations from authoritative texts.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 35%;" />
+
+<p class="bigcenter"><span class="smcap">William Cowper</span></p>
+
+<p>Cowper stands almost alone among English poets as an instance of late
+manifestation of poetic power. He was over fifty years of age when he
+offered his first volume of <i>Poems</i> (1782) to the public. This
+collection, which included <i>Table-Talk</i> and other didactic poems,
+appeared at the beginning of the most prosaic age in the history of
+modern English literature; yet the critics did not find it sufficiently
+striking in quality to differentiate it from the level of contemporary
+verse, or to forecast the success of <i>The Task</i> and <i>John Gilpin's Ride</i>
+three years later.</p>
+
+<p>The notice in the <i>Critical Rev.</i>, LIII (287-290), appeared in April,
+1782. While the same poems are but slightly esteemed<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_199" id="Page_199">[Pg 199]</a></span> to-day, it must be
+recognized that the attitude of the reviewer was severe for his time.
+The age had grown accustomed to large draughts of moralizing and
+didacticism in verse, and the quality of Cowper's contribution was
+assuredly above the average. The <i>Monthly Rev.</i>, LXVII, p. 262, gave the
+<i>Poems</i> a much more favorable reception.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_10">10</a>. <i>Non Dii, non homines, etc.</i> Properly, <i>non homines, non di</i>,
+Horace, <i>Ars Poetica</i>, l. 373.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_10">10</a>. <i>Caraccioli</i>. <i>Jouissance de soi-m&ecirc;me</i> (ed. 1762), cap. xii.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_11">11</a>. <i>There needs no ghost, etc.</i> See <i>Hamlet</i>, I, 5. 110.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 35%;" />
+
+<p class="bigcenter"><span class="smcap">Robert Burns</span></p>
+
+<p>The Kilmarnock edition (1786) of Burns' <i>Poems</i> was published during the
+most eventful period of the poet's life; the almost universally kind
+reception accorded to this volume was the one source of consolation amid
+many sorrows and distractions. Two reviews have been selected to
+illustrate both the Scottish and English attitude toward the newly
+discovered "ploughman-poet." The <i>Edinburgh Magazine</i>, IV (284-288), in
+October, 1786, gave Burns a welcome that was hearty and sincere; though
+we may smile to-day at the information that he has neither the "doric
+simplicity" of Ramsay, nor the "brilliant imagination" of Ferguson.
+Besides the poems mentioned in brackets, the magazine published further
+extracts from Burns in subsequent numbers. The <i>Critical Review</i>, LXIII
+(387-388), gave the volume a belated notice in May, 1787, exceeding even
+the Scotch magazine in its generous appreciation. With the generally
+accepted fact in mind that all of Burns' enduring work is in the
+Scottish dialect, and that his English poems are comparatively inferior,
+it is interesting to note the <i>Critical Review's</i> regret that the
+dialect must "obscure the native beauties" and be often unintelligible
+to English readers. The same sentiment was expressed by the <i>Monthly
+Review</i>, LXXV, p. 439, in the critique reprinted (without its curious
+anglified version of <i>The Cotter's Saturday Night</i>) in Stevenson's
+<i>Early Reviews</i>.</p>
+
+<p>There is perhaps no other English poet whose fame was so suddenly and
+securely established as Burns'. At no time since the appearance of the
+Kilmarnock volume has the worth of his lyrical achievement been
+seriously questioned. The <i>Reliques</i> of Burns, edited by Dr. Cromek in
+1808, were reviewed by Walter Scott in<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_200" id="Page_200">[Pg 200]</a></span> the first number of the
+<i>Quarterly Review</i>, and by Jeffrey in the corresponding number of the
+<i>Edinburgh</i>. Both articles are valuable to the student of Burns, but
+their great length made their inclusion in the present volume
+impracticable.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_14">14</a>. <i>Rusticus abnormis sapiens, etc.</i> Horace, Sat. II, l. 3.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_15">15</a>. <i>A great lady ... and celebrated professor</i>. Evidently Mrs. Dunlop
+and Professor Dugald Stewart, who both took great interest in Burns
+after the appearance of the Kilmarnock volume.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 35%;" />
+
+<p class="bigcenter"><span class="smcap">William Wordsworth</span></p>
+
+<p>The thin quartos containing <i>An Evening Walk</i> and <i>Descriptive Sketches</i>
+were published by Wordsworth in 1793. The former was practically a
+school-composition in verse, written between 1787-89 and dedicated to
+his sister; the latter was composed in France during 1791-92 and was
+revised shortly before publication. The dedication was addressed to the
+Rev. Robert Jones, fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, who was
+Wordsworth's companion during the pedestrian tour in the Alps. Though
+<i>An Evening Walk</i> was published first, the <i>Monthly Review</i>, XII, n.s.
+(216-218), in October, 1793, noticed both in the same issue and
+naturally gave precedence to the longer poem. Specific allusions in the
+text necessitate the same order in the present reprint.</p>
+
+<p>The impatience of the reviewer at the prospect of "more descriptive
+poetry" was due to the fact that many such productions had recently been
+noticed by the <i>Monthly</i>, and that the volumes then under consideration
+evidently belonged to the broad stream of mediocre verse that had been
+flowing soberly along almost since the days of Thomson. These first
+attempts smacked so decidedly of the older manner that we cannot censure
+the critic for failing to foresee that Wordsworth was destined to
+glorify the "poetry of nature," and to rescue it from the rut of
+listless and soporific topographical description. Both poems, in the
+definitive text, are readable, and exhibit here and there a glimmer of
+the poet's future greatness; yet it must be borne in mind that
+Wordsworth was continually tinkering at his verse, to the subsequent
+despair of conscientious variorum editors, and that most of the
+absurdities and infelicities in his first editions disappeared under the
+correcting influence of his sarcastic critics and his own maturing
+taste.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_201" id="Page_201">[Pg 201]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>A collation of the accepted text with the <i>Monthly Review's</i> quotations
+will repay the student; thus, the twelve opening lines quoted by the
+reviewer are represented by eight lines in Professor Knight's edition,
+and only four of these correspond to the original text. The reviewer
+confined his remarks to the first thirty lines of the poem and very
+properly neglected the rest. He followed, with moderate success, the
+method of quotation with interpolated sarcasm and badinage&mdash;a method
+that was afterwards effectively pursued by the early Edinburgh Reviewers
+and the Blackwood coterie. There are few examples of that style in the
+eighteenth century reviews, but some noteworthy specimens of a later
+period&mdash;<i>e.g.</i>, the <i>Edinburgh Review</i> on Coleridge's <i>Christabel</i> and
+the <i>Quarterly</i> on Tennyson's <i>Poems</i>&mdash;are reprinted in this volume.</p>
+
+<p>The review of <i>An Evening Walk</i> is simply an appended paragraph to the
+previous article. Wordsworth evidently appreciated the advice conveyed
+in the reviewer's final sentence and found many of the lines that
+"called loudly for amendment." More favorable notices of both poems will
+be found in <i>Critical Review</i>, VIII, pp. 347 and 472.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Lyrical Ballads</i></h4>
+
+<p>The <i>Lyrical Ballads</i> by Wordsworth and Coleridge were published
+anonymously early in September, 1798&mdash;a few days before the joint
+authors sailed for Germany. Coleridge's contributions were <i>The Rime of
+the Ancient Mariner</i>, <i>The Foster-Mother's Tale</i>, <i>The Nightingale</i>, and
+<i>The Dungeon</i>; the remaining nineteen poems were by Wordsworth. As the
+publication of this volume has been accepted by most critics as the
+first fruit of the new romantic spirit and the virtual beginning of
+modern English poetry, the reception accorded to the <i>Lyrical Ballads</i>
+becomes a matter of prime importance. It is well known that the effort
+was a failure at first and that the apparent triumph of romanticism did
+not occur until the publication of Scott's <i>Lay of the Last Minstrel</i>
+(1805); but a contemporary blindness to the beauty of two of the finest
+poems in English literature cannot be permitted to figure in the
+critics' dispassionate investigation of causes and influences.</p>
+
+<p>There were four interesting reviews of the first edition of the <i>Lyrical
+Ballads</i>, namely, (1) <i>Critical Rev.</i>, XXIV, n.s. (197-204), in October,
+1798, which is reprinted here; (2) <i>Analytical<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_202" id="Page_202">[Pg 202]</a></span> Rev.</i>, XXVIII (583-587),
+in December, 1798; (3) <i>Monthly Rev.</i>, XXIX, n.s. (202-210), in May,
+1799, reprinted in Stevenson's <i>Early Reviews</i>; (4) <i>British Critic</i>,
+XIV (364-369) in October, 1799.</p>
+
+<p>The article in the <i>Critical Review</i> was written by Robert Southey under
+conditions most favorable for such a malicious procedure. The publisher,
+his friend Cottle, had transferred the copyright of the <i>Lyrical
+Ballads</i> to Arch, a London publisher, within two weeks of the appearance
+of the volume, giving as a shallow excuse the "heavy sale" of the book.
+Both Wordsworth and Coleridge were in Germany. Southey had quarreled
+with Coleridge, and was probably jealous of the latter's extravagant
+praise of Wordsworth. He accordingly seized the opportunity to assail
+the work without injuring Cottle's interests or entailing the immediate
+displeasure of the travelling bards.</p>
+
+<p>He covered his tracks to some extent by referring several times to "the
+author," although the joint authorship was well known to him. While
+severe in most of his strictures on Wordsworth, Southey reserved his
+special malice for <i>The Ancient Mariner</i>. He called it "a Dutch attempt
+at German sublimity"; and in a letter written to William Taylor on
+September 5, 1798&mdash;probably while he was writing his discreditable
+critique&mdash;he characterized the poem as "the clumsiest attempt at German
+sublimity I ever saw." Southey's responsibility for the article became
+known to Cottle, who communicated the fact to the poets on their return
+a year later. Wordsworth declared that "if Southey could not
+conscientiously have spoken differently of the volume, he ought to have
+declined the task of reviewing it." Coleridge indited an epigram, <i>To a
+Critic</i>, and let the matter drop. Shortly afterwards he showed his
+renewed good-will by aiding Southey in preparing the second <i>Annual
+Anthology</i> (1800).</p>
+
+<p>The subsequent reviews of the <i>Lyrical Ballads</i> adopted the tone of the
+<i>Critical</i> (then recognized as the leading review) and internal evidence
+shows that they did not hesitate to borrow ideas from Southey's article.
+The <i>Analytical Review</i> also saw German extravagances in <i>The Ancient
+Mariner</i>; the <i>Monthly</i> borrowed Southey's figure of the Italian and
+Flemish painters, and called <i>The Ancient Mariner</i> "the strangest story
+of a cock and bull that we ever saw on paper ... a rhapsody of
+unintelligible wildness and incoherence." The belated review in the
+<i>British Critic</i><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_203" id="Page_203">[Pg 203]</a></span> was probably written by Coleridge's friend, Rev.
+Francis Wrangham, and was somewhat more appreciative than the rest. For
+further details, consult Mr. Thomas Hutchinson's reprint (1898) of the
+<i>Lyrical Ballads</i>, pp. (xiii-xxviii). Despite the unfavorable reviews,
+the Ballads reached a fourth edition in 1805 (besides an American
+edition in 1802), thus achieving the popularity alluded to by Jeffrey at
+the beginning of our next review.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Poems</i> (1807)</h4>
+
+<p>Wordsworth's fourth publication, the <i>Poems</i> (1807), included most of
+the pieces written after the first appearance of the <i>Lyrical Ballads</i>.
+It was likewise his first venture subsequent to the founding of the
+<i>Edinburgh Review</i>. Jeffrey had assailed the theories of the "Lake
+Poets" (and, incidentally, coined that unfortunate term) in the first
+number of the <i>Review</i>, in an article on Southey's <i>Thalaba</i>, and three
+years later (1805), in criticizing <i>Madoc</i>, he again expressed his views
+on the subject. Now came the first opportunity to deal with the
+recognized leader of the "Lakers"&mdash;the poet whose work most clearly
+illustrated the poetic theories that Jeffrey deemed pernicious.</p>
+
+<p>The article here reprinted from the <i>Edinburgh Rev.</i>, XI (214-231), of
+October, 1807, and Jeffrey's review of <i>The Excursion</i>, in <i>ibid.</i>, XXIV
+(1-30), are perhaps the two most important critiques of their kind. No
+student of Wordsworth's theory of poetry, as set forth in his various
+prefaces, can afford to ignore either of these interesting discussions
+of the subject. (For details, see A.J. George's edition of the
+<i>Prefaces</i> of Wordsworth, Gates' <i>Selections</i> from Jeffrey, Beers'
+<i>Nineteenth Century Romanticism</i>, Hutchinson's edition of <i>Lyrical
+Ballads</i>, etc.) It was undoubtedly true that Jeffrey, although an able
+critic, failed to grasp the real significance of the new poetic
+movement, and to appreciate the influence wrought by the doctrines of
+the Lake Poets on modern conceptions of poetry. Yet he was far from
+wrong in many of his criticisms of Wordsworth. While deprecating the
+latter's theories, it is clear that Jeffrey regarded him as a poet of
+great power who was being led astray by his perverse practice. The
+popular conception of Jeffrey as a hectoring and blatant opponent of
+Wordsworth is not substantiated by the review. The impartial reader must
+agree with Jeffrey at many points, and if he will take the trouble to
+collate Jeffrey's quotations with the revised text<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_204" id="Page_204">[Pg 204]</a></span> of Wordsworth, he
+will learn that the poet did not disdain to take an occasional
+suggestion for the improvement of his verse.</p>
+
+<p>We recognize Wordsworth to-day as the most unequal of English poets.
+There is little that is common to the inspired bard of <i>Tintern Abbey</i>,
+the <i>Immortality Ode</i> and the nobler <i>Sonnets</i>, and the unsophisticated
+scribe of <i>Peter Bell</i> and <i>The Idiot Boy</i>. Like Browning, he wrote too
+much to write well at all times, and if both poets were capable of the
+sublimest flights, they likewise descended to unimagined depths; but the
+fault of Wordsworth was perhaps the greater, because his bathos was the
+result of a deliberate and persistent attempt to enrich English poetry
+with prosaically versified incidents drawn at length from homely rural
+life.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 35%;" />
+
+<p class="bigcenter"><span class="smcap">Samuel Taylor Coleridge</span></p>
+
+<p>The first part of Coleridge's <i>Christabel</i> was written in 1797 during
+the brief period of inspiration that also gave us <i>The Ancient Mariner</i>
+and <i>Kubla Khan</i>&mdash;in short, that small group of exquisite poems which in
+themselves suffice to place Coleridge in the front rank of English
+poets. The second part was written in 1800, after the author's return
+from Germany. The fragment circulated widely in manuscript among
+literary men, bewitched Scott and Byron into imitating its fascinating
+rhythms, and, at Byron's suggestion, was finally published by Murray in
+1816 with <i>Kubla Khan</i> and <i>The Pains of Sleep</i>. It is probable that the
+high esteem in which these poems were held by Coleridge's literary
+friends led him to expect a favorable reception at the hands of the
+critics; hence his keen disappointment at the general tone of their
+sarcastic analysis and their protests against the absurdity and
+obscurity of the poems. The principal critiques on <i>Christabel</i>
+were:&mdash;(1) <i>Edinburgh Rev.</i>, XXVII (58-67), which is here reprinted; (2)
+<i>Monthly Rev.</i>, LXXXII, n.s. (22-25), reprinted in Stevenson's <i>Early
+Reviews</i>; (3) <i>The Literary Panorama</i>, IV, n.s. (561-565); and (4)
+<i>Anti-Jacobin Rev.</i>, L (632-636).</p>
+
+<p>It is evident that Coleridge was eminently successful in the gentle art
+of making enemies. We have seen that Southey's attack on the <i>Lyrical
+Ballads</i> was a direct result of his ill-will toward Coleridge; the
+outrageous article in the <i>Edinburgh Review</i> was written by William
+Hazlitt under similar inspiration, and was followed by abusive papers in
+<i>The Examiner</i> (1816, p.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_205" id="Page_205">[Pg 205]</a></span> 743, and 1817, p. 236). There was no
+justification for Hazlitt, and none has been attempted by his
+biographers. Judged by its intrinsic merits, the Edinburgh article is
+one of the most absurd reviews ever written by a critic of recognized
+ability. Hazlitt followed the method of outlining the story by quotation
+with interspersed sarcasm and ironical criticism. As a coarse boor might
+crumple a delicate and beautifully wrought fabric to prove that it has
+not the wearing qualities of a blacksmith's apron, Hazlitt seized upon
+the ethereal story of <i>Christabel</i>, with its wealth of medi&aelig;val and
+romantic imagery, and held up to ridicule the incidents that did not
+conform to modern English conceptions of life. It requires no great art
+to produce such a critique; the same method was applied to <i>Christabel</i>
+with hardly less success by the anonymous hack of the <i>Anti-Jacobin</i>.
+Whatever may have been Hazlitt's motives, we cannot understand how a
+critic of his unquestioned ability could quote with ridicule some of the
+very finest lines of <i>Kubla Khan</i>, and expect his readers to concur with
+his opinion. The lack of taste was more apparent because he quoted, with
+qualified praise, six lines of no extraordinary merit from <i>Christabel</i>
+and insisted, that with this one exception, there was not a couplet in
+the whole poem that achieved the standard of a newspaper poetry-corner
+or the effusions scratched by peripatetic bards on inn-windows. An
+interesting discussion between Mr. Thomas Hutchinson and Col. Prideaux
+concerning Hazlitt's responsibility for this and other critiques on
+Coleridge in the <i>Edinburgh Review</i> will be found in <i>Notes and Queries</i>
+(Ninth Series), X, pp. 388, 429; XI, 170, 269.</p>
+
+<p>The other reviews of <i>Christabel</i> were all unfavorable. Most extravagant
+was the utterance of the <i>Monthly Magazine</i>, XLVI, p. 407, in 1818, when
+it declared that the "poem of Christabel is only fit for the inmates of
+Bedlam. We are not acquainted in the history of literature with so great
+an insult offered to the public understanding as the publication of that
+r[h]apsody of delirium."</p>
+
+<p>Hazlitt's primitive remarks on the metre of <i>Christabel</i> are of little
+interest. Coleridge was, of course, wrong in stating that his metre was
+founded on a new principle. The irregularly four-stressed line occurs in
+Spenser's <i>Shepherd's Calender</i> and can be traced back through the
+halting tetrameters of Skelton. Coleridge himself alludes to this fact
+in his note to his poem <i>The Raven</i>, and elsewhere.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_206" id="Page_206">[Pg 206]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>Coleridge's earlier poetical publications were received with commonplace
+critiques usually mildly favorable. For reviews of his <i>Poems</i> (1796)
+see <i>Monthly Rev.</i>, XX, n.s., p. 194; <i>Analytical Rev.</i>, XXIII, p. 610;
+<i>British Critic</i>, VII, p. 549; and <i>Critical Rev.</i>, XVII, n.s., p. 209;
+the second edition of <i>Poems</i> (1797) is noticed in <i>Critical Rev.</i>,
+XXIII, n.s., p. 266; for <i>Lyrical Ballads</i>, see under Wordsworth; for
+the successful play <i>Remorse</i> (1813), see <i>Monthly Rev.</i>, LXXI, n.s., p.
+82, and <i>Quarterly Rev.</i>, XI, p. 177.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 35%;" />
+
+<p class="bigcenter"><span class="smcap">Robert Southey</span></p>
+
+<p><i>Madoc</i>, a ponderous quarto of over five hundred pages and issued at two
+guineas, was published by Southey in 1805 as the second of that
+long-forgotten series of interminable epics including <i>Thalaba</i>, <i>The
+Curse of Kehama</i>, and <i>Roderick, Last of the Goths</i>. These huge unformed
+productions were not poems, but metrical tales, written in a kind of
+verse that could have flowed indefinitely from the author's pen. In
+short, Southey was not a poet, and the whole bulk of his efforts in
+verse, with but one or two exceptions, seems destined to oblivion. As
+poet-laureate for thirty years and the associate of Wordsworth and
+Coleridge in the "Lake School," Southey will, however, remain a figure
+of some importance in the history of English poetry.</p>
+
+<p>The review of <i>Madoc</i> reprinted from the <i>Monthly Rev.</i>, XLVIII
+(113-122) for October, 1805, was written in the old style then fast
+giving way to the sprightlier methods of the <i>Edinburgh</i>. Here we find a
+style abounding in literary allusions and classical quotations, and
+evincing a generally patronizing attitude toward the author under
+discussion. Most readers will agree with the sentiments expressed by the
+reviewer, who succeeded in making his article interesting without
+descending to the depths of buffoonery. No apology is necessary for the
+excision of the reviewer's unreasonably long extracts from the poem.
+<i>Madoc</i> was also reviewed at great length in the <i>Edinburgh Review</i> by
+Francis Jeffrey.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_61">61</a>. <i>Ille ego, qui quondam, etc.</i> The lines usually prefixed to the
+<i>&AElig;neid</i>.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_61">61</a>. <i>Prorumpere in medias res</i>. Cf. Horace, <i>Ars Poetica</i>, l. 148.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_61">61</a>. <i>Macklin's Tragedy</i>. <i>Henry VII</i> (1746), his only tragedy, and a
+failure.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_61">61</a>. <i>Toto carere possum</i>. Cf. Martial, <i>Epig.</i> XI, 56.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_207" id="Page_207">[Pg 207]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_61">61</a>. <i>Camo&euml;ns</i>. The author of the Portuguese <i>Lusiad</i> (1572) which
+narrates the adventures of Vasco da Gama.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_62">62</a>. <i>Milton</i>. Quoted from Sonnet XI.&mdash;<i>On the Detraction which followed
+upon my writing certain Treatises</i>.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_63">63</a>. <i>Snatching a grace, etc.</i> Pope's <i>Essay on Criticism</i>, l. 153.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 35%;" />
+
+<p class="bigcenter"><span class="smcap">Charles Lamb</span></p>
+
+<p>Most of Lamb's earlier poetical productions appeared in conjunction with
+the work of other poets. Four of his sonnets were printed with
+Coleridge's <i>Poems on Various Subjects</i> (1796), and he was more fully
+represented in <i>Poems by S.T. Coleridge. Second Edition</i>. <i>To which are
+now added Poems by Charles Lamb and Charles Lloyd</i> (1797). In the
+following year appeared <i>Blank Verse</i>, by Charles Lloyd and Charles
+Lamb. For new and interesting material concerning the three poets, see
+E.V. Lucas' <i>Charles Lamb and the Lloyds</i> (1899). Lloyd (1775-1839)
+wrote melancholy verses and a sentimental, epistolary novel <i>Edmund
+Oliver</i>, but nothing of permanent value. However, in 1798, he was almost
+as well known as Coleridge, and was hailed in some quarters as a
+promising poet.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Monthly Rev.</i>, XXVII, n.s. (104-105), in September, 1798, published
+the critique of <i>Blank Verse</i> which is here reprinted. Its principal
+interest lies in the scant attention shown to Lamb, although the volume
+contained his best poem&mdash;the tender <i>Old Familiar Faces</i>. Dr. Johnson's
+characterization of blank-verse as "poetry to the eye" will be found at
+the end of his <i>Life of Milton</i> as a quotation from "an ingenious
+critic."</p>
+
+<p>Lamb's drama, <i>John Woodvil</i> (1802), written in imitation of later
+Elizabethan models, was a failure. It was unfavorably noticed in the
+<i>Monthly Rev.</i>, XL, n.s., p. 442 and at greater length in the <i>Edinburgh
+Rev.</i>, II, p. 90 ff.</p>
+
+<p>Many years later (1830) Lamb prepared his collection of <i>Album-Verses</i>
+at the request of his friend Edward Moxon, who had achieved some fame as
+a poet and was enabled (by the generous aid of Samuel Rogers) to begin
+his more lucrative career as a publisher. Three years after the
+appearance of <i>Album-Verses</i>, he married Lamb's adopted daughter, Emma
+Isola. The <i>Album-Verses</i>, like most of their kind, were a collection of
+small value; the <i>Literary Gazette</i>, 1830 (441-442), consequently lost
+no time in assailing them. The <i>Athen&aelig;um</i>, 1830, p. 435, at that<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_208" id="Page_208">[Pg 208]</a></span> time
+the bitter rival of the <i>Gazette</i>, published a more favorable review,
+and a few weeks later (p. 491) printed Southey's verses, <i>To Charles
+Lamb, on the Reviewal of his Album-Verses in the Literary Gazette</i>,
+together with a sharp commentary on the methods of the <i>Gazette</i>.
+Several times during that year the <i>Athen&aelig;um</i> assailed the system of
+private puffery which was followed by the <i>Gazette</i> and eventually
+caused its downfall. There is a reply to the <i>Athen&aelig;um</i> in the <i>Literary
+Gazette</i>, 1833, p. 772.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 35%;" />
+
+<p class="bigcenter"><span class="smcap">Walter Savage Landor</span></p>
+
+<p>Landor was twenty-three when he published <i>Gebir</i> anonymously in
+1798&mdash;the year of the <i>Lyrical Ballads</i>&mdash;and he lived until 1864. The
+nine decades of his life covered an important period of literature. He
+was nine years old when the great Johnson died, yet he lived to see the
+best poetic achievements of Tennyson, Browning, and Arnold. However, he
+did not live to see <i>Gebir</i> a popular poem. Southey gave it a favorable
+welcome in the <i>Critical Review</i>, and became a life-long admirer of
+Landor; but our brief notices reprinted from the <i>Monthly Rev.</i>, XXXI,
+n.s., p. 206, and <i>British Critic</i>, XV, p. 190 of February, 1800,
+represent more nearly the popular verdict. Both reviewers complain of
+the obscurity of the poem, which, it will be remembered, had been
+originally written in Latin, then translated and abridged.
+Notwithstanding the fact that Landor declared himself amply repaid by
+the praise of a few appreciative readers, he prepared a violent and
+scornful reply to the <i>Monthly Review</i>, and would have published it but
+for the sensible dissuasion of a friend. Some interesting extracts from
+the letter are printed in Forster's <i>Life of Landor</i>, pp. (76-85). He
+protested especially against the imputed plagiarisms from Milton and
+gave ample evidence of the pugnacious spirit that brought him into
+difficulties several times during his life. See also the <i>Imaginary
+Conversation</i> between Archdeacon Hare and Walter Landor, wherein the
+reception of <i>Gebir</i> is discussed and Southey's poetry is praised at the
+expense of Wordsworth's. Landor's first publication, the <i>Poems</i> (1795)
+was noticed in the <i>Monthly Rev.</i>, XXI, n.s., p. 253.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 35%;" />
+
+<p class="bigcenter"><span class="smcap">Sir Walter Scott</span></p>
+
+<p>The successful series of metrical tales which Scott inaugurated with the
+<i>Lay of the Last Minstrel</i> (1805) had for its second<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_209" id="Page_209">[Pg 209]</a></span> member the more
+elaborate <i>Marmion</i> (1808). From the first, Scott's poems and romances
+were favorably received by the reviews and usually noticed at great
+length. There was always a story to outline and choice passages to
+quote. As suggested in the Preface, these p&aelig;ans of praise are of
+comparatively little interest to the student, and need hardly be cited
+here in detail.</p>
+
+<p>The critique of <i>Marmion</i>, written by Jeffrey for the <i>Edinburgh Rev.</i>,
+XII (1-35), had the place of honor in the number for April, 1808. It was
+chosen for the present reprints partly as a fitting example of Jeffrey's
+fearlessness in expressing his opinions, and partly for its historic
+interest as the article that contributed to Scott's rupture with the
+Edinburghers and to his successful founding of a Tory rival in the
+<i>Quarterly Review</i>. Although the article has here been abridged to about
+half of its original length by the omission of six hundred quoted lines
+and a synopsis of the poem, it is still the longest of these reprints.
+Jeffrey evidently felt that a detailed account of the story was
+necessary in order to justify his strictures on the plot.</p>
+
+<p>An author of those days could afford to ignore the decisions of the
+critical monthlies, but the brilliant criticism and incisive diction of
+the <i>Edinburgh Review</i> carried weight and exerted far-reaching
+influence. Jeffrey's article was practically the only dissonant note in
+the chorus of praise that greeted <i>Marmion</i>, and Scott probably resented
+the critic's attitude. Lockhart, in his admirable chapter on the
+publication of <i>Marmion</i>, admits that "Jeffrey acquitted himself on this
+occasion in a manner highly creditable to his courageous sense of duty."
+The April number of the <i>Edinburgh</i> appeared shortly before a particular
+day on which Jeffrey had engaged to dine with Scott. Fearing that under
+the circumstances he might be an unwelcome guest, he sent the following
+tactful note with the copy which was forwarded to the poet:&mdash;</p>
+
+<p>"Dear Scott,&mdash;If I did not give you credit for more magnanimity than any
+other of your irritable tribe, I should scarcely venture to put this
+into your hands. As it is, I do it with no little solicitude, and
+earnestly hope that it will make no difference in the friendship which
+has hitherto subsisted between us. I have spoken of your poem exactly as
+I think, and though I cannot reasonably suppose that you will be pleased
+with everything I have said, it would mortify me very severely to
+believe I had<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_210" id="Page_210">[Pg 210]</a></span> given you pain. If you have any amity left for me, you
+will not delay very long to tell me so. In the meantime, I am very
+sincerely yours, F. Jeffrey."</p>
+
+<p>There was but one course open to Scott; accordingly to Lockhart, "he
+assured Mr. Jeffrey that the article had not disturbed his digestion,
+though he hoped neither his booksellers nor the public would agree with
+the opinions it expressed, and begged he would come to dinner at the
+hour previously appointed. Mr. Jeffrey appeared accordingly, and was
+received by his host with the frankest cordiality, but had the
+mortification to observe that the mistress of the house, though
+perfectly polite, was not quite so easy with him as usual. She, too,
+behaved herself with exemplary civility during the dinner, but could not
+help saying, in her broken English, when her guest was departing, 'Well,
+good night, Mr. Jeffrey. Dey tell me you have abused Scott in de Review,
+and I hope Mr. Constable has paid <i>you</i> very well for writing it.'"</p>
+
+<p>Jeffrey's article apparently had little influence on the sale of
+<i>Marmion</i>, which reached eight editions (25,000 copies) in three years.
+In October, 1808, the <i>Edinburgh Review</i> published an appreciative
+review of Scott's edition of Dryden, and afterwards received with favor
+the later poems and the principal Waverley Novels.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_78">78</a>. <i>Mr. Thomas Inkle</i>. The story of Inkle and Yarico was related by
+Steele in no. 11 of the <i>Spectator</i>. It was afterwards dramatized (1787)
+by George Colman.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 35%;" />
+
+<p class="bigcenter"><span class="smcap">Lord Byron</span></p>
+
+<p>The twentieth number of the <i>Edinburgh Review</i> contained Jeffrey's long
+article on Wordsworth's <i>Poems</i> (1807); the twenty-second contained his
+review of Scott's <i>Marmion</i>; and the twenty-first (January, 1808)
+contained a still more famous critique, long attributed to Jeffrey&mdash;the
+review of Byron's <i>Hours of Idleness</i> (1807). It is reprinted from
+<i>Edinburgh Rev.</i>, XI (285-289) in Stevenson's <i>Early Reviews</i> and forms
+Appendix II of R.E. Prothero's edition of Byron's <i>Letters and
+Journals</i>. We know definitely that the article was written by Henry
+Brougham. (See Prothero, op. cit., II, p. 397, and Sir M.E. Grant Duff's
+<i>Notes from a Diary</i>, II, p. 189.)<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_211" id="Page_211">[Pg 211]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>It is hardly within the province of literary criticism to deal with
+hypothetical conditions in authors' lives; but it is at least a matter
+of some interest to conjecture whether Byron would have become a great
+poet if this stinging review had not been published. It is evident that
+the <i>Hours of Idleness</i> gave few signs of promise, and the poet, fully
+intent upon a political career, himself expressed his intention of
+abandoning the muse. Many an educated Englishman has published such a
+volume of <i>Juvenilia</i> and sinned no more. But a nature like Byron's
+could not overlook the effrontery of the <i>Edinburgh Review</i>. The
+proud-spirited poet was evidently far more incensed by the patronizing
+tone of the article than by its strictures: what could be more galling
+than the reiterated references to the "noble minor," or the withering
+contempt that characterized a particular poem as "the thing in page 79"?
+Many years later, Byron wrote to Shelley:&mdash;"I recollect the effect on me
+of the <i>Edinburgh</i> on my first poem; it was rage, and resistance, and
+redress&mdash;but not despondency nor despair." (Prothero, V, p. 267.)</p>
+
+<p>There was method in Byron's "rage and resistance and redress." For more
+than a year he labored upon a satire which he had begun even before the
+appearance of the <i>Edinburgh</i> article. (See letter of October 26, 1807,
+in <i>Letters</i>, ed. Prothero, I, p. 147.) In the spring of 1809, <i>English
+Bards and Scotch Reviewers</i> was given anonymously to the world. The
+publication of this vigorous satire virtually decided Byron's career.
+Not only did he abuse Jeffrey, whom he believed responsible for the
+offending critique, but he flung defiance in the face of almost all his
+literary contemporaries. The authorship of the satire was soon apparent,
+and in a flippant note to the second edition, Byron became still more
+abusive toward Jeffrey and his "dirty pack," and declared that he was
+ready to give satisfaction to all who sought it. A few years later he
+regretted his rashness in assailing the authors of his time. He also
+learned of the injustice done to Jeffrey and had ample reason to feel
+embarrassed by the tone of the eight reviews of his poems that Jeffrey
+did write for the <i>Edinburgh</i>. (See the list in Prothero, II, p. 248.)
+In <i>Don Juan</i> (canto X, xvi), he made the following retraction:&mdash;</p>
+
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">"And all our little feuds, at least all <i>mine</i>,<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">Dear Jeffrey, once my most redoubted foe<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">(As far as rhyme and criticism combine<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">To make such puppets of us things below),<br /></span>
+<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_212" id="Page_212">[Pg 212]</a></span>
+<span class="i0">Are over. Here's a health to 'Auld Lang Syne!'<br /></span>
+<span class="i2">I do not know you, and may never know<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Your face&mdash;but you have acted, on the whole,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">Most nobly; and I own it from my soul."<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+
+<p>The other reviews of <i>Hours of Idleness</i> are of little interest. The
+<i>Monthly</i> and the <i>Critical</i> both praised the book; the <i>Literary
+Panorama</i>, III, p. 273, said the author was no imbecile, but an
+incautious writer.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_98">98</a>. &#952;&#949;&#955;&#959; &#955;&#949;&#947;&#949;&#953;&#957;,&mdash;Anacreon, Ode I. (&#952;&#8051;&#955;&#959; &#955;&#8051;&#947;&#949;&#953;&#957; &#7944;&#964;&#961;&#949;&#8055;&#948;&#945;&#962;, &#954;. &#964;. &#955;.)</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_98">98</a>. &#956;&#949;&#963;&#959;&#957;&#965;&#954;&#964;&#953;&#959;&#953;&#962;, &#960;&#959;&#952;' &#8001;&#961;&#945;&#953;&#962;,&mdash;Anacreon, Ode III. (&#956;&#949;&#963;&#959;&#957;&#965;&#954;&#964;&#8055;&#959;&#953;&#962; &#960;&#959;&#952;'
+&#8037;&#961;&#945;&#953;&#962;, &#954;. &#964;. &#955;.)</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_100">100</a>. <i>Sancho</i>,&mdash;Sancho Panza in <i>Don Quixote</i>. The proverb is of ancient
+origin. See French, Latin, Italian and Spanish forms in Brewer's
+<i>Dictionary of Phrase and Fable</i>.</p>
+
+
+<h4><i>Childe Harold</i></h4>
+
+<p>Shortly after the appearance of the second edition of <i>English Bards and
+Scotch Reviewers</i>, Byron left England and travelled through the East, at
+the same time leisurely composing the first two cantos of <i>Childe
+Harold's Pilgrimage</i>. Their publication in 1812 placed him at the head
+of the popular poets of the day. Henceforth the reviews gave extensive
+notices to all his productions. (For references, see J.P. Anderson's
+bibliography appended to Hon. Roden Noel's <i>Life of Byron</i>.) <i>Childe
+Harold</i> was reviewed in the <i>Edinburgh Rev.</i>, XIX (466-477), by Jeffrey;
+in the <i>Quarterly</i>, VII (180-200), by George Ellis; in the <i>British
+Review</i>, III (275-302); and <i>Eclectic Review</i>, XV (630-641).</p>
+
+<p>The article here reprinted from the <i>Christian Observer</i>, XI (376-386),
+of June, 1812, is of special interest as an early protest from
+conservative, religious circles against the immoral and irreverent tone
+of Byron's poetry. As literary criticism, it is almost worthless, in
+spite of the elaborate allusions and quotations with which the
+critic&mdash;evidently a survivor of the old school&mdash;has interlarded his
+remarks. Little can be said in defense of an article which insists that
+the chief end of poetry is to be agreeably didactic and which (in 1812)
+cites Southey as the greatest of living poets. However, it probably
+represents the attitude of a large number of worthy people of the time,
+who recognized that Byron had genius, and wished to see him exercise his
+powers<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_213" id="Page_213">[Pg 213]</a></span> with due regard for the proprieties of civilized life. As
+Byron's offences grew more flagrant in his later poems, the criticisms
+in the conservative reviews became more vehement. For Byron's
+controversy with the <i>British Review</i>, which he facetiously dubbed "my
+grandmother's review" in <i>Don Juan</i>, see Prothero, IV, pp. (346-347),
+and Appendix VII. The ninth Appendix to the same volume is Byron's
+caustic reply to the brutal review of <i>Don Juan</i> in <i>Blackwood's
+Magazine</i>, V, p. 512 ff.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_101">101</a>. <i>Lion of the north</i>, Francis Jeffrey. The usual agnomen of Gustavus
+Adolphus. Cf. Walter Scott, the "Wizard of the North."</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_105">105</a>. <i>Faiery Queen will not often be read through</i>. Hume's <i>History of
+England</i>, Appendix III.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_106">106</a>. <i>Qui, quid sit pulchrum</i>, etc. Horace, Epis. II (3-4).</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_196">106</a>. <i>Rursum&mdash;quid virtus</i>, etc. Horace, Epis. II (17-18).</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_107">107</a>. <i>Our sage serious Spenser, etc.</i> Milton's <i>Areopagitica</i>, <i>Works</i>,
+ed. Mitford, IV, p. 412.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_107">107</a>. <i>Quinctilian</i>. See Quintilian, Book XII, Chap. I.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_107">107</a>. <i>Longinus</i>. <i>On the Sublime</i>, IX, XIII, etc.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_108">108</a>. <i>Restoration of Learning in the East</i>. A Cambridge prize poem
+(1805) by Charles Grant, Lord Glenelg (1778-1866).</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_109">109</a>. <i>Thersites</i>. See Shakespeare's <i>Troilus and Cressida</i>.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_109">109</a>. <i>Caliban</i>. See Shakespeare's <i>The Tempest</i>.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_109">109</a>. <i>Heraclitus</i>. The "weeping philosopher" (circa 500 B.C.).</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_109">109</a>. <i>Zeno</i>. The founder (342-270 B.C.) of the Stoic School.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_109">109</a>. <i>Zoilus</i>. The ancient grammarian who assailed the works of Homer.
+The epithet Homeromastix is sometimes applied to him.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_113">113</a>. <i>The philosophic Tully, etc.</i> See the concluding paragraph of
+Cicero's <i>De Senectute</i>.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 35%;" />
+
+<p class="bigcenter"><span class="smcap">Percy Bysshe Shelley</span></p>
+
+<p>It is doubtful whether any other poet was so widely and so continuously
+assailed in the reviews as Shelley. Circumstances have made certain
+critiques on Byron, Keats, and others more widely known, but nowhere
+else do we find the persistent stream of abuse that followed in the wake
+of Shelley's publications. The <i>Blackwood</i> articles were usually most
+scathing, and those of the <i>Literary Gazette</i> were not far behind.
+Fortunately, the poet spent most of his time in Italy and thus remained
+in ignorance of the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_214" id="Page_214">[Pg 214]</a></span> great majority of these spiteful attacks in the
+less important periodicals.</p>
+
+<p><i>Alastor</i>, which appeared in 1816, attracted comparatively little
+attention. The tone of the brief notice reprinted from the <i>Monthly
+Rev.</i>, LXXIX, n.s., p. 433, shows that the poet was as yet unknown to
+the critics. <i>Blackwood's Magazine</i>, VI (148-154), gave a longer and, on
+the whole, more favorable account of the poem. In the same year, Leigh
+Hunt published his <i>Story of Rimini</i>, most noteworthy for its graceful
+rhythmical structure in the unrestricted couplets of Chaucer. This
+departure from the polished heroics of Pope, which were ill-adapted to
+narrative subjects in spite of his successful translation of Homer, was
+hailed with delight by the younger poets. Shelley imitated the measure
+in his <i>Julian</i> and <i>Maddalo</i>, and Keats did likewise in <i>Lamia</i> and
+<i>Endymion</i>. Hunt was soon recognized by the critics as the leader of a
+group of liberals whom they conveniently classified as the Cockney
+School. Shelley's ill-treatment at the hands of the reviewers dates from
+his association with this coterie. His <i>Revolt of Islam</i> (1818) was
+assailed by John Taylor Coleridge in the <i>Quarterly Review</i>, XXI
+(460-471). <i>The Cenci</i> was condemned as a horrible literary monstrosity
+by the scandalized critics of the <i>Monthly Rev.</i>, XCIV, n.s. (161-168);
+the <i>Literary Gazette</i>, 1820 (209-10); and the <i>New Monthly Magazine</i>,
+XIII (550-553). The review here reprinted from the <i>London Mag.</i>, I
+(401-405), is comparatively mild in its censure.</p>
+
+<p>One would naturally suppose that the death of Keats would have ensured
+at least a respectful consideration for Shelley's lament, <i>Adonais</i>
+(1821); but the callous critics were by no means abashed. The outrageous
+article in the <i>Literary Gazette</i> of December 8, 1821, pp. (772-773), is
+one of the unpardonable errors of literary criticism; but it sinks into
+insignificance beside the brutal, unquotable review which <i>Blackwood's
+Magazine</i> permitted to appear in its pages. In the same year Shelley's
+youthful poetical indiscretion, <i>Queen Mab</i>, which he himself called
+"villainous trash," was published under circumstances beyond his
+control, and forthwith the readers of the <i>Literary Gazette</i> were
+regaled with ten columns of foul abuse from the pen of a critic who
+declared that he was driven almost speechless by the sentiments
+expressed in the poem. Well could the heartless reviewer of <i>Adonais</i>
+write:&mdash;"If criticism killed the disciples of that [the<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_215" id="Page_215">[Pg 215]</a></span> Cockney]
+school, Shelley would not have been alive to write an elegy on another."</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_115">115</a>. <i>Eye in a fine phrenzy rolling</i>. Shakespeare's <i>Midsummer-Night's
+Dream</i>, V, 1, 12.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_115">115</a>. <i>Above this visible diurnal sphere</i>. Milton's <i>Paradise Lost</i>, Book
+VII, 22.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_116">116</a>. <i>Parc&acirc; quod satis est manu</i>. Horace, <i>Odes</i>, III, 16, 24.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_116">116</a>. <i>Lord Fanny</i>. A nickname bestowed upon Lord Hervey, an effeminate
+noble of the time of George II.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_117">117</a>. <i>O! rus, quando ego te aspiciam</i>. Horace, <i>Satires</i>, II, 6, 60.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_117">117</a>. <i>Mordecai</i>. See Book of <i>Esther</i>, V, 13.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_118">118</a>. <i>Last of the Romans</i>. Mark Antony in Shakespeare's <i>Julius C&aelig;sar</i>,
+III, 2, 194.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_120">120</a>. <i>Full fathom five</i>. Shakespeare's <i>The Tempest</i>, I, 2, 396.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_126">126</a>. <i>Oh&eacute;! jam satis est</i>. Horace, <i>Satires</i>, I, 5, 12-13.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_126">126</a>. <i>Tristram Shandy</i>. The excommunication is in vol. III, chap. XI.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_133">133</a>. <i>Put a girdle</i>, etc. See Shakespeare's <i>Midsummer-Night's Dream</i>,
+II, 1, 175.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 35%;" />
+
+<p class="bigcenter"><span class="smcap">John Keats</span></p>
+
+<p>The history of English poetry offers no more interesting case between
+poet and critic than that of John Keats. The imputed influence of a
+savage critique in hastening the death of the poet has given the
+<i>Quarterly Review</i> an unenviable notoriety which clings in spite of the
+efforts of scholars to establish the truth. To many students, Keats,
+<i>Endymion</i>, and <i>Quarterly</i> are practically connotative terms; and this
+is a direct result of the righteous but misguided indignation of
+Shelley&mdash;misguided because his information was incomplete and the more
+guilty party escaped, thus inflicting upon the <i>Quarterly</i> the brunt of
+the opprobrium of which far more than half should be accredited to
+<i>Blackwood's Magazine</i>.</p>
+
+<p><i>Endymion</i> was published in April, 1818. One of the publishers (Taylor
+and Hessey) requested Gifford, then editor of the <i>Quarterly Review</i>, to
+treat the poem with indulgence. This indiscreet move probably actuated
+Gifford to provide a severe critique; at any rate, in the belated April
+number of the <i>Quarterly</i>, XIX (204-208), which was not issued until
+September, appeared the famous review. A persistent error, which has
+crept into W.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_216" id="Page_216">[Pg 216]</a></span>M. Rossetti's <i>Life of Keats</i>, into Anderson's
+bibliography, and even into the article on Gifford in the <i>Dictionary of
+National Biography</i>, attributes this article to Gifford himself; but it
+is known to be the work of John Wilson Croker. (See the article on
+Croker in <i>Dict. Nat. Biog.</i> From the article on John Murray (<i>ibid.</i>)
+we learn that Gifford was not wholly responsible for a single article in
+the <i>Quarterly</i>.)</p>
+
+<p>Meanwhile, <i>Blackwood's Magazine</i>, III (519-524) had made <i>Endymion</i> the
+text of its fourth infamous tirade against the Cockney School of Poetry.
+The signature "Z" was appended to all the articles, but the critic's
+identity has not yet been discovered. Leigh Hunt thought it was Walter
+Scott, Haydon suspected the actor Terry, but it is more probable that
+the honor belongs to John Gibson Lockhart. One account attributes the
+entire series to Lockhart; another attributes the series to Wilson, but
+holds Lockhart responsible for the <i>Endymion</i> article. Mr. Andrew Lang,
+in his <i>Life and Letters of Lockhart</i>, dismissed the matter by saying
+that he did not know who wrote the article.</p>
+
+<p>The <i>Quarterly</i> critique was reprinted in Stevenson's <i>Early Reviews</i>,
+in Rossetti's <i>Life of Keats</i>, in Buxton Forman's edition of Keats'
+<i>Poetical Works</i> (Appendix V) and elsewhere. From a critical point of
+view, it is, as Forman terms it, a "curiously unimportant production."
+The student will at once question its power to cause distress in the
+mind of the poet; as for malignant severity, there are several reviews
+among the present reprints that put the brief <i>Quarterly</i> article to
+shame. When we turn to what Swinburne calls the "obscener insolence" of
+the <i>Blackwood</i> article, we find an unrestrained torrent of abuse
+against both Hunt and Keats that amply justified Landor's subsequent
+allusions to the <i>Blackguard's Magazine</i>. The <i>Quarterly</i> critique was
+captious and ill-tempered; but the <i>Blackwood</i> article was a personal
+insult.</p>
+
+<p>It is impossible to consider in detail the vexed question of the
+influence which these reviews had upon Keats. In Mr. W.M. Rossetti's
+<i>Life of Keats</i>, pp. (83-106) there is a full discussion of the evidence
+on the subject. Within a few months after the appearance of the
+articles, Keats wrote:&mdash;"Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on
+the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic
+of his own works. My own domestic criticism has given me pain without
+comparison beyond what <i>Blackwood</i> or <i>The Quarterly</i> could possibly
+inflict." Some weeks later he wrote that the <i>Quarterly</i> article had
+only served to<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_217" id="Page_217">[Pg 217]</a></span> make him more prominent among bookmen. After some time
+he expressed himself less confidently and deprecated the growing power
+of the reviews, but there is no evidence that he fretted over the
+critiques. Haydon tells us that Keats was morbid and silent for hours at
+a time; but it is quite likely that the consciousness of his physical
+affliction&mdash;hereditary consumption&mdash;was oppressing his mind. His death
+occurred on February 23, 1821&mdash;about two and a half years after the
+appearance of the <i>Endymion</i> critiques.</p>
+
+<p>Shelley had gone to Italy before the reviews were published. He heard of
+the <i>Quarterly</i> article, but knew nothing of <i>Blackwood's</i> while writing
+<i>Adonais</i>; hence in both poem and preface, the former review is charged
+with having caused Keats' death. Shelley declared that Keats' agitation
+over the review ended in the rupture of a blood vessel in the lungs with
+an ensuing rapid consumption. These statements, which Shelley must have
+had indirectly, have not been substantiated. We are forced to the
+conclusion now generally accepted&mdash;that Keats, although sensitive to
+personal ridicule, was superior to the stings of review criticism and
+that the distressing events of the last year of his life were sufficient
+to assure the early triumph of the inherent and unconquerable disease.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_141">141</a>. <i>Miss Baillie</i>. Joanna Baillie (1762-1851) authoress of numerous
+forgotten plays and poems which enjoyed great popularity in their day.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_142">142</a>. <i>Land of Cockaigne</i>. Here means London, and refers specifically to
+the Cockney poets. An old French poem on the <i>Land of Cockaigne</i>
+described it as an ideal land of luxury and ease. The best authorities
+do not accept Cockney as a derivative form. The Cockney School was
+composed of Londoners of the middle-class, supposedly ill-bred and
+imperfectly educated. The critics took special delight in dwelling upon
+the humble origin of the Cockneys, their lack of university training,
+and especially their dependence on translations for their knowledge of
+the classics.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_142">142</a>. <i>When Leigh Hunt left prison</i>. Hunt had been imprisoned for libel
+on the Prince Regent (1812).</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_146">146</a>. <i>Vauxhall</i>. The Gardens were a favorite resort for Londoners early
+in the eighteenth century and remained popular for a long time. See
+Thackeray's <i>Vanity Fair</i> (chap. VI). The implication in the present
+passage is that the Cockney poet gets his ideas of nature from the
+immediate vicinity of London.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_218" id="Page_218">[Pg 218]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_147">147</a>. <i>East of Temple-bar</i>. That is, living in the City of London.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_150">150</a>. <i>Young Sangrado</i>. An allusion to Doctor Sangrado, in Le Sage's <i>Gil
+Blas</i> (1715).</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 35%;" />
+
+<p class="bigcenter"><span class="smcap">Alfred Lord Tennyson</span></p>
+
+<p>Tennyson's first poetical efforts, which appeared in <i>Poems by Two
+Brothers</i> (1827) attracted little critical attention. His prize-poem,
+<i>Timbuctoo</i> (1829) received the interesting notice here reprinted from
+the <i>Athen&aelig;um</i> (p. 456) of July 22, 1829. <i>Timbuctoo</i> was printed in the
+<i>Cambridge Chronicle</i> (July 10, 1829); in the <i>Prolusiones Academic&aelig;</i>
+(1829); and several times in <i>Cambridge Prize-Poems</i>. The use of heroic
+metre in prize-poems was traditional; hence the award was an enviable
+tribute to the blank-verse of <i>Timbuctoo</i>.</p>
+
+<p>Tennyson's success was emphasized by the remarkable series of reviews
+that greeted his earliest volumes of poems. The <i>Poems, chiefly Lyrical</i>
+(1830) were welcomed by Sir John Bowring in the <i>Westminster Review</i>, by
+Leigh Hunt in the <i>Tatler</i>, by Arthur Hallam in the <i>Englishman's
+Magazine</i>, and by John Wilson in <i>Blackwood's Magazine</i>. The <i>Poems</i>
+(1833) were reviewed by W.J. Fox in the <i>Monthly Repository</i>, and by
+John Stuart Mill in the <i>Westminster Review</i>. This array of names was
+indeed a tribute to the poet; but the unfavorable review, was, as usual,
+most significant. The article written by Lockhart for the <i>Quarterly
+Rev.</i>, XLIX (81-97), has been characterized as "silly and brutal," but
+it was neither. Tennyson's fame is secure; we can at least be just to
+his early reviewer. It is true that the poet winced under the lash and
+that ten years elapsed before his next volume of collected poems
+appeared; but Canon Ainger is surely in error when he holds the
+<i>Quarterly Review</i> mainly responsible for this long silence. The rich
+measure of praise elsewhere bestowed upon the volume would leave us no
+alternative but the conclusion that Tennyson was childish enough to
+maintain his silence for a decade because Lockhart took liberties with
+his poems instead of joining the chorus of adulation. We know that there
+were other and stronger reasons for Tennyson's silence and we also know
+that the effect of Lockhart's article was decidedly salutary. When the
+next collection of <i>Poems</i> (1842) did appear, the shorter pieces
+ridiculed by Lockhart were omitted, and the derided passages in the
+longer poems were altered.<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_219" id="Page_219">[Pg 219]</a></span></p>
+
+<p>We may, without conscientious scruples, take Mr. Andrew Lang's advice,
+and enjoy a laugh over Lockhart's performance. Its mock appreciations
+are, perhaps, far-fetched at times; but there are enough effective
+passages to give zest to the article. It has been said in all
+seriousness that Lockhart failed to appreciate the beauty of most of
+Tennyson's lines, and that he confined his remarks to the most
+assailable passages. Surely, when a critic undertakes to write a
+mock-appreciation, he will not quote the best verses, to the detriment
+of his plan. The poet must see to it that his volume does not contain
+enough absurdities to form a sufficient basis for such an article. There
+is a striking contrast to the humor of Lockhart in the little-known
+review of the same volume by the <i>Literary Gazette</i>, 1833, pp.
+(772-774). The latter seized upon some crudities that had escaped the
+<i>Quarterly's</i> notice, and, with characteristic brutality, decided that
+the poet was insane and needed a low diet and a cell.</p>
+
+<p>Although the reception accorded to <i>Poems</i> (1842) was generally
+favorable, the publication of <i>The Princess</i> in 1847 afforded the
+critics another opportunity to lament Tennyson's inequalities. The
+spirit of the review of <i>The Princess</i> here reprinted from the <i>Literary
+Gazette</i> of August 8, 1848, is practically identical with that of the
+<i>Athen&aelig;um</i> on January 6, 1848, but specifies more clearly the critic's
+objections to the medley. It is noteworthy that Lord Tennyson made
+extensive changes in subsequent editions of <i>The Princess</i>, but left
+unaltered all of the passages to which the <i>Literary Gazette</i> took
+exception. The beautiful threnody <i>In Memoriam</i> (1850) and Tennyson's
+elevation to the laureateship in the same year established his position
+as the leading poet of the time; but the appearance of <i>Maud</i> in 1856
+proved to be a temporary check to his popularity. A few personal friends
+admired it and praised its fine lyrics; but as a dramatic narrative it
+failed to please the reviews. The most interesting of the critiques
+(unfortunately too long to be reprinted here) appeared in <i>Blackwood's
+Magazine</i>, XLI (311-321), of September, 1855,&mdash;a forcible, well-written
+article, which, incidentally, shows how much the magazine had improved
+in respectability since the days of the lampooners of Byron, Shelley,
+and Keats. The authorship of the article has not been disclosed, but we
+know that W.E. Aytoun asked permission of the proprietor to review
+Tennyson's <i>Maud</i>. (See Mrs. Oliphant's <i>William Blackwood and his
+Sons</i>.) The publication of the <i>Idylls<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_220" id="Page_220">[Pg 220]</a></span> of the King</i> (1859), turned the
+tide more strongly than before in Tennyson's favor, and subsequent
+fault-finding on the part of the critics was confined largely to his
+dramas.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_153">153</a>. <i>Catullus</i>. See Catullus, II and III&mdash;(<i>Passer, delici&aelig; me&aelig;
+puell&aelig;</i>, and <i>Lugete, O Veneres Cupidinesque</i>).</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_153">153</a>. &#917;&#8055;&#952;&#949; &#955;&#8059;&#961;&#951;, &#954;. &#964;. &#955;. Usually found in the remains of
+Alc&aelig;us. Thomas Moore translates it with his <i>Odes of Anacreon</i> (LXXVII),
+beginning "Would that I were a tuneful lyre," etc. Lockhart proceeds to
+ridicule Tennyson for wishing to be a river, which is not what the
+quoted lines state. Nor does Tennyson "ambition a bolder metamorphosis"
+than his predecessors. Anacreon (Ode XXII) wishes to be a stream, as
+well as a mirror, a robe, a pair of sandals and sundry other articles.
+See Moore's interesting note.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_155">155</a>. <i>Non omnis moriar</i>. Horace, <i>Odes</i>, III, 30, 6.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_156">156</a>. <i>Tongues in trees</i>, etc. Shakespeare's <i>As You Like It</i>, II, 1, 17.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_157">157</a>. <i>Arist&aelig;us</i>. A minor Grecian divinity, worshipped as the first to
+introduce the culture of bees.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_164">164</a>. <i>Dionysius Periegetes</i>. Author of &#960;&#949;&#961;&#953;&#8053;&#947;&#951;&#963;&#953;&#962; &#964;&#8134;&#962; &#947;&#8134;&#962;, a
+description of the earth in hexameters, usually published with the
+scholia of Eustathius and the Latin paraphrases of Avienus and Priscian.
+For the account of &AElig;thiopia, see also Pausanias, I, 33, 4.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_167">167</a>. <i>The Rovers</i>. <i>The Rovers</i> was a parody on the German drama of the
+day, published in the <i>Anti-Jacobin</i> (1798) and written by Frere,
+Canning and others. It is reprinted in Charles Edmund's <i>Poetry of the
+Anti-Jacobin</i>. The chorus of conspirators is at the end of Act IV.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_169">169</a>. <i>The Groves of Blarney</i>. An old Irish song. A version may be seen
+in the <i>Antiquary</i>, I, p. 199. The quotation by Lockhart differs
+somewhat from the corresponding stanza of the cited version.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_170">170</a>. <i>Corporal Trim</i>. In Sterne's <i>Tristram Shandy</i>.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_173">173</a>. <i>Christopher North</i>. John Wilson, of <i>Blackwood's Magazine</i>.</p>
+
+<hr style="width: 35%;" />
+
+<p class="bigcenter"><span class="smcap">Robert Browning</span></p>
+
+<p>The reviews of Browning's poems are singularly uninteresting from a
+historical standpoint. There is usually a protest against the obscurity
+of the poetry and a plea that the author should make better use of his
+manifest genius. For details concerning<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_221" id="Page_221">[Pg 221]</a></span> these reviews, see the
+bibliography of Browning in Nicoll and Wise's <i>Literary Anecdotes of the
+Nineteenth Century</i>. The list there given is extensive, but does not
+include several of the reviews mentioned below.</p>
+
+<p>The early poems were so abstruse that the critics were unable to make
+sport of them as they did in the case of Wordsworth, Byron, Tennyson,
+and the rest; and when Browning finally deigned to write within range of
+the average human intellect, that particular style of reviewing had lost
+favor. His earliest publication, <i>Pauline</i> (1832) was well received by
+W.J. Fox in <i>Monthly Repository</i>, and in the <i>Athen&aelig;um</i>. <i>Tait's
+Edinburgh Magazine</i> called it a "piece of pure bewilderment." See also
+the brief notice in the <i>Literary Gazette</i>, 1833, p. 183. <i>Paracelsus</i>
+(1835) had a similar experience; the reprint from the <i>Athen&aelig;um</i>, 1835,
+p. 640, is fairly characteristic of the rest, among which are the
+articles in the <i>Monthly Repository</i>, 1835, p. 716; the <i>Christian
+Remembrancer</i>, XX, p. 346, and the reviews written by John Forster for
+the <i>Examiner</i>, 1835, p. 563, and the <i>New Monthly Magazine</i>, XLVI
+(289-308).</p>
+
+<p>Neither the favorable review of <i>Sordello</i> (1840) in the <i>Monthly Rev.</i>,
+1840, II, p. 149, nor the partly appreciative article in the <i>Athen&aelig;um</i>,
+1840, p. 431, seems to warrant the well-known anecdotes relating the
+difficulties of Douglas Jerrold and Tennyson in attempting to understand
+that poem. The <i>Athen&aelig;um</i> gave the poet sound advice, especially in
+regard to the intentional obscurity of his meaning. That this admonition
+was futile may be gathered from the <i>Saturday Review's</i> article (I, p.
+69) on <i>Men and Women</i> (1855) published fifteen years after <i>Sordello</i>.
+The critic reverted to the earlier style, and produced one of the most
+readable reviews of Browning. Whatever may be the final verdict yet to
+be passed upon Browning's poetic achievement, the fact remains that the
+contemporary reviews from first to last deplored in his work a
+deliberate obscurity which was wholly unwarranted and which precluded
+the universal appeal that is essential to a poet's greatness.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_189">189</a>. <i>Della Crusca of Sentimentalism</i>. Robert Merry (1755-1798) under
+the name Della Crusca became the leader of a set of poetasters who
+flourished during the poetic dearth at the end of the eighteenth century
+and poured forth their rubbish until William Gifford exposed their
+follies in his satires <i>The Baviad</i> (1794) and <i>The M&aelig;viad</i> (1795).<span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_222" id="Page_222">[Pg 222]</a></span></p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_189">189</a>. <i>Alexander Smith</i>. A Scotch poet (1830-1867).</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_189">189</a>. <i>Mystic of Bailey</i>. Philip James Bailey (1816-1902), best known as
+the author of <i>Festus</i>, published <i>The Mystic</i> in 1855.</p>
+
+<p><a href="#Page_192">192</a>. <i>Hudibras Butler, etc.</i> Samuel Butler, author of <i>Hudibras</i>
+(1663-78); Richard H. Barham, author of the <i>Ingoldsby Legends</i> (1840);
+and Thomas Hood, author of <i>Whims and Oddities</i> (1826-27). These poets
+are cited by the reviewer for their skill with unusual metres and
+difficult rhymes.</p>
+
+
+
+<hr style="width: 65%;" /><p><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_223" id="Page_223">[Pg 223]</a></span></p>
+<h2>INDEX</h2>
+
+
+
+<ul>
+<li><i>Academy</i>, <a href="#Page_xlii">xlii-xliii</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Account of English Dramatic Poets</i>, <a href="#Page_xv">xv</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Adonais</i>, by Shelley, reviewed, <a href="#Page_129">129-134</a>; <a href="#Page_214">214</a>, <a href="#Page_217">217</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Advice to Young Reviewer</i>, <a href="#Page_xxiii">xxiii</a></li>
+
+<li>Ainsworth, Harrison, <a href="#Page_xlv">xlv</a></li>
+
+<li>Akenside, Mark, <a href="#Page_xvi">xvi</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Alastor</i>, by Shelley, reviewed, <a href="#Page_115">115</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Album Verses</i>, by Lamb, reviewed, <a href="#Page_66">66-67</a></li>
+
+<li>Alford, Dean, <a href="#Page_xxxv">xxxv</a></li>
+
+<li>Allingham, William, <a href="#Page_l">l</a></li>
+
+<li><i>All the Year Round</i>, <a href="#Page_l">l</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Analytical Review</i>, <a href="#Page_xxii">xxii</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Anti-Jacobin Review</i>, <a href="#Page_xxiii">xxiii</a></li>
+
+<li>Appleton, Dr. Charles, <a href="#Page_xlii">xlii</a></li>
+
+<li>Arber, Prof. Edward, <a href="#Page_xiii">xiii</a></li>
+
+<li>Arnold, Matthew, <a href="#Page_xxxii">xxxii</a>, <a href="#Page_xxxvi">xxxvi</a>, <a href="#Page_xlii">xlii</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Athen&aelig;um</i>, <a href="#Page_xxxviii">xxxviii-xl</a>, <a href="#Page_liv">liv</a>;</li>
+<li>  <span style="margin-left: 2em;">on Tennyson's <i>Timbuctoo</i>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>;</span></li>
+<li>  <span style="margin-left: 2em;">on Browning's <i>Paracelsus</i>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a></span></li>
+
+<li><i>Athenian Mercury</i>, <a href="#Page_xiv">xiv</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Atlas</i>, <a href="#Page_xl">xl</a></li>
+
+<li>Austin, Mr. Alfred, <a href="#Page_xxxvi">xxxvi</a></li>
+</ul>
+<ul>
+<li>Bagehot, Walter, <a href="#Page_xxxii">xxxii</a>, <a href="#Page_xxxiv">xxxiv</a></li>
+
+<li>Barrow, Sir John, <a href="#Page_xxviii">xxviii</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Battle of the Reviews</i>, <a href="#Page_xx">xx-xxi</a></li>
+
+<li>Bayle, Pierre, <a href="#Page_xiii">xiii</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Bee</i>, <a href="#Page_xvi">xvi</a></li>
+
+<li>Behn, Mrs. Aphra, <a href="#Page_xv">xv</a></li>
+
+<li>Beloe, William, <a href="#Page_xxiii">xxiii</a></li>
+
+<li>Bentham, Jeremy, <a href="#Page_xxxi">xxxi</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Bentley's Miscellany</i>, <a href="#Page_l">l</a></li>
+
+<li>Bibliography, <a href="#Page_lvi">lvi-lix</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Bibliotheca Literaria</i>, <a href="#Page_xvi">xvi</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Biblioth&egrave;que Ancienne et Moderne</i>, <a href="#Page_xvi">xvi</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Biblioth&egrave;que Angloise</i>, <a href="#Page_xv">xv</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Biblioth&egrave;que Chois&eacute;e</i>, <a href="#Page_xvi">xvi</a></li>
+
+<li>Blackwood, John, <a href="#Page_xlvii">xlvii</a></li>
+
+<li>Blackwood, William, <a href="#Page_xlv">xlv</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Blackwood's Magazine</i>, <a href="#Page_xlv">xlv-xlvii</a>;</li>
+<li>  <span style="margin-left: 2em;">on Keats' <i>Endymion</i>, <a href="#Page_141">141-150</a>; <a href="#Page_216">216</a></span></li>
+
+<li><i>Blank Verse</i>, by Lamb and Lloyd, reviewed, <a href="#Page_65">65</a></li>
+
+<li>Blount, Sir Thomas Pope, <a href="#Page_xiv">xiv</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Bookman</i>, <a href="#Page_xxxvii">xxxvii</a></li>
+
+<li>Bower, Archibald, <a href="#Page_xvi">xvi</a></li>
+
+<li><i>British and Foreign Review</i>, <a href="#Page_xxxii">xxxii</a></li>
+
+<li><i>British Critic</i>, <a href="#Page_xxiii">xxiii</a>;</li>
+<li>  <span style="margin-left: 2em;">on Landor's <i>Gebir</i>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a></span></li>
+
+<li><i>British Librarian</i>, <a href="#Page_xvi">xvi</a></li>
+
+<li><i>British Magazine</i>, <a href="#Page_xxii">xxii</a>, <a href="#Page_xlv">xlv</a></li>
+
+<li><i>British Review</i>, <a href="#Page_xxxii">xxxii</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213</a></li>
+
+<li>Brougham, Henry, <a href="#Page_xxiv">xxiv</a>, <a href="#Page_xxvi">xxvi-xxvii</a>, <a href="#Page_xxx">xxx</a>, <a href="#Page_210">210</a></li>
+
+<li>Browning, Robert, <i>Paracelsus</i> rev. in <i>Athen&aelig;um</i>, <a href="#Page_187">187</a>;</li>
+<li>  <span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Sordello</i> rev. in <i>Monthly Rev.</i>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a>;</span></li>
+<li>  <span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Men and Women</i> rev. in <i>Saturday Rev.</i>, <a href="#Page_189">189-196</a>; <a href="#Page_220">220-222</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Buckingham, James Silk, <a href="#Page_xxxviii">xxxviii</a></li>
+
+<li>Budgell, Eustace, <a href="#Page_xvi">xvi</a></li>
+
+<li>Bulwer, Edward, <a href="#Page_xxx">xxx</a>, <a href="#Page_xlv">xlv</a></li>
+
+<li>Bunting, Mr. Percy, <a href="#Page_xxxvi">xxxvi</a></li>
+
+<li>Burns, Robert, <i>Poems</i> rev. in <i>Edinburgh Mag.</i>, <a href="#Page_13">13-14</a>;</li>
+<li>  <span style="margin-left: 2em;">in <i>Critical Rev.</i>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>; <a href="#Page_199">199-200</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Byron, Lord, <a href="#Page_47">47</a>, <a href="#Page_48">48</a>;</li>
+<li>  <span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Hours of Idleness</i> rev. in <i>Edinburgh Rev.</i>, <a href="#Page_94">94-100</a>;</span></li>
+<li>  <span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Childe Harold</i> rev. in <i>Christian Observer</i>, <a href="#Page_101">101-114</a>; <a href="#Page_210">210-213</a></span></li>
+</ul>
+<ul>
+<li>Campbell, Thomas, <a href="#Page_xlv">xlv</a></li>
+
+<li>Carlyle, Thomas, <a href="#Page_xxx">xxx</a>, <a href="#Page_xlv">xlv</a>, <a href="#Page_xlix">xlix</a></li>
+
+<li>Cave, Edward, <a href="#Page_xliv">xliv</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Cenci</i>, by Shelley, reviewed, <a href="#Page_116">116-128</a>, <a href="#Page_214">214</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Censura Celebrium Authorum</i>, <a href="#Page_xiv">xiv</a></li>
+
+<li><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_224" id="Page_224">[Pg 224]</a></span><i>Censura Temporum</i>, <a href="#Page_xv">xv</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Childe Harold</i>, by Byron, reviewed, <a href="#Page_101">101-114</a>; <a href="#Page_212">212-213</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Christabel</i>, by Coleridge, reviewed, <a href="#Page_47">47-59</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Christian Observer</i>, <a href="#Page_xxxiii">xxxiii</a>;</li>
+<li>  <span style="margin-left: 2em;">on Byron's <i>Childe Harold</i>, <a href="#Page_101">101-114</a></span></li>
+
+<li><i>Christian Remembrancer</i>, <a href="#Page_xxxii">xxxii</a></li>
+
+<li>Christie, Jonathan Henry, <a href="#Page_xlviii">xlviii</a></li>
+
+<li>Cleghorn, James, <a href="#Page_xlvi">xlvi</a></li>
+
+<li>Cobbett, William, <a href="#Page_xxxvii">xxxvii</a></li>
+
+<li>Cockney School, <i>Blackwood's Mag.</i> on, <a href="#Page_141">141-150</a>; <a href="#Page_216">216-217</a></li>
+
+<li>Colburn, Henry, <a href="#Page_xxxvii">xxxvii</a>, <a href="#Page_xlv">xlv</a></li>
+
+<li>Coleridge, John Taylor, <a href="#Page_xxix">xxix</a></li>
+
+<li>Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, <a href="#Page_xlvi">xlvi</a>;</li>
+<li>  <span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Christabel</i> rev. in <i>Edinburgh Rev.</i>, <a href="#Page_47">47-59</a>; <a href="#Page_201">201-202</a>, <a href="#Page_204">204-206</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Collins, Mr. John Churton, <a href="#Page_li">li</a></li>
+
+<li>Colvin, Mr. Sidney, <a href="#Page_xlii">xlii</a>, <a href="#Page_liv">liv</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Compleat Library</i>, <a href="#Page_xiv">xiv</a></li>
+
+<li>Conder, Josiah, <a href="#Page_xxxii">xxxii</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Contemporary Review</i>, <a href="#Page_xxxv">xxxv</a></li>
+
+<li>Cook, John D., <a href="#Page_xli">xli</a></li>
+
+<li>Copleston, Edward, <a href="#Page_xxiii">xxiii</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Cornhill Magazine</i>, <a href="#Page_l">l</a></li>
+
+<li>Cotton, Mr. James S., <a href="#Page_xliii">xliii</a></li>
+
+<li>Courthope, Mr. W.J., <a href="#Page_xxxvi">xxxvi</a></li>
+
+<li>Courtney, Mr. W.L., <a href="#Page_xxxv">xxxv</a></li>
+
+<li>Cowper, William, <i>Poems</i> rev. in <i>Critical Rev.</i>, <a href="#Page_10">10-12</a>; <a href="#Page_198">198-199</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Critic</i>, <a href="#Page_xxxvii">xxxvii</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Critical Review</i>, <a href="#Page_xviii">xviii-xxi</a>, <a href="#Page_xxiii">xxiii</a>, <a href="#Page_xxv">xxv</a>, <a href="#Page_xxxiii">xxxiii</a>;</li>
+<li>  <span style="margin-left: 2em;">on Goldsmith's <i>Traveller</i>, <a href="#Page_5">5-9</a>;</span></li>
+<li>  <span style="margin-left: 2em;">on Cowper's <i>Poems</i>, <a href="#Page_10">10-12</a>;</span></li>
+<li>  <span style="margin-left: 2em;">on Burn's <i>Poems</i>, <a href="#Page_15">15</a>;</span></li>
+<li>  <span style="margin-left: 2em;">on <i>Lyrical Ballads</i>, <a href="#Page_20">20-23</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Croker, John Wilson, <a href="#Page_xxviii">xxviii</a></li>
+</ul>
+<ul>
+<li>Dennis, John, <a href="#Page_xv">xv</a></li>
+
+<li>DeQuincey, Thomas, <a href="#Page_xlviii">xlviii</a></li>
+
+<li><i>De Re Poetica</i>, <a href="#Page_xiv">xiv</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Descriptive Sketches</i>, by Wordsworth, reviewed, <a href="#Page_16">16-18</a></li>
+
+<li>Dickens, Charles, <a href="#Page_l">l</a>, <a href="#Page_liv">liv</a></li>
+
+<li>Dilke, Charles W., <a href="#Page_xxxix">xxxix</a></li>
+
+<li>Dixon, William H., <a href="#Page_xxxix">xxxix</a></li>
+
+<li>Doble, Mr. C.E., <a href="#Page_xliii">xliii</a></li>
+
+<li>Dowden, Prof. Edward, <a href="#Page_xxxiv">xxxiv</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Dublin Review</i>, <a href="#Page_xxxii">xxxii</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Dublin University Magazine</i>, <a href="#Page_l">l</a></li>
+
+<li>D'Urfey, Thomas, <a href="#Page_xv">xv</a></li>
+</ul>
+<ul>
+<li><i>Eclectic Review</i>, <a href="#Page_xxxii">xxxii</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Edinburgh Magazine</i>, <a href="#Page_xliv">xliv</a>;</li>
+<li>  <span style="margin-left: 2em;">on Burns' <i>Poems</i>, <a href="#Page_13">13-14</a></span></li>
+
+<li><i>Edinburgh Review</i>, <a href="#Page_xxiv">xxiv-xxvii</a>, <a href="#Page_xxix">xxix-xxxi</a>, <a href="#Page_xlvi">xlvi</a>, <a href="#Page_liv">liv</a>;</li>
+<li>  <span style="margin-left: 2em;">on Wordsworth's <i>Poems</i>, <a href="#Page_24">24-46</a>;</span></li>
+<li>  <span style="margin-left: 2em;">on Coleridge's <i>Christabel</i>, <a href="#Page_47">47-59</a>;</span></li>
+<li>  <span style="margin-left: 2em;">on Scott's <i>Marmion</i>, <a href="#Page_70">70-93</a>;</span></li>
+<li>  <span style="margin-left: 2em;">on Byron's <i>Hours of Idleness</i>, <a href="#Page_94">94-100</a>; <a href="#Page_209">209-211</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Eliot, George, <a href="#Page_xxxiv">xxxiv</a>, <a href="#Page_xlvii">xlvii</a></li>
+
+<li>Elliott, Hon. A.R.D., <a href="#Page_xxxi">xxxi</a></li>
+
+<li>Elwin, Whitwell, <a href="#Page_xxix">xxix</a></li>
+
+<li>Empson, William, <a href="#Page_xxx">xxx</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Endymion</i>, by Keats, rev. in <i>Quarterly Rev.</i>, <a href="#Page_135">135-140</a>;</li>
+<li>  <span style="margin-left: 2em;">rev. in <i>Blackwood's Mag.</i>, <a href="#Page_141">141-150</a>; <a href="#Page_215">215-218</a></span></li>
+
+<li><i>English Review</i>, <a href="#Page_xxii">xxii</a>, <a href="#Page_xxxii">xxxii</a></li>
+
+<li>Escott, Mr. T.H.S., <a href="#Page_xxxv">xxxv</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Evening Walk</i>, by Wordsworth, reviewed, <a href="#Page_19">19</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Examiner</i>, <a href="#Page_xxxvii">xxxvii</a></li>
+</ul>
+<ul>
+<li>Fonblanque, Albany, <a href="#Page_xxxvii">xxxvii</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Foreign Quarterly Review</i>, <a href="#Page_xxxii">xxxii</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Foreign Review</i>, <a href="#Page_xxxii">xxxii</a></li>
+
+<li>Forster, John, <a href="#Page_xxxvii">xxxvii</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Fortnightly Review</i>, <a href="#Page_xxxiii">xxxiii-xxxv</a></li>
+
+<li>Fox, W.J., <a href="#Page_xxxiii">xxxiii</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Fraser's Magazine</i>, <a href="#Page_xlix">xlix-l</a></li>
+
+<li>Froude, James A., <a href="#Page_l">l</a></li>
+</ul>
+<ul>
+<li><i>Gebir</i>, by Landor, rev. in <i>British Critic</i>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>;</li>
+<li>  <span style="margin-left: 2em;">rev. in <i>Monthly Rev.</i>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>; <a href="#Page_208">208</a></span></li>
+
+<li><i>Gentleman's Journal</i>, <a href="#Page_xv">xv</a>, <a href="#Page_xliv">xliv</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Gentleman's Magazine</i>, <a href="#Page_xv">xv</a>, <a href="#Page_xliv">xliv</a></li>
+
+<li>Gifford, William, <a href="#Page_xxvii">xxvii</a>, <a href="#Page_xxviii">xxviii</a></li>
+
+<li>Goldsmith, Oliver, <a href="#Page_xviii">xviii</a>, <a href="#Page_xxi">xxi</a>, <a href="#Page_xxii">xxii</a>, <a href="#Page_xlv">xlv</a>;</li>
+<li>  <span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>The Traveller</i> rev. in <i>Critical Rev.</i>, <a href="#Page_5">5-9</a>, <a href="#Page_197">197</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Grant, Charles, <a href="#Page_108">108</a></li>
+
+<li>Gray, Thomas, <i>Odes</i> rev. in <i>Monthly Rev.</i>, <a href="#Page_1">1-4</a>; <a href="#Page_197">197-198</a></li>
+
+<li><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_225" id="Page_225">[Pg 225]</a></span>Green, John Richards, <a href="#Page_xxiii">xxiii</a></li>
+
+<li>Griffiths, Ralph, <a href="#Page_xvii">xvii</a>, <a href="#Page_xviii">xviii</a>, <a href="#Page_xx">xx</a></li>
+</ul>
+<ul>
+<li>Hallam, Henry, <a href="#Page_xxx">xxx</a></li>
+
+<li>Hamilton, Sir William, <a href="#Page_xxx">xxx</a></li>
+
+<li>Harris, Mr. Frank, <a href="#Page_xxxv">xxxv</a>, <a href="#Page_xli">xli</a></li>
+
+<li>Harwood, Mr. Philip, <a href="#Page_xli">xli</a></li>
+
+<li>Hazlitt, William, <a href="#Page_204">204-205</a></li>
+
+<li>Hervey, Thomas K., <a href="#Page_xxxix">xxxix</a></li>
+
+<li>Hind, Mr. C. Lewis, <a href="#Page_xliii">xliii</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Historia Literaria</i>, <a href="#Page_xvi">xvi</a></li>
+
+<li><i>History of Learning</i>, <a href="#Page_xiv">xiv</a></li>
+
+<li><i>History of the Works of the Learned</i>, <a href="#Page_xv">xv</a>, <a href="#Page_xvi">xvi</a></li>
+
+<li>Hodge, Mr. Harold, <a href="#Page_xli">xli</a></li>
+
+<li>Hood, Thomas, <a href="#Page_xlviii">xlviii</a></li>
+
+<li>Hook, Theodore, <a href="#Page_xlv">xlv</a></li>
+
+<li>Horne, Richard Hengist, <a href="#Page_xxxiii">xxxiii</a></li>
+
+<li>Horner, Francis, <a href="#Page_xxiv">xxiv</a>, <a href="#Page_xxv">xxv</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Hours of Idleness</i>, by Byron, reviewed, <a href="#Page_94">94-100</a>; <a href="#Page_210">210-212</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Household Words</i>, <a href="#Page_l">l</a></li>
+
+<li>Hume, David, <a href="#Page_105">105</a></li>
+
+<li>Hunt, Leigh, <a href="#Page_xxxiii">xxxiii</a>, <a href="#Page_xxxvii">xxxvii</a>, <a href="#Page_135">135</a>, <a href="#Page_136">136</a>, <a href="#Page_142">142</a></li>
+
+<li>Hutton, Richard Holt, <a href="#Page_xxxii">xxxii</a>, <a href="#Page_xl">xl</a></li>
+</ul>
+<ul>
+<li>Introduction, <a href="#Page_xiii">xiii-lv</a></li>
+</ul>
+<ul>
+<li>Jebb, Samuel, <a href="#Page_xvi">xvi</a></li>
+
+<li>Jeffrey, Francis, <a href="#Page_xxiv">xxiv-xxvi</a>, <a href="#Page_xxix">xxix</a>, <a href="#Page_xlviii">xlviii</a>, <a href="#Page_203">203</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206</a>, <a href="#Page_209">209-210</a></li>
+
+<li>Jerdan, William, <a href="#Page_xxxvii">xxxvii</a>, <a href="#Page_xxxix">xxxix</a></li>
+
+<li>Johnson, Samuel, <a href="#Page_xxi">xxi</a>, <a href="#Page_xxii">xxii</a>, <a href="#Page_198">198</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Journal des Savans</i>, <a href="#Page_xiii">xiii</a>, <a href="#Page_xiv">xiv</a>, <a href="#Page_xxi">xxi</a></li>
+</ul>
+<ul>
+<li>Keats, John, <i>Endymion</i>, reviewed in <i>Quarterly Rev.</i>, <a href="#Page_135">135-140</a>;</li>
+<li>  <span style="margin-left: 2em;">in <i>Blackwood's Mag.</i>, <a href="#Page_141">141-150</a>; <a href="#Page_152">152</a>, <a href="#Page_215">215-218</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Kenrick, William, <a href="#Page_xx">xx</a>, <a href="#Page_xxi">xxi</a>, <a href="#Page_xxii">xxii</a></li>
+
+<li>Kingsley, Charles, <a href="#Page_l">l</a></li>
+
+<li>Knowles, Mr. James, <a href="#Page_xxxv">xxxv</a>, <a href="#Page_xxxvi">xxxvi</a></li>
+</ul>
+<ul>
+<li>Lamb, Charles, <a href="#Page_xlviii">xlviii</a>;</li>
+<li>  <span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Blank Verse</i> rev. in <i>Monthly Rev.</i>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>;</span></li>
+<li>  <span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Album-Verses</i> rev. in <i>Literary Gazette</i>, <a href="#Page_66">66-67</a>; <a href="#Page_207">207-208</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Landor, Walter Savage, <i>Gebir</i> rev. in <i>British Critic</i>, <a href="#Page_68">68</a>;</li>
+<li>  <span style="margin-left: 2em;">in <i>Monthly Rev.</i>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>; <a href="#Page_208">208</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Langbaine, Gerald, <a href="#Page_xv">xv</a></li>
+
+<li>Le Clerc, Daniel, <a href="#Page_xvi">xvi</a></li>
+
+<li>Le Clerc, Jean, <a href="#Page_xiv">xiv</a>, <a href="#Page_xvi">xvi</a></li>
+
+<li>Lewes, George Henry, <a href="#Page_xxxiv">xxxiv</a></li>
+
+<li>Lewis, Sir George Cornewall, <a href="#Page_xxx">xxx</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Literary Chronicle</i>, <a href="#Page_xxxviii">xxxviii</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Literary Gazette</i>, <a href="#Page_xxxvii">xxxvii-xxxix</a>;</li>
+<li>  <span style="margin-left: 2em;">on Lamb's <i>Album-Verses</i>, <a href="#Page_66">66-67</a>;</span></li>
+<li>  <span style="margin-left: 2em;">on Shelley's <i>Adonais</i>, <a href="#Page_129">129-134</a>;</span></li>
+<li>  <span style="margin-left: 2em;">on Tennyson's <i>The Princess</i>, <a href="#Page_176">176-186</a>; <a href="#Page_207">207-208</a></span></li>
+
+<li><i>Literary Journal</i>, <a href="#Page_xvi">xvi</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Literary Magazine</i>, <a href="#Page_xvi">xvi</a>, <a href="#Page_xxii">xxii</a></li>
+
+<li>Lloyd, Charles, <i>Blank Verse</i>, rev. in <i>Monthly Rev.</i>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a></li>
+
+<li>Lloyd, H.E., <a href="#Page_xxxvii">xxxvii</a></li>
+
+<li>Lockhart, John Gibson, <a href="#Page_xxii">xxii</a>, <a href="#Page_xxxi">xxxi</a>, <a href="#Page_216">216</a>, <a href="#Page_218">218-219</a></li>
+
+<li><i>London Magazine</i>, <a href="#Page_xliv">xliv</a>, <a href="#Page_xlvii">xlvii-xlviii</a>;</li>
+<li>  <span style="margin-left: 2em;">on Shelley's <i>Cenci</i>, <a href="#Page_116">116-128</a></span></li>
+
+<li><i>London Quarterly Review</i>, <a href="#Page_xxxii">xxxii</a></li>
+
+<li><i>London Review</i>, <a href="#Page_xxii">xxii</a>, <a href="#Page_xxxi">xxxi</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Longman's Magazine</i>, <a href="#Page_l">l</a></li>
+
+<li>Lowth, Bishop, <a href="#Page_xvi">xvi</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Lyrical Ballads</i>, by Wordsworth, reviewed, <a href="#Page_20">20-23</a>; <a href="#Page_201">201-203</a></li>
+</ul>
+<ul>
+<li>Macaulay, Thomas Babington, <a href="#Page_xxix">xxix-xxx</a></li>
+
+<li>MacColl, Mr. Norman, <a href="#Page_xxxix">xxxix</a></li>
+
+<li>Maclise, Daniel, <a href="#Page_xlix">xlix</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Macmillan's Magazine</i>, <a href="#Page_l">l</a></li>
+
+<li>Macpherson, William, <a href="#Page_xxix">xxix</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Madoc</i>, by Southey, reviewed, <a href="#Page_60">60-64</a>; <a href="#Page_206">206-207</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Marmion</i>, by Scott, reviewed, <a href="#Page_70">70-93</a>; <a href="#Page_208">208-210</a></li>
+
+<li>Martin, Sir Theodore, <a href="#Page_l">l</a></li>
+
+<li>Martineau, James, <a href="#Page_xxxii">xxxii</a></li>
+
+<li>Maty, Paul Henry, <a href="#Page_xxii">xxii</a></li>
+
+<li>Maurice, Frederick D., <a href="#Page_xxxviii">xxxviii</a></li>
+
+<li>Maxse, Mr. Louis J., <a href="#Page_xxxvi">xxxvi</a></li>
+
+<li>Melbourne, Lord, <a href="#Page_xxx">xxx</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Memoirs for the Ingenious</i>, <a href="#Page_xiv">xiv</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Memoirs of Literature</i>, <a href="#Page_xv">xv</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Memoires Litt&eacute;raires</i>, <a href="#Page_xv">xv</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Men and Women</i>, by Browning, reviewed <a href="#Page_189">189-196</a>, <a href="#Page_221">221</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Mercurius Librarius</i>, <a href="#Page_xiii">xiii</a></li>
+
+<li>Meredith, Mr. George, <a href="#Page_xxxiv">xxxiv</a></li>
+
+<li><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_226" id="Page_226">[Pg 226]</a></span><i>Metropolitan</i>, <a href="#Page_l">l</a></li>
+
+<li>Mill, John Stuart, <a href="#Page_xxx">xxx</a>, <a href="#Page_xxxi">xxxi</a></li>
+
+<li>Minto, William, <a href="#Page_xxxvii">xxxvii</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Miscellaneous Letters</i>, <a href="#Page_xiv">xiv</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Monthly Censor</i>, <a href="#Page_xxxiii">xxxiii</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Monthly Chronicle</i>, <a href="#Page_xxxiii">xxxiii</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Monthly Magazine</i>, <a href="#Page_xlv">xlv</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Monthly Miscellany</i>, <a href="#Page_xv">xv</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Monthly Repository</i>, <a href="#Page_xxxiii">xxxiii</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Monthly Review</i>, <a href="#Page_xvii">xvii-xxi</a>, <a href="#Page_xxv">xxv</a>, <a href="#Page_xxxiii">xxxiii</a>;</li>
+<li>  <span style="margin-left: 2em;">on Gray's <i>Odes</i>, <a href="#Page_1">1-4</a>;</span></li>
+<li>  <span style="margin-left: 2em;">on Wordsworth's <i>Descriptive Sketches</i>, <a href="#Page_16">16-18</a>;</span></li>
+<li>  <span style="margin-left: 2em;">on Wordsworth's <i>Evening Walk</i>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>;</span></li>
+<li>  <span style="margin-left: 2em;">on Southey's <i>Madoc</i>, <a href="#Page_60">60-64</a>;</span></li>
+<li>  <span style="margin-left: 2em;">on Lamb's <i>Blank Verse</i>, <a href="#Page_65">65</a>;</span></li>
+<li>  <span style="margin-left: 2em;">on Landor's <i>Gebir</i>, <a href="#Page_69">69</a>;</span></li>
+<li>  <span style="margin-left: 2em;">on Shelley's <i>Alastor</i>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>;</span></li>
+<li>  <span style="margin-left: 2em;">on Browning's <i>Sordello</i>, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Moore, Thomas, <a href="#Page_xlviii">xlviii</a></li>
+
+<li>Morley, Mr. John, <a href="#Page_xxxiv">xxxiv</a></li>
+
+<li>Motteux, Peter Anthony, <a href="#Page_xv">xv</a>, <a href="#Page_xliv">xliv</a></li>
+
+<li>Moxon, Edward, <a href="#Page_207">207</a></li>
+
+<li>Murray, John, <a href="#Page_xxvii">xxvii</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Museum</i>, <a href="#Page_xvi">xvi</a></li>
+</ul>
+<ul>
+<li>Napier, Macvey, <a href="#Page_xxix">xxix</a></li>
+
+<li>Nares, Robert, <a href="#Page_xxxiii">xxxiii</a></li>
+
+<li><i>National Review</i> (quar.), <a href="#Page_xxxii">xxxii</a>;</li>
+<li>  <span style="margin-left: 2em;">(mon.), <a href="#Page_xxxvi">xxxvi</a></span></li>
+
+<li><i>New Memoirs of Literature</i>, <a href="#Page_xvi">xvi</a></li>
+
+<li><i>New Monthly Magazine</i>, <a href="#Page_xxxvii">xxxvii</a>, <a href="#Page_xlv">xlv</a></li>
+
+<li><i>New Review</i>, <a href="#Page_xxii">xxii</a></li>
+
+<li>Nicolas, Sir N.H., <a href="#Page_xxxii">xxxii</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Nineteenth Century</i>, <a href="#Page_xxxvi">xxxvi</a></li>
+
+<li><i>North British Review</i>, <a href="#Page_xxxii">xxxii</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Nouvelles de la R&eacute;publique des Lettres</i>, <a href="#Page_xiii">xiii</a></li>
+</ul>
+<ul>
+<li>Oldys, William, <a href="#Page_xvi">xvi</a></li>
+
+<li>Oliphant, Mrs. M.O.W., <a href="#Page_xlvii">xlvii</a></li>
+</ul>
+<ul>
+<li><i>Paracelsus</i>, by Browning, reviewed, <a href="#Page_187">187</a></li>
+
+<li>Parkes, Samuel, <a href="#Page_xiv">xiv</a></li>
+
+<li>Pater, Walter, <a href="#Page_xlii">xlii</a>, <a href="#Page_xliii">xliii</a></li>
+
+<li>Phillips, Sir Richard, <a href="#Page_xlv">xlv</a></li>
+
+<li>Phillips, Mr. Stephen, <a href="#Page_liv">liv</a></li>
+
+<li>Pollock, Mr. W.H., <a href="#Page_xli">xli</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Porcupine's Gazette</i>, <a href="#Page_xxxvii">xxxvii</a></li>
+
+<li>Pratt, Josiah, <a href="#Page_xxxiii">xxxiii</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Present State of the Republic of Letters</i>, <a href="#Page_xvi">xvi</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Princess</i>, by Tennyson, reviewed, <a href="#Page_176">176-186</a></li>
+
+<li>Pringle, Thomas, <a href="#Page_xlvi">xlvi</a></li>
+
+<li>Prothero, Mr. George, <a href="#Page_xxix">xxix</a></li>
+
+<li>Prothero, Mr. Rowland, <a href="#Page_xxix">xxix</a></li>
+</ul>
+<ul>
+<li><i>Quarterly Review</i>, <a href="#Page_xxvii">xxvii-xxix</a>, <a href="#Page_liv">liv</a>;</li>
+<li>  <span style="margin-left: 2em;">on Keats' <i>Endymion</i>, <a href="#Page_135">135-140</a>;</span></li>
+<li>  <span style="margin-left: 2em;">on Tennyson's <i>Poems</i>, <a href="#Page_152">152-175</a>; <a href="#Page_215">215-217</a></span></li>
+
+<li><i>Quarterly Theological Review</i>, <a href="#Page_xxiii">xxiii</a></li>
+
+<li>Quintilian, <a href="#Page_107">107</a></li>
+</ul>
+<ul>
+<li>Reeve, Henry, <a href="#Page_xxx">xxx</a></li>
+
+<li>Reid, Andrew, <a href="#Page_xvi">xvi</a></li>
+
+<li>Rendall, Mr. Vernon, <a href="#Page_xxxix">xxxix</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Retrospective Review</i>, <a href="#Page_xxxii">xxxii</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Revue des Deux Mondes</i>, <a href="#Page_xxxiii">xxxiii</a></li>
+
+<li>Ridpath, George, <a href="#Page_xv">xv</a></li>
+
+<li>Rintoul, Robert S., <a href="#Page_xl">xl</a></li>
+
+<li>Roche, M. de la, <a href="#Page_xv">xv</a>, <a href="#Page_xvi">xvi</a></li>
+
+<li>Roscoe, Mr. E.S., <a href="#Page_xxxi">xxxi</a></li>
+
+<li>Roscoe, William C., <a href="#Page_xxxii">xxxii</a></li>
+
+<li>Ross, Miss, <a href="#Page_xxxvii">xxxvii</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Royal Magazine</i>, <a href="#Page_xliv">xliv</a></li>
+
+<li>Russell, Lord John, <a href="#Page_xxx">xxx</a></li>
+</ul>
+<ul>
+<li>Salisbury, Lord, <a href="#Page_xli">xli</a></li>
+
+<li>Sallo, Denis de, <a href="#Page_xiii">xiii</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Saturday Review</i>, <a href="#Page_xli">xli</a>, <a href="#Page_liv">liv</a>;</li>
+<li>  <span style="margin-left: 2em;">on Browning's <i>Men and Women</i>, <a href="#Page_189">189-196</a></span></li>
+
+<li><i>Scots Magazine</i>, <a href="#Page_xliv">xliv</a></li>
+
+<li>Scott, John, <a href="#Page_xlvii">xlvii</a></li>
+
+<li>Scott, Sir Walter, <a href="#Page_xxvii">xxvii</a>;</li>
+<li>  <span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Marmion</i> rev. in <i>Edinburgh Rev.</i>, <a href="#Page_70">70-93</a>; <a href="#Page_208">208-210</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Shelley, Percy Bysshe, <i>Alastor</i> rev. in <i>Monthly Rev.</i>, <a href="#Page_115">115</a>;</li>
+<li>  <span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Cenci</i> rev. in <i>London Mag.</i>, <a href="#Page_116">116-128</a>;</span></li>
+<li>  <span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Adonais</i> rev. in <i>Literary Gazette</i>, <a href="#Page_129">129-134</a>, <a href="#Page_213">213-215</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Shore, Mr. W. Teignmouth, <a href="#Page_xliii">xliii</a></li>
+
+<li>Smith, Sydney, <a href="#Page_xxiv">xxiv</a>, <a href="#Page_xxvi">xxvi</a></li>
+
+<li>Smith, Sir William, <a href="#Page_xxix">xxix</a></li>
+
+<li><span class='pagenum'><a name="Page_227" id="Page_227">[Pg 227]</a></span>Smollett, Tobias <a href="#Page_xviii">xviii</a>, <a href="#Page_xx">xx</a>, <a href="#Page_xlv">xlv</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Sordello</i>, by Browning, reviewed, <a href="#Page_188">188</a></li>
+
+<li>Southern, Henry, <a href="#Page_xxxi">xxxi</a>, <a href="#Page_xxxii">xxxii</a></li>
+
+<li>Southey, Robert, <a href="#Page_xxviii">xxviii</a>;</li>
+<li>  <span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Madoc</i> rev. in <i>Monthly Rev.</i>, <a href="#Page_60">60-64</a>; <a href="#Page_109">109</a>, <a href="#Page_202">202</a>, <a href="#Page_206">206-207</a></span></li>
+
+<li><i>Spectator</i>, <a href="#Page_xl">xl-xli</a></li>
+
+<li>Stebbing, Henry, <a href="#Page_xxxviii">xxxviii</a></li>
+
+<li>Stephen, (Sir) Leslie, <a href="#Page_xxxiv">xxxiv</a></li>
+
+<li>Sterling, John, <a href="#Page_xxxviii">xxxviii</a></li>
+
+<li>Strachey, Mr. J. St. L., <a href="#Page_xl">xl</a></li>
+
+<li>Swinburne, Mr. A.C., <a href="#Page_xxxiv">xxxiv</a>, <a href="#Page_liv">liv</a></li>
+
+<li>Symonds, J.A., <a href="#Page_xxxiv">xxxiv</a></li>
+
+<li>Symons, Mr. Arthur, <a href="#Page_liv">liv</a></li>
+</ul>
+<ul>
+<li><i>Tait's Edinburgh Magazine</i>, <a href="#Page_l">l</a></li>
+
+<li>Taylor, William, <a href="#Page_xlv">xlv</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Temple Bar</i>, <a href="#Page_l">l</a></li>
+
+<li>Tennyson, Alfred, (Lord), <a href="#Page_xxxvi">xxxvi</a>;</li>
+<li>  <span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Timbuctoo</i> rev. in <i>Athen&aelig;um</i>, <a href="#Page_151">151</a>;</span></li>
+<li>  <span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Poems</i> rev. in <i>Quarterly Rev.</i>, <a href="#Page_152">152-175</a>;</span></li>
+<li>  <span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>The Princess</i> rev. in <i>Literary Gazette</i>, <a href="#Page_176">176-186</a>; <a href="#Page_218">218-220</a></span></li>
+
+<li>Thackeray, W.M., <a href="#Page_xxx">xxx</a>, <a href="#Page_xlix">xlix</a>, <a href="#Page_l">l</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Theatrum Poetarum</i>, <a href="#Page_xv">xv</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Timbuctoo</i>, by Tennyson, reviewed, <a href="#Page_151">151</a></li>
+
+<li>Townsend, Meredith, <a href="#Page_xl">xl</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Traveller</i>, by Goldsmith, reviewed, <a href="#Page_5">5-9</a></li>
+</ul>
+<ul>
+<li><i>Universal Historical Biblioth&egrave;que</i>, <a href="#Page_xiv">xiv</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Universal Magazine</i>, <a href="#Page_xliv">xliv</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Universal Mercury</i>, <a href="#Page_xiv">xiv</a></li>
+</ul>
+<ul>
+<li>Walpole, Horace, <a href="#Page_xvi">xvi</a>, <a href="#Page_xx">xx</a></li>
+
+<li>Warton, J. and T., <a href="#Page_xvi">xvi</a></li>
+
+<li>Watkins, Dr., <a href="#Page_xlv">xlv</a></li>
+
+<li>Watts, Alaric A., <a href="#Page_xlv">xlv</a>, <a href="#Page_xlviii">xlviii</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Weekly Memorial</i>, <a href="#Page_xiv">xiv</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Weekly Register</i>, <a href="#Page_xxxvii">xxxvii</a></li>
+
+<li><i>Westminster Review</i>, <a href="#Page_xxxi">xxxi-xxxii</a></li>
+
+<li>Wilson, John, <a href="#Page_xlvi">xlvi</a></li>
+
+<li>Wordsworth, William, <i>Descriptive Sketches</i> rev. in <i>Monthly Rev.</i>, <a href="#Page_16">16-18</a>;</li>
+<li>  <span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Evening Walk</i> rev. in <i>ibid.</i>, <a href="#Page_19">19</a>;</span></li>
+<li>  <span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Lyrical Ballads</i> rev. in <i>Critical Rev.</i>, <a href="#Page_20">20-23</a>;</span></li>
+<li>  <span style="margin-left: 2em;"><i>Poems</i> rev. in <i>Edinburgh Rev.</i>, <a href="#Page_24">24-46</a>; <a href="#Page_200">200-204</a></span></li>
+
+<li><i>Works of the Learned</i>, <a href="#Page_xiv">xiv</a></li>
+</ul>
+<ul>
+<li><i>Young Student's Library</i>, <a href="#Page_xiv">xiv</a></li>
+</ul>
+
+<div class="footnotes"><h3>FOOTNOTES:</h3>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_A_1" id="Footnote_A_1"></a><a href="#FNanchor_A_1"><span class="label">[A]</span></a> Reprinted in Professor Arber's <i>The Term Catalogues</i>
+(1668-1709). London, privately printed, 1903.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_B_2" id="Footnote_B_2"></a><a href="#FNanchor_B_2"><span class="label">[B]</span></a> See the centenary number of the <i>Edinburgh Review</i>
+(October, 1902). During the editor's recent tenure of government office,
+the review was temporarily edited by Mr. E.S. Roscoe.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_C_3" id="Footnote_C_3"></a><a href="#FNanchor_C_3"><span class="label">[C]</span></a> See his letter in <i>Athen&aelig;um</i>, January 19, 1878. See also
+"Our Seventieth Birthday," <i>Athen&aelig;um</i>, January 1, 1898.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_D_4" id="Footnote_D_4"></a><a href="#FNanchor_D_4"><span class="label">[D]</span></a> Mr. Bertram Dobell in his <i>Side-Lights on Charles Lamb</i>
+(1903) directs attention to some hitherto unknown articles of Lamb's in
+the <i>London Magazine</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_E_5" id="Footnote_E_5"></a><a href="#FNanchor_E_5"><span class="label">[E]</span></a> In July, 1902, the <i>Quarterly Review</i> published its first
+signed article&mdash;the widely-discussed paper on Charles Dickens by Mr.
+Algernon Charles Swinburne. Since then several other noteworthy articles
+have appeared over the authors' signatures.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_F_6" id="Footnote_F_6"></a><a href="#FNanchor_F_6"><span class="label">[F]</span></a> The best Odes of Pindar are said to be those which have
+been destroyed by time; and even they were seldom recited among the
+Greeks, without the adventitious ornaments of music and dancing. Our
+Lyric Odes are seldom set off with these advantages, which, trifling as
+they seem, have alone given immortality to the works of Quinault.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_G_7" id="Footnote_G_7"></a><a href="#FNanchor_G_7"><span class="label">[G]</span></a> Nous sommes n&eacute;s pour la v&eacute;rit&eacute;, et nous ne pouvons souffrir
+son abord. Les figures, les paraboles, les embl&eacute;mes, sont toujours des
+ornements n&eacute;cessaires pour qu'elle puisse s'annoncer: on veut, en la
+recevant, qu'elle soit <i>d&eacute;guis&eacute;e</i>.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_H_8" id="Footnote_H_8"></a><a href="#FNanchor_H_8"><span class="label">[H]</span></a> See Vol. I. p. 63, &amp;c.&mdash;Vol. VII. p. 1, &amp;c.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_I_9" id="Footnote_I_9"></a><a href="#FNanchor_I_9"><span class="label">[I]</span></a> Milton.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_J_10" id="Footnote_J_10"></a><a href="#FNanchor_J_10"><span class="label">[J]</span></a> Hume.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_K_11" id="Footnote_K_11"></a><a href="#FNanchor_K_11"><span class="label">[K]</span></a> Grant's Restoration of Learning in the East.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_L_12" id="Footnote_L_12"></a><a href="#FNanchor_L_12"><span class="label">[L]</span></a> We cannot resist the temptation of saying, that in this
+highest department of the poet's art, we know of no living poet who will
+bear a comparison with Mr. Southey.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_M_13" id="Footnote_M_13"></a><a href="#FNanchor_M_13"><span class="label">[M]</span></a> Though there is <i>no Echo</i> and the mountains are
+<i>voiceless</i>, the woodmen, nevertheless, in the last line of this verse
+hear "a drear murmur between their Songs!!"</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_N_14" id="Footnote_N_14"></a><a href="#FNanchor_N_14"><span class="label">[N]</span></a> This would have done excellently for a coroner's inquest
+like that on <i>Honey</i>, which lasted <i>thirty</i> days, and was facetiously
+called the "Honey-moon."</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_O_15" id="Footnote_O_15"></a><a href="#FNanchor_O_15"><span class="label">[O]</span></a> See Quarterly Review, vol. XIX, p. 204.</p></div>
+
+<div class="footnote"><p><a name="Footnote_P_16" id="Footnote_P_16"></a><a href="#FNanchor_P_16"><span class="label">[P]</span></a> The same Camelot, in Somersetshire, we presume, which is
+alluded to by Kent in 'King Lear'&mdash;
+</p>
+<div class="poem"><div class="stanza">
+<span class="i0">'Goose! if I had thee upon Sarum plain,<br /></span>
+<span class="i0">I'd drive thee cackling home to Camelot.'<br /></span>
+</div></div>
+</div>
+
+</div>
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+<pre>
+
+
+
+
+
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+Project Gutenberg's Early Reviews of English Poets, by John Louis Haney
+
+This eBook is for the use of anyone anywhere at no cost and with
+almost no restrictions whatsoever.  You may copy it, give it away or
+re-use it under the terms of the Project Gutenberg License included
+with this eBook or online at www.gutenberg.org
+
+
+Title: Early Reviews of English Poets
+
+Author: John Louis Haney
+
+Release Date: July 6, 2006 [EBook #18766]
+
+Language: English
+
+Character set encoding: ASCII
+
+*** START OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EARLY REVIEWS OF ENGLISH POETS ***
+
+
+
+
+Produced by David Starner, Taavi Kalju and the Online
+Distributed Proofreading Team at http://www.pgdp.net
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+
+EARLY REVIEWS
+
+OF
+
+ENGLISH POETS
+
+
+EDITED WITH AN INTRODUCTION
+
+BY
+
+JOHN LOUIS HANEY, PH.D.
+
+_Assistant Professor of English and History, Central High School,
+Philadelphia; Research Fellow in English, University of Pennsylvania_
+
+
+PHILADELPHIA
+THE EGERTON PRESS
+1904
+
+COPYRIGHT, 1904
+BY JOHN LOUIS HANEY
+
+
+PRESS OF
+THE NEW ERA PRINTING COMPANY,
+LANCASTER, PA.
+
+
+
+
+TO
+
+MY FRIEND AND TEACHER
+
+PROFESSOR FELIX E. SCHELLING
+
+OF THE UNIVERSITY OF PENNSYLVANIA
+
+
+
+
+PREFACE
+
+
+"Among the amusing and instructive books that remain to be written, one
+of the most piquant would be a history of the criticism with which the
+most celebrated literary productions have been greeted on their first
+appearance before the world." It is quite possible that when Dr. William
+Matthews began his essay on _Curiosities of Criticism_ with these words,
+he failed to grasp the full significance of that future undertaking. Mr.
+Churton Collins recently declared that "a very amusing and edifying
+record might be compiled partly out of a selection of the various
+verdicts passed contemporaneously by reviews on particular works, and
+partly out of comparisons of the subsequent fortunes of works with their
+fortunes while submitted to this censorship." Both critics recognize the
+fact that such a volume would be entertaining and instructive; but, from
+another point of view, it would also be a somewhat doleful book. Even a
+reader of meagre imagination and rude sensibilities could not peruse
+such a volume without picturing in his mind the anguish and the
+heart-ache which those bitter and often vicious attacks inflicted upon
+the unfortunate victims whose works were being assailed.
+
+Authors (particularly sensitive poets) have been at all times the sport
+and plaything of the critics. Mrs. Oliphant, in her _Literary History of
+England_, said with much truth: "There are few things so amusing as to
+read a really 'slashing article'--except perhaps to write it. It is
+infinitely easier and gayer work than a well-weighed and serious
+criticism, and will always be more popular. The lively and brilliant
+examples of the art which dwell in the mind of the reader are
+invariably of this class." Thus it happens that we remember the witty
+onslaughts of the reviewers, and often ignore the fact that certain
+witticisms drove Byron, for example, into a frenzy of anger that called
+forth the most vigorous satire of the century; and others so completely
+unnerved Shelley that he felt tempted to write no more; and still others
+were so unanimously hostile in tone that Coleridge thought the whole
+detested tribe of critics was in league against his literary success.
+There were, of course, such admirable personalities as Wordsworth's--for
+the most part indifferent to the strongest torrent of abuse; and clever
+craftsmen like Tennyson, who, although hurt, read the criticisms and
+profited by them; but, on the other hand, there are still well-informed
+readers who believe that the _Quarterly Review_ at least hastened the
+death of poor Keats.
+
+It has been suggested that such a volume of the "choice crudities of
+criticism" as is here proposed would likewise fulfill the desirable
+purpose of avenging the author upon his ancient enemy, the critic, by
+showing how absurd the latter's utterances often are, and what a
+veritable farrago of folly those collected utterances can make. We may
+rest assured that however much hostile criticism may have pained an
+author, it has never inflicted a permanent injury upon a good book. If
+there appear to be works that have been thus more or less obscured, the
+fault will probably be found not in the critic but in the works
+themselves. According to this agreeable theory, which we would all fain
+believe, the triumph of the ignorant or malevolent critic cannot endure;
+sooner or later the author's merit will be recognized and he will come
+into his own.
+
+The present volume does not attempt to fulfill the conditions suggested
+by Dr. Matthews and Mr. Collins. A history of contemporary criticism of
+famous authors would be a more ambitious undertaking, necessitating an
+extensive apparatus of notes and references. It seeks merely to gather a
+number of interesting anomalies of criticism--reviews of famous poems
+and famous poets differing more or less from the modern consensus of
+opinion concerning those poems and their authors. Although most of the
+chosen reviews are unfavorable, several others have been selected to
+afford evidence of an early appreciation of certain poets. A few
+unexpectedly favorable notices, such as the _Monthly Review's_ critique
+of Browning's _Sordello_, are printed because they appear to be unique.
+The chief criterion in selecting these reviews (apart from the effort to
+represent most of the periodicals and the principal poets between Gray
+and Browning) has been that of interest to the modern reader. In most
+cases, criticisms of a writer's earlier works were preferred as more
+likely to be spontaneous and uninfluenced by his growing literary
+reputation. Thus the volume does not attempt to trace the development of
+English critical methods, nor to supply a hand-book of representative
+English criticism; it offers merely a selection of bygone but readable
+reviews--what the critics thought, or, in some cases, pretended to
+think, of works of poets whom we have since held in honorable esteem.
+The short notices and the well-known longer reviews are printed entire;
+but considerations of space and interest necessitated excisions in a few
+cases, all of which are, of course, properly indicated. The spelling and
+punctuation of the original texts have been carefully followed.
+
+The history of English critical journals has not yet been adequately
+written. The following introduction offers a rapid survey of the
+subject, compiled principally from the sources indicated in the
+bibliographical list. I am indebted to Professor Felix E. Schelling of
+the University of Pennsylvania, and to Dr. Robert Ellis Thompson and
+Professor Albert H. Smyth of the Philadelphia Central High School for
+many suggestions that have been of value in writing the introduction.
+Dr. Edward Z. Davis examined at my request certain pamphlets in the
+British Museum that threw additional light upon the history of the early
+reviews. Dr. A.S.W. Rosenbach and Professor J.H. Moffatt read the proofs
+of the introduction and notes respectively, and suggested several
+noteworthy improvements.
+
+J.L.H.
+
+CENTRAL HIGH SCHOOL,
+PHILADELPHIA.
+
+
+
+
+CONTENTS
+
+
+Preface                                                       vii
+Introduction                                                 xiii
+Bibliography                                                  lvi
+
+REVIEWS
+
+GRAY       Odes (_Monthly Review_)                              1
+GOLDSMITH  The Traveller (_Critical Review_)                    5
+COWPER     Poems, 1782 (_Critical Review_)                     10
+BURNS      Poems, 1786 (_Edinburgh Magazine_)                  13
+           Poems, 1786 (_Critical Review_)                     15
+WORDSWORTH Descriptive Sketches (_Monthly Review_)             16
+           An Evening Walk (_Monthly Review_)                  19
+           Lyrical Ballads (_Critical Review_)                 20
+           Poems, 1807 (_Edinburgh Review_)                    24
+COLERIDGE  Christabel (_Edinburgh Review_)                     47
+SOUTHEY    Madoc (_Monthly Review_)                            60
+LAMB       Blank Verse (_Monthly Review_)                      65
+           Album Verses (_Literary Gazette_)                   66
+LANDOR     Gebir (_British Critic_)                            68
+           Gebir (_Monthly Review_)                            69
+SCOTT      Marmion (_Edinburgh Review_)                        70
+BYRON      Hours of Idleness (_Edinburgh Review_)              94
+           Childe Harold (_Christian Observer_)               101
+SHELLEY    Alastor (_Monthly Review_)                         115
+           The Cenci (_London Magazine_)                      116
+           Adonais (_Literary Gazette_)                       129
+KEATS      Endymion (_Quarterly Review_)                      135
+           Endymion (_Blackwood's Magazine_)                  141
+TENNYSON   Timbuctoo (_Athenaeum_)                             151
+           Poems, 1833 (_Quarterly Review_)                   152
+           The Princess (_Literary Gazette_)                  176
+BROWNING   Paracelsus (_Athenaeum_)                            187
+           Sordello (_Monthly Review_)                        188
+           Men and Women (_Saturday Review_)                  189
+
+Notes                                                         197
+Index                                                         223
+
+
+
+
+INTRODUCTION
+
+
+To the modern reader, with an abundance of periodicals of all sorts and
+upon all subjects at hand, it seems hardly possible that this wealth of
+ephemeral literature was virtually developed within the past two
+centuries. It offers such a rational means for the dissemination of the
+latest scientific and literary news that the mind undeceived by facts
+would naturally place the origin of the periodical near the invention of
+printing itself. Apart from certain sporadic manifestations of what is
+termed, by courtesy, periodical literature, the real beginning of that
+important department of letters was in the innumerable _Mercurii_ that
+flourished in London after the outbreak of the Civil War. Although the
+_British Museum Catalogue_ presents a long list of these curious
+messengers and news-carriers, the only one that could be of interest in
+the present connection is the _Mercurius Librarius; or a Catalogue of
+Books Printed and Published at London_[A] (1668-70), the contents of
+which simply fulfilled the promise of its title.
+
+Literary journals in England were, however, not a native development,
+but were copied, like the fashions and artistic norms of that period,
+from the French. The famous and long-lived _Journal des Scavans_ was
+begun at Paris in 1665 by M. Denis de Sallo, who has been called, since
+the time of Voltaire, the "inventor" of literary journals. In 1684
+Pierre Bayle began at Amsterdam the publication of _Nouvelles de la
+Republique des Lettres_, which continued under various hands until
+1718. These French periodicals were the acknowledged inspiration for
+similar ventures in England, beginning in 1682 with the _Weekly Memorial
+for the Ingenious: or an Account of Books lately set forth in Several
+Languages, with some other Curious Novelties relating to Arts and
+Sciences_. The preface stated the intention of the publishers to notice
+foreign as well as domestic works, and to transcribe the "curious
+novelties" from the _Journal des Scavans_. Fifty weekly numbers appeared
+(1682-83), consisting principally of translations of the best articles
+in the French journal.
+
+A few years later (1686), the Genevan theologian, Jean Le Clerc, then a
+resident of London, established the _Universal Historical Bibliotheque;
+or, an Account of most of the Considerable Books printed in All
+Languages_, which was continued by various hands until 1693 in a series
+of twenty-five quarto volumes. Contemporary with this review was a
+number of similar publications which had for the most part a brief
+existence. Among them was the _Athenian Mercury_, published on Tuesdays
+and Saturdays (1691-1696), the _History of Learning_, which appeared for
+a short time in 1691 and again in 1694; _Works of the Learned_
+(1691-92); the _Young Student's Library_ (1692) and its continuation,
+the _Compleat Library_ (1692-94); _Memoirs for the Ingenious_ (1693);
+the _Universal Mercury_ (1694) and _Miscellaneous Letters, etc._
+(1694-96). Samuel Parkes includes among the reviews of this period Sir
+Thomas Pope Blount's remarkable _Censura Celebrium Authorum_ (1690).
+That popular bibliographical dictionary of criticism (reprinted 1694,
+1710 and 1718) is only remembered now for its omission of Shakespeare,
+Spenser, Jonson and Milton from its list of "celebrated authors."
+Neither that volume nor the same author's _De Re Poetica_ (1694) finds a
+proper place in a list of periodicals. They should be grouped with such
+works as Phillips' _Theatrum Poetarum_ (1675) and Langbaine's _Account
+of the English Dramatic Poets_ (1691) among the more deliberate attempts
+at literary criticism.
+
+Between 1692-94 appeared the _Gentleman's Journal; or, the Monthly
+Miscellany. Consisting of News, History, Philosophy, Poetry, Music,
+Translations, etc._ This noteworthy paper, edited by Peter Anthony
+Motteux while he was translating Rabelais, included among its
+contributors Aphra Behn, Oldmixon, Dennis, D'Urfey and others. In many
+ways it anticipated the plan of the _Gentleman's Magazine_ (1731), which
+has usually been accorded the honor of priority among English literary
+magazines. The _History of the Works of the Learned; or, an Impartial
+Account of Books lately printed in all Parts of Europe_ was begun in
+1699 and succumbed after the publication of its thirteenth volume
+(1711). Among its editors was George Ridpath, who was afterwards
+immortalized in Pope's _Dunciad_. The careers of the _Monthly
+Miscellany_ (1707-09) and _Censura Temporum_ (1709-10) were brief. About
+the same time an extensive series of periodicals was begun by a Huguenot
+refugee, Michael De la Roche, who fled to England after the revocation
+of the Edict of Nantes and became an Episcopalian. After several years
+of hack-work for the booksellers, he published (1710) the first numbers
+of his _Memoirs of Literature, containing a Weekly Account of the State
+of Learning at Home and Abroad_, which he continued until 1714 and for a
+few months in 1717. In the latter year he began at Amsterdam his
+_Bibliotheque Angloise_ (1717-27), continued by his _Memoires
+Litteraires de la Grande Bretagne_ (1720-1724) after the editorship of
+the former had been placed in other hands on account of his pronounced
+anti-Calvinistic views. At Amsterdam, Daniel Le Clerc, a brother of the
+Jean Le Clerc already mentioned, published his _Bibliotheque Choisee_
+(1703-14) and his _Bibliotheque Ancienne et Moderne_ (1714-28). Both of
+these periodicals suggested numerous ideas to De la Roche, who returned
+to London and conducted the _New Memoirs of Literature_ (1725-27). His
+last venture was a _Literary Journal, or a Continuation of the Memoirs
+of Literature_, which lasted about a year.
+
+Contemporary with De la Roche, Samuel Jebb conducted _Bibliotheca
+Literaria_ (1722-24), dealing with "inscriptions, medals, dissertations,
+etc." In 1728 Andrew Reid began the _Present State of the Republick of
+Letters_, which reached its eighteenth volume in 1736. It was then
+incorporated with the _Literary Magazine; or the History of the Works of
+the Learned_ (1735-36) and the joint periodical was henceforth published
+as a _History of the Works of the Learned_ until 1743. Other less
+extensive literary journals of the same period were Archibald Bower's
+_Historia Literaria_ (1730-34); the _Bee; or, Universal Weekly Pamphlet_
+(1733-35), edited by Addison's cousin, Eustace Budgell; the _British
+Librarian, exhibiting a Compendious Review or Abstract of our most
+Scarce, Useful and Valuable Books, etc._, published anonymously by the
+antiquarian William Oldys, from January to June, 1737, and much esteemed
+by modern bibliophiles as a pioneer and a curiosity of its kind; a
+_Literary Journal_ (1744-49) published at Dublin; and, finally, the
+_Museum; or the Literary and Historical Register_. This interesting
+periodical printed essays, poems and reviews by such contributors as
+Spence, Horace Walpole, the brothers Warton, Akenside, Lowth and others.
+It was published fortnightly from March, 1746 to September, 1747, making
+three octavo volumes.
+
+The periodicals enumerated thus far can hardly be regarded as literary
+in the modern acceptation of the term; they were, for the most part,
+ponderous, learned and scientific in character, and, with the exception
+of the _Gentleman's Journal_ and Dodsley's _Museum_, rarely ventured
+into the domain of _belles-lettres_. An occasional erudite dissertation
+on classical poetry or on the French canons of taste suggested a
+literary intent, but the bulk of the journals was supplied by articles
+on natural history, curious experiments, physiological treatises and
+historical essays. During the latter half of the eighteenth century
+theological and political writings, and accounts of travels in distant
+lands became the staple offering of the reviews.
+
+A new era in the history of English periodicals was marked by the
+publication, on May 1, 1749, of the first number of the _Monthly
+Review_, destined to continue through ninety-six years of varying
+fortune and to reach its 249th volume. It bore the subtitle: _A
+Periodical Work giving an Account, with Proper Abstracts of, and
+Extracts from, the New Books, Pamphlets, etc., as they come out. By
+Several Hands._ The publisher was Ralph Griffiths, who continued to
+manage the review until his death in 1803. It seems remarkable that this
+periodical which set the norm for half a century should have appeared
+not only without preface or advertisement, but likewise without
+patronage or support of any kind. From the first it reviewed poetry,
+fiction and drama as well as the customary classes of applied
+literature, and thus appealed primarily to the public rather than, like
+most of its predecessors, to the learned. Its politics were Whig and its
+theology Non-conformist. Griffiths was not successful at first, but
+determined to achieve popularity by enlisting Ruffhead, Kippis,
+Langhorne and several other minor writers on his critical staff. In
+1757 Oliver Goldsmith became one of those unfortunate hacks as a result
+of his well-known agreement with Griffiths to serve as an
+assistant-editor in exchange for his board, lodging and "an adequate
+salary." About a score of miscellaneous reviews from Goldsmith's
+pen--including critiques of Home's _Douglas_, Burke's _On the Sublime
+and the Beautiful_, Smollett's _History of England_ and Gray's
+_Odes_--appeared in the _Monthly Review_ during 1757-58. The contract
+with Griffiths was soon broken, probably on account of incompatibility
+of temper. Goldsmith declared that he had been over-worked and badly
+treated; but it is quite likely that his idleness and irregular habits
+contributed largely to the misunderstanding.
+
+Meanwhile, a Tory rival and a champion of the Established Church had
+appeared on the field. A printer named Archibald Hamilton projected the
+_Critical Review: or, Annals of Literature. By a Society of Gentlemen_,
+which began to appear in February, 1756, under the editorship of Tobias
+Smollett and extended to a total of 144 volumes when it ceased
+publication in 1817. Its articles were of a high order for the time and
+the new review soon became popular. The open rivalry between the reviews
+was fostered by an exchange of editorial compliments. Griffiths
+published a statement that the _Monthly_ was not written by "physicians
+without practice, authors without learning, men without decency,
+gentlemen without manners, and critics without judgment." Smollett
+retorted that "the _Critical Review_ is not written by a parcel of
+obscure hirelings, under the restraint of a bookseller and his wife, who
+presume to revise, alter and amend the articles occasionally. The
+principal writers in the _Critical Review_ are unconnected with
+booksellers, unawed by old women, and independent of each other." Such
+literary encounters did not fail to stimulate public interest in both
+reviews and to add materially to their circulation.
+
+When the first volume of the _Critical Review_ was complete, the
+"Society of Gentlemen" enriched it with an ornate, self-congratulatory
+Preface in which they said of themselves:
+
+     "However they may have erred in judgment, they have declared their
+     thoughts without prejudice, fear, or affectation; and strove to
+     forget the author's person, while his works fell under their
+     consideration. They have treated simple dulness as the object of
+     mirth or compassion, according to the nature of its appearance.
+     Petulance and self-conceit they have corrected with more severe
+     strictures; and though they have given no quarter to insolence,
+     scurrility and sedition, they will venture to affirm, that no
+     production of merit has been defrauded of its due share of
+     applause. On the contrary, they have cherished with commendation,
+     the very faintest bloom of genius, even when vapid and unformed, in
+     hopes of its being warmed into flavour, and afterwards producing
+     agreeable fruit by dint of proper care and culture; and never,
+     without reluctance disapproved, even of a bad writer, who had the
+     least title to indulgence. The judicious reader will perceive that
+     their aim has been to exhibit a succinct plan of every performance;
+     to point out the most striking beauties and glaring defects; to
+     illustrate their remarks with proper quotations; and to convey
+     these remarks in such a manner, as might best conduce to the
+     entertainment of the public."
+
+Moreover, these high ideals were entertained under the most unfavorable
+circumstances. By the time the second volume was complete, the editors
+took pleasure in announcing that in spite of "open assault and private
+assassination," "published reproach and printed letters of abuse,
+distributed like poisoned arrows in the dark," yea, in spite of the
+"breath of secret calumny" and the "loud blasts of obloquy," the
+_Critical Review_ was more strongly entrenched than before.
+
+There was more than mere rhodomontade in these words. Not only did open
+rivalry exist between the two reviews, but they were both made the
+subject of violent attacks by authors whose productions had been
+condemned on their pages. John Brine (1755), John Shebbeare (1757),
+Horace Walpole (1759), William Kenrick (1759), James Grainger (1759) and
+Joseph Reed (1759) are the earliest of the many writers who issued
+pamphlets in reply to articles in the reviews. In 1759 Smollett was
+tried at the King's Bench for aspersions upon the character of Admiral
+Sir Charles Knowles published in the _Critical Review_. He was declared
+guilty, fined L100, and sentenced to three months' imprisonment. Yet in
+spite of such difficulties, the _Critical Review_ continued to find
+favor among its readers. The articles written by its "Society of
+Gentlemen" were on the whole far more interesting in subject and
+treatment than the work of Griffiths' unfortunate hacks; but the
+_Monthly_ was also prospering, as in 1761 a fourth share in that review
+was sold for more than L755.
+
+In 1760 appeared a curious anonymous satire entitled _The Battle of the
+Reviews_, which presented, upon the model of Swift's spirited account of
+the contest between ancient and modern learning, a fantastic description
+of the open warfare between the two reviews. After a formal declaration
+of hostilities both sides marshal their forces for the struggle. The
+"noble patron" of the _Monthly_ is but slightly disguised as the Right
+Honourable Rehoboam Gruffy, Esq. His associates Sir Imp Brazen, Mynheer
+Tanaquil Limmonad, Martin Problem, and others were probably recognized
+by contemporary readers. To oppose this array the _Critical_ summons a
+force that contains only two names of distinction, Sampson MacJackson
+and Sawney MacSmallhead (_i.e._, Smollett). The ensuing battle, which is
+described at great length, results in a victory for the _Critical
+Review_, and the banishment of Squire Gruffy to the land of the
+Hottentots.
+
+Dr. Johnson's well-known characterization of the two reviews was quite
+just. On the occasion of his memorable interview (1767) with George III,
+Johnson gave the King information concerning the _Journal des Savans_
+and said of the two English reviews that "the _Monthly Review_ was done
+with most care; the _Critical_ upon the best principles; adding that the
+authors of the _Monthly Review_ were enemies to the Church." Some years
+later Johnson said of the reviews:
+
+     "I think them very impartial: I do not know an instance of
+     partiality.... The Monthly Reviewers are not Deists; but they are
+     Christians with as little Christianity as may be; and are for
+     pulling down all establishments. The Critical Reviewers are for
+     supporting the constitution both in church and state. The Critical
+     Reviewers, I believe, often review without reading the books
+     through; but lay hold of a topick and write chiefly from their own
+     minds. The Monthly Reviewers are duller men and are glad to read
+     the books through."
+
+Goldsmith's successor on the _Monthly_ staff was the notorious libeller
+and "superlative scoundrel," Dr. William Kenrick, who signalized his
+advent (November, 1759) by writing an outrageous attack upon Goldsmith's
+_Enquiry into the Present State of Polite Learning in Europe_. His
+utterances were so thoroughly unjustified that Griffiths, who had scant
+reason for praising poor Oliver, made an indirect apology for his
+unworthy minion by a favorable though brief review (June, 1762) of _The
+Citizen of the World_. During 1759 the _Critical Review_ published a
+number of Goldsmith's articles which probably enabled the impecunious
+author to effect his removal from the garret in Salisbury Square to the
+famous lodgings in Green Arbour Court. After March, 1760, we find no
+record of his association with either review, although he afterwards
+wrote for the _British Magazine_ and others.
+
+During the latter half of the century several reviews appeared and
+flourished for a time without serious damage to their well-established
+rivals. The _Literary Magazine; or Universal Review_ (1756-58) is
+memorable for Johnson's cooeperation and a half-dozen articles by
+Goldsmith. Boswell tells us that Johnson wrote for the magazine until
+the fifteenth number and "that he never gave better proofs of the force,
+acuteness and vivacity of his mind, than in this miscellany, whether we
+consider his original essays, or his reviews of the works of others."
+The _London Review of English and Foreign Literature_ (1775-80) was
+conducted by the infamous Kenrick and others who faithfully maintained
+the editor's well-recognized policy of vicious onslaught and personal
+abuse. Paul Henry Maty, an assistant-librarian of the British Museum,
+conducted for five years a _New Review_ (1782-86), often called _Maty's
+Review_, and dealing principally with learned works. It apparently
+enjoyed some authority, but both Walpole and Gibbon spoke unfavorably of
+Maty's critical pretensions. _The English Review; or, an Abstract of
+English and Foreign Literature_ (1783-96), extended to twenty-eight
+volumes modelled upon the plan of the older periodicals. In 1796 it was
+incorporated with the _Analytical Review_ (1788) and survived under the
+latter title until 1799. The _Analytical Review_ deprecated the
+self-sufficient attitude of contemporary criticism and advocated
+extensive quotations from the works under consideration so that readers
+might be able to judge for themselves. It likewise hinted at the tacit
+understanding then existing between certain authors, publishers and
+reviews for their mutual advantage, but which was arousing a growing
+feeling of distrust on the part of the public. The _British Critic_
+(1793-1843) was edited by William Beloe and Robert Nares as the organ of
+the High Church Party. This "dull mass of orthodoxy" concerned itself
+extensively with literary reviews; but its articles were best known for
+their lack of interest and authority. The foibles of the _British
+Critic_ were satirized in Bishop Copleston's _Advice to a Young
+Reviewer_ (1807) with an appended mock critique of Milton's _L'Allegro_.
+In 1826 it was united with the _Quarterly Theological Review_ and
+continued until 1843.
+
+_The Anti-Jacobin Review and Magazine; or, Monthly Political and
+Literary Censor_ (1799-1821) played a strenuous role in the troublous
+times of the Napoleonic wars. It continued the policy of the
+_Anti-Jacobin, or Weekly Examiner_ (1797-98) conducted with such marked
+vigor by William Gifford, but it numbered among its contributors none of
+the brilliant men whose witty verses for the weekly paper are still read
+in the popular _Poetry of the Anti-Jacobin_. The _Review_ was conducted
+by John Richards Green, better known as John Gifford. Its articles were
+at times sensational in character, viciously abusing writers of known or
+suspected republican sentiments. From its pages could be culled a new
+series of "Beauties of the Anti-Jacobin" which for sheer vituperation
+and relentless abuse would be without a rival among such anthologies.
+
+At the beginning of the nineteenth century, the principal reviews in
+course of publication were the _Monthly_, the _Critical_, the _British
+Critic_, and the _Anti-Jacobin_. The latter was preeminently vulgar in
+its appeal, the _Critical_ had lost its former prestige, and the other
+two had never risen above a level of mediocrity. There was more than a
+lurking suspicion that these periodicals were, to a certain extent,
+booksellers' organs, quite unreliable on account of the partial and
+biassed criticisms which they offered the dissatisfied public. The time
+was evidently ripe for a new departure in literary reviews--for the
+establishment of a trustworthy critical journal, conducted by capable
+editors and printing readable notices of important books. People were
+quite willing to have an unfortunate author assailed and flayed for
+their entertainment; but they did not care to be deceived by laudatory
+criticisms that were inspired by the publisher's name instead of the
+intrinsic merits of the work itself.
+
+Such was the state of affairs when Francis Jeffrey, Henry Brougham and
+Sydney Smith launched the _Edinburgh Review_ in 1802, choosing a name
+that had been borne in 1755-56 by a short-lived semi-annual review.
+There were several significant facts associated with the new enterprise.
+It was the first important literary periodical to be published beyond
+the metropolis. It was the first review to appear quarterly--an interval
+that most contemporary journalists would have condemned as too long for
+a successful review. Moreover, it was conducted upon an entirely
+different principle than any previous review; by restricting its
+attention to the most important works of each quarter, it gave extensive
+critiques of only a few books in each number and thus avoided the
+multitude of perfunctory notices that had made previous reviews so
+dreary and unreadable.
+
+The idea of founding the _Edinburgh Review_ was apparently suggested by
+Sydney Smith in March, 1802. Jeffrey and Francis Horner were his
+immediate associates; but during the period of preparation Henry
+Brougham, Dr. Thomas Brown, Dr. John Thomson and others became
+interested. After some delay, the first number appeared on October 10,
+1802, containing among its twenty-nine articles three by Brougham, five
+by Horner, six by Jeffrey and nine by Smith. Although there was a
+slight feeling of disappointment over the mild political tone of the new
+review, its success was immediate. The edition of 750 copies was
+speedily disposed of, and within a month a second edition of equal size
+was printed. There was no regular editor at first, although the
+publication of the first three numbers was practically superintended by
+Smith. Afterwards Jeffrey became editor at a salary of L300. He had
+previously written some articles (including a critique of Southey's
+_Thalaba_) for the _Monthly Review_ and was pessimistic enough to
+anticipate an early failure for the new venture. However, at the time he
+assumed control (July, 1803) the circulation was 2500, and within five
+years it reached 8,000 or 9,000 copies. Jeffrey's articles were
+recognized and much admired; but the success of the _Edinburgh_ was due
+to its independent tone and general excellence rather than to the
+individual contributions of its editor. Its prosperity enabled the
+publishers to offer the contributors attractive remuneration for their
+articles, thus assuring the cooeperation of specialists and of the most
+capable men of letters of the day. At the outset, ten guineas per sheet
+were paid; later sixteen became the minimum, and the average ranged from
+twenty to twenty-five guineas. When we recall that the _Critical Review_
+paid two, and the _Monthly Review_ sometimes four guineas per sheet, we
+can readily understand the distinctly higher standard of the _Edinburgh
+Review_.
+
+Horner left Scotland for London in 1803 to embark upon a political
+career. During the next six years occasional articles from his pen--less
+than a score in all--appeared in the review. Smith and Brougham likewise
+left Edinburgh in 1803 and 1805 respectively; but they ably supported
+Jeffrey by sending numerous contributions for many years. During the
+first quarter-century of the review's existence, this trio, with the
+cooeperation of Sir James Mackintosh and a few others, constituted the
+mainstay of its success. Jeffrey's remarkable critical faculty was
+displayed to best advantage in the wide range of articles (two hundred
+in number) which he wrote during his editorship. It is true that his
+otherwise sound judgment was unable to grasp the significance of the new
+poetic movement of his day, and that his best remembered efforts are the
+diatribes against the Lake Poets. Hence, in the eyes of the modern
+literary dilettante, he figures as a misguided, domineering Zoilus whose
+mission in life was to heap ridicule upon the poetical efforts of
+Wordsworth, Coleridge and the lesser disciples of romanticism.
+
+There are in the early volumes of the _Edinburgh_ no more conspicuous
+qualities than that air of vivacity and graceful wit, so thoroughly
+characteristic of Sydney Smith. The reader who turns to those early
+numbers may be disappointed in the literary quality of the average
+article, for he will instinctively and unfairly make comparison with
+more recent standards, instead of considering the immeasurably inferior
+conditions that had previously prevailed; but we may safely assert that
+the majority of Smith's articles can be read with interest to-day. He
+was sufficiently sedate and serious when occasion demanded; yet at all
+times he delighted in the display of his native and sparkling humor.
+Although most of his important articles have been collected, far too
+much of his work lies buried in that securest of literary
+sepulchres--the back numbers of a critical review.
+
+Henry Brougham at first wrote the scientific articles for the
+_Edinburgh_. Soon his ability to deal with a wide range of subjects was
+recognized and he proved the most versatile of the early reviewers. In
+the first twenty numbers are eighty articles from his pen. A story that
+does not admit of verification attributes to Brougham a whole number of
+the _Edinburgh_, including an article on lithotomy and another on
+Chinese music. Later he became especially distinguished for his
+political articles, and remained a contributor long after Jeffrey and
+Smith had withdrawn. A comparatively small portion of his _Edinburgh_
+articles was reprinted (1856) in three volumes.
+
+Although the young men who guided the early fortunes of the review were
+Whigs, the _Edinburgh_ was not (as is generally believed) founded as a
+Whig organ. In fact, the political complexion of their articles was so
+subdued that even stalwart Tories like Walter Scott did not refrain from
+contributing to its pages. Scott's _Marmion_ was somewhat sharply
+reviewed by Jeffrey in April, 1808, and in the following October
+appeared the article by Jeffrey and Brougham upon Don Pedro Cevallos'
+_French Usurpation of Spain_. The pronounced Whiggism of that critique
+led to an open rupture with the Tory contributors. Scott, who was no
+longer on the best terms with Constable, the publisher of the
+_Edinburgh_, declared that henceforth he could neither receive nor read
+the review. He proposed to John Murray--then of Fleet Street--the
+founding of a Tory quarterly in London as a rival to the northern review
+that had thus far enjoyed undisputed possession of the field, because it
+afforded "the only valuable literary criticism which can be met with."
+Murray, who had already entertained the idea of establishing such a
+review, naturally welcomed the prospect of so powerful an ally. Like a
+good Tory, Scott felt that the "flashy and bold character of the
+_Edinburgh's_ politics was likely to produce an indelible impression
+upon the youth of the country." He ascertained that William Gifford,
+formerly editor of the _Anti-Jacobin_ newspaper, was willing to take
+charge of the new review, which Scott desired to be not exclusively nor
+principally political, but a "periodical work of criticism conducted
+with equal talent, but upon sounder principle than that which had gained
+so high a station in the world of letters."
+
+In February, 1809, appeared the first number of the _Quarterly Review_.
+Three of its articles were by Scott, who continued to contribute for
+some time and whose advice was frequently sought by both editor and
+publisher. Canning, Ellis, and others who had written for the then
+defunct _Anti-Jacobin_ became interested in the _Quarterly_; but the
+principal contributors for many years were Robert Southey, John Wilson
+Croker and Sir John Barrow. This trio contributed an aggregate of almost
+five hundred articles to the _Quarterly_. In spite of its high standard,
+the new venture was a financial failure for at least the first two
+years; later, especially in the days of Tory triumph after the overthrow
+of Napoleon, the _Quarterly_ flourished beyond all expectation.
+Gifford's salary as editor was raised from the original L200 to L900;
+for many years Southey was paid L100 for each article. Gifford was
+distinctly an editor of the old school, with well-defined ideas of his
+official privilege of altering contributed articles to suit himself--a
+weakness that likewise afflicted Francis Jeffrey. While it appears that
+Gifford wrote practically nothing for the review and that the savage
+_Endymion_ article so persistently attributed to him was really the work
+of Croker, he was an excellent manager and conducted the literary
+affairs of the _Quarterly_ with considerable skill. His lack of system
+and of business qualifications, however, resulted in the frequently
+irregular appearance of the early numbers.
+
+On account of his failing health, Gifford resigned the editorship of the
+_Quarterly_ in 1824, and was succeeded by John Taylor Coleridge, whose
+brief and unimportant administration served merely to fill the gap until
+an efficient successor for Gifford could be found. The choice fell upon
+Scott's son-in-law, John Gibson Lockhart, who, from 1825 to 1853, proved
+to be a most capable editor. The subsequent history of the review under
+Whitwell Elwin (1853-1860), William Macpherson (1860-1867), Sir William
+Smith (1867-1893), Mr. Rowland Prothero (1894-1899) and the latter's
+brother, Mr. George Prothero, the present editor, naturally lies beyond
+the purposes of this introduction.
+
+The period of Lockhart's editorship of the _Quarterly_ was likewise the
+golden epoch of the _Edinburgh_. Sydney Smith's contributions ceased
+about 1828. In the following year Jeffrey was elected Dean of the
+Faculty of Advocates. He felt that the tenure of his new dignity
+demanded the relinquishment of the editorship of an independent literary
+and political review; accordingly, after editing the ninety-eighth
+number of the _Edinburgh_, he retired in favor of Macvey Napier, who had
+been a contributor since 1805. Napier conducted the review with great
+success from 1829 until his death in 1847. His policy was to prefer
+shorter articles than those printed when he assumed control. At first,
+each number contained from fifteen to twenty-five articles; but the
+growing length and importance of the political contributions had reduced
+the average to ten. The return to the original policy naturally resulted
+in a greater variety of purely literary articles.
+
+Macaulay had begun his association with the _Edinburgh_ by his
+remarkable essay on _Milton_ in 1825--a bold, striking piece of
+criticism, full of the fire of youth, which established his literary
+reputation and gave a renewed impetus to the already prosperous review.
+During Napier's editorship he contributed his essays on _Croker's
+Boswell_, _Hampden_, _Burleigh_, _Horace Walpole_, _Lord Chatham_,
+_Bacon_, _Clive_, _Hastings_ and many others. Napier experienced some
+difficulty in steering a middle course for the review between Lord
+Brougham, who sought to use its pages to further his own political
+ambitions, and Macaulay, who vigorously denounced the procedure. The
+_Edinburgh_ was no longer conspicuous among its numerous contemporaries;
+but the literary quality was much higher than at first. Among the other
+famous contributors of this period were Carlyle, John Stuart Mill,
+Thackeray, Bulwer, Hallam, Sir William Hamilton and many others. This
+was undoubtedly the greatest period in the history of the review. Its
+power in Whig politics is shown by the fact that Lord Melbourne and Lord
+John Russell sought to make it the organ of the government.
+
+Napier's successor in 1847 was William Empson, who had contributed to
+the _Edinburgh_ since 1823 and who held the editorship until his demise
+in 1852. Next followed Sir George Cornewall Lewis, who, however,
+resigned in 1855 to become Chancellor of the Exchequer in Lord
+Palmerston's cabinet. During his regime he wrote less than a score of
+articles for the review. His immediate successor was the late Henry
+Reeve, whose forty years of faithful service until his death in 1895
+brings the review practically to our own day. When Reeve began his
+duties by editing No. 206 (April, 1855) Lord Brougham was the only
+survivor of the contributors to the original number. In 1857, when a
+discussion arose between editor and publisher concerning the
+denunciatory attitude assumed by the review toward Lord Palmerston's
+ministry, Reeve drew up a list of his contributors at that time,
+including Bishop (afterwards Archbishop) Tait, George Grote, John
+Forster, M. Guizot, the Duke of Argyll, Rev. Canon Moseley, George S.
+Venables, Richard Monckton Milnes and a score of others--most of them
+"names of the highest honour and the most consistent adherence to
+Liberal principles." Within the four decades that followed, the
+personnel of the review has made another almost complete change. A new
+group of contributors, under the editorship of Hon. Arthur R.D. Elliot,
+is now striving to maintain the standards of old "blue and yellow." A
+caustic note in the (1890) Annual Index of _Review of Reviews_ said of
+the _Edinburgh_:
+
+     "It has long since subsided into a respectable exponent of high and
+     dry Whiggery, which in these later days has undergone a further
+     degeneration or evolution into Unionism.... Audacity, wit,
+     unconventionality, enthusiasm--all these qualities have long since
+     evaporated, and with them has disappeared the political influence
+     of the _Edinburgh_."
+
+The two great rivals which are now reaching their centenary[B] are still
+the most prominent, in fact the only well-known literary quarterlies of
+England. During their life-time many quarterlies have risen, flourished
+for a time and perished. The _Westminster Review_, founded 1824, by
+Jeremy Bentham, appeared under the editorship of Sir John Bowring and
+Henry Southern. As the avowed organ of the Radicals it lost no time in
+assailing (principally through the vigorous pens of James Mill and John
+Stuart Mill) both the _Edinburgh_ and the _Quarterly_. In 1836 Sir
+William Molesworth's recently established _London Review_ was united
+with the _Westminster_, and, after several changes of joint title,
+continued since 1851 as the _Westminster Review_. Since 1887 it has been
+published as a monthly of Liberal policy and "high-class philosophy."
+The _Dublin Review_ (London, 1836) still continues quarterly as a Roman
+Catholic organ; similarly the _London Quarterly Review_, a Wesleyan
+organ, has been published since 1853. Of the quarterlies now defunct, it
+will suffice to mention the dissenting _Eclectic Review_ (1805-68) owned
+and edited for a time by Josiah Conder; the _British Review_ (1811-25);
+the _Christian Remembrancer_ (1819-68), which was a monthly during its
+early history; the _Retrospective Review_ (1820-26, 1853-54) conducted
+by Henry Southern and afterwards Sir Nicholas Harris Nicolas as a
+critical review for old and curious books; the _English Review_
+(1844-53); and the _North British Review_ (1844-71), published at
+Edinburgh. The impulse toward the study of continental literature during
+the third decade of the century gave rise to the _Foreign Quarterly
+Review_ (1827-46); the _Foreign Review and Continental Miscellany_
+(1828-30) and the _British and Foreign Review_ (1835-44), continued as
+the _British Quarterly Review_ (1845-86).
+
+A most determined effort to rival the older quarterlies resulted in the
+_National Review_, founded in 1855 by Walter Bagehot and Richard Holt
+Hutton. Its articles were exhaustive, well-written and thoroughly
+characteristic of their class. In addition to the excellent work of both
+editors, there were contributions by James Martineau, Matthew Arnold,
+and Hutton's brother-in-law, William Caldwell Roscoe. Yet, in spite of
+the high standards maintained until the end, the _National_ ceased
+publication in 1864. The many failures in this class of periodicals seem
+to indicate quite clearly that the spirit of the age no longer favors a
+quarterly. For our energetic and progressive era such an interval is too
+long. The confirmed admirer of the elaborate essays of the _Edinburgh_
+and the _Quarterly_ will continue to welcome their bulky numbers; but
+the average reader is strongly prejudiced in favor of the more frequent,
+more attractive and more thoroughly entertaining monthlies.
+
+It is one of the curiosities in the history of periodical literature
+that no popular monthly developed during the first half of the
+nineteenth century: the great quarterlies apparently usurped the entire
+field. We have already seen that the _Critical Review_ came to an end in
+1817 whilst the _Monthly_ continued until 1843. In both cases, however,
+the publication amounted to little more than a sheer struggle for
+existence. The _Monthly's_ attempt to imitate in a smaller way the plan
+of the quarterlies proved an unqualified failure. Neither of the two
+periodicals established at the beginning of the century ever achieved a
+position of critical authority. The _Christian Observer_, started (1802)
+by Josiah Pratt and conducted by Zachary Macaulay until 1816, was
+devoted mainly to the abolition of the slave-trade. Its subsequent
+history until its demise in 1877 is confined almost wholly to the
+theological pale. The second periodical was the _Monthly Repository of
+Theology and General Literature_ (1806-37), which achieved some literary
+prominence for a time under the editorship of W.J. Fox. During the last
+two years of its existence, Richard Hengist Horne and Leigh Hunt became
+its successive editors, but failed to avert the final collapse.
+
+It would be useless to enumerate the many short-lived attempts, such as
+the _Monthly Censor_ (1822) and Longman's _Monthly Chronicle_ (1838-41)
+that were made to provide a successful monthly review. The first of the
+modern literary monthlies was the _Fortnightly Review_, established in
+1865, evidently upon the model of _Revue des Deux Mondes_, which had
+been published at Paris since 1831. Like the great French periodical,
+it was issued fortnightly (at first) and printed signed articles. It was
+Liberal in politics, agnostic in religion and abreast of the times in
+science. The publishers, Messrs. Chapman and Hall, secured an
+experienced editor in George Henry Lewes, who had contributed
+extensively to most of the reviews then in progress. The success of the
+new review was assured by the presence of such names as Walter Bagehot,
+George Eliot, Sir John Herschel, Mr. Frederic Harrison and Herbert
+Spencer on its list of contributors. It provided articles of timely
+interest in politics, literature, art and science; in its early volumes
+appeared serially Anthony Trollope's _Belton Estate_ and Mr. George
+Meredith's _Vittoria_.
+
+Lewes edited the first six volumes, covering the years 1865-66. The
+review was then made a monthly without, however, changing its now
+inappropriate name, and the editorship was accepted by Mr. John Morley,
+who conducted the _Fortnightly_ with great success for sixteen years.
+Most of the earlier contributors were retained; others like Mr.
+Swinburne, J.A. Symonds, Professor Edward Dowden and (Sir) Leslie
+Stephen established a standard of literary criticism that was
+practically unrivalled. The authority of its scientific and political
+writers was equally high; as for serial fiction, Mr. Morley published
+Mr. Meredith's _Beauchamp's Career_ and _The Tragic Comedians_, besides
+less important novels by Trollope and others. More recently the
+publication of fiction has been exceptional. The (1890) _Review of
+Reviews_ Index said of the _Fortnightly_:
+
+     "While disclaiming 'party' or 'editorial consistency,' and
+     proclaiming that its pages were open to all views, the
+     _Fortnightly_ seldom included the orthodox among its contributors.
+     The articles which startled people and made small earthquakes
+     beneath the crust of conventional orthodoxy, political and
+     religious, usually appeared in the _Fortnightly_. It was here that
+     Professor Huxley seemed to foreshadow the expulsion of the
+     spiritual from the world, by his paper on 'The Physical Basis of
+     Life,' and that Professor Tyndall propounded his famous suggestion
+     for the establishment of a prayerless union or hospital as a
+     scientific method for testing the therapeutic value of prayer. Mr.
+     Frederic Harrison chanted in its pages the praises of the Commune,
+     and prepared the old ladies of both sexes for the imminent advent
+     of an English Terror by his plea for Trade Unionism. It was in the
+     _Fortnightly_ also that Mr. Chamberlain was introduced to the
+     world, when he was permitted to explain his proposals for Free
+     Labour, Free Land, Free Education, and Free Church. Mr. Morley's
+     papers on the heroes and saints (Heaven save the mark!) of the
+     French Revolution appeared here, and every month in an editorial
+     survey he summed up the leading features of the progress of the
+     world."
+
+Since Mr. Morley's retirement in 1883, the editors of the _Fortnightly_
+have been Mr. T.H.S. Escott (1883-86), Mr. Frank Harris (1886-94) and
+the present incumbent, Mr. W.L. Courtney.
+
+The _Fortnightly_ was not long permitted to enjoy undisputed possession
+of the field. In 1866, while it was still published semi-monthly, the
+_Contemporary Review_ was launched. Alexander Strahan, the publisher,
+selected Dean Alford as its editor in order to assure a more reserved
+tone than that of its popular predecessor. Although Liberal in politics,
+like the _Fortnightly_, it assumed a very different and apparently
+corrective attitude in religious matters. Most of its articles for many
+years were upon theological subjects and were written by scholars
+comparatively unknown to the public. The gradual change in policy
+furthered by its later editors, especially Mr. James Knowles and Mr.
+Percy Bunting has brought the _Contemporary_ nearer to the general type
+of popular monthlies. Its principles seem to tend toward "broad
+evangelical, semi-socialistic Liberalism."
+
+In 1877 Mr. Knowles found it impossible to conduct the _Contemporary_
+any longer in the independent manner that seemed essential to him;
+accordingly, he withdrew and established the _Nineteenth Century_, which
+in deference to the new era and a desire to be abreast of the times,
+recently adopted the somewhat awkward title of the _Nineteenth Century
+and After_. Like the _Fortnightly_, it presented a brilliant array of
+names from the first. The initial number contained a Prefatory Sonnet by
+Tennyson, and articles by Gladstone, Matthew Arnold, Cardinal Manning,
+and the Dean of Gloucester and Bristol. It is sufficient to state that
+this standard has since been maintained by Mr. Knowles and has made his
+_Nineteenth Century and After_ the most popular of the monthlies.
+
+The _National Review_ (not to be confounded with Bagehot and Hutton's
+quarterly of that name), is the youngest and least important of the
+monthly reviews. It was established in 1883 as a Conservative organ
+under the editorship of Mr. Alfred Austin and Professor W.J. Courthope.
+Well-known writers have contributed to its pages, yet it has never
+assumed a place of first importance in the periodical world. Its present
+editor is Mr. Louis J. Maxse.
+
+It is well to bear in mind that these reviews all seek to discuss the
+most important subjects of contemporary interest, and to secure the
+services of writers best qualified to treat those subjects. In the
+narrow sense of the term, they are not literary reviews; the function of
+periodicals that discuss present day politics, sociology, theology,
+history, science, art and numerous other generic subjects is more
+inclusive and appeals to a much larger audience than the periodical of
+literary criticism. In the quarterlies and monthlies we look for the
+most authoritative reviews of the important books of the day; but for
+general literary review and gossip, a new class of monthlies, best
+represented by Dr. Robertson Nicoll's _Bookman_ (1891) and the American
+_Bookman_ (1895) and _The Critic_ (1881) has appeared. These fill a gap
+between the more substantial monthlies and the very popular weekly
+papers.
+
+The last-mentioned class was practically developed during the nineteenth
+century. The frequency of publication forbade a strict devotion to the
+cause of _belles-lettres_; hence, in most cases, politics or music and
+art were included in the scheme. At first literature was granted meagre
+space in newspapers of the _Weekly Register_ and _Examiner_ type.
+William Cobbett, profiting by his previous experience with _Porcupine's
+Gazette_ and the _Porcupine_, began his _Weekly Political Register_ in
+1802 and continued its publication until his death in 1835. It was so
+thoroughly political in character that it hardly merits recognition as a
+literary periodical. The _Examiner_, begun in 1808 by John Hunt, enjoyed
+during the thirteen years of his brother Leigh's cooeperation a wide
+reputation for the excellence of its political and literary criticism.
+Under Albany Fonblanque, John Forster and William Minto it continued
+with varying success until 1880.
+
+The first truly literary weekly review was the _Literary Gazette_,
+established in 1817 by Henry Colburn, of the _New Monthly Magazine_,
+under the joint editorship of Mr. H.E. Lloyd and Miss Ross. After the
+first half-year of its existence, Colburn sold a third share to the
+Messrs. Longman and another third to William Jerdan, who became sole
+editor and eventually (1842) sole proprietor. The original price of a
+shilling was soon reduced to eight pence. Jerdan set the prototype for
+later literary weeklies in his plan, which embraced "foreign and
+domestic correspondence, critical analyses of new publications,
+varieties connected with polite literature, philosophical researches,
+scientific inventions, sketches of society, biographical memoirs, essays
+on fine arts, and miscellaneous articles on drama, music and literary
+intelligence." Thus Jerdan followed his friend Canning's advice by
+avoiding "politics and polemics" and by aiming to present "a clear and
+instructive picture of the moral and literary improvement of the times,
+and a complete and authentic chronological literary record for general
+reference." He secured the services of Crabbe, Barry Cornwall, Maginn,
+Campbell, Mrs. Hemans and others: with such an array of contributors he
+was able to crush the several rival weeklies that soon entered the
+field.
+
+Toward the end of its prosperous first decade, however, the misfortunes
+of the _Literary Gazette_ began. Colburn's publications had been roughly
+handled in its pages and he accordingly aided James Silk Buckingham in
+founding the _Athenaeum_. The first number appeared on January 2, 1828,
+as an evident rival of the older weekly. For a time the new venture was
+on the verge of failure and the proprietors actually offered to sell it
+to Jerdan. Within half a year Buckingham was succeeded by John Sterling
+as editor. Frederic Denison Maurice's friends purchased the _Literary
+Chronicle and Weekly Review_ (begun 1819) and merged it with the
+_Athenaeum_ in July, 1828. For a year Sterling and Maurice contributed
+some of the most brilliant critical articles that have appeared in its
+pages. The working editor at that time was Henry Stebbing who had been
+associated with the _Athenaeum_ since its inception and who was the only
+survivor[C] of the original staff when the semi-centennial number was
+published on January 5, 1878.
+
+Even the high standards set by Maurice and Sterling failed to win
+public favor. The crisis came about the middle of 1830 when Charles
+Wentworth Dilke became "supreme editor," enlisted Lamb, George Darley,
+Barry Cornwall and others on his staff, and reduced the price of the
+_Athenaeum_ from eightpence to fourpence. The apparent folly of reducing
+the price and increasing the expenses did not lead to the generally
+prophesied collapse; this first experiment in modern methods resulted in
+the rapid growth of the _Athenaeum's_ circulation, to the serious
+detriment of the _Literary Gazette_. Jerdan tried to stem the tide by
+publishing lampoons on the dullness of Dilke's paper; but when the
+_Athenaeum_ was enlarged in 1835 from sixteen to twenty-four pages
+Dilke's triumph was evident. The _Literary Gazette_ was compelled to
+reduce its price to fourpence in its effort to regain the lost
+subscriptions. Dilke labored earnestly to improve his paper and when, in
+1846, he felt that it was established on a firm basis, he made Thomas
+Kibble Hervey editor and devoted his own time to furthering his
+journalistic enterprises. However, he continued to contribute to the
+weekly; his valuable articles on Junius and Pope together with several
+others were afterwards reprinted as _Papers of a Critic_.
+
+Jerdan withdrew from the _Literary Gazette_ in 1850. The hopeless
+struggle with the _Athenaeum_, involving a third reduction in price to
+threepence, lasted until 1862, when the _Gazette_ was incorporated with
+the _Parthenon_ and came to an end during the following year. Hervey
+edited the _Athenaeum_ until 1853 when ill-health necessitated his
+resignation. The later editors include William Hepworth Dixon, Norman
+MacColl and at present Mr. Vernon Rendall. After the withdrawal of Dixon
+in 1869 a reformation in the staff and management of the _Athenaeum_ took
+place.
+
+     "Some old writers were parted with, and a great many fresh
+     contributors were found. While special departments, such as
+     science, art, music and the drama, were of necessity entrusted to
+     regular hands, indeed, the reviewing of books, now more than ever
+     the principal business of 'The Athenaeum,' was distributed over a
+     very large staff, the plan being to assign each work to a writer
+     familiar with its subject and competent to deal with it
+     intelligently, but rigidly to exclude personal favouritism or
+     prejudice, and to secure as much impartiality as possible. The rule
+     of anonymity has been more carefully observed in 'The Athenaeum'
+     than in most other papers. Its authority as a literary censor is
+     not lessened, however, and is in some respects increased, by the
+     fact that the paper itself, and not any particular critic of great
+     or small account, is responsible for the verdicts passed in its
+     columns." (Fox Bourne.)
+
+Half a year after the inception of the _Athenaeum_, the first number of
+the _Spectator_ was issued (July 6, 1828) by Robert Stephen Rintoul, an
+experienced journalist who had launched the ill-fated semi-political
+_Atlas_ two years before and therefore decided to confine his new
+venture to literary and social topics. The political excitement of the
+time soon aroused Rintoul's interest, and he undertook the advocacy of
+the Reform Bill with all possible ardor. From him emanated the famous
+battle-cry: "The Bill, the whole Bill, and nothing but the Bill." He
+conducted the _Spectator_ with great skill until 1858, when he sold it
+two months before his death. Although he wrote little for its pages,
+Rintoul made the _Spectator_ a power in furthering all reforms. The
+literary standard, while somewhat obscured for a time by its politics,
+was high. In 1861 the _Spectator_ passed into the hands of Mr. Meredith
+Townsend who sold a half share to the late Richard Holt Hutton with the
+understanding that they should act as political and literary editors
+respectively. During the four years of the American Civil War, the
+_Spectator_ espoused the cause of the North and was consequently
+unpopular; but the outcome turned the sentiment in England and likewise
+the fortunes of the _Spectator_. Hutton's contributions included his
+most memorable utterances upon theological and literary subjects. In the
+midst of religious controversy he was able to discuss delicate questions
+without giving offense, to enlist all parties by refraining from
+expressed allegiance to one. The _Spectator_ of Hutton's day was, in
+Mrs. Oliphant's opinion, "specially distinguished by the thoughtful tone
+of its writing, the almost Quixotic fairness of its judgments, and the
+profoundly religious spirit which pervades its more serious articles."
+Hutton retired shortly before his death in 1897. The present editor is
+Mr. J. St. Loe Strachey.
+
+The _Saturday Review_ was established in November, 1855, by A.J.
+Beresford Hope. Its first editor was John Douglass Cook, who had indexed
+the early volumes of the _Quarterly_ for Murray and had gained his
+journalistic experience with the _Times_ and the _Morning Chronicle_.
+Though possessed of no great personal ability, Cook had the useful
+editorial faculty of recognizing talent, and consequently gathered about
+himself the most promising writers of the younger generation, including,
+among others, Robert Talbot Cecil, the late Lord Salisbury. The
+_Saturday Review_ at once became the most influential and most energetic
+of the weekly papers. Its politics, independent at first, later assumed
+a pronounced Conservative complexion. Cook remained editor until his
+death (1868) when he was succeeded by his assistant, Philip Harwood.
+Since the latter's retirement in 1883 the more recent editors include
+Mr. Walter H. Pollock, Mr. Frank Harris and the present incumbent, Mr.
+Harold Hodge. Professor Saintsbury wrote of the _Saturday Review_:
+
+     "Its staff was, as a rule, recruited from the two Universities
+     (though there was no kind of exclusion for the unmatriculated; as a
+     matter of fact, neither of its first two editors was a son either
+     of Oxford or Cambridge), and it always insisted on the necessity of
+     classical culture.... It observed, for perhaps a longer time than
+     any other paper, the salutary principles of anonymity (real as well
+     as ostensible) in regard to the authorship of particular articles;
+     and those who knew were constantly amused at the public mistakes on
+     this subject."
+
+Such "salutary principles of anonymity" were not observed by the
+_Academy, a Monthly Record of Literature, Learning, Science and Art_,
+which began to appear in October, 1869, and was published for a short
+time by John Murray. Its founder, Dr. Charles E. Appleton, edited the
+_Academy_ until his death in 1879. All the leading articles bore the
+authors' signatures, and, following the example of the more ambitious
+monthlies, Dr. Appleton secured the best known writers as contributors.
+The first number opened with an interesting unpublished letter of Lord
+Byron's; its literary articles were by Matthew Arnold, Gustave Masson
+and Mr. Sidney Colvin, theology was represented by the Rev. T.K. Cheyne
+and J.B. Lightfoot (later Bishop of Durham), science by Thomas Huxley
+and Sir John Lubbock (now Lord Avebury), and classical learning by Mark
+Pattison and John Conington. This remarkable array of names did not
+diminish in subsequent numbers. Besides those mentioned Mr. W.M.
+Rossetti, Max Mueller, G. Maspero, J.A. Symonds, F.T. Palgrave and others
+contributed to the first volume. Later such names as William Morris,
+John Tyndall, Dante Gabriel Rossetti, Walter Pater and Robert Louis
+Stevenson appeared in its pages.
+
+In spite of its brilliant program, the size of the _Academy_, even at
+its price of sixpence, was too slight to rank as a monthly. After four
+years' experience, first as a monthly, then as a fortnightly, it became
+and has remained a weekly. The editorial succession since the death of
+Dr. Appleton has been C.E. Doble (1879-81); Mr. James Sutherland Cotton
+(1881-96); Mr. C. Lewis Hind (1896-1903); and Mr. W. Teignmouth Shore.
+The issue of November 7, 1896, announced Mr. Cotton's retirement and the
+inauguration of a new policy, which, in addition to technical
+improvements, promised the issue of occasional supplements of a purely
+academic and educational character, and the beginning of the series of
+_Academy Portraits_ of men of letters. At the same time the publication
+of signed articles was abolished and the _Academy_ remained anonymous
+until the recent editorial change. A new departure in October, 1898,
+made the _Academy_ an illustrated paper--the most attractive though not
+the most authoritative of the weeklies. It has departed widely from the
+set traditions of Dr. Appleton, but most readers will agree that the
+departure has been justified by the needs of the hour. There is small
+satisfaction in reading a one-page review from the pen of an Arnold or a
+Pater; we feel that such authorities should express themselves at length
+in the pages of the literary monthlies; that the reader of the weekly
+should be content with the anonymous (and less expensive) review written
+by the staff-critic. Whatever the personal bias, it is at least certain
+that under present conditions the _Academy_ appeals more generally to
+the popular taste. Its recent absorption of a younger periodical is
+indicated in the compounding of its title into the _Academy and
+Literature_--a change that does not commend itself on abstract grounds
+of literary fitness and tradition.
+
+A consideration of periodicals of the _Tatler_, _Spectator_ and
+_Rambler_ class evidently lies beyond our present purpose; though
+Addison's papers on _Paradise Lost_ and similar articles show an
+occasional critical intent. The magazines, however, have in various
+instances shown such an extensive interest in matters literary that a
+brief account of their development will not be amiss. The primary
+distinction between the review and the magazine is well understood; the
+former criticizes, the latter entertains. Hence fiction, poetry and
+essays are better adapted than book-reviews to the needs of the literary
+magazine. As already stated, Peter Motteux's _Gentleman's Journal_
+(1692-94) probably deserves recognition as the first English magazine,
+though its brief career is forgotten in the honor accorded to the
+_Gentleman's Magazine_, established in 1731 by Edward Cave and which,
+still under the editorship of "Sylvanus Urban, Gentleman," is now
+approaching its three hundredth volume. In the early days its lists of
+births, deaths, marriages, bankrupts, events, etc., must have made it a
+useful summary for the public. In literature it printed merely a
+"Register of New Books" without comment of any sort. It is exasperating
+to find such books as _Pamela_ or _Tom Jones_ listed among "New
+Publications" without a word of criticism or commendation. We could
+spare whole reams of pages devoted to "Army Promotions" and "Monthly
+Chronicle" for a few lines of literary review.
+
+Although the booksellers refused to aid Cave in establishing his
+magazine, the demonstration of its success brought forth numerous
+rivals. As they all followed Cave's precedent in ignoring literary
+criticism, it will suffice to mention merely the names of the _London
+Magazine_ (1732-79); the _Scots Magazine_ (1739-1817), continued as the
+_Edinburgh Magazine_ until 1826; the _Universal Magazine_ (1743-1815);
+the _British Magazine_ (1746-50); the _Royal Magazine_ (1759-71); and
+finally the _British Magazine, or Monthly Repository for Gentlemen and
+Ladies_ (1760-67) edited by Tobias Smollett, who published his _Sir
+Launcelot Greaves_ in its pages--perhaps the first instance of the
+serial publication of fiction. Goldsmith wrote some of his most
+interesting essays for Smollett's magazine.
+
+An important addition to the ranks was the _Monthly Magazine_ begun in
+1796 by Sir Richard Phillips under the editorship of John Aikin. The
+principal contributor was William Taylor of Norwich who, during a period
+of thirty years, supplied to the _Monthly Magazine_ and other
+periodicals a series of 1,750 articles of remarkable quality. His
+contributions gave the Magazine standing as a literary review. Hazlitt
+accorded to Taylor the honor of writing the first reviews in the style
+afterwards adopted by the Edinburgh Reviewers, which established their
+reputations as original and impartial critics. He is remembered to-day
+as the author of an unread _Historic Survey of German Poetry_ which was
+vigorously assailed by Carlyle in the _Edinburgh Review_. The _New
+Monthly Magazine_ was started in 1814 by Henry Colburn and Frederick
+Shoberl in opposition to Phillips' magazine. Its first editors were Dr.
+Watkins and Alaric A. Watts. At a later time Campbell, Bulwer, Theodore
+Hook and Harrison Ainsworth successively assumed charge. Under such
+capable direction the magazine naturally won a prominent place among the
+periodicals of the day. During its later years the _New Monthly_ was
+obscured by more ambitious ventures and came to an inglorious end in
+1875--thirty-two years after the suspension of Phillips' _Monthly
+Magazine_.
+
+A most significant event in the history of the magazine was the founding
+of the _Edinburgh Monthly Magazine_ in April, 1817, by William
+Blackwood. The new magazine was projected to counteract the influence
+of the _Edinburgh Review_, but under its first editors, James Cleghorn
+and Thomas Pringle, it failed to win favor. After six numbers were
+issued, a final disagreement between Blackwood and the editors resulted
+in the withdrawal of the latter. The name of the monthly was changed to
+_Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine_--popularly _Blackwood's_ or "Maga"--and
+henceforth until his death Blackwood was his own editor. John Wilson
+(Christopher North) and John Gibson Lockhart, the most important of the
+early contributors to _Blackwood's_, published in that famous seventh
+number the clever _Chaldee Manuscript_--an audacious satire upon the
+original editors, the rival publisher Constable, the _Edinburgh Review_
+and various literary personages under a thinly veiled allegory in
+apocalyptic style. It at once attracted wide attention (including a
+costly action for libel within a fortnight) and was suppressed in the
+second impression of the number. The same number of _Blackwood's_ set
+the precedent for the subsequent critical vituperation that made the
+magazine notorious. It contained an abusive article on Coleridge's
+_Biographia Literaria_ and the first of a series of virulent attacks on
+"The Cockney School of Poetry." Much of the literary criticism in the
+first few volumes is inexcusably brutal; fortunately, _Blackwood's_ soon
+became less rampant in its critical outbursts. The cooeperation of James
+Hogg and the ill-fated Maginn introduced new articles of varied
+interest, particularly the witty letters and the parodies of "Ensign
+O'Doherty." Wilson's _Noctes Ambrosianae_ became a characteristic feature
+of _Blackwood's_; John Galt and Susan Ferrier won popularity among the
+novel readers of the day; and in the trenchant literary criticism of
+Lockhart, Wilson, Hogg and their confreres an equally high standard was
+maintained.
+
+After the death of the elder Blackwood in 1834, the management of the
+magazine passed to his sons successively. John Blackwood, the sixth son,
+enjoyed the distinction of "discovering" George Eliot and beginning, by
+the publication of her _Scenes of Clerical Life_ in 1857, a relationship
+that was both pleasant and profitable to the firm. A few years earlier
+appeared the first contributions of another remarkable literary
+woman--Mrs. Margaret Oliphant, whose association with _Blackwood's_
+lasted over forty years. Her history of the house of Blackwood was
+published in the year of her death (1897).
+
+_Blackwood's_ is still a strong conservative organ. The already quoted
+Index of the _Review of Reviews_ says of it: "With a rare consistency it
+has contrived to appear for over three score years and ten as a spirited
+and defiant advocate of all those who are at least five years behind
+their time. Sometimes _Blackwood_ is fifty years in the rear, but that
+is a detail of circumstance. Five or fifty, it does not matter, so long
+as it is well in the rear." Such gentle sarcasm merely emphasizes the
+fact that _Blackwood's_ has always aimed to be more than a magazine of
+_belles-lettres_. The publishers celebrated the appearance of the one
+thousandth number in February, 1899, by almost doubling its size to a
+volume of three hundred pages, including a latter-day addition to the
+_Noctes Ambrosianae_ and other features.
+
+An important though short-lived venture was the _London Magazine_, begun
+in January, 1820, under the editorship of John Scott. By its editorial
+assaults upon the _Blackwood_ criticisms of the "Cockney School," it
+became the recognized champion of that loosely defined coterie. The
+initial attack in the May number was further emphasized by more vigorous
+articles in November and December of 1820, and January, 1821. Lockhart,
+who was the recipient of the worst abuse, demanded of Scott an apology
+or a hostile meeting. The outcome of the controversy was a duel on
+February 16th between Scott and Lockhart's intimate friend, Jonathan
+Henry Christie. Scott was mortally wounded, and died within a fortnight;
+the verdict of wilful murder brought against Christie and his second at
+the inquest resulted in their trial and acquittal at the old Bailey two
+months later. It would have been well for the _London Magazine_ and for
+literature in general if that unfortunate duel could have been prevented
+or at least diverted into such a ludicrous affair as the meeting between
+Jeffrey and Tom Moore in 1806.
+
+The most famous contributions to the _London Magazine_ during Scott's
+regime were Lamb's _Essays of Elia_. Those charming productions, now
+ranked among our dearly treasured classics, were not received at first
+with universal approbation. The long and justly forgotten Alaric A.
+Watts said of them: "Charles Lamb delivers himself with infinite pain
+and labour of a silly piece of trifling, every month, in this Magazine,
+under the signature of Elia. It is the curse of the Cockney School that,
+with all their desire to appear exceedingly off-hand and ready with all
+they have to say, they are constrained to elaborate every sentence, as
+though the web were woven from their own bowels. Charles Lamb says he
+can make no way in an article under at least a week." In July, 1821, the
+_London Magazine_ was purchased by Taylor and Hessey. Although Thomas
+Hood was made working-editor, the _Blackwood_ idea of retaining
+editorial supervision in the firm was followed. Within a few months De
+Quincey contributed his _Confessions of an English Opium-Eater_--the
+most famous of all the articles that appeared in the magazine. Lamb[D]
+and De Quincey continued to write for the magazine for several years.
+Other contributors, especially of literary criticism, were Barry
+Cornwall, Carlyle, Hazlitt, Henry Cary and, toward the end, Walter
+Savage Landor. The magazine became less conspicuous after 1824 and
+dragged out an obscure existence until 1829; but it is probable that no
+other periodical achieved the standard of purely literary excellence
+represented by the _London Magazine_ during the first five years of its
+existence.
+
+In February, 1830, James Fraser published the first number of _Fraser's
+Magazine for Town and Country_. The magazine was not named after the
+publisher but after its sponsor, Hugh Fraser, a "briefless barrister"
+and man about town. The latter enlisted the aid of Maginn who had
+severed his connection with _Blackwood's_ in 1828. In general,
+_Fraser's_ was modelled upon _Blackwood's_; but a unique and popular
+feature was the publication of the "Gallery of Illustrious Literary
+Characters" between 1830-38. This famous series of eighty-one caricature
+portraits chiefly by Daniel Maclise, with letter-press by Maginn, has
+been made accessible to present-day readers in William Bates' _Maclise
+Portrait Gallery_ (1883) where much illustrative material has been added
+to the original articles. It is evident that the literary standard of
+_Fraser's_ soon equalled and possibly surpassed that of _Blackwood's_.
+Among its writers were Carlyle (who contributed a critique to the first
+number, published _Sartor Resartus_ in its pages, 1833-35, and, as late
+as 1875, his _Early Kings of Norway_), Thackeray, Father Prout and
+Thomas Love Peacock. Maclise's plate of "The Fraserians" also includes
+Allan Cunningham, Theodore Hook, William Jerdan, Lockhart, Hogg,
+Coleridge, Southey and several others. It is unlikely that all of them
+wrote much for _Fraser's_; but the staff was undoubtedly a brilliant
+assemblage. James Anthony Froude became editor in 1860 and was assisted
+for a time by Charles Kingsley and Sir Theodore Martin. He was succeeded
+by his sub-editor, William Allingham, during whose administration
+(1874-79) the fortunes of _Fraser's_ suffered a decline. The gradual
+failure was due to the competition of the new shilling magazines rather
+than to incompetence on the part of the editor. The end came in October,
+1882, when _Fraser's_ was succeeded by _Longman's Magazine_ which is
+still in progress.
+
+The magazines established soon after _Fraser's_ followed for the most
+part a policy that demands for them mere passing mention in the present
+connection. Literary criticism and reviews were largely abandoned in
+favor of lighter and more entertaining material. The _Dublin University
+Magazine_ (1833-80) and _Tait's Edinburgh Magazine_ (1832-61) best
+represent the transitional stage. During its early history, the latter
+employed prominent contributors, who gave it an important position. Such
+magazines as the _Metropolitan_ (1831-50) and _Bentley's Miscellany_
+(1837-68) set the standards for similar periodicals since that time.
+Charles Dickens' experience with _Bentley's_ led to the publication of
+his weeklies, _Household Words_ (1850 to date) and _All the Year Round_
+(1859), which was incorporated in 1895 with the former. _Macmillan's
+Magazine_, first of the popular shilling monthlies, began in 1859 and
+was soon followed by Thackeray's _Cornhill Magazine_ (1860) and _Temple
+Bar_ (1860). All of these magazines are still in progress. The
+occasional publication of an article by a literary critic hardly
+justifies their inclusion within the category of critical reviews, as
+their essential purpose is to instruct and entertain, rather than to sit
+in judgment upon contemporary letters.
+
+There are in course of publication to-day numerous literary periodicals
+of varying scope and importance that have not even been mentioned by
+title in our hasty survey. Enough has been said, however, to give some
+idea of the magnitude of the field, and to show that most of the great
+names of modern English literature have been more or less closely
+associated with the history of the literary reviews. Those reviews have
+usually sought to foster all that is highest and best in our
+intellectual development; and although English literary criticism has
+been, on the whole, less convincing, less brilliant and less
+authoritative than that of France, it has during the past century set a
+fairly high standard of excellence. It seems difficult to understand why
+the literary conditions in England, instead of developing critics like
+Sainte-Beuve, Gaston Paris, Brunetiere and others whose utterances
+redound to the lasting glory of French criticism, should be steadily
+tending toward a lower and less influential level. Mr. Churton Collins
+in his pessimistic discussion of "The Present Functions of Criticism"
+deplores the spirit of tolerance and charity manifested toward the
+mediocre productions of contemporary writers; he attributes the
+degradation of criticism to the lack of critical standards and
+principles, and indirectly to the neglect of the study of literature at
+the English Universities. The plea for an English Academy has been made
+at different times and with different ends in view, but under modern
+conditions such an institution would hardly solve the problem. Mr.
+Collins shows how the intellectual aristocracy of the past has been
+superseded by the present omnivorous reading-public afflicted with a
+perpetual craving for literary novelty. The inevitable rapidity of
+production results in a deluge of poor books which are foisted upon
+readers by a "detestable system of mutual puffery." This condition of
+affairs naturally offers few opportunities for the development of
+critical ideals; but it hardly applies to the incorruptible reviews of
+recognized standing. The reasons for the lack of authority in modern
+English criticism are more deeply grounded in an inherent objection to
+the restraint imposed upon an artist by artificial canons of taste, and
+in a well-founded impression that many of the greatest literary
+achievements evince a violation of such canons.
+
+It is not to be inferred that criticism is thereby disdained and
+disregarded. The critical dicta of a Dryden or a Johnson, a Coleridge or
+a Hazlitt, and, more recently, an Arnold or a Pater, are valued and
+studied because they emphasize the vital elements essential to the
+proper appreciation of a literary product; and, moreover, because such
+critics, in transcending the limitations of their kind, establish higher
+and juster standards for the criticism of the future. On the other hand,
+the great majority of critical utterances must necessarily be ephemeral;
+they may exert considerable contemporary influence, but are usually
+forgotten long before the works that called them forth. Unless this
+criticism is more than a perfunctory examination of the merits and
+defects of the work under consideration, it cannot endure beyond its own
+brief day.
+
+Several fruitless attempts have been made to reduce criticism to an
+exact science, which, quite disregarding the factor of personal taste,
+could refer all literature to a more or less fixed and arbitrary set of
+critical principles. The champions of this objective criticism point to
+the occasionally ludicrous divergence of the views expressed in
+criticism of certain poets or novelists, and insist that there is no
+occasion for such a bewildering difference of opinion. They seem to
+forget that the criticism which we esteem most highly at all times is
+the subjective criticism in which the personality of a competent and
+sincere critic is manifest. Literature, like music, painting and the
+other arts, has its own laws of technique--fundamental canons that must
+be observed in the successful pursuit of the art; but at a certain point
+difference of opinion is not only possible but profitable. The critics
+who would unite in condemning a thirteen-line sonnet or a ten-act
+tragedy could not be expected to agree on the relative merits of
+Milton's and Wordsworth's sonnets. Unanimity of opinion is as impossible
+and undesirable concerning the poetic achievement of Browning and
+Whitman as it is concerning the music of Brahms and Wagner, or the
+painting of Turner and Whistler. Great artists who have taken liberties
+with traditions and precedents have done much to prevent the critics
+from falling into a state of self-complacency over their scientific
+methods and formulas.
+
+The most helpful form of criticism is the interpretative variety, not
+necessarily the laudatory "appreciation" that is so popular in our day,
+but an honest effort to understand and elucidate the intention of the
+writer. The proper exercise of this art occasionally demands rare
+qualifications on the part of the critic; at the same time it adds
+dignity to his calling and value to his utterance. It serves to dispel
+the popular conception of a critic as a disappointed _litterateur_ who
+begrudges his more brilliant fellow craftsmen their success and who dogs
+their triumphs with his ill-tempered snarling. Interpretative criticism
+needs few rules and no system; yet it serves a noble purpose as a guide
+and monitor for subsequent literary effort.
+
+The question of anonymous criticism has occasioned much thoughtful
+discussion. In former times anonymity was often a shield for the
+slanderer who saw fit to abuse and assail his victim with the rancorous
+outburst of his malice; but it is also clear that the earlier reviewers
+were mere literary hacks whose names would have given no weight to the
+critique and hence could be omitted without much loss. The authorship of
+important _Edinburgh_ and _Quarterly_[E] articles in the days of their
+greatness was usually an open secret. Later periodicals, like the
+_Fortnightly_ and the _Academy_ found it a profitable advertisement to
+publish the signatures of their eminent critics. The tendency of the
+present day is largely in favor of anonymity; no longer as a cover for
+the dispensation of malicious vituperation, but as a necessary
+safe-guard for the unbiased and untrammeled exercise of the critical
+function. Certain abuses of the privilege are inevitable. Mr. Sidney
+Colvin in looking over the criticisms of Mr. Stephen Phillips' poetry
+recently discovered in three periodicals convincing parallels that led
+Mr. Arthur Symons to confess to the authorship of all three critiques.
+The average reader would in most cases be strongly influenced by the
+united verdict of the critics of the _Saturday Review_, the _Athenaeum_
+and the _Quarterly Review_; in this instance his convictions would
+undoubtedly be rudely shattered when he learned the truth. Under such
+conditions anonymous criticism is a menace, not an aid to the reader's
+judgment.
+
+In conclusion, it must be borne in mind that criticism is not an end but
+a means to an end. All the literary criticism ever uttered would be
+useless as such if it did not evince a desire to further the development
+of literary art. The _Iliad_ and the _Oedipus_ were written long
+before Aristotle's _Poetics_, and it is not likely that either Homer or
+Sophocles would have been a greater poet if he could have read the
+Stagirite's treatise. Yet the _Poetics_, as a summary of the essential
+features of that art, served an important purpose in later ages and
+exerted far-reaching influences. Criticism in all ages has necessarily
+been of less importance than art itself--it guides and suggests, but
+cannot create. Literary history shows that true criticism must be in
+conformity with the spirit of the age; it cannot oppose the trend of
+intelligent opinion. It may praise, censure, advise, interpret--but it
+will always remain subservient to the art that called it forth. There is
+no reason to believe that criticism can ever be established in the
+English-speaking world upon a basis that will subject to an arbitrary
+and irrevocable ruling the form and spirit of the artist's message to
+mankind.
+
+[Footnote A: Reprinted in Professor Arber's _The Term Catalogues_
+(1668-1709). London, privately printed, 1903.]
+
+[Footnote B: See the centenary number of the _Edinburgh Review_
+(October, 1902). During the editor's recent tenure of government office,
+the review was temporarily edited by Mr. E.S. Roscoe.]
+
+[Footnote C: See his letter in _Athenaeum_, January 19, 1878. See also
+"Our Seventieth Birthday," _Athenaeum_, January 1, 1898.]
+
+[Footnote D: Mr. Bertram Dobell in his _Side-Lights on Charles Lamb_
+(1903) directs attention to some hitherto unknown articles of Lamb's in
+the _London Magazine_.]
+
+[Footnote E: In July, 1902, the _Quarterly Review_ published its first
+signed article--the widely-discussed paper on Charles Dickens by Mr.
+Algernon Charles Swinburne. Since then several other noteworthy articles
+have appeared over the authors' signatures.]
+
+
+
+
+BIBLIOGRAPHY
+
+
+British Museum. Catalogue of Printed Books. Periodicals. (Revised ed.,
+1900.)
+
+Dictionary of National Biography.
+
+Encyclopedia Britannica. Article on Periodicals, by H.R. Tedder.
+
+Barrow, Sir John. Autobiography. London, 1847.
+
+Bourne, H.R. Fox. English Newspapers. Chapters in the History of
+Journalism. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1887.
+
+Cockburn, Lord. Life of Lord Jeffrey. With a Selection from his
+Correspondence. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1852.
+
+Copinger, W.A. On the Authorship of the first Hundred Numbers of the
+"Edinburgh Review." (Privately Printed.) Manchester, 1895.
+
+Cross, Maurice. Selections from the Edinburgh Review, etc. With a
+Preliminary Dissertation. 4 vols. 8vo. London, 1833.
+
+Gates, Lewis E. Francis Jeffrey. In _Three Studies in Literature_. 12mo.
+New York, 1899.
+
+Horner, Leonard. Memoirs and Correspondence of Francis Horner, M.P.
+Edited by his brother. 2 vols. 8vo. Boston, 1853.
+
+Jennings, Louis J. The Correspondence and Diaries of John Wilson Croker.
+2 vols. 8vo. New York, 1884.
+
+Jerdan, William. Autobiography. With his Literary, Political, and Social
+Reminiscences and Correspondence, etc. 4 vols. 12mo. London, 1852-53.
+
+Laughton, John Knox. Memoirs of the Life and Correspondence of Henry
+Reeve, C.B., D.C.L. 2 vols. 8vo. London, 1898.
+
+Napier, Macvey. Selections from the Correspondence of the late Macvey
+Napier, Esq. Edited by his son. 8vo. London, 1879.
+
+Oliphant, Mrs. M.O.W., and Porter, Mrs. Gerald. William Blackwood and
+his Sons, etc. 3 vols. 8vo. New York, 1897-98.
+
+Paston, George. The "Monthly Review." In _Side-Lights on the Georgian
+Period_. 8vo. London, 1903.
+
+Smiles, Samuel. A Publisher and his Friends. Memoir and Correspondence
+of the late John Murray, etc. 2 vols. 8vo. London and New York, 1891.
+
+
+Last Century Magazines. (By T.H.) _Fraser's Magazine_, XCIV (325-333).
+
+Layton, W.E. Early Periodicals. In _The Bibliographer_, III (36-39).
+
+Lee, William. Periodical Publications during the Twenty Years 1712 to
+1732. _Notes and Queries_ (Third Series), IX (53-54, 72-75, 92-95). Cf.
+_ibid._, pp. 164, 268, and X, p. 134.
+
+Niven, G.W. On some Eighteenth Century Periodicals. In _The
+Bibliographer_, II (38-40).
+
+Parkes, Samuel. An Account of the Periodical Literary Journals which
+were Published in Great Britain and Ireland, from the Year 1681 to the
+Commencement of the Monthly Review in the year 1749. In _The Quarterly
+Journal of Science, Literature and the Arts_ (1822), XIII (36-58,
+289-312).
+
+Stephen, (Sir) Leslie. The First Edinburgh Reviewers. In _Cornhill
+Magazine_, XXXVIII (218-234). Also in _Living Age_, CXXXVIII (643-653).
+
+Waugh, Arthur. The English Reviewers. A Sketch of their History and
+Principles. In _The Critic_, XL (26-37).
+
+
+Allingham, William. Varieties in Prose. 3 vols. 12mo. London, 1893. Vol.
+III contains _Some Curiosities of Criticism_, reprinted from _Fraser's
+Magazine_, LXXXVII (43-51).
+
+Arnold, Matthew. Essays in Criticism. First Series. 12mo. London, 1865.
+Contains _The Function of Criticism at the Present Time._
+
+Birrell, Augustine. Men, Women, and Books. 16mo. London, 1894. Contains
+_Authors and Critics_.
+
+Collins, J. Churton. Ephemera Critica, or Plain Truths about Current
+Literature. 12mo. Westminster and New York, 1901.
+
+[Copleston, Edward.] Advice to a Young Reviewer, with a Specimen of the
+Art. 8vo. Oxford and London, 1807. Reprinted in _An English Garner,
+Critical Essays and Literary Fragments_, ed. J.C. Collins. New York,
+1903.
+
+Disraeli, I. Calamities and Quarrels of Authors. A New Edition, etc.
+12mo. London, n.d. Contains _Undue Severity of Criticism_.
+
+Gayley, C.M., and Scott, F.N. An Introduction to the Methods and
+Materials of Literary Criticism, etc. 12mo. Boston, 1899.
+
+Jennings, Henry J. Curiosities of Criticism. 12mo. London, 1881. See
+_Eclectic Magazine_, XCVII (420-423).
+
+Johnson, Charles F. Elements of Literary Criticism. 12mo. New York,
+1898.
+
+Mabie, Hamilton W. Essays in Literary Interpretation. 12mo. New York,
+1896. Contains _The Significance of Modern Criticism_.
+
+Matthews, William. The Great Conversers, and other Essays. 12mo.
+Chicago, 1874. Contains _Curiosities of Criticism_.
+
+Repplier, Agnes. Books and Men. 16mo. Boston, 1888. Contains
+_Curiosities of Criticism_.
+
+Robertson, John M. Essays toward a Critical Method. Sm. 8vo. London,
+1889. Contains _Science in Criticism_.
+
+Robertson, John M. New Essays toward a Critical Method. Sm. 8vo. London,
+1897.
+
+Sears, Lorenzo. Principles and Methods of Literary Criticism. 12mo. New
+York and London, 1898.
+
+Stevenson, E. Early Reviews of Great Writers (1786-1832): Selected and
+Edited with an Introduction. 12mo. London, n.d.
+
+Trent, W.P. The Authority of Criticism and other Essays. 12mo. New York,
+1899.
+
+Winchester, C.T. Some Principles of Literary Criticism. 12mo. New York,
+1899.
+
+Worsfold, W. Basil. The Principles of Criticism. An Introduction to the
+Study of Literature. New Edition. 8vo. New York, 1902.
+
+Wylie, Laura Johnson. Studies in the Evolution of English Criticism.
+16mo. Boston, 1894.
+
+
+Allen, Grant. The Decay of Criticism. In _Fortnightly Review_, XXXVII
+(339-351).
+
+Clarke, Helen A. The Value of Contemporary Judgment. In _Poet-Lore_, V
+(201-209).
+
+Critical Errors. In _Chamber's Journal_, XLII (164-166).
+
+Criticism Extraordinary. In _All the Year Round_, XXXIII (558-563).
+
+G.L.A. Some Curiosities of Criticism. In _Temple Bar_, LXXX (241-247).
+
+Howe, Herbert Crombie. The Contradictions of Literary Criticism. In
+_North American Review_, CLXXV (399-408).
+
+Hunt, T.W. Critics and Criticism. In _Modern Language Notes_, IV, p.
+161.
+
+
+
+
+EARLY REVIEWS OF ENGLISH POETS
+
+
+
+
+THOMAS GRAY
+
+
+ODES. _By Mr._ Gray. 4to. 1s. Dodsley.
+
+As this publication seems designed for those who have formed their taste
+by the models of antiquity, the generality of Readers cannot be supposed
+adequate Judges of its merit; nor will the Poet, it is presumed, be
+greatly disappointed if he finds them backward in commending a
+performance not entirely suited to their apprehensions. We cannot,
+however, without some regret behold those talents so capable of giving
+pleasure to all, exerted in efforts that, at best, can amuse only the
+few; we cannot behold this rising Poet seeking fame among the learned,
+without hinting to him the same advice that Isocrates used to give his
+Scholars, _Study the People_. This study it is that has conducted the
+great Masters of antiquity up to immortality. Pindar himself, of whom
+our modern Lyrist is an imitator, appears entirely guided by it. He
+adapted his works exactly to the dispositions of his countrymen.
+Irregular[,] enthusiastic, and quick in transition,--he wrote for a
+people inconstant, of warm imaginations and exquisite sensibility. He
+chose the most popular subjects, and all his allusions are to customs
+well known, in his day, to the meanest person.[F]
+
+His English Imitator wants those advantages. He speaks to a people not
+easily impressed with new ideas; extremely tenacious of the old; with
+difficulty warmed; and as slowly cooling again.--How unsuited then to
+our national character is that species of poetry which rises upon us
+with unexpected flights! Where we must hastily catch the thought, or it
+flies from us; and, in short, where the Reader must largely partake of
+the Poet's enthusiasm, in order to taste his beauties. To carry the
+parallel a little farther; the Greek Poet wrote in a language the most
+proper that can be imagined for this species of composition; lofty,
+harmonious, and never needing rhyme to heighten the numbers. But, for
+us, several unsuccessful experiments seem to prove that the English
+cannot have Odes in blank Verse; while, on the other hand, a natural
+imperfection attends those which are composed in irregular rhymes:--the
+similar sound often recurring where it is not expected, and not being
+found where it is, creates no small confusion to the Reader,--who, as we
+have not seldom observed, beginning in all the solemnity of poetic
+elocution, is by frequent disappointments of the rhyme, at last obliged
+to drawl out the uncomplying numbers into disagreeable prose.
+
+It is, by no means, our design to detract from the merit of our Author's
+present attempt: we would only intimate, that an English Poet,--one whom
+the Muse has _mark'd for her own_, could produce a more luxuriant bloom
+of flowers, by cultivating such as are natives of the soil, than by
+endeavouring to force the exotics of another climate: or, to speak
+without a metaphor, such a genius as Mr. Gray might give greater
+pleasure, and acquire a larger portion of fame, if, instead of being an
+imitator, he did justice to his talents, and ventured to be more an
+original. These two Odes, it must be confessed, breath[e] much of the
+spirit of Pindar, but then they have caught the seeming obscurity, the
+sudden transition, and hazardous epithet, of his mighty master; all
+which, though evidently intended for beauties, will, probably, be
+regarded as blemishes, by the generality of his Readers. In short, they
+are in some measure, a representation of what Pindar now appears to be,
+though perhaps, not what he appeared to the States of Greece, when they
+rivalled each other in his applause, and when Pan himself was seen
+dancing to his melody.
+
+In conformity to the antients, these Odes consist of the _Strophe_,
+_Antistrophe_, and _Epode_, which, in each Ode, are thrice repeated. The
+Strophes have a correspondent resemblance in their str[u]cture and
+numbers: and the Antistrophe and Epode also bear the same similitude.
+The Poet seems, in the first Ode particularly, to design the Epode as a
+complete air to the Strophe and Antistrophe, which have more the
+appearance of Recitative. There was a necessity for these divisions
+among the antients, for they served as directions to the dancer and
+musician; but we see no reason why they should be continued among the
+moderns; for, instead of assisting, they will but perplex the Musician,
+as our music requires a more frequent transition from the Air to the
+Recitative than could agree with the simplicity of the antients.
+
+The first of these Poems celebrates the Lyric Muse. It seems the most
+laboured performance of the two, but yet we think its merit is not equal
+to that of the second. It seems to want that regularity of plan upon
+which the second is founded; and though it abounds with images that
+strike, yet, unlike the second, it contains none that are affecting.
+
+In the second Antistrophe the Bard thus marks the progress of Poetry.
+
+    II. [2.]
+
+    In climes beyond the solar road,
+    Where shaggy forms o'er ice-built mountains roam,
+    The Muse has broke the twilight-gloom
+    To cheer the shivering natives dull abode
+    And oft beneath the od'rous shade
+    Of Chili's boundless forests laid,
+    She deigns to hear the savage youth repeat,
+    In loose numbers wildly sweet
+    Their feather-cinctured Chiefs, and dusky loves.
+    Her track, where'er the Goddess roves,
+    Glory pursue, and generous shame,
+    Th' unconquerable Mind, and Freedom's holy flame.
+
+There is great spirit in the irregularity of the numbers towards the
+conclusion of the foregoing stanza.
+
+[II, 3, and III, 2, of _The Progress of Poesy_ are quoted without
+comment.]
+
+The second 'Ode is founded on a tradition current in Wales, that Edward
+the first, when he compleated the conquest of that country, ordered all
+the Bards that fell into his hands to be put to death.' The Author seems
+to have taken the hint of this subject from the fifteenth Ode of the
+first book of Horace. Our Poet introduces the only surviving Bard of
+that country in concert with the spirits of his murdered brethren, as
+prophetically denouncing woes upon the Conqueror and his posterity. The
+circumstances of grief and horror in which the Bard is represented,
+those of terror in the preparation of the votive web, and the mystic
+obscurity with which the prophecies are delivered, will give as much
+pleasure to those who relish this species of composition, as anything
+that has hitherto appeared in our language, the Odes of Dryden himself
+not excepted.
+
+[I, 2, I, 3, part of II, 1, and the conclusion of _The Bard_ are
+quoted]--_The Monthly Review_.
+
+[Footnote F: The best Odes of Pindar are said to be those which have
+been destroyed by time; and even they were seldom recited among the
+Greeks, without the adventitious ornaments of music and dancing. Our
+Lyric Odes are seldom set off with these advantages, which, trifling as
+they seem, have alone given immortality to the works of Quinault.]
+
+
+
+
+OLIVER GOLDSMITH
+
+
+_The Traveller, or a Prospect of Society. A Poem_. _Inscribed to the
+Rev. Mr._ Henry Goldsmith. _By_ OLIVER GOLDSMITH, _M.B. 4to. Pr. 1s.
+6d_. Newbery.
+
+The author has, in an elegant dedication to his brother, a country
+clergyman, given the design of his poem:--'Without espousing the cause
+of any party, I have attempted to moderate the rage of all. I have
+endeavoured to shew, that there may be equal happiness in other states,
+though differently governed from our own; that each state has a peculiar
+principle of happiness; and that this principle in each state,
+particularly in our own, may be carried to a mischievous excess.'
+
+That he may illustrate and enforce this important position, the author
+places himself on a summit of the Alps, and, turning his eyes around, in
+all directions, upon the different regions that lie before him,
+compares, not merely their situation or policy, but those social and
+domestic manners which, after a very few deductions, make the sum total
+of human life.
+
+    'Remote, unfriended, melancholy, slow,
+    Or by the lazy Scheld, or wandering Po;
+    Or onward, where the rude Carinthian boor
+    Against the houseless stranger shuts the door;
+    Or where Campania's plain forsaken lies,
+    A weary waste expanded to the skies.
+    Where'er I roam, whatever realms to see,
+    My heart untravell'd fond turns to thee;
+    Still to my brother turns with ceaseless pain,
+    And drags at each remove a lengthening chain.--
+      Even now, where Alpine solitudes ascend,
+    I sit me down a pensive hour to spend;
+    And, plac'd on high above the storm's career,
+    Look downward where an hundred realms appear;
+    Lakes, forests, cities, plains extended wide,
+    The pomp of kings, the shepherd's humbler pride.
+      When thus creation's charms around combine,
+    Amidst the store 'twere thankless to repine.
+    'Twere affectation all, and school-taught pride,
+    To spurn the splendid things by heaven supply'd.
+    Let school-taught pride dissemble all it can,
+    These little things are great to little man;
+    And wiser he, whose sympathetic mind
+    Exults in all the good of all mankind.'
+
+The author already appears, by his numbers, to be a versifier; and by
+his scenery, to be a poet; it therefore only remains that his sentiments
+discover him to be a just estimator of comparative happiness.
+
+The goods of life are either given by nature, or procured by ourselves.
+Nature has distributed her gifts in very different proportions, yet all
+her children are content; but the acquisitions of art are such as
+terminate in good or evil, as they are differently regulated or
+combined.
+
+    'Yet, where to find that happiest spot below,
+    Who can direct, when all pretend to know?
+    The shudd'ring tenant of the frigid zone
+    Boldly asserts that country for his own,
+    Extols the treasures of his stormy seas,
+    And live-long nights of revelry and ease;
+    The naked Negro, panting at the line,
+    Boasts of his golden sands and palmy wine,
+    Basks in the glare, or stems the tepid wave,
+    And thanks his Gods for all the good they gave.--
+      Nature, a mother kind alike, to all,
+    Still grants her bliss at Labour's earnest call;
+    And though rough rocks or gloomy summits frown,
+    These rocks, by custom, turn to beds of down.
+      From Art more various are the blessings sent;
+    Wealth, splendours, honor, liberty, content:
+    Yet these each other's power so strong contest,
+    That either seems destructive of the rest.
+    Hence every state, to one lov'd blessing prone,
+    Conforms and models life to that alone.
+    Each to the favourite happiness attends,
+    And spurns the plan that aims at other ends;
+    Till, carried to excess in each domain,
+    This favourite good begets peculiar pain.'
+
+This is the position which he conducts through Italy, Swisserland,
+France, Holland, and England; and which he endeavours to confirm by
+remarking the manners of every country.
+
+Having censured the degeneracy of the modern Italians, he proceeds thus:
+
+    'My soul turn from them, turn we to survey
+    Where rougher climes a nobler race display,
+    Where the bleak Swiss their stormy mansions tread,
+    And force a churlish soil for scanty bread;
+    No product here the barren hills afford,
+    But man and steel, the soldier and his sword.
+    No vernal blooms their torpid rocks array,
+    But winter lingering chills the lap of May;
+    No Zephyr fondly soothes the mountain's breast,
+    But meteors glare, and stormy glooms invest.
+    Yet still, even here, content can spread a charm,
+    Redress the clime, and all its rage disarm.
+    Though poor the peasant's hut, his feasts though small,
+    He sees his little lot, the lot of all;
+    See no contiguous palace rear its head
+    To shame the meanness of his humble shed;
+    No costly lord the sumptuous banquet deal
+    To make him loath his vegetable meal;
+    But calm, and bred in ignorance and toil,
+    Each wish contracting, fits him to the soil.'
+
+But having found that the rural life of a Swiss has its evils as well as
+comforts, he turns to France.
+
+    'To kinder skies, where gentler manners reign,
+    We turn; and France displays her bright domain.
+    Gay sprightly land of mirth and social ease,
+    Pleas'd with thyself, whom all the world can please.--
+    Theirs are those arts that mind to mind endear,
+    For honour forms the social temper here.--
+    From courts to camps, to cottages it strays,
+    And all are taught an avarice of praise;
+    They please, are pleas'd, they give to get esteem,
+    Till, seeming blest, they grow to what they seem.'
+
+Yet France has its evils:
+
+    'For praise too dearly lov'd, or warmly sought,
+    Enfeebles all internal strength of thought,
+    And the weak soul, within itself unblest,
+    Leans all for pleasure on another's breast.--
+    The mind still turns where shifting fashion draws,
+    Nor weighs the solid worth of self-applause.'
+
+Having then passed through Holland, he arrives in England, where,
+
+    'Stern o'er each bosom reason holds her state,
+    With daring aims, irregularly great,
+    I see the lords of human kind pass by,
+    Pride in their port, defiance in their eye,
+    Intent on high designs, a thoughtful band,
+    By forms unfashion'd, fresh from Nature's hand.'
+
+With the inconveniences that harrass [_sic_] the sons of freedom, this
+extract shall be concluded.
+
+    'That independence Britons prize too high,
+    Keeps man from man, and breaks the social tie;
+    See, though by circling deeps together held,
+    Minds combat minds, repelling and repell'd;
+    Ferments arise, imprison'd factions roar,
+    Represt ambition struggles round her shore,
+    Whilst, over-wrought, the general system feels
+    Its motions stopt, or phrenzy fires the wheels.
+      Nor this the worst. As social bonds decay,
+    As duty, love, and honour fail to sway,
+    Fictitious bonds, the bonds of wealth and law,
+    Still gather strength, and force unwilling awe.
+    Hence all obedience bows to these alone,
+    And talent sinks, and merit weeps unknown;
+    Till time may come, when, stript of all her charms,
+    That land of scholars, and that nurse of arms;
+    Where noble stems transmit the patriot flame,
+    And monarchs toil, and poets pant for fame;
+    One sink of level avarice shall lie,
+    And scholars, soldiers, kings unhonor'd die.'
+
+Such is the poem, 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 any thing equal.--_The Critical Review_.
+
+
+
+
+WILLIAM COWPER
+
+
+_Poems by William Cowper, of the Inner Temple, Esq._ _8vo. 5s._ Johnson.
+
+These Poems are written, as we learn from the title-page, by Mr. Cowper
+of the Inner Temple, who seems to be a man of a sober and religious turn
+of mind, with a benevolent heart, and a serious wish to inculcate the
+precepts of morality; he is not, however, possessed of any superior
+abilities, or powers of genius, requisite to so arduous an undertaking;
+his verses are, in general, weak and languid, and have neither novelty,
+spirit, or animation, to recommend them; that mediocrity so severely
+condemned by Horace,
+
+    Non Dii non homines, &c.
+
+pervades the whole; and, whilst the author avoids every thing that is
+ridiculous or contemptible, he, at the same time, never rises to any
+thing that we can commend or admire. He says what is incontrovertible,
+and what has already been said over and over, with much gravity, but
+says nothing new, sprightly, or entertaining; travelling on in a plain,
+level, flat road, with great composure, almost through the whole long,
+and rather tedious volume, which is little better than a dull sermon, in
+very indifferent verse, on Truth, the Progress of Error, Charity, and
+some other grave subjects. If this author had followed the advice given
+by Caraccioli,[G] and which he has chosen for one of the mottos
+prefixed to these Poems, he would have clothed his indisputable truths
+in some becoming _disguise_, and rendered his work much more agreeable.
+In its present state, we cannot compliment him on its shape or beauty;
+for, as this bard himself _sweetly_ sings,
+
+    'The clear harangue, and cold as it is clear,
+    Falls soporific on the listless ear.'
+
+In his learned dissertation on _Hope_, we meet with the following lines
+
+    [Quotes some fifty lines from _Hope_ beginning,
+      Build by whatever plan caprice decrees,
+      With what materials, on what ground you please, etc.]
+
+All this is very true; but there needs no ghost, nor author, nor poet,
+to tell us what we knew before, unless he could tell it to us in a new
+and better manner. Add to this, that many of our author's expressions
+are coarse, vulgar, and unpoetical; such as _parrying_, _pushing by_,
+_spitting abhorrence_, &c. The greatest part of Mr. Cowper's didactics
+is in the same strain. He attempts indeed sometimes to be lively,
+facetious, and satirical; but is seldom more successful in this, than in
+the serious and pathetic. In his poem on Conversation there are two or
+three faint attempts at humour; in one of them he tells us that
+
+    'A story in which native humour reigns
+    Is often useful, always entertains,
+    A graver fact enlisted on your side,
+    May furnish illustration, well applied;
+    But sedentary weavers of long tales,
+    Give me the fidgets and my patience fails.
+    'Tis the most asinine employ on earth,
+    To hear them tell of parentage and birth,
+    And echo conversations dull and dry,
+    Embellished with, _he said_, and _so said I_.
+    At ev'ry interview their route the same,
+    The repetition makes attention lame,
+    We bustle up with unsuccessful speed,
+    And in the saddest part cry--droll indeed!
+    The path of narrative with care pursue,
+    Still making probability your clue,
+    On all the vestiges of truth attend,
+    And let them guide you to a decent end.
+    Of all ambitions man may entertain,
+    The worst that can invade a sickly brain,
+    Is that which angles hourly for surprize,
+    And baits its hook with prodigies and lies.
+    Credulous infancy or age as weak
+    Are fittest auditors for such to seek,
+    Who to please others will themselves disgrace,
+    Yet please not, but affront you to your face.'
+
+In the passage above quoted, our readers will perceive that the wit is
+rather aukward, [_sic_] and the verses, especially the last, very
+prosaic.
+
+Toward the end of this volume are some little pieces of a lighter kind,
+which, after dragging through Mr. Cowper's long moral lectures, afforded
+us some relief. The fables of the Lily and the Rose, the Nightingale and
+Glow-worm, the Pine-apple and the Bee, with two or three others, are
+written with ease and spirit. It is a pity that our author had not
+confined himself altogether to this species of poetry, without entering
+into a system of ethics, for which his genius seems but ill
+adapted.--_The Critical Review_.
+
+[Footnote G: Nous sommes nes pour la verite, et nous ne pouvons souffrir
+son abord. Les figures, les paraboles, les emblemes, sont toujours des
+ornements necessaires pour qu'elle puisse s'annoncer: on veut, en la
+recevant, qu'elle soit _deguisee_.]
+
+
+
+
+ROBERT BURNS
+
+
+_Poems, chiefly in the Scottish Dialect_. _By_ ROBERT BURNS,
+_Kilmarnock_.
+
+When an author we know nothing of solicits our attention, we are but too
+apt to treat him with the same reluctant civility we show to a person
+who has come unbidden into company. Yet talents and address will
+gradually diminish the distance of our behaviour, and when the first
+unfavourable impression has worn off, the author may become a favourite,
+and the stranger a friend. The poems we have just announced may probably
+have to struggle with the pride of learning and the partiality of
+refinement; yet they are intitled to particular indulgence.
+
+Who are you, Mr. Burns? will some surly critic say. At what university
+have you been educated? what languages do you understand? what authors
+have you particularly studied? whether has Aristotle or Horace directed
+your taste? who has praised your poems, and under whose patronage are
+they published? In short, what qualifications intitle you to instruct or
+entertain us? To the questions of such a catechism, perhaps honest
+Robert Burns would make no satisfactory answers. 'My good Sir, he might
+say, I am a poor country man; I was bred up at the school of Kilmarnock;
+I understand no languages but my own; I have studied Allan Ramsay and
+Ferguson. My poems have been praised at many a fireside; and I ask no
+patronage for them, if they deserve none. I have not looked on mankind
+_through the spectacle of books_. An ounce of mother-wit, you know, is
+worth a pound of clergy; and Homer and Ossian, for any thing that I have
+heard, could neither write nor read.' The author is indeed a striking
+example of native genius bursting through the obscurity of poverty and
+the obstructions of laborious life. He is said to be a common ploughman;
+and when we consider him in this light, we cannot help regretting that
+wayward fate had not placed him in a more favoured situation. Those who
+view him with the severity of lettered criticism, and judge him by the
+fastidious rules of art, will discover that he has not the doric
+simplicity of Ramsay, nor the brilliant imagination of Ferguson; but to
+those who admire the exertions of untutored fancy, and are blind to many
+faults for the sake of numberless beauties, his poems will afford
+singular gratification. His observations on human characters are acute
+and sagacious, and his descriptions are lively and just. Of rustic
+pleasantry he has a rich fund; and some of his softer scenes are touched
+with inimitable delicacy. He seems to be a boon companion, and often
+startles us with a dash of libertinism, which will keep some readers at
+a distance. Some of his subjects are serious, but those of the humorous
+kind are the best. It is not meant, however, to enter into a minute
+investigation of his merits, as the copious extracts we have subjoined
+will enable our readers to judge for themselves. The Character Horace
+gives to Osellus is particularly applicable to him.
+
+    _Rusticus abnormis sapiens, crassaque Minerva._
+
+[Quotes _Address to the Deil_, from the _Epistle to a Brother Bard_,
+from _Description of a Sermon in the Fields_, and from
+_Hallowe'en_.]--_The Edinburgh Magazine_.
+
+
+_Poems, chiefly in the Scottish Dialect_. _By Robert Burns._ Printed at
+Kilmarnock.
+
+We have had occasion to examine a number of poetical productions,
+written by persons in the lower rank of life, and who had hardly
+received any education; but we do not recollect to have ever met with a
+more signal instance of true and uncultivated genius, than in the author
+of these Poems. His occupation is that of a common ploughman; and his
+life has hitherto been spent in struggling with poverty. But all the
+rigours of fortune have not been able to repress the frequent efforts of
+his lively and vigorous imagination. Some of these poems are of a
+serious cast; but the strain which seems most natural to the author, is
+the sportive and humorous. It is to be regretted, that the Scottish
+dialect, in which these poems are written, must obscure the native
+beauties with which they appear to abound, and renders the sense often
+unintelligible to an English reader. Should it, however, prove true,
+that the author has been taken under the patronage of a great lady in
+Scotland, and that a celebrated professor has interested himself in the
+cultivation of his talents, there is reason to hope, that his
+distinguished genius may yet be exerted in such a manner as to afford
+more general delight. In the meantime, we must admire the generous
+enthusiasm of his untutored muse; and bestow the tribute of just
+applause on one whose name will be transmitted to posterity with
+honour.--_The Critical Review_.
+
+
+
+
+WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
+
+
+_Descriptive Sketches_, in Verse. Taken during a Pedestrian Tour in the
+Italian, Grison, Swiss and Savoyard Alps. By W. WORDSWORTH, B.A. of St.
+John's, Cambridge. 4to. pp. 55. 3s. Johnson. 1793.
+
+More descriptive poetry! (See page 166, &c.) Have we not yet enough?
+Must eternal changes be rung on uplands and lowlands, and nodding
+forests, and brooding clouds, and cells, and dells, and dingles? Yes;
+more, and yet more: so it is decreed.
+
+Mr. Wordsworth begins his descriptive sketches with the following
+exordium:
+
+    'Were there, below, a spot of holy ground,
+    By Pain and her sad family _un_found,
+    Sure, Nature's God that spot to man had giv'n,
+    Where murmuring _rivers join_ the song of _ev'n_!
+    Where _falls_ the purple morning far and wide
+    _In flakes_ of light upon the mountain side;
+    Where summer suns in ocean sink to rest,
+    Or moonlight upland lifts her hoary breast;
+    Where Silence, on her night of wing, o'er-broods
+    Unfathom'd dells and undiscover'd woods;
+    Where rocks and groves the _power_ of waters _shakes_
+    In cataracts, or sleeps in quiet lakes.'
+
+May we ask, how it is that rivers join the song of ev'n? or, in plain
+prose, the evening! but, if they do, is it not true that they equally
+join the song of morning, noon, and night? The _purple morning falling
+in flakes_ of light is a bold figure: but we are told, it falls far and
+wide--Where?--On the mountain's _side_. We are sorry to see the purple
+morning confined so like a maniac in a straight waistcoat. What the
+night of wing of silence is, we are unable to comprehend: but the
+climax of the passage is, that, were there such a spot of holy ground as
+is here so sublimely described, _unfound_ by Pain and her sad family,
+Nature's God had surely given that spot to man, though its _woods_ were
+_undiscovered_.
+
+Let us proceed,
+
+    'But doubly pitying Nature loves to show'r
+    Soft on his _wounded heart_ her healing pow'r,
+    Who _plods_ o'er hills and vales his road _forlorn_,
+    Wooing her varying charms from eve to morn.
+    _No sad vacuities_ his heart _annoy_,
+    _Blows_ not a Zephyr but it _whispers joy_;
+    For him _lost_ flowers their _idle_ sweets _exhale_;
+    He _tastes_ the meanest _note_ that swells the gale;
+    For him sod-seats the cottage-door adorn,
+    And _peeps_ the far-off _spire_, his evening bourn!
+    Dear is the forest _frowning_ o'er his head,
+    And dear the green-sward to his _velvet tread_;
+    Moves there a _cloud_ o'er mid-day's flaming eye?
+    Upwards he looks--and calls it luxury;
+    Kind Nature's _charities_ his steps attend,
+    In every babbling brook he finds a friend.'
+
+Here we find that _doubly_ pitying Nature is very kind to the traveller,
+but that this traveller has a _wounded heart_ and _plods_ his road
+_forlorn_. In the next line but one we discover that--
+
+    'No _sad vacuities_ his heart _annoy_;
+    Blows not a Zephyr but it whispers _joy_.'
+
+The flowers, though they have lost themselves, or are lost, exhale their
+idle sweets for him; the _spire peeps_ for him; sod-seats, forests,
+clouds, nature's charities, and babbling brooks, all are to him luxury
+and friendship. He is the happiest of mortals, and plods, is forlorn,
+and has a wounded heart. How often shall we in vain advise those, who
+are so delighted with their own thoughts that they cannot forbear from
+putting them into rhyme, to examine those thoughts till they themselves
+understand them? No man will ever be a poet, till his mind be
+sufficiently powerful to sustain this labour.--_The Monthly Review_.
+
+
+_An Evening Walk_. An Epistle; in Verse. Addressed to a Young Lady, from
+the Lakes of the North of England. By W. Wordsworth, B.A. of St. John's,
+Cambridge. 4to. pp. 27. 2s. Johnson. 1793.
+
+In this Epistle, the subject and the manner of treating it vary but
+little from the former poem. We will quote four lines from a passage
+which the author very sorrowfully apologizes for having omitted:
+
+    'Return delights! with whom my road beg_un_,
+    When _Life-rear'd_ laughing _up her_ morning _sun_;
+    When Transport kiss'd away my April tear,
+    "Rocking as in a dream the tedious year."
+
+Life _rearing_ up the sun! Transport kissing away an _April_ tear and
+_rocking_ the year as in a dream! Would the cradle had been specified!
+Seriously, these are figures which no poetical license can justify. If
+they can possibly give pleasure, it must be to readers whose habits of
+thinking are totally different from ours. Mr. Wordsworth is a scholar,
+and, no doubt, when reading the works of others, a critic. There are
+passages in his poems which display imagination, and which afford hope
+for the future: but, if he can divest himself of all partiality, and
+will critically question every line that he has written, he will find
+many which, he must allow, call loudly for amendment.--_The Monthly
+Review_.
+
+
+_Lyrical Ballads, with a few other Poems_. _Small 8vo. 5s. Boards._
+Arch. 1798.
+
+The majority of these poems, we are informed in the advertisement, are
+to be considered as experiments.
+
+'They were written chiefly with a view to ascertain how far the language
+of conversation in the middle and lower classes of society is adapted to
+the purposes of poetic pleasure.' P. i.
+
+Of these experimental poems, the most important is the Idiot Boy, the
+story of which is simply this. Betty Foy's neighbour Susan Gale is
+indisposed; and no one can conveniently be sent for the doctor but
+Betty's idiot boy. She therefore puts him upon her poney, at eight
+o'clock in the evening, gives him proper directions, and returns to take
+care of her sick neighbour. Johnny is expected with the doctor by
+eleven; but the clock strikes eleven, and twelve, and one, without the
+appearance either of Johnny or the doctor. Betty's restless fears become
+insupportable; and she now leaves her friend to look for her idiot son.
+She goes to the doctor's house, but hears nothing of Johnny. About five
+o'clock, however, she finds him sitting quietly upon his feeding poney.
+As they go home they meet old Susan, whose apprehensions have cured her,
+and brought her out to seek them; and they all return merrily together.
+
+Upon this subject the author has written nearly five hundred lines. With
+what spirit the story is told, our extract will evince.
+
+[Quotes lines (322-401) of _The Idiot Boy_.]
+
+No tale less deserved the labour that appears to have been bestowed upon
+this. It resembles a Flemish picture in the worthlessness of its design
+and the excellence of its execution. From Flemish artists we are
+satisfied with such pieces: who would not have lamented, if Corregio or
+Rafaelle had wasted their talents in painting Dutch boors or the humours
+of a Flemish wake?
+
+The other ballads of this kind are as bald in story, and are not so
+highly embellished in narration. With that which is entitled the Thorn,
+we were altogether displeased. The advertisement says, it is not told in
+the person of the author, but in that of some loquacious narrator. The
+author should have recollected that he who personates tiresome
+loquacity, becomes tiresome himself. The story of a man who suffers the
+perpetual pain of cold, because an old woman prayed that he might never
+be warm, is perhaps a good story for a ballad, because it is a
+well-known tale: but is the author certain that it is '_well
+authenticated?_' and does not such an assertion promote the popular
+superstition of witchcraft?
+
+In a very different style of poetry, is the Rime of the Ancyent
+Marinere; a ballad (says the advertisement) 'professedly written in
+imitation of the _style_, as well as of the spirit of the elder poets.'
+We are tolerably conversant with the early English poets; and can
+discover no resemblance whatever, except in antiquated spelling and a
+few obsolete words. This piece appears to us perfectly original in style
+as well as in story. Many of the stanzas are laboriously beautiful; but
+in connection they are absurd or unintelligible. Our readers may
+exercise their ingenuity in attempting to unriddle what follows.
+
+    'The roaring wind! it roar'd far off,
+      It did not come anear;
+    But with its sound it shook the sails
+      That were so thin and sere.
+
+    The upper air bursts into life,
+      And a hundred fire-flags sheen
+    To and fro they are hurried about;
+    And to and fro, and in and out
+      The stars dance on between.
+
+    The coming wind doth roar more loud;
+      The sails do sigh, like sedge:
+    The rain pours down from one black cloud,
+      And the moon is at its edge.
+
+    Hark! hark! the thick black cloud is cleft,
+      And the moon is at its side:
+    Like waters shot from some high crag,
+    The lightning falls with never a jag
+      A river steep and wide.
+
+    The strong wind reach'd the ship: it roar'd
+      And dropp'd down, like a stone!
+    Beneath the lightning and the moon
+      The dead men gave a groan.' P. 27.
+
+We do not sufficiently understand the story to analyse it. It is a Dutch
+attempt at German sublimity. Genius has here been employed in producing
+a poem of little merit.
+
+With pleasure we turn to the serious pieces, the better part of the
+volume. The Foster-Mother's Tale is in the best style of dramatic
+narrative. The Dungeon, and the Lines upon the Yew-tree Seat, are
+beautiful. The Tale of the Female Vagrant is written in the stanza, not
+the style, of Spenser. We extract a part of this poem.
+
+[Quotes lines (91-180) of _The Female Vagrant_.]
+
+Admirable as this poem is, the author seems to discover still superior
+powers in the Lines written near Tintern Abbey. On reading this
+production, it is impossible not to lament that he should ever have
+condescended to write such pieces as the Last of the Flock, the Convict,
+and most of the ballads. In the whole range of English poetry, we
+scarcely recollect anything superior to a part of the following passage.
+
+[Quotes lines (66-112) of _Lines Written a few Miles above Tintern
+Abbey_.]
+
+The 'experiment,' we think, has failed, not because the language of
+conversation is little adapted to 'the purposes of poetic pleasure' but
+because it has been tried upon uninteresting subjects. Yet every piece
+discovers genius; and, ill as the author has frequently employed his
+talents, they certainly rank him with the best of living poets.--_The
+Critical Review_.
+
+
+_Poems, in Two Volumes_. _By_ WILLIAM WORDSWORTH, _Author of the Lyrical
+Ballads._ 8vo. pp. 320. London, 1807.
+
+This author is known to belong to a certain brotherhood of poets, who
+have haunted for some years about the Lakes of Cumberland; and is
+generally looked upon, we believe, as the purest model of the
+excellences and peculiarities of the school which they have been
+labouring to establish. Of the general merits of that school, we have
+had occasion to express our opinion pretty freely, in more places than
+one, and even to make some allusion to the former publications of the
+writer now before us. We are glad, however, to have found an opportunity
+of attending somewhat more particularly to his pretensions.
+
+The Lyrical Ballads were unquestionably popular; and, we have no
+hesitation in saying, deservedly popular; for in spite of their
+occasional vulgarity, affectation, and silliness, they were undoubtedly
+characterised by a strong spirit of originality, of pathos, and natural
+feeling; and recommended to all good minds by the clear impression which
+they bore of the amiable dispositions and virtuous principles of the
+author. By the help of these qualities, they were enabled, not only to
+recommend themselves to the indulgence of many judicious readers, but
+even to beget among a pretty numerous class of persons, a sort of
+admiration of the very defects by which they were attended. It was upon
+this account chiefly, that we thought it necessary to set ourselves
+against this alarming innovation. Childishness, conceit, and
+affectation, are not of themselves very popular or attractive; and
+though mere novelty has sometimes been found sufficient to give them a
+temporary currency, we should have had no fear of their prevailing to
+any dangerous extent, if they had been graced with no more seductive
+accompaniments. It was precisely because the perverseness and bad taste
+of this new school was combined with a great deal of genius and of
+laudable feeling, that we were afraid of their spreading and gaining
+ground among us, and that we entered into the discussion with a degree
+of zeal and animosity which some might think unreasonable toward
+authors, to whom so much merit had been conceded. There were times and
+moods indeed, in which we were led to suspect ourselves of unjustifiable
+severity, and to doubt, whether a sense of public duty had not carried
+us rather too far in reprobation of errors, that seemed to be atoned
+for, by excellences of no vulgar description. At other times, the
+magnitude of these errors--the disgusting absurdities into which they
+led their feebler admirers, and the derision and contempt which they
+drew from the more fastidious, even upon the merits with which they were
+associated, made us wonder more than ever at the perversity by which
+they were retained, and regret that we had not declared ourselves
+against them with still more formidable and decided hostility.
+
+In this temper of mind, we read the _annonce_ of Mr Wordsworth's
+publication with a good deal of interest and expectation, and opened his
+volumes with greater anxiety, than he or his admirers will probably give
+us credit for. We have been greatly disappointed certainly as to the
+quality of the poetry; but we doubt whether the publication has afforded
+so much satisfaction to any other of his readers:--it has freed us from
+all doubt or hesitation as to the justice of our former censures, and
+has brought the matter to a test, which we cannot help hoping may be
+convincing to the author himself.
+
+Mr Wordsworth, we think, has now brought the question, as to the merit
+of his new school of poetry, to a very fair and decisive issue. The
+volumes before us are much more strongly marked by all its peculiarities
+than any former publication of the fraternity. In our apprehension, they
+are, on this very account, infinitely less interesting or meritorious;
+but it belongs to the public, and not to us, to decide upon their merit,
+and we will confess, that so strong is our conviction of their obvious
+inferiority, and the grounds of it, that we are willing for once to
+wa[i]ve our right of appealing to posterity, and to take the judgment of
+the present generation of readers, and even of Mr Wordsworth's former
+admirers, as conclusive on this occasion. If these volumes, which have
+all the benefit of the author's former popularity, turn out to be nearly
+as popular as the lyrical ballads--if they sell nearly to the same
+extent--or are quoted and imitated among half as many individuals, we
+shall admit that Mr Wordsworth has come much nearer the truth in his
+judgment of what constitutes the charm of poetry, than we had previously
+imagined--and shall institute a more serious and respectful inquiry into
+his principles of composition than we have yet thought necessary. On the
+other hand,--if this little work, selected from the compositions of five
+maturer years, and written avowedly for the purpose of exalting a
+system, which has already excited a good deal of attention, should be
+generally rejected by those whose prepossessions were in its favour,
+there is room to hope, not only that the system itself will meet with no
+more encouragement, but even that the author will be persuaded to
+abandon a plan of writing, which defrauds his industry and talents of
+their natural reward.
+
+Putting ourselves thus upon our country, we certainly look for a verdict
+against this publication; and have little doubt indeed of the result,
+upon a fair consideration of the evidence contained in these
+volumes.--To accelerate that result, and to give a general view of the
+evidence, to those into whose hands the record may not have already
+fallen, we must now make a few observations and extracts.
+
+We shall not resume any of the particular discussions by which we
+formerly attempted to ascertain the value of the improvements which this
+new school had effected in poetry;[H] but shall lay the grounds of our
+opposition, for this time, a little more broadly. The end of poetry, we
+take it, is to please--and the name, we think, is strictly applicable to
+every metrical composition from which we receive pleasure, without any
+laborious exercise of the understanding. This pleasure, may, in general,
+be analyzed into three parts--that which we receive from the excitement
+of Passion or emotion--that which is derived from the play of
+Imagination, or the easy exercise of Reason--and that which depends on
+the character and qualities of the Diction. The two first are the vital
+and primary springs of poetical delight, and can scarcely require
+explanation to any one. The last has been alternately overrated and
+undervalued by the professors of the poetical art, and is in such low
+estimation with the author now before us and his associates, that it is
+necessary to say a few words in explanation of it.
+
+One great beauty of diction exists only for those who have some degree
+of scholarship or critical skill. This is what depends on the exquisite
+_propriety_ of the words employed, and the delicacy with which they are
+adapted to the meaning which is to be expressed. Many of the finest
+passages in Virgil and Pope derive their principal charm from the fine
+propriety of their diction. Another source of beauty, which extends
+only to the more instructed class of readers, is that which consists in
+the judicious or happy application of expressions which have been
+sanctified by the use of famous writers, or which bear the stamp of a
+simple or venerable antiquity. There are other beauties of diction,
+however, which are perceptible by all--the beauties of sweet sound and
+pleasant associations. The melody of words and verses is indifferent to
+no reader of poetry; but the chief recommendation of poetical language
+is certainly derived from those general associations, which give it a
+character of dignity or elegance, sublimity or tenderness. Every one
+knows that there are low and mean expressions, as well as lofty and
+grave ones; and that some words bear the impression of coarseness and
+vulgarity, as clearly as others do of refinement and affection. We do
+not mean, of course, to say anything in defence of the hackneyed
+common-places of ordinary versemen. Whatever might have been the
+original character of these unlucky phrases, they are now associated
+with nothing but ideas of schoolboy imbecility and vulgar affectation.
+But what we do maintain is, that much of the most popular poetry in the
+world owes its celebrity chiefly to the beauty of its diction; and that
+no poetry can be long or generally acceptable, the language of which is
+coarse, inelegant, or infantine.
+
+From this great source of pleasure, we think the readers of Mr
+Wordsworth are in a great measure cut off. His diction has no where any
+pretensions to elegance or dignity; and he has scarcely ever
+condescended to give the grace of correctness or melody to his
+versification. If it were merely slovenly and neglected, however, all
+this might be endured. Strong sense and powerful feeling will ennoble
+any expressions; or, at least, no one who is capable of estimating those
+higher merits, will be disposed to mark these little defects. But, in
+good truth, no man, now-a-days, composes verses for publication with a
+slovenly neglect of their language. It is a fine and laborious
+manufacture, which can scarcely ever be made in a hurry; and the faults
+which it has, may, for the most part, be set down to bad taste or
+incapacity, rather than to carelessness or oversight. With Mr Wordsworth
+and his friends, it is plain that their peculiarities of diction are
+things of choice, and not of accident. They write as they do, upon
+principle and system; and it evidently costs them much pains to keep
+_down_ to the standard which they have proposed to themselves. They are,
+to the full, as much mannerists, too, as the poetasters who ring changes
+on the common-places of magazine versification; and all the difference
+between them is, that they borrow their phrases from a different and a
+scantier _gradus ad Parnassum_. If they were, indeed, to discard all
+imitation and set phraseology, and to bring in no words merely for show
+or for metre,--as much, perhaps, might be gained in freedom and
+originality, as would infallibly be lost in allusion and authority; but,
+in point of fact, the new poets are just as great borrowers as the old;
+only that, instead of borrowing from the more popular passages of their
+illustrious predecessors, they have preferred furnishing themselves from
+vulgar ballads and plebeian nurseries.
+
+Their peculiarities of diction alone, are enough, perhaps, to render
+them ridiculous; but the author before us really seems anxious to court
+this literary martyrdom by a device still more infallible,--we mean,
+that of connecting his most lofty, tender, or impassioned conceptions,
+with objects and incidents, which the greater part of his readers will
+probably persist in thinking low, silly, or uninteresting. Whether this
+is done from affectation and conceit alone, or whether it may not
+arise, in some measure, from the self-illusion of a mind of
+extraordinary sensibility, habituated to solitary meditation, we cannot
+undertake to determine. It is possible enough, we allow, that the sight
+of a friend's garden-spade, or a sparrow's nest, or a man gathering
+leeches, might really have suggested to such a mind a train of powerful
+impressions and interesting reflections; but it is certain, that, to
+most minds, such associations will always appear forced, strained, and
+unnatural; and that the composition in which it is attempted to exhibit
+them, will always have the air of parody, or ludicrous and affected
+singularity. All the world laughs at Elegiac stanzas to a sucking-pig--a
+Hymn on Washing-day--Sonnets to one's grandmother--or Pindarics on
+gooseberry-pye; and yet, we are afraid, it will not be quite easy to
+convince Mr Wordsworth, that the same ridicule must infallibly attach to
+most of the pathetic pieces in these volumes. To satisfy our readers,
+however, as to the justice of this and our other anticipations, we shall
+proceed, without further preface, to lay before them a short view of
+their contents.
+
+The first is a kind of ode 'to the Daisy,'--very flat, feeble, and
+affected; and in a diction as artificial, and as much encumbered with
+heavy expletives, as the theme of an unpractised schoolboy. The two
+following stanzas will serve as a specimen.
+
+    'When soothed a while by milder airs,
+    Thee Winter in the garland wears
+    That thinly shades his few grey hairs;
+      _Spring cannot shun thee_;
+    Whole summer fields are thine by right;
+    And Autumn, melancholy Wight!
+    Doth in thy crimson head delight
+      When rains are on thee.
+    In shoals and bands, a morrice train,
+    Thou greet'st the Traveller in the lane;
+    If welcome once thou count'st it gain;
+      _Thou art not daunted_,
+    Nor car'st if thou be set at naught;
+    And oft alone in nooks remote
+    We meet thee, like a pleasant thought,
+      _When such are wanted_.' I. p. 2.
+
+The scope of the piece is to say, that the flower is found everywhere;
+and that it has suggested many pleasant thoughts to the author--some
+chime of fancy '_wrong or right_'--some feeling of devotion 'more or
+less'--and other elegancies of the same stamp. It ends with this
+unmeaning prophecy.
+
+    'Thou long the poet's praise shalt gain;
+    Thou wilt be more beloved by men
+    In times to come; thou not in vain
+      Art Nature's favourite.' I. 6.
+
+The next is called 'Louisa,' and begins in this dashing and affected
+manner.
+
+    'I met Louisa in the shade;
+    And, having seen that lovely maid,
+    _Why should I fear to say_
+    That she is ruddy, fleet, and _strong_;
+    _And down the rocks can leap_ along,
+    Like rivulets in May?' I. 7.
+
+Does Mr Wordsworth really imagine that this is at all more natural or
+engaging than the ditties of our common song writers?
+
+A little farther on we have another original piece, entitled, 'The
+Redbreast and the Butterfly,' of which our readers will probably be
+contented with the first stanza.
+
+    'Art thou the bird whom man loves best,
+    The pious bird with the scarlet breast,
+      Our little English Robin;
+    The bird that comes about our doors
+    When autumn winds are sobbing?
+    Art thou the Peter of Norway Boors?
+      Their Thomas in Finland,
+      And Russia far inland?
+    The bird, whom _by some name or other_
+    All men who know thee call their brother,
+    The darling of children and men?
+    Could Father Adam open his eyes,
+    And see this sight beneath the skies,
+    He'd wish to close them again.' I. 16.
+
+This, it must be confessed, is 'Silly Sooth' in good earnest. The three
+last [_sic_] lines seem to be downright raving.
+
+By and by, we have a piece of namby-pamby 'to the Small Celandine,'
+which we should almost have taken for a professed imitation of one of Mr
+Philip's prettyisms. Here is a page of it.
+
+    'Comfort have thou of thy merit,
+    Kindly, unassuming spirit!
+    Careless of thy neighbourhood,
+    Thou dost show thy pleasant face
+    On the moor, and in the wood,
+    In the lane;--there's not a place,
+    Howsoever mean it be,
+    But 'tis good enough for thee.
+    Ill befal the yellow flowers,
+    Children of the flaring hours!
+    Buttercups, that will be seen,
+    Whether we will see or no;
+    Others, too, of lofty mien;
+    They have done as worldlings do,
+    Taken praise that should be thine,
+    Little, humble, Celandine!' I. 25.
+
+After talking of its 'bright coronet,' the ditty is wound up with this
+piece of babyish absurdity.
+
+    'Thou art not beyond the moon,
+    But a thing "beneath our shoon;"
+    Let, as old Magellan did,
+    Others roam about the sea;
+    Build who will a pyramid;
+    Praise it is enough for me,
+    If there be but three or four
+    Who will love my little flower.' I. 30.
+
+After this come some more manly lines on 'The Character of the Happy
+Warrior,' and a chivalrous legend on 'The Horn of Egremont Castle,'
+which, without being very good, is very tolerable, and free from most of
+the author's habitual defects. Then follow some pretty, but professedly
+childish verses, on a kitten playing with the falling leaves. There is
+rather too much of Mr Ambrose Philips here and there in this piece also;
+but it is amiable and lively.
+
+Further on, we find an 'Ode to Duty,' in which the lofty vein is very
+unsuccessfully attempted. This is the concluding stanza.
+
+    'Stern lawgiver! yet thou dost wear
+    The Godhead's most benignant grace;
+    Nor know we anything so fair
+    As is the smile upon thy face;
+    Flowers laugh before thee on their beds;
+    And fragrance in thy footing treads;
+    Thou dost preserve the stars from wrong;
+    And the most ancient heavens through thee are fresh and strong.' I. 73.
+
+The two last [_sic_] lines seem to be utterly without meaning; at least
+we have no sort of conception in what sense _Duty_ can be said to keep
+the old skies _fresh_, and the stars from wrong.
+
+The next piece, entitled 'The Beggars,' may be taken, we fancy, as a
+touchstone of Mr Wordsworth's merit. There is something about it that
+convinces us it is a favourite of the author's; though to us, we will
+confess, it appears to be a very paragon of silliness and affectation.
+Our readers shall have the greater part of it. It begins thus.
+
+      'She had a tall man's height, or more;
+      No bonnet screen'd her from the heat;
+      A long drab-coloured cloak she wore,
+      A mantle reaching to her feet:
+      What other dress she had I could not know;
+    Only she wore a cap that was as white as snow.
+
+      'Before me begging did she stand,
+      Pouring out sorrows like a sea;
+      Grief after grief:--on English land
+      Such woes I knew could never be;
+      And yet a boon I gave her; for the creature
+    Was beautiful to see; a weed of glorious feature!' I. 77, 78.
+
+The poet, leaving this interesting person, falls in with two ragged boys
+at play, and 'like that woman's face as gold is like to gold.' Here is
+the conclusion of this memorable adventure.
+
+      'They bolted on me thus, and lo!
+      Each ready with a plaintive whine;
+      Said I, "Not half an hour ago
+      Your mother has had alms of mine."
+      "That cannot be," one answered, "She is dead."
+    "Nay but I gave her pence, and she will buy you bread."
+
+      "She has been dead, Sir, many a day."
+      "Sweet boys, you're telling me a lie";
+      "It was your mother, as I say--"
+      And in the twinkling of an eye,
+      "Come, come!" cried one; and, without more ado,
+    Off to some other play they both together flew.' I. 79.
+
+'Alice Fell' is a performance of the same order. The poet, driving into
+Durham in a postchaise, hears a sort of scream; and, calling to the
+post-boy to stop, finds a little girl crying on the back of the vehicle.
+
+    "My cloak!" the word was last and first,
+    And loud and bitterly she wept,
+    As if her very heart would burst;
+    And down from off the chaise she leapt.
+
+    "What ails you, child?" she sobb'd, "Look here!"
+    I saw it in the wheel entangled,
+    A weather beaten rag as e'er
+    From any garden scarecrow dangled.' I. 85, 86.
+
+They then extricate the torn garment, and the good-natured bard takes
+the child into the carriage along with him. The narrative proceeds--
+
+    "My child, in Durham do you dwell?"
+    She check'd herself in her distress,
+    And said, "My name is Alice Fell;
+    I'm fatherless and motherless.
+
+    And I to Durham, Sir, belong."
+    And then, as if the thought would choke
+    Her very heart, her grief grew strong;
+    And all was for her tatter'd cloak.
+
+    The chaise drove on; our journey's end
+    Was nigh; and, sitting by my side,
+    As if she'd lost her only friend
+    She wept, nor would be pacified.
+
+    Up to the tavern-door we post;
+    Of Alice and her grief I told;
+    And I gave money to the host,
+    To buy a new cloak for the old.
+
+    "And let it be of duffil grey,
+    As warm a cloak as man can sell!"
+    Proud creature was she the next day,
+    The little orphan, Alice Fell!' I. p. 87, 88.
+
+If the printing of such trash as this be not felt as an insult on the
+public taste, we are afraid it cannot be insulted.
+
+After this follows the longest and most elaborate poem in the volume,
+under the title of 'Resolution and Independence.' The poet, roving about
+on a common one fine morning, falls into pensive musings on the fate of
+the sons of song, which he sums up in this fine distich.
+
+    'We poets in our youth begin in gladness;
+    But thereof comes in the end despondency and madness.' I. p. 92.
+
+In the midst of his meditations--
+
+    'I saw a man before me unawares;
+    The oldest man he seemed that ever wore grey hairs.
+
+              ----------
+
+    Motionless as a cloud the old man stood;
+    That heareth not the loud winds when they call;
+    And moveth altogether, if it move at all.
+    At length, himself unsettling, he the pond
+    Stirred with his staff, and fixedly did look
+    Upon the muddy water, which he conn'd,
+    As if he had been reading in a book:
+    And now such fre[e]dom as I could I took;
+    And, drawing to his side, to him did say,
+    "This morning gives us promise of a glorious day."
+
+              ----------
+
+    "What kind of work is that which you pursue?
+    This is a lonesome place for one like you."
+    He answer'd me _with pleasure and surprise_;
+    And there was, while he spake, a fire about his eyes.
+    He told me _that he to this pond had come
+    To gather leeches_, being old and poor:
+    Employment hazardous and wearisome!
+    And he had many hardships to endure:
+    From pond to pond he roam'd, from moor to moor,
+    Housing, with God's good help, by choice or chance:
+    And in this way he gain'd an honest maintenance.' I. p. 92-95.
+
+Notwithstanding the distinctness of this answer, the poet, it seems, was
+so wrapped up in his own moody fancies, that he could not attend to it.
+
+    'And now, not knowing what the old man had said,
+    My question eagerly did I renew,
+    "How is it that you live, and what is it you do?"
+    He with a smile did then his words repeat;
+    And said, that, _gathering leeches_, far and wide
+    He travelled; stirring thus _about his feet_
+    The waters of the ponds where they abide.
+    "_Once I could meet with them on every side_;
+    But they have dwindled long by slow decay;
+    Yet still I persevere, and find them where I may." I. p. 96, 97.
+
+This very interesting account, which he is lucky enough at last to
+comprehend, fills the poet with comfort and admiration; and, quite glad
+to find the old man so cheerful, he resolves to take a lesson of
+contentedness from him; and the poem ends with this pious ejaculation--
+
+    "God," said I, "be my help and stay secure;
+    I'll think of the leech-gatherer on the lonely moor." I. p. 97.
+
+We defy the bitterest enemy of Mr Wordsworth to produce anything at all
+parallel to this from any collection of English poetry, or even from the
+specimens of his friend Mr Southey. The volume ends with some sonnets,
+in a very different measure, of which we shall say something by and by.
+
+The first poems in the second volume were written during a tour in
+Scotland. The first is a very dull one about Rob Roy; but the title that
+attracted us most was 'an Address to the Sons of _Burns_, after visiting
+their Father's Grave.' Never was anything, however, more miserable. This
+is one of the four stanzas.
+
+    'Strong bodied if ye be to bear
+    Intemperance with less harm, beware!
+    But if your father's wit ye share,
+      Then, then indeed,
+    Ye sons of Burns! for watchful care
+      There will be need.' II. p. 29.
+
+The next is a very tedious, affected performance, called 'the Yarrow
+Unvisited.' The drift of it is, that the poet refused to visit this
+celebrated stream, because he had 'a vision of his own' about it, which
+the reality might perhaps undo; and, for this no less fantastical
+reason--
+
+    "Should life be dull, and spirits low,
+    'Twill soothe us in our sorrow,
+    That earth has something yet to show,
+    The bonny holms of Yarrow!" II. p. 35.
+
+After this we come to some ineffable compositions which the poet has
+simply entitled, 'Moods of my own Mind.' One begins--
+
+    'O Nightingale! thou surely art
+    A creature of a fiery heart--
+    Thou sing'st as if the god of wine
+    Had help'd thee to a valentine.' II. p. 42.
+
+This is the whole of another--
+
+    'My heart leaps up when I behold
+      A rainbow in the sky:
+    So was it when my life began;
+    So is it now I am a man;
+    So be it when I shall grow old,
+      Or let me die!
+    The child is father of the man;
+    And I could wish my days to be
+    Bound each to each by natural piety.' II. p. 44.
+
+A third, 'on a Sparrow's Nest,' runs thus--
+
+    'Look, five blue eggs are gleaming there!
+    _Few visions have I seen more fair,_
+    _Nor many prospects of delight_
+    More pleasing than that simple sight.' II. p. 53.
+
+The charm of this fine prospect, however, was, that it reminded him of
+another nest which his sister Emmeline and he had visited in their
+childhood.
+
+    'She look'd at it as if she fear'd it;
+    Still wishing, dreading to be near it:
+    Such heart was in her, being then
+    A little prattler among men,' &c., &c. II. p. 54.
+
+We have then a rapturous mystical ode to the Cuckoo; in which the
+author, striving after force and originality, produces nothing but
+absurdity.
+
+    'O cuckoo! shall I call thee bird,
+    Or but a wandering voice?' II. p. 57.
+
+And then he says, that the said voice seemed to pass from hill to hill,
+'about and all about!'--Afterwards he assures us, it tells him 'in the
+vale of visionary hours,' and calls it a darling; but still insists,
+that it is
+
+    'No bird; but an invisible thing,
+    A voice,--a mystery.' II. p. 58.
+
+It is afterwards 'a hope;' and 'a love;' and, finally,
+
+    'O blessed _bird_! the earth we pace
+    Again appears to be
+    An unsubstantial, faery place,
+    That is fit home for thee!' II. p. 59.
+
+After this there is an address to a butterfly, whom he invites to visit
+him, in these simple strains--
+
+    'This plot of orchard-ground is ours;
+    My trees they are, my sister's flowers;
+    Stop here whenever you are weary.' II. p. 61.
+
+We come next to a long story of a 'Blind Highland Boy,' who lived near
+an arm of the sea, and had taken a most unnatural desire to venture on
+that perilous element. His mother did all she could to prevent him; but
+one morning, when the good woman was out of the way, he got into a
+vessel of his own, and pushed out from the shore.
+
+    'In such a vessel ne'er before
+    Did human creature leave the shore.' II. p. 72.
+
+And then we are told, that if the sea should get rough, 'a bee-hive
+would be ship as safe.' 'But say, what is it?' a poetical interlocutor
+is made to exclaim most naturally; and here followeth the answer, upon
+which all the pathos and interest of the story depend.
+
+    'A HOUSEHOLD TUB, like one of those
+    Which women use to wash their clothes!!' II. p. 72.
+
+This, it will be admitted, is carrying the matter as far as it will well
+go; nor is there anything,--down to the wiping of shoes, or the
+evisceration of chickens,--which may not be introduced in poetry, if
+this is tolerated. A boat is sent out and brings the boy ashore, who
+being tolerably frightened we suppose, promises to go to sea no more;
+and so the story ends.
+
+Then we have a poem, called 'the Green Linnet,' which opens with the
+poet's telling us;
+
+    'A whispering leaf is now my joy,
+    And then a bird will be the _toy_
+      That doth my fancy _tether_.' II. p. 79.
+
+and closes thus--
+
+    'While thus before my eyes he gleams,
+    A brother of the leaves he seems;
+    When in a moment forth _he teems_
+      His little song in gushes:
+    As if it pleas'd him to disdain
+    And mock the form which he did feign,
+    While he was dancing with the train
+      Of leaves among the bushes.' II. p. 81.
+
+The next is called 'Star Gazers.' A set of people peeping through a
+telescope, all seem to come away disappointed with the sight; whereupon
+thus sweetly moralizeth our poet.
+
+    'Yet, showman, where can lie the cause? Shall thy implement have blame,
+    A boaster, that when he is tried, fails, and is put to shame?
+    Or is it good as others are, and be their eyes in fault?
+    Their eyes, or minds? or, finally, is this resplendent vault?
+
+    Or, is it rather, that conceit rapacious is and strong,
+    And bounty never yields so much but it seems to do her wrong?
+    Or is it, that when human souls a journey long have had,
+    And are returned into themselves, they cannot but be sad?' II. p. 88.
+
+There are then some really sweet and amiable verses on a French lady,
+separated from her own children, fondling the baby of a neighbouring
+cottager;--after which we have this quintessence of unmeaningness,
+entitled, 'Foresight.'
+
+    'That is work which I am rueing--
+    Do as Charles and I are doing!
+    Strawberry-blossoms, one and all,
+    We must spare them--here are many:
+    Look at it--the flower is small,
+    Small and low, though fair as any:
+    Do not touch it! Summers two
+    I am older, Anne, than you.
+    Pull the primrose, sister Anne!
+    Pull as many as you can.
+
+    Primroses, the spring may love them--
+    Summer knows but little of them:
+    Violets, do what they will,
+    Wither'd on the ground must lie:
+    Daisies will be daisies still;
+    Daisies they must live and die:
+    Fill your lap, and fill your bosom,
+    Only spare the strawberry-blossom!' II. p. 115, 116.
+
+Afterwards come some stanzas about an echo repeating a cuckoo's voice;
+here is one for a sample--
+
+    'Whence the voice? from air or earth?
+    _This the cuckoo cannot tell_;
+    But a startling sound had birth,
+    _As the bird must know full well_.' II. p. 123.
+
+Then we have Elegiac stanzas 'to the Spade of a friend,' beginning--
+
+    'Spade! with which Wilkinson hath till'd his lands,'
+
+--but too dull to be quoted any further.
+
+After this there is a Minstrel's Song, on the Restoration of Lord
+Clifford the Shepherd, which is in a very different strain of poetry;
+and then the volume is wound up with an 'Ode,' with no other title but
+the motto, _Paulo majora canamus_. This is, beyond all doubt, the most
+illegible and unintelligible part of the publication. We can pretend to
+give no analysis or explanation of it;--our readers must make what they
+can of the following extracts.
+
+    '----But there's a tree, of many one,
+    A single field which I have look'd upon,
+    Both of them speak of something that is gone:
+          The pansy at my feet
+          Doth the same tale repeat:
+    Whither is fled the visionary gleam?
+    Where is it now, the glory and the dream?' II. 150.
+
+              ----------
+
+          O joy! that in our embers
+          Is something that doth live,
+          That nature yet remembers
+          What was so fugitive!
+    The thought of our past years in me doth breed
+    Perpetual benedictions: not indeed
+    For that which is most worthy to be blest:
+    Delight and liberty, the simple creed
+    Of childhood, whether fluttering or at rest,
+    With new-born hope forever in his breast:--
+          Not for these I raise
+        The song of thanks and praise;
+      But for those obstinate questionings
+      Of sense and outward things,
+      Fallings from us, vanishings;
+      Blank misgivings of a creature
+    Moving about in worlds not realiz'd,
+    High instincts, before which our mortal nature
+    Did tremble like a guilty thing surpriz'd:
+      But for those first affections,
+      Those shadowy recollections,
+          Which be they what they may,
+    Are yet the fountain light of all our day,
+    Are yet a master light of all our feeling
+          Uphold us, cherish us, and make
+    Our noisy years seem moments in the being
+    Of the eternal silence: truths that wake,
+          To perish never;
+    Which neither listlessness, nor mad endeavour,
+          Nor man nor boy,
+    Nor all that is at enmity with joy,
+    Can utterly abolish or destroy!
+        Hence, in a season of calm weather,
+          Though inland far we be,
+    Our souls have sight of that immortal sea
+          Which brought us hither,
+        Can in a moment travel thither,
+    And see the children sport upon the shore,
+    And hear the mighty waters rolling evermore.' II. 154-6.
+
+We have thus gone through this publication, with a view to enable our
+readers to determine, whether the author of the verses which have now
+been exhibited, is entitled to claim the honours of an improver or
+restorer of our poetry, and to found a new school to supersede or
+new-model all our maxims on this subject. If we were to stop here, we do
+not think that Mr Wordsworth, or his admirers, would have any reason to
+complain; for what we have now quoted is undeniably the most peculiar
+and characteristic part of his publication, and must be defended and
+applauded if the merit or originality of his system is to be seriously
+maintained. In our own opinion, however, the demerit of that system
+cannot be fairly appreciated, until it be shown, that the author of the
+bad verses which we have already extracted, can write good verses when
+he pleases; and that, in point of fact, he does always write good
+verses, when, by any accident, he is led to abandon his system, and to
+transgress the laws of that school which he would fain establish on the
+ruin of all existing authority.
+
+The length to which our extracts and observations have already extended,
+necessarily restrains us within more narrow limits in this part of our
+citations; but it will not require much labour to find a pretty decided
+contrast to some of the passages we have already detailed. The song on
+the restoration of Lord Clifford is put into the mouth of an ancient
+minstrel of the family; and in composing it, the author was led,
+therefore, almost irresistibly to adopt the manner and phraseology that
+is understood to be connected with that sort of composition, and to
+throw aside his own babyish incidents and fantastical sensibilities. How
+he has succeeded, the reader will be able to judge from the few
+following extracts.
+
+[Quotes fifty-six lines of _Lord Clifford_.]
+
+All English writers of sonnets have imitated Milton; and, in this way,
+Mr Wordsworth, when he writes sonnets, escapes again from the trammels
+of his own unfortunate system; and the consequence is, that his sonnets
+are as much superior to the greater part of his other poems, as Milton's
+sonnets are superior to his.
+
+[Quotes the sonnets _On the Extinction of the Venetian Republic_,
+_London_, and _I griev'd for Buonaparte_.]
+
+When we look at these, and many still finer passages, in the writings of
+this author, it is impossible not to feel a mixtures of indignation and
+compassion, at that strange infatuation which has bound him up from the
+fair exercise of his talents, and withheld from the public the many
+excellent productions that would otherwise have taken the place of the
+trash now before us. Even in the worst of these productions, there are,
+no doubt, occasional little traits of delicate feeling and original
+fancy; but these are quite lost and obscured in the mass of childishness
+and insipidity with which they are incorporated; nor can any thing give
+us a more melancholy view of the debasing effects of this miserable
+theory, than that it has given ordinary men a right to wonder at the
+folly and presumption of a man gifted like Mr Wordsworth, and made him
+appear, in his second avowed publication, like a bad imitator of the
+worst of his former productions.
+
+We venture to hope, that there is now an end of this folly; and that,
+like other follies, it will be found to have cured itself by the
+extravagances resulting from its unbridled indulgence. In this point of
+view, the publication of the volumes before us may ultimately be of
+service to the good cause of literature. Many a generous rebel, it is
+said, has been reclaimed to his allegiance by the spectacle of lawless
+outrage and excess presented in the conduct of the insurgents; and we
+think there is every reason to hope, that the lamentable consequences
+which have resulted from Mr Wordsworth's open violation of the
+established laws of poetry, will operate as a wholesome warning to those
+who might otherwise have been seduced by his example, and be the means
+of restoring to that antient and venerable code its due honour and
+authority.--_The Edinburgh Review_.
+
+[Footnote H: See Vol. I. p. 63, &c.--Vol. VII. p. 1, &c.]
+
+
+
+
+SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
+
+
+_Christabel: Kubla Khan, a Vision. The Pains of Sleep_. By S.T.
+COLERIDGE, ESQ. London, Murray, 1816.
+
+The advertisement by which this work was announced to the publick,
+carried in its front a recommendation from Lord Byron,--who, it seems,
+has somewhere praised Christabel, as 'a wild and singularly original and
+beautiful poem.' Great as the noble bard's merits undoubtedly are in
+poetry, some of his latest _publications_ dispose us to distrust his
+authority, where the question is what ought to meet the public eye; and
+the works before us afford an additional proof, that his judgment on
+such matters is not absolutely to be relied on. Moreover, we are a
+little inclined to doubt the value of the praise which one poet lends
+another. It seems now-a-days to be the practice of that once irritable
+race to laud each other without bounds; and one can hardly avoid
+suspecting, that what is thus lavishly advanced may be laid out with a
+view to being repaid with interest. Mr Coleridge, however, must be
+judged by his own merits.
+
+It is remarked, by the writers upon the Bathos, that the true _profound_
+is surely known by one quality--its being wholly bottomless; insomuch,
+that when you think you have attained its utmost depth in the work of
+some of its great masters, another, or peradventure the same, astonishes
+you, immediately after, by a plunge so much more vigorous, as to outdo
+all his former outdoings. So it seems to be with the new school, or, as
+they may be termed, the wild or lawless poets. After we had been
+admiring their extravagance for many years, and marvelling at the ease
+and rapidity with which one exceeded another in the unmeaning or
+infantine, until not an idea was left in the rhyme--or in the insane,
+until we had reached something that seemed the untamed effusion of an
+author whose thoughts were rather more free than his actions--forth
+steps Mr Coleridge, like a giant refreshed with sleep, and as if to
+redeem his character after so long a silence, ('his poetic powers having
+been, he says, from 1808 till very lately, in a state of suspended
+animation,' p. v.) and breaks out in these precise words--
+
+    ''Tis the middle of night by the castle clock,
+    And the owls have awaken'd the crowing cock;
+    Tu ---- whit! ---- Tu ---- whoo!
+    And hark, again! the crowing cock,
+    How drowsily it crew.'
+    'Sir Leoline, the Baron rich,
+    Hath a toothless mastiff bitch;
+    From her kennel beneath the rock
+    She makes answer to the clock,
+    Four for the quarters, and twelve for the hour:
+    Ever and aye, moonshine or shower,
+    Sixteen short howls, not over loud;
+    Some say she sees my lady's shroud.'
+    'Is the night chilly and dark?
+    The night is chilly, but not dark.' p. 3, 4.
+
+It is probable that Lord Byron may have had this passage in his eye,
+when he called the poem 'wild' and 'original;' but how he discovered it
+to be 'beautiful,' is not quite so easy for us to imagine.
+
+Much of the art of the wild writers consists in sudden
+transitions--opening eagerly upon some topic, and then flying from it
+immediately. This indeed is known to the medical men, who not
+unfrequently have the care of them, as an unerring symptom. Accordingly,
+here we take leave of the Mastiff Bitch, and lose sight of her entirely,
+upon the entrance of another personage of a higher degree,
+
+    'The lovely Lady Christabel,
+    Whom her father loves so well'--
+
+And who, it seems, has been rambling about all night, having, the night
+before, had dreams about her lover, which 'made her moan and _leap_.'
+While kneeling, in the course of her rambles, at an old oak, she hears a
+noise on the other side of the stump, and going round, finds, to her
+great surprize, another fair damsel in white silk, but with her dress
+and hair in some disorder; at the mention of whom, the poet takes
+fright, not, as might be imagined, because of her disorder, but on
+account of her beauty and her fair attire--
+
+    'I guess, 'twas frightful there to see
+    A lady so richly clad as she--
+    Beautiful exceedingly!'
+
+Christabel naturally asks who she is, and is answered, at some length,
+that her name is Geraldine; that she was, on the morning before, seized
+by five warriors, who tied her on a white horse, and drove her on, they
+themselves following, also on white horses; and that they had rode all
+night. Her narrative now gets to be a little contradictory, which gives
+rise to unpleasant suspicions. She protests vehemently, and with oaths,
+that she has no idea who the men were; only that one of them, the
+tallest of the five, took her and placed her under the tree, and that
+they all went away, she knew not whither; but how long she had remained
+there she cannot tell--
+
+    'Nor do I know how long it is,
+    For I have lain in fits, I _wis_;'
+
+--although she had previously kept a pretty exact account of the time.
+The two ladies then go home together, after this satisfactory
+explanation, which appears to have conveyed to the intelligent mind of
+Lady C. every requisite information. They arrive at the castle, and pass
+the night in the same bed-room; not to disturb Sir Leoline, who, it
+seems, was poorly at the time, and, of course, must have been called up
+to speak to the chambermaids, and have the sheets aired, if Lady G. had
+had a room to herself. They do not get to their bed, however in the
+poem, quite so easily as we have carried them. They first cross the
+moat, and Lady C. 'took the key that fitted well,' and opened a little
+door, 'all in the middle of the gate.' Lady G. then sinks down 'belike
+through pain;' but it should seem more probably from laziness; for her
+fair companion having lifted her up, and carried her a little way, she
+then walks on 'as she were not in pain.' Then they cross the court--but
+we must give this in the poet's words, for he seems so pleased with
+them, that he inserts them twice over in the space of ten lines.
+
+    'So free from danger, free from fear,
+    They crossed the court--right glad they were.'
+
+Lady C. is desirous of a little conversation on the way, but Lady G.
+will not indulge her Ladyship, saying she is too much tired to speak. We
+now meet our old friend, the mastiff bitch, who is much too important a
+person to be slightly passed by--
+
+    'Outside her kennel, the mastiff old
+    Lay fast asleep, in moonshine cold.
+    The mastiff old did not awake,
+    Yet she an angry moan did make!
+    And what can ail the mastiff bitch?
+    Never till now she uttered yell
+    Beneath the eye of Christabel.
+    Perhaps it is the owlet's scritch:
+    For what can ail the mastiff bitch?'
+
+Whatever it may be that ails the bitch, the ladies pass forward, and
+take off their shoes, and tread softly all the way upstairs, as
+Christabel observes that her father is a bad sleeper. At last, however,
+they do arrive at the bed-room, and comfort themselves with a dram of
+some homemade liquor, which proves to be very old; for it was made by
+Lady C.'s mother; and when her new friend asks if she thinks the old
+lady will take her part, she answers, that this is out of the question,
+in as much as she happened to die in childbed of her. The mention of the
+old lady, however, gives occasion to the following pathetic
+couplet.--Christabel says,
+
+    'O mother dear, that thou wert here!
+    I would, said Geraldine, she were!'
+
+A very mysterious conversation next takes place between Lady Geraldine
+and the old gentlewoman's ghost, which proving extremely fatiguing to
+her, she again has recourse to the bottle--and with excellent effect, as
+appears by these lines.
+
+    'Again the wild-flower wine she drank;
+    Her fair large eyes 'gan glitter bright,
+    'And from the floor whereon she sank,
+    The lofty Lady stood upright:
+      She was most beautiful to see,
+      Like a Lady of a far countree.'
+
+--From which, we may gather among other points, the exceeding great
+beauty of all women who live in a distant place, no matter where. The
+effects of the cordial speedily begin to appear; as no one, we imagine,
+will doubt, that to its influence must be ascribed the following
+speech--
+
+    'And thus the lofty lady spake--
+    All they, who live in the upper sky,
+    Do love you, holy Christabel!
+    And you love them--and for their sake
+    And for the good which me befel,
+    Even I in my degree will try,
+    Fair maiden, to requite you well.'
+
+Before going to bed, Lady G. kneels to pray, and desires her friend to
+undress, and lie down; which she does 'in her loveliness;' but being
+curious, she leans 'on her elbow,' and looks toward the fair
+devotee,--where she sees something which the poet does not think fit to
+tell us very explicitly.
+
+    'Her silken robe, and inner vest,
+    Dropt to her feet, and full in view,
+    Behold! her bosom and half her side--
+    A sight to dream of, not to tell!
+    And she is to sleep by Christabel.'
+
+She soon rises, however, from her knees; and as it was not a
+double-bedded room, she turns in to Lady Christabel, taking only 'two
+paces and a stride.' She then clasps her tight in her arms, and mutters
+a very dark spell, which we apprehend the poet manufactured by shaking
+words together at random; for it is impossible to fancy that he can
+annex any meaning whatever to it. This is the end of it.
+
+        'But vainly thou warrest,
+          For this is alone in
+        Thy power to declare,
+          That in the dim forest
+          Thou heard'st a low moaning,
+    And found'st a bright lady, surpassingly fair:
+    And didst bring her home with thee in love and in charity,
+    To shield her and shelter her from the damp air.'
+
+The consequence of this incantation is, that Lady Christabel has a
+strange dream--and when she awakes, her first exclamation is, 'Sure I
+have sinn'd'--'Now heaven be praised if all be well!' Being still
+perplexed with the remembrance of her 'too lively' dream--she then
+dresses herself, and modestly prays to be forgiven for 'her sins
+unknown.' The two companions now go to the Baron's parlour, and
+Geraldine tells her story to him. This, however, the poet judiciously
+leaves out, and only signifies that the Baron recognized in her the
+daughter of his old friend Sir Roland, with whom he had had a deadly
+quarrel. Now, however, he despatches his tame poet, or laureate, called
+Bard Bracy, to invite him and his family over, promising to forgive
+every thing, and even make an apology for what had passed. To understand
+what follows, we own, surpasses our comprehension. Mr Bracy, the poet,
+recounts a strange dream he has just had, of a dove being almost
+strangled by a snake; whereupon the Lady Geraldine falls a hissing, and
+her eyes grow small, like a serpent's,--or at least so they seem to her
+friend; who begs her father to 'send away that woman.' Upon this the
+Baron falls into a passion, as if he had discovered that his daughter
+had been seduced; at least, we can understand him in no other sense,
+though no hint of such a kind is given; but on the contrary, she is
+painted to the last moment as full of innocence and
+purity.--Nevertheless,
+
+    'His heart was cleft with pain and rage,
+    His cheeks they quiver'd, his eyes were wild,
+    Dishonour'd thus in his old age;
+    Dishonour'd by his only child;
+    And all his hospitality
+    To th' insulted daughter of his friend
+    By more than woman's jealousy,
+    Brought thus to a disgraceful end.--'
+
+Nothing further is said to explain the mystery; but there follows
+incontinently, what is termed '_The conclusion of Part the Second_.' And
+as we are pretty confident that Mr Coleridge holds this passage in the
+highest estimation; that he prizes it more than any other part of 'that
+wild, and singularly original and beautiful poem Christabel,' excepting
+always the two passages touching the 'toothless mastiff bitch;' we shall
+extract it for the amazement of our readers--premising our own frank
+avowal that we are wholly unable to divine the meaning of any portion of
+it.
+
+    'A little child, a limber elf,
+    Singing, dancing to itself,
+    A fairy thing with red round cheeks,
+    That always finds and never seeks;
+    Makes such a vision to the sight
+    As fills a father's eyes with light;
+    And pleasures flow in so thick and fast
+    Upon his heart, that he at last
+    Must needs express his love's excess
+    With words of unmeant bitterness.
+    Perhaps 'tis pretty to force together
+    Thoughts so all unlike each other;
+    To mutter and mock a broken charm,
+    To dally with wrong that does no harm
+    Perhaps 'tis tender too, and pretty,
+    At each wild word to feel within
+    A sweet recoil of love and pity.
+    And what if in a world of sin
+    (O sorrow and shame should this be true!)
+    Such giddiness of heart and brain
+    Comes seldom save from rage and pain,
+    So talks as it's most used to do.'
+
+Hence endeth the Second Part, and, in truth, the 'singular' poem itself;
+for the author has not yet written, or, as he phrases it, 'embodied in
+verse,' the 'three parts yet to come;'--though he trusts he shall be
+able to do so' in the course of the present year.'
+
+One word as to the metre of Christabel, or, as Mr Coleridge terms it,
+'_the_ Christabel'--happily enough; for indeed we doubt if the peculiar
+force of the definite article was ever more strongly exemplified. He
+says, that though the reader may fancy there prevails a great
+_irregularity_ in the metre, some lines being of four, others of twelve
+syllables, yet in reality it is quite regular; only that it is 'founded
+on a new principle, namely, that of counting in each line the accents,
+not the syllables.' We say nothing of the monstrous assurance of any man
+coming forward coolly at this time of day, and telling the readers of
+English poetry, whose ear has been tuned to the lays of Spenser, Milton,
+Dryden, and Pope, that he makes his metre 'on a new principle!' but we
+utterly deny the truth of the assertion, and defy him to show us _any_
+principle upon which his lines can be conceived to tally. We give two or
+three specimens to confound at once this miserable piece of coxcombry
+and shuffling. Let our 'wild, and singularly original and beautiful'
+author, show us how these lines agree either in number of accents or of
+feet.
+
+      'Ah wel-a-day!'
+      'For this is alone in--'
+    'And didst bring her home with thee in love and in charity'--
+      'I pray you drink this cordial wine'--
+      'Sir Leoline'--
+      'And found a bright lady surpassingly fair'--
+      'Tu--whit!----Tu--whoo!'
+
+_Kubla Khan_ is given to the public, it seems, 'at the request of a poet
+of great and deserved celebrity;'--but whether Lord Byron, the praiser
+of 'the Christabel,' or the Laureate, the praiser of Princes, we are not
+informed. As far as Mr Coleridge's 'own opinions are concerned,' it is
+published, 'not upon the ground of any _poetic_ merits,' but 'as a
+PSYCHOLOGICAL CURIOSITY!' In these opinions of the candid author, we
+entirely concur; but for this reason we hardly think it was necessary to
+give the minute detail which the Preface contains, of the circumstances
+attending its composition. Had the question regarded '_Paradise Lost_,'
+or '_Dryden's Ode_,' we could not have had a more particular account of
+the circumstances in which it was composed. It was in the year 1797, and
+in the summer season. Mr Coleridge was in bad health;--the particular
+disease is not given; but the careful reader will form his own
+conjectures. He had retired very prudently to a lonely farm-house; and
+whoever would see the place which gave birth to the 'psychological
+curiosity,' may find his way thither without a guide; for it is situated
+on the confines of Somerset and Devonshire, and on the Exmoor part of
+the boundary; and it is, moreover, between Porlock and Linton. In that
+farm-house, he had a slight indisposition, and had taken an anodyne,
+which threw him into a deep sleep in his chair (whether after dinner or
+not he omits to state), 'at the moment that he was reading a sentence in
+Purchas's Pilgrims,' relative to a palace of Kubla Khan. The effects of
+the anodyne, and the sentence together, were prodigious: They produced
+the 'curiosity' now before us; for, during his three-hours sleep, Mr
+Coleridge 'has the most vivid confidence that he could not have composed
+less than from two to three hundred lines.' On awaking, he 'instantly
+and eagerly' wrote down the verses here published; when he was (he says,
+'_unfortunately_') called out by a 'person on business from Porlock, and
+detained by him above an hour;' and when he returned the vision was
+gone. The lines here given smell strongly, it must be owned, of the
+anodyne; and, but that an under dose of a sedative produces contrary
+effects, we should inevitably have been lulled by them into
+forgetfulness of all things. Perhaps a dozen more such lines as the
+following would reduce the most irritable of critics to a state of
+inaction.
+
+        'A damsel with a dulcimer
+        In a vision once I saw:
+        It was an Abyssinian maid
+        And on her dulcimer she play'd,
+        Singing of Mount Abora.
+        Could I revive within me
+        Her symphony and song,
+        To such a deep delight 'twould win me,
+    That with music loud and long,
+    I would build that dome in air,
+    That sunny dome! those caves of ice!
+    And all who heard should see them there,
+    And all should cry, Beware! Beware!
+    His flashing eyes, his floating hair!
+    Weave a circle round him thrice,
+    And close your eyes with holy dread:
+    For he on honey-dew hath fed,' &c. &c.
+
+There is a good deal more altogether as exquisite--and in particular a
+fine description of a wood, 'ancient as the hills;' and 'folding sunny
+spots of _greenery_!' But we suppose this specimen will be sufficient.
+
+Persons in this poet's unhappy condition, generally feel the want of
+sleep as the worst of their evils; but there are instances, too, in the
+history of the disease, of sleep being attended with new agony, as if
+the waking thoughts, how wild and turbulent soever, had still been under
+some slight restraint, which sleep instantly removed. Mr Coleridge
+appears to have experienced this symptom, if we may judge from the title
+of his third poem, '_The Pains of Sleep_;' and, in truth, from its
+composition--which is mere raving, without any thing more affecting than
+a number of incoherent words, expressive of extravagance and
+incongruity.--We need give no specimen of it.
+
+Upon the whole, we look upon this publication as one of the most notable
+pieces of impertinence of which the press has lately been guilty; and
+one of the boldest experiments that has yet been made on the patience or
+understanding of the public. It is impossible, however, to dismiss it,
+without a remark or two. The other productions of the Lake School have
+generally exhibited talents thrown away upon subjects so mean, that no
+power of genius could ennoble them; or perverted and rendered useless by
+a false theory of poetical composition. But even in the worst of them,
+if we except the White Doe of Mr Wordsworth and some of the laureate
+odes, there were always some gleams of feeling or of fancy. But the
+thing now before us is utterly destitute of value. It exhibits from
+beginning to end not a ray of genius; and we defy any man to point out a
+passage of poetical merit in any of the three pieces which it contains,
+except, perhaps, the following lines in p. 32, and even these are not
+very brilliant; nor is the leading thought original--
+
+    'Alas! they had been friends in youth;
+    But whispering tongues can poison truth;
+    And constancy lives in realms above;
+    And life is thorny; and youth is vain;
+    And to be wroth with one we love,
+    Doth work like madness in the brain.'
+
+With this one exception, there is literally not one couplet in the
+publication before us which would be reckoned poetry, or even sense,
+were it found in the corner of a newspaper or upon the window of an inn.
+Must we then be doomed to hear such a mixture of raving and driv'ling,
+extolled as the work of a '_wild and original_' genius, simply because
+Mr Coleridge has now and then written fine verses, and a brother poet
+chooses, in his milder mood, to laud him from courtesy or from interest?
+And are such panegyrics to be echoed by the mean tools of a political
+faction, because they relate to one whose daily prose is understood to
+be dedicated to the support of all that courtiers think should be
+supported? If it be true that the author has thus earned the patronage
+of those liberal dispensers of bounty, we can have no objection that
+they should give him proper proofs of their gratitude; but we cannot
+help wishing, for his sake, as well as our own, that they would pay in
+solid pudding instead of empty praise; and adhere, at least in this
+instance, to the good old system of rewarding their champions with
+places and pensions, instead of puffing their bad poetry, and
+endeavouring to cram their nonsense down the throats of all the loyal
+and well affected.--_The Edinburgh Review_.
+
+
+
+
+ROBERT SOUTHEY
+
+
+_Madoc_, by ROBERT SOUTHEY. 4to. pp. 560. 2l. 2s. Boards. Printed at
+Edinburgh, for Longman and Co., London. 1805.
+
+It has fallen to the lot of this writer to puzzle our critical
+discernment more than once. In the _Annual Anthology_ we had reason to
+complain that it was difficult to distinguish his jocular from his
+serious poetry; and sometimes indeed to know his poetry from his prose.
+He has now contrived to manufacture a large quarto, which he has styled
+a poem, but of what description it is no easy matter to decide. The
+title of epic, which he indignantly disclaims, we might have been
+inclined to refuse his production, had it been claimed; and we suppose
+that Mr. Southey would not suffer it to be classed under the
+mock-heroic. The poem of Madoc is not didactic, nor elegiac, nor
+classical, in any respect. Neither is it _Macphersonic_, nor
+_Klopstockian_, nor _Darwinian_,--we beg pardon, we mean _Brookian_. To
+conclude, according to a phrase of the last century, which was applied
+to ladies of ambiguous character, _it is what it is_.--As Mr. Southey
+has set the rules of Aristotle at defiance in his preface, we hope that
+he will feel a due degree of gratitude for this appropriate definition
+of his work. It is an old saying, thoroughly descriptive of such an old
+song as this before us.
+
+Mr. Southey, however, has not disdained all ancient precedents in his
+poem, for he introduces it with this advertisement:
+
+    'Come, listen to a tale of times of old!
+    Come, for ye know me! I am he who sung
+    The maid of Arc; and I am he who framed
+    Of Thalaba the wild and wonderous song.
+    Come, listen to my lay, and ye shall hear
+    How Madoc from the shores of Britain spread
+    The adventurous sail, explored the ocean ways,
+    And quelled barbarian power, and overthrew
+    The bloody altars of idolatry,
+    And planted in its fanes triumphantly
+    The cross of Christ. Come, listen to my lay!'
+
+This _modest ostentation_ was certainly derived from the verses imputed
+to Virgil;
+
+    "Ille ego, qui quondam gracili modulatus avena
+    Carmen; et egressus sylvis, vicina coegi
+    Ut quamvis avido parerent arva colono,
+    Gratum opus agricolis: at nunc horrentia Martis, &c."
+
+In the very first part of the poem, also, we find Mr. Southey pursuing
+the Horatian precept, "_prorumpere in medias res_;" for he commences
+with the _return_ of Madoc to his native country. It is true that, like
+the Messenger in Macklin's tragedy, he "goes but to return;" and the
+critic is tempted to say, with Martial, _toto carere possum_.--Thus the
+grand interest of the work, which ought to consist in exploring a new
+world, is destroyed at once, by the reader at his outset encountering
+the heroes returning "sound, wind and limb," to their native country. It
+may be said that Camoens has thrown a great part of Da Gama's Voyage
+into the form of a narrative: but he has also given much in description;
+enough, at least, to have justified Mr. Southey in commencing rather
+nearer the commencement of his tale.
+
+That he might withdraw himself entirely from the yoke of Aristotle, Mr.
+Southey has divided his poem into two parts, instead of giving it a
+beginning, a middle and an end. One of these parts is concisely
+entitled, 'Madoc in Wales;' the other, 'Madoc in Aztlan.' A _middle_
+might, however, have been easily found, by adding, _Madoc on
+Shipboard_.--The first of these Anti Peripatetic parts contains 18
+divisions; the second, 27 which include every incident, episode, &c.
+introduced into the poem. This arrangement gives it very much the
+appearance of a journal versified, and effectually precludes any
+imputation of luxuriance of fancy in the plot.
+
+Respecting the manners, Mr. Southey appears to have been more successful
+than in his choice of the story. He has adhered to history where he
+could discover any facts adapted to his purpose; and when history failed
+him, he has had recourse to probability. Yet we own that the
+nomenclature of his heroes has shocked what Mr. S. would call our
+prejudices. _Goervyl_ and _Ririd_ and _Rodri_ and _Llaian_ may have
+charms for Cambrian ears, but who can feel an interest in _Tezozomoc_,
+_Tlalala_, or _Ocelopan_? Or, should
+
+    ----'Tyneio, Merini,
+    Boda and Brenda and Aelgyvarch,
+    Gwynon and Celynin and Gwynodyl,' (p. 129.)
+    "Those rugged names to our like mouths grow sleek,
+    That would have made Quintilian stare and gasp[I],"
+
+how could we swallow _Yuhidthiton_, _Coanocotzin_, and, above all, the
+yawning jaw-dislocating _Ayayaca_?--These torturing words, particularly
+the latter, remind us so strongly of the odious cacophony of the Nurse
+and Child, that they really are not to be tolerated. Mr. Southey's
+defence (for he has partially anticipated this objection) is that the
+names are conformable to history or analogy, which we are not inclined
+to dispute: but it is not requisite to tread so closely in the traces of
+barbarity. Truth does not constitute the essence of poetry: but it is
+indispensably necessary that the lines should be agreeable to the ear,
+as well as to the sense. Sorry, indeed, we are to complain that Mr.
+Southey, in attempting a new method of writing,--in professing to set
+aside the old models, and to promote his own work to a distinguished
+place in the library,--has failed to interest our feelings, or to excite
+our admiration. The dull tenor of mediocrity, which characterizes his
+pages, is totally unsuitable to heroic poetry, regular or irregular.
+Instead of viewing him on a _fiery Pegasus_, and "snatching a grace
+beyond the reach of art," we behold the author mounted on a strange
+animal, something between a rough Welsh poney and a Peruvian sheep,
+whose utmost capriole only tends to land him in the mud. We may indeed
+safely compliment Mr. Southey, by assuring him that there is nothing in
+Homer, Virgil, or Milton, in any degree resembling the beauties of
+Madoc.
+
+Whether the expedition of Madoc, and the existence of a Welsh tribe in
+America, be historically true, it is not our present business to
+examine. It is obvious, however, that one great object of the poem, the
+destruction of the altars of idolatry, had failed; for it is not
+pretended that the supposed descendants of Madoc remained Christians.
+
+We shall now make some extracts from this poem, which will enable our
+readers to judge whether we have spoken too severely of Mr. Southey's
+labours.
+
+[Quotes 270 lines of _Madoc_ with interpolated comments.]
+
+If the perusal of these and the preceding verses should tempt any of our
+readers to purchase Mr. Southey's volume, we can warrant equal
+entertainment in all its other parts, and shall heartily wish the
+gentleman all happiness with his poet.--To us, there appears a thorough
+perversion of taste, in the conception and execution of the whole; and
+we are disgusted with the tameness of the verse, the vulgarity of the
+thoughts, and the barbarity of the manners. If this style of writing be
+continued, we may expect not only the actions of Vindomarus or
+Ariovistus to be celebrated, but we may perhaps see the history of the
+Cherokees, Choctaws, and Catabaws, versified in quarto. The name of
+Atakulla-kulla would not be inharmonious, compared with some of Mr.
+Southey's heroes. Indeed, a very interesting poem might be founded on
+the story of Pocahuntas, as it is detailed by Smith, in his History of
+the Settlement of Virginia; and if Mr. Southey should meditate another
+irruption into the territories of the Muse, we would recommend this
+subject to his attention.
+
+It must be remarked that this is a very handsome and elegantly printed
+book, with engraved title-pages, vignettes, &c. and had the poet
+equalled the printer, his work might have stood on the same shelf with
+those of our most admired writers.--_The Monthly Review_.
+
+[Footnote I: Milton.]
+
+
+
+
+CHARLES LAMB
+
+
+_Blank Verse_, by CHARLES LLOYD, and CHARLES LAMB. 12mo. 2s. 6d. Boards.
+Arch. 1798.
+
+Dr. Johnson, speaking of blank verse, seemed to have adopted the opinion
+of some great man,--we forget whom,--that it is only "_poetry to the
+eye_." On perusing the works of several modern bards of our own country,
+we have sometimes rather inclined to the same idea, but the recollection
+of Milton and Thomson presently banished it.
+
+We have more than once delivered our sentiments respecting the poetry of
+Mr. Charles Lloyd. To what we have formerly remarked, in general on this
+head, we have little to add on the present occasion; except that we
+begin to grow weary of his continued melancholy strains. Why is this
+ingenious writer so uncomfortably constant to the _mournful_ Muse? If he
+has any taste for variety, he has little to fear from _jealousy_ in the
+sacred sisterhood.--Then why not sometimes make his bow to THALIA?
+
+Mr. Lamb, the joint author of this little volume, seems to be very
+properly associated with his plaintive companion.--_The Monthly
+Review_.
+
+
+_Album Verses, with a few others_. By CHARLES LAMB. 12mo. pp. 150.
+London, 1830. Moxon.
+
+If any thing could prevent our laughing at the present collection of
+absurdities, it would be a lamentable conviction of the blinding and
+engrossing nature of vanity. We could forgive the folly of the original
+composition, but cannot but marvel at the egotism which has preserved,
+and the conceit which has published. What exaggerated notion must that
+man entertain of his talents, who believes their slightest efforts
+worthy of remembrance; one who keeps a copy of the verses he writes in
+young ladies' albums, the proverbial receptacles for trash! Here and
+there a sweet and natural thought intervenes; but the chief part is best
+characterized by that expressive though ungracious word "rubbish." And
+what could induce our author to trench on the masculine and vigorous
+Crabbe? did he think his powerful and dark outlines might with advantage
+be turned to "prettiness and favour?" But let our readers judge from the
+following specimens. The first is from the album of Mrs. Jane Towers.
+
+    "Conjecturing, I wander in the dark,
+    I know thee only sister to Charles Clarke!"
+
+Directions for a picture--
+
+    "You wished a picture, cheap, but good;
+    The colouring? decent; clear, not muddy;
+    To suit a poet's quiet study."
+
+The subject is a child--
+
+    "Thrusting his fingers in his ears,
+    Like Obstinate, that perverse funny one,
+    In honest parable of Bunyan."
+
+We were not aware of "Obstinate's" fun before.
+
+An epitaph:--
+
+    "On her bones the turf lie lightly,
+    And her rise again be brightly!
+    No dark stain be found upon her--
+    No, there will not, on mine honour--
+    Answer that at least I can."
+
+Or what is the merit of the ensuing epicedium?
+
+[Quotes 48 lines beginning:--
+
+    There's rich Kitty Wheatley,
+    With footing it featly, etc.]
+
+Mr. Lamb, in his dedication, says his motive for publishing is to
+benefit his publisher, by affording him an opportunity of shewing how he
+means to bring out works. We could have dispensed with the specimen;
+though it is but justice to remark on the neat manner in which the work
+is produced: the title-page is especially pretty.--_The Literary
+Gazette_.
+
+
+
+
+WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
+
+
+_Gebir; a Poem, in Seven Books_. 12mo. 74 pp. Rivingtons. 1798.
+
+How this Poem, which appears to issue from the same publishers as our
+own work, so long escaped our notice, we cannot say. Still less are we
+able to guess at the author, or his meaning. In a copy lately lent to
+us, as a matter we had overlooked, we observe the following very
+apposite quotation, inscribed on the title-page, by some unknown hand:
+
+    Some love the verse----
+    Which read, and read, you raise your eyes in doubt,
+    And gravely wonder what it is about.
+
+Among persons of that turn of mind, the author must look for the _ten_
+admirers who, as he says, would satisfy his ambition; but whether they
+could have the qualities of taste and genius, which he requires, is with
+us a matter of doubt. Turgid obscurity is the general character of the
+composition, with now and then a gleam of genuine poetry, irradiating
+the dark profound. The effect of the perusal is to give a kind of whirl
+to the brain, more like distraction than pleasure; and something
+analogous to the sensation produced, when the end of the finger is
+rubbed against the parchment of the tambourine.--_The British Critic_.
+
+
+_Gebir_; a Poem, in Seven Books. 8vo. pp. 74. 2s. 6d. Rivingtons. 1798.
+
+An unpractised author has attempted, in this poem, the difficult task of
+relating a romantic story in blank-verse. His performance betrays all
+the incorrectness and abruptness of inexperience, but it manifests
+occasionally some talent for description. He has fallen into the common
+error of those who aspire to the composition of blank-verse, by
+borrowing too many phrases and epithets from our incomparable Milton. We
+give the following extract, as affording a fair specimen:
+
+[Quotes about 60 lines from the beginning of the fifth and sixth books
+of _Gebir_.]
+
+We must observe that the story is told very obscurely, and should have
+been assisted by an _Argument_ in prose. Young writers are often
+astonished to find that passages, which seem very clear to their own
+heated imaginations, appear very dark to their readers.--The author of
+the poem before us may produce something worthy of more approbation, if
+he will labour hard, and delay for a few years the publication of his
+next performance.--_The Monthly Review_.
+
+
+
+
+SIR WALTER SCOTT
+
+
+_Marmion; a Tale of Flodden Field_. By WALTER SCOTT, Esq. 4to. pp. 500.
+Edinburgh and London, 1808.
+
+There is a kind of right of primogeniture among books, as well as among
+men; and it is difficult for an author, who has obtained great fame by a
+first publication, not to appear to fall off in a second--especially if
+his original success could be imputed, in any degree, to the novelty of
+his plan of composition. The public is always indulgent to untried
+talents; and is even apt to exaggerate a little the value of what it
+receives without any previous expectation. But, for this advance of
+kindness, it usually exacts a most usurious return in the end. When the
+poor author comes back, he is no longer received as a benefactor, but a
+debtor. In return for the credit it formerly gave him, the world now
+conceives that it has a just claim on him for excellence, and becomes
+impertinently scrupulous as to the quality of the coin in which it is to
+be paid.
+
+The just amount of this claim plainly cannot be for more than the rate
+of excellence which he had reached in his former production; but, in
+estimating this rate, various errors are perpetually committed, which
+increase the difficulties of the task which is thus imposed on him. In
+the _first_ place, the comparative amount of his past and present merits
+can only be ascertained by the uncertain standard of his reader's
+feelings; and these must always be less lively with regard to a second
+performance; which, with every other excellence of the first, must
+necessarily want the powerful recommendations of novelty and surprise,
+and consequently fall very far short of the effect produced by their
+strong cooeperation. In the _second_ place, it may be observed, in
+general, that wherever our impression of any work is favourable on the
+whole, its excellence is constantly exaggerated, in those vague and
+habitual recollections which form the basis of subsequent comparisons.
+We readily drop from our memory the dull and bad passages, and carry
+along with us the remembrance of those only which had afforded us
+delight. Thus, when we take the merit of any favourite poem as a
+standard of comparison for some later production of the same author, we
+never take its true average merit, which is the only fair standard, but
+the merit of its most striking and memorable passages, which naturally
+stand forward in our recollection, and pass upon our hasty retrospect as
+just and characteristic specimens of the whole work; and this high and
+exaggerated standard we rigorously apply to the first, and perhaps the
+least interesting parts of the second performance. Finally, it deserves
+to be noticed, that where a first work, containing considerable
+blemishes, has been favourably received, the public always expects this
+indulgence to be repaid by an improvement that ought not to be always
+expected. If a second performance appear, therefore, with the same
+faults, they will no longer meet with the same toleration. Murmurs will
+be heard about indolence, presumption, and abuse of good nature; while
+the critics, and those who had gently hinted at the necessity of
+correction, will be more out of humour than the rest at this apparent
+neglect of their admonitions.
+
+For these, and for other reasons, we are inclined to suspect, that the
+success of the work now before us will be less brilliant than that of
+the author's former publication, though we are ourselves of opinion,
+that its intrinsic merits are nearly, if not altogether, equal; and
+that, if it had had the fortune to be the elder born, it would have
+inherited as fair a portion of renown as has fallen to the lot of its
+predecessor. It is a good deal longer, indeed, and somewhat more
+ambitious; and it is rather clearer that it has greater faults, than
+that it has greater beauties; though, for our own parts, we are inclined
+to believe in both propositions. It has more tedious and flat passages,
+and more ostentation of historical and antiquarian lore; but it has also
+greater richness and variety, both of character and incident; and if it
+has less sweetness and pathos in the softer passages, it has certainly
+more vehemence and force of colouring in the loftier and busier
+representations of action and emotion. The place of the prologuizing
+minstrel is but ill supplied, indeed, by the epistolary dissertations
+which are prefixed to each book of the present poem; and the ballad
+pieces and mere episodes which it contains, have less finish and
+poetical beauty; but there is more airiness and spirit in the lighter
+delineations; and the story, if not more skilfully conducted, is at
+least better complicated, and extended through a wider field of
+adventure. The characteristics of both, however, are evidently the
+same;--a broken narrative--a redundancy of minute description--bursts of
+unequal and energetic poetry--and a general tone of spirit and
+animation, unchecked by timidity or affectation, and unchastised by any
+great delicacy of taste, or elegance of fancy.
+
+But though we think this last romance of Mr Scott's about as good as the
+former, and allow that it affords great indications of poetical talent,
+we must remind our readers, that we never entertained much partiality
+for this sort of composition, and ventured on a former occasion to
+express our regret, that an author endowed with such talents should
+consume them in imitations of obsolete extravagance, and in the
+representation of manners and sentiments in which none of his readers
+can be supposed to take much interest, except the few who can judge of
+their exactness. To write a modern romance of chivalry, seems to be
+much such a fantasy as to build a modern abbey, or an English pagoda.
+For once, however, it may be excused as a pretty caprice of genius; but
+a second production of the same sort is entitled to less indulgence, and
+imposes a sort of duty to drive the author from so idle a task, by a
+fair exposition of the faults which are in a manner inseparable from its
+execution. To enable our readers to judge fairly of the present
+performance, we shall first present them with a brief abstract of the
+story; and then endeavour to point out what seems to be exceptionable,
+and what is praiseworthy, in the execution.
+
+[Here follows a detailed outline of the plot of _Marmion_.]
+
+Now, upon this narrative, we are led to observe, in the first place,
+that it forms a very scanty and narrow foundation for a poem of such
+length as is now before us. There is scarcely matter enough in the main
+story for a ballad of ordinary dimensions; and the present work is not
+so properly diversified with episodes and descriptions, as made up and
+composed of them. No long poem, however, can maintain its interest
+without a connected narrative. It should be a grand historical picture,
+in which all the personages are concerned in one great transaction, and
+not a mere gallery of detailed groups and portraits. When we accompany
+the poet in his career of adventure, it is not enough that he points out
+to us, as we go along, the beauties of the landscape, and the costumes
+of the inhabitants. The people must do something after they are
+described, and they must do it in concert, or in opposition to each
+other; while the landscape, with its castles and woods and defiles, must
+serve merely as the scene of their exploits, and the field of their
+conspiracies and contentions. There is too little connected incident in
+Marmion, and a great deal too much gratuitous description.
+
+In the second place, we object to the whole plan and conception of the
+fable, as turning mainly upon incidents unsuitable for poetical
+narrative, and brought out in the denouement in a very obscure,
+laborious, and imperfect manner. The events of an epic narrative should
+all be of a broad, clear, and palpable description; and the difficulties
+and embarrassments of the characters, of a nature to be easily
+comprehended and entered into by readers of all descriptions. Now, the
+leading incidents in this poem are of a very narrow and peculiar
+character, and are woven together into a petty intricacy and
+entanglement which puzzles the reader instead of interesting him, and
+fatigues instead of exciting his curiosity. The unaccountable conduct of
+Constance, in first ruining De Wilton in order to forward Marmion's suit
+with Clara, and then trying to poison Clara, because Marmion's suit
+seemed likely to succeed with her--but, above all, the paltry device of
+the forged letters, and the sealed packet given up by Constance at her
+condemnation, and handed over by the abbess to De Wilton and Lord Angus,
+are incidents not only unworthy of the dignity of poetry, but really
+incapable of being made subservient to its legitimate purposes. They are
+particularly unsuitable, too, to the age and character of the personages
+to whom they relate; and, instead of forming the instruments of knightly
+vengeance and redress, remind us of the machinery of a bad German novel,
+or of the disclosures which might be expected on the trial of a
+pettifogging attorney. The obscurity and intricacy which they
+communicate to the whole story, must be very painfully felt by every
+reader who tries to comprehend it; and is prodigiously increased by the
+very clumsy and inartificial manner in which the denouement is
+ultimately brought about by the author. Three several attempts are made
+by three several persons to beat into the head of the reader the
+evidence of De Wilton's innocence, and of Marmion's guilt; first, by
+Constance in her dying speech and confession; secondly, by the abbess in
+her conference with De Wilton; and, lastly, by this injured innocent
+himself, on disclosing himself to Clara in the castle of Lord Angus.
+After all, the precise nature of the plot and the detection is very
+imperfectly explained, and we will venture to say, is not fully
+understood by one half those who have fairly read through every word of
+the quarto now before us. We would object, on the same grounds, to the
+whole scenery of Constance's condemnation. The subterranean chamber,
+with its low arches, massive walls, and silent monks with smoky
+torches,--its old chandelier in an iron chain,--the stern abbots and
+haughty prioresses, with their flowing black dresses, and book of
+statutes laid on an iron table, are all images borrowed from the novels
+of Mrs Ratcliffe [_sic_] and her imitators. The public, we believe, has
+now supped full of this sort of horrors; or, if any effect is still to
+be produced by their exhibition, it may certainly be produced at too
+cheap a rate, to be worthy the ambition of a poet of original
+imagination.
+
+In the third place, we object to the extreme and monstrous improbability
+of almost all the incidents which go to the composition of this fable.
+We know very well that poetry does not describe what is ordinary; but
+the marvellous, in which it is privileged to indulge, is the marvellous
+of performance, and not of accident. One extraordinary rencontre or
+opportune coincidence may be permitted, perhaps, to bring the parties
+together, and wind up matters for the catastrophe; but a writer who gets
+through the whole business of his poem, by a series of lucky hits and
+incalculable chances, certainly manages matters in a very economical way
+for his judgment and invention, and will probably be found to have
+consulted his own ease, rather than the delight of his readers. Now,
+the whole story of Marmion seems to us to turn upon a tissue of such
+incredible accidents. In the first place, it was totally beyond all
+calculation, that Marmion and De Wilton should meet, by pure chance, at
+Norham, on the only night which either of them could spend in that
+fortress. In the next place, it is almost totally incredible that the
+former should not recognize his antient rival and antagonist, merely
+because he had assumed a palmer's habit, and lost a little flesh and
+colour in his travels. He appears unhooded, and walks and speaks before
+him; and, as near as we can guess, it could not be more than a year
+since they had entered the lists against each other. Constance, at her
+death, says she had lived but three years with Marmion; and, it was not
+till he tired of her, that he aspired to Clara, or laid plots against De
+Wilton. It is equally inconceivable that De Wilton should have taken
+upon himself the friendly office of a guide to his arch enemy, and
+discharged it quietly and faithfully, without seeking, or apparently
+thinking of any opportunity of disclosure or revenge. So far from
+meditating anything of the sort, he makes two several efforts to leave
+him, when it appears that his services are no longer indispensable. If
+his accidental meeting, and continued association with Marmion, be
+altogether unnatural, it must appear still more extraordinary, that he
+should afterwards meet with the Lady Clare, his adored mistress, and the
+Abbess of Whitby, who had in her pocket the written proofs of his
+innocence, in consequence of an occurrence equally accidental. These two
+ladies, the only two persons in the universe whom it was of any
+consequence to him to meet, are captured in their voyage from Holy Isle,
+and brought to Edinburgh, by the luckiest accident in the world, the
+very day that De Wilton and Marmion make their entry into it. Nay, the
+king, without knowing that they are at all of his acquaintance, happens
+to appoint them lodgings in the same stair-case, and to make them travel
+under his escort! We pass the night combat at Gifford, in which Marmion
+knows his opponent by moonlight, though he never could guess at him in
+sunshine; and all the inconsistencies of his dilatory wooing of Lady
+Clare. Those, and all the prodigies and miracles of the story, we can
+excuse, as within the privilege of poetry; but, the lucky chances we
+have already specified, are rather too much for our patience. A poet, we
+think, should never let his heroes contract such great debts to fortune;
+especially when a little exertion of his own might make them independent
+of her bounty. De Wilton might have been made to seek and watch his
+adversary, from some moody feeling of patient revenge; and it certainly
+would not have been difficult to discover motives which might have
+induced both Clara and the Abbess to follow and relieve him, without
+dragging them into his presence by the clumsy hands of a cruizer from
+Dunbar.
+
+In the _fourth_ place, we think we have reason to complain of Mr Scott
+for having made his figuring characters so entirely worthless, as to
+excite but little of our sympathy, and at the same time keeping his
+virtuous personages so completely in the back ground, that we are
+scarcely at all acquainted with them when the work is brought to a
+conclusion. Marmion is not only a villain, but a mean and sordid
+villain; and represented as such, without any visible motive, and at the
+evident expense of characteristic truth and consistency. His elopement
+with Constance, and his subsequent desertion of her, are knightly vices
+enough, we suppose; but then he would surely have been more interesting
+and natural, if he had deserted her for a brighter beauty, and not
+merely for a richer bride. This was very well for Mr Thomas Inkle, the
+young merchant of London; but for the valiant, haughty, and liberal Lord
+Marmion of Fontenaye and Lutterward, we do think it was quite
+unsuitable. Thus, too, it was very chivalrous and orderly perhaps, for
+him to hate De Wilton, and to seek to supplant him in his lady's love;
+but, to slip a bundle of forged letters into his bureau, was cowardly as
+well as malignant. Now, Marmion is not represented as a coward, nor as
+at all afraid of De Wilton; on the contrary, and it is certainly the
+most absurd part of the story, he fights him fairly and valiantly after
+all, and overcomes him by mere force of arms, as he might have done at
+the beginning, without having recourse to devices so unsuitable to his
+general character and habits of acting. By the way, we have great doubts
+whether a _convicted_ traitor, like De Wilton, whose guilt was
+established by written evidence under his own hand, was ever allowed to
+enter the lists, as a knight, against his accuser. At all events, we are
+positive, that an accuser, who was as ready and willing to fight as
+Marmion, could never have condescended to forge in support of his
+accusation; and that the author has greatly diminished our interest in
+the story, as well as needlessly violated the truth of character, by
+loading his hero with the guilt of this most revolting and improbable
+proceeding. The crimes of Constance are multiplied in like manner to
+such a degree, as both to destroy our interest in her fate, and to
+violate all probability. Her elopement was enough to bring on her doom;
+and we should have felt more for it, if it had appeared a little more
+unmerited. She is utterly debased, when she becomes the instrument of
+Marmion's murderous perfidy, and the assassin of her unwilling rival.
+
+De Wilton, again, is too much depressed throughout the poem. It is
+rather dangerous for a poet to chuse a hero who has been beaten in fair
+battle. The readers of romance do not like an unsuccessful warrior; but
+to be beaten in a judicial combat, and to have his arms reversed and
+tied on the gallows, is an adventure which can only be expiated by
+signal prowess and exemplary revenge, achieved against great odds, in
+full view of the reader. The unfortunate De Wilton, however, carries the
+stain upon him from one end of the poem to the other. He wanders up and
+down, a dishonoured fugitive, in the disguise of a palmer, through the
+five first books; and though he is knighted and mounted again in the
+last, yet we see nothing of his performances; nor is the author merciful
+enough to afford him one opportunity of redeeming his credit by an
+exploit of gallantry or skill. For the poor Lady Clare, she is a
+personage of still greater insipidity and insignificance. The author
+seems to have formed her upon the principle of Mr Pope's maxim, that
+women have no characters at all. We find her every where, where she has
+no business to be; neither saying nor doing any thing of the least
+consequence, but whimpering and sobbing over the Matrimony in her prayer
+book, like a great miss from a boarding school; and all this is the more
+inexcusable, as she is altogether a supernumerary person in the play,
+who should atone for her intrusion by some brilliancy or novelty of
+deportment. Matters would have gone on just as well, although she had
+been left behind at Whitby till after the battle of Flodden; and she is
+daggled about in the train, first of the Abbess and then of Lord
+Marmion, for no purpose, that we can see, but to afford the author an
+opportunity for two or three pages of indifferent description.
+
+Finally, we must object, both on critical and on national grounds, to
+the discrepancy between the title and the substance of the poem, and the
+neglect of Scotish feelings and Scotish character that is manifested
+throughout. Marmion is no more a tale of Flodden Field, than of Bosworth
+Field, or any other field in history. The story is quite independent of
+the national feuds of the sister kingdoms; and the battle of Flodden has
+no other connexion with it, than from being the conflict in which the
+hero loses his life. Flodden, however, is mentioned; and the
+preparations for Flodden, and the consequences of it, are repeatedly
+alluded to in the course of the composition. Yet we nowhere find any
+adequate expressions of those melancholy and patriotic sentiments which
+are still all over Scotland the accompaniment of those allusions and
+recollections. No picture is drawn of the national feelings before or
+after that fatal encounter; and the day that broke for ever the pride
+and the splendour of his country, is only commemorated by a Scotish poet
+as the period when an English warrior was beaten to the ground. There is
+scarcely one trait of true Scotish nationality or patriotism introduced
+into the whole poem; and Mr Scott's only expression of admiration or
+love for the beautiful country to which he belongs, is put, if we
+rightly remember, into the mouth of one of his Southern favourites.
+Independently of this, we think that too little pains is taken to
+distinguish the Scotish character and manners from the English, or to
+give expression to the general feeling of rivalry and mutual jealousy
+which at that time existed between the two countries.
+
+If there be any truth in what we have now said, it is evident that the
+merit of this poem cannot consist in the story. And yet it has very
+great merit, and various kinds of merit,--both in the picturesque
+representation of visible objects, in the delineation of manners and
+characters, and in the description of great and striking events. After
+having detained the reader so long with our own dull remarks, it will
+be refreshing to him to peruse a few specimens of Mr Scott's more
+enlivening strains.
+
+[Quotes over six hundred lines of _Marmion_ with brief comment.]
+
+The powerful poetry of these passages can receive no illustration from
+any praises or observations of ours. It is superior, in our
+apprehension, to all that this author has hitherto produced; and, with a
+few faults of diction, equal to any thing that has _ever_ been written
+upon similar subjects. Though we have extended our extracts to a very
+unusual length, in order to do justice to these fine conceptions, we
+have been obliged to leave out a great deal, which serves in the
+original to give beauty and effect to what we have actually cited. From
+the moment the author gets in sight of Flodden Field, indeed, to the end
+of the poem, there is no tame writing, and no intervention of ordinary
+passages. He does not once flag or grow tedious; and neither stops to
+describe dresses and ceremonies, nor to commemorate the harsh names of
+feudal barons from the Border. There is a flight of five or six hundred
+lines, in short, in which he never stoops his wing, nor wavers in his
+course; but carries the reader forward with a more rapid, sustained, and
+lofty movement, than any Epic bard that we can at present remember.
+
+From the contemplation of such distinguished excellence, it is painful
+to be obliged to turn to the defects and deformities which occur in the
+same composition. But this, though a less pleasing, is a still more
+indispensable part of our duty; and one, from the resolute discharge of
+which, much more beneficial consequences may be expected. In the work
+which contains the fine passages we have just quoted, and many of nearly
+equal beauty, there is such a proportion of tedious, hasty, and
+injudicious composition, as makes it questionable with us, whether it
+is entitled to go down to posterity as a work of classical merit, or
+whether the author will retain, with another generation, that high
+reputation which his genius certainly might make coeval with the
+language. These are the authors, after all, whose faults it is of most
+consequence to point out; and criticism performs her best and boldest
+office,--not when she tramples down the weed, or tears up the
+bramble,--but when she strips the strangling ivy from the oak, or cuts
+out the canker from the rose. The faults of the fable we have already
+noticed at sufficient length. Those of the execution we shall now
+endeavour to enumerate with greater brevity.
+
+And, in the _first_ place, we must beg leave to protest, in the name of
+a very numerous class of readers, against the insufferable number, and
+length and minuteness of those descriptions of antient dresses and
+manners, and buildings; and ceremonies, and local superstitions; with
+which the whole poem is overrun,--which render so many notes necessary,
+and are, after all, but imperfectly understood by those to whom
+chivalrous antiquity has not hitherto been an object of peculiar
+attention. We object to these, and to all such details, because they
+are, for the most part, without dignity or interest in themselves;
+because, in a modern author, they are evidently unnatural; and because
+they must always be strange, and, in a good degree, obscure and
+unintelligible to ordinary readers.
+
+When a great personage is to be introduced, it is right, perhaps, to
+give the reader some notion of his external appearance; and when a
+memorable event is to be narrated, it is natural to help the imagination
+by some picturesque representation of the scenes with which it is
+connected. Yet, even upon such occasions, it can seldom be advisable to
+present the reader with a full inventory of the hero's dress, from his
+shoebuckle to the plume in his cap, or to enumerate all the drawbridges,
+portcullisses, and diamond cut stones in the castle. Mr Scott, however,
+not only draws out almost all his pictures in these full dimensions, but
+frequently introduces those pieces of Flemish or Chinese painting to
+represent persons who are of no consequence, or places and events which
+are of no importance to the story. It would be endless to go through the
+poem for examples of this excess of minute description; we shall merely
+glance at the First Canto as a specimen. We pass the long description of
+Lord Marmion himself, with his mail of Milan steel; the blue ribbons on
+his horse's mane; and his blue velvet housings. We pass also the two
+gallant squires who ride behind him. But our patience is really
+exhausted, when we are forced to attend to the black stockings and blue
+jerkins of the inferior persons in the train, and to the whole process
+of turning out the guard with advanced arms on entering the castle.
+
+    'Four men-at-arms came _at their backs_,
+    With halberd, bill, and battle-axe:
+    They bore Lord Marmion's lance so strong,
+    And led his sumpter mules along,
+    And ambling palfrey, _when at need_
+    Him listed ease his battle-steed.
+    The last, and trustiest of the four,
+    On high his forky pennon bore;
+    Like swallow's tail, in shape and hue,
+    Flutter'd the streamer glossy blue,
+    Where, blazoned sable, as before,
+    The towering falcon seemed to soar.
+    Last, twenty yeomen, two and two,
+    In hosen black, and jerkins blue,
+    With falcons broider'd on each breast,
+    Attended on their lord's behest.
+    'Tis meet that I should tell you now,
+    How fairly armed, and ordered how,
+      The soldiers of the guard,
+    With musquet, pike, and morion,
+    To welcome noble Marmion,
+      Stood in the Castle-yard;
+    Minstrels and trumpeters were there,
+    The gunner held his _linstock yare_,
+      For welcome-shot prepared--
+
+    The guards their morrice pikes advanced,
+      The trumpets flourished brave,
+    The cannon from the ramparts glanced,
+      And thundering welcome gave.
+
+    Two pursuivants, whom tabards deck,
+    With silver scutcheon round their neck,
+      Stood on the steps of stone,
+    By which you reach the Donjon gate,
+    And there, with herald pomp and state,
+      They hailed Lord Marmion.
+    And he, their courtesy to requite,
+    Gave them a chain of twelve marks weight,
+      All as he lighted down.' p. 29-32.
+
+Sir Hugh the Heron then orders supper--
+
+    'Now broach ye a pipe of Malvoisie,
+    Bring pasties of the doe.'
+
+--And after the repast is concluded, they have some mulled wine, and
+drink good night very ceremoniously.
+
+    'Lord Marmion drank a fair good rest,
+    The Captain pledged his noble guest,
+    The cup went round among the rest.'
+
+In the morning, again, we are informed that they had prayers, and that
+knight and squire
+
+    ----'broke their fast
+    On rich substantial repast.'
+    'Then came the stirrup-cup in course,' &c., &c.
+
+And thus a whole Canto is filled up with the account of a visit and a
+supper, which lead to no consequences whatever, and are not attended
+with any circumstances which must not have occurred at every visit and
+supper among persons of the same rank at that period. Now, we are really
+at a loss to know, why the mere circumstance of a moderate antiquity
+should be supposed so far to ennoble those details, as to entitle them
+to a place in poetry, which certainly never could be claimed for a
+description of more modern adventures. Nobody, we believe, would be bold
+enough to introduce into a serious poem a description of the hussar
+boots and gold epaulets of a commander in chief, and much less to
+particularize the liveries and canes of his servants, or the order and
+array of a grand dinner, given even to the cabinet ministers. Yet these
+things are, in their own nature, fully as picturesque, and as
+interesting, as the ribbons at the mane of Lord Marmion's horse, or his
+supper and breakfast at the castle of Norham. We are glad, indeed, to
+find these little details in _old_ books, whether in prose or verse,
+because they are there authentic and valuable documents of the usages
+and modes of life of our ancestors; and we are thankful when we light
+upon this sort of information in an antient romance, which commonly
+contains matter much more tedious. Even there, however, we smile at the
+simplicity which could mistake such naked enumerations for poetical
+description; and reckon them as nearly on a level, in point of taste,
+with the theological disputations that are sometimes introduced in the
+same meritorious compositions. In a _modern_ romance, however, these
+details being no longer authentic, are of no value in point of
+information; and as the author has no claim to indulgence on the ground
+of simplicity, the smile which his predecessors excited is in some
+danger of being turned into a yawn. If he wishes sincerely to follow
+their example, he should describe the manners of his own time, and not
+of theirs. They painted from observation, and not from study; and the
+familiarity and _naivete_ of their delineations, transcribed with a
+slovenly and hasty hand from what they saw daily before them, is as
+remote as possible from the elaborate pictures extracted by a modern
+imitator from black-letter books, and coloured, not from the life, but
+from learned theories, or at best from mouldy monkish illuminations, and
+mutilated fragments of painted glass.
+
+But the times of chivalry, it may be said, were more picturesque than
+the present times. They are better adapted to poetry; and everything
+that is associated with them has a certain hold on the imagination, and
+partakes of the interest of the period. We do not mean utterly to deny
+this; nor can we stop, at present, to assign exact limits to our assent:
+but this we will venture to observe, in general, that if it be true that
+the interest which we take in the contemplation of the chivalrous era,
+arises from the dangers and virtues by which it was distinguished,--from
+the constant hazards in which its warriors passed their days, and the
+mild and generous valour with which they met those hazards,--joined to
+the singular contrast which it presented between the ceremonious polish
+and gallantry of the nobles, and the brutish ignorance of the body of
+the people:--if these are, as we conceive they are, the sources of the
+charm which still operates in behalf of the days of knightly adventure,
+then it should follow, that nothing should interest us, by association
+with that age, but what serves naturally to bring before us those
+hazards and that valour, and gallantry, and aristocratical superiority.
+Any description, or any imitation of the exploits in which those
+qualities were signalized, will do this most effectually.
+Battles,--tournaments,--penances,--deliverance of damsels,--instalments
+of knights, &c.--and, intermixed with these, we must admit some
+description of arms, armorial bearings, castles, battlements, and
+chapels: but the least and lowest of the whole certainly is the
+description of servants' liveries, and of the peaceful operations of
+eating, drinking, and ordinary salutation. These have no sensible
+connexion with the qualities or peculiarities which have conferred
+certain poetical privileges on the manners of chivalry. They do not
+enter either necessarily or naturally into our conception of what is
+interesting in those manners; and, though protected, by their
+strangeness, from the ridicule which would infallibly attach to their
+modern equivalents, are substantially as unpoetic, and as little
+entitled to indulgence from impartial criticism.
+
+We would extend this censure to a larger proportion of the work before
+us than we now choose to mention--certainly to all the stupid monkish
+legends about St Hilda and St Cuthbert--to the ludicrous description of
+Lord Gifford's habiliments of divination--and to all the various scraps
+and fragments of antiquarian history and baronial biography, which are
+scattered profusely through the whole narrative. These we conceive to be
+put in purely for the sake of displaying the erudition of the author;
+and poetry, which has no other recommendation, but that the substance of
+it has been gleaned from rare or obscure books, has, in our estimation,
+the least of all possible recommendations. Mr Scott's great talents, and
+the novelty of the style in which his romances are written, have made
+even these defects acceptable to a considerable part of his readers. His
+genius, seconded by the omnipotence of fashion, has brought chivalry
+again into temporary favour; but he ought to know, that this is a taste
+too evidently unnatural to be long prevalent in the modern world. Fine
+ladies and gentlemen now talk, indeed, of donjons, keeps, tabards,
+scutcheons, tressures, caps of maintenance, portcullisses, wimples, and
+we know not what besides; just as they did, in the days of Dr Darwin's
+popularity, of gnomes, sylphs, oxygen, gossamer, polygynia, and
+polyandria. That fashion, however, passed rapidly away; and if it be now
+evident to all the world, that Dr Darwin obstructed the extension of his
+fame, and hastened the extinction of his brilliant reputation, by the
+pedantry and ostentatious learning of his poems, Mr Scott should take
+care that a different sort of pedantry does not produce the same
+effects. The world will never be long pleased with what it does not
+readily understand; and the poetry which is destined for immortality,
+should treat only of feelings and events which can be conceived and
+entered into by readers of all descriptions.
+
+What we have now mentioned is the cardinal fault of the work before us;
+but it has other faults, of too great magnitude to be passed altogether
+without notice. There is a debasing lowness and vulgarity in some
+passages, which we think must be offensive to every reader of delicacy,
+and which are not, for the most part, redeemed by any vigour or
+picturesque effect. The venison pasties, we think, are of this
+description; and this commemoration of Sir Hugh Heron's troopers, who
+
+    'Have drunk the monks of St Bothan's ale,
+    And driven the beeves of Lauderdale;
+    Harried the wives of Greenlaw's goods,
+    And given them light to set their hoods.' p. 41.
+
+The long account of Friar John, though not without merit, offends in the
+same sort; nor can we easily conceive, how any one could venture, in a
+serious poem, to speak of
+
+    ----'the wind that blows,
+    And _warms itself against his nose_.'
+
+The speeches of squire Blount, too, are a great deal too unpolished for
+a noble youth aspiring to knighthood. On two occasions, to specify no
+more, he addresses his brother squire in these cacophonous lines--
+
+    '_St Anton' fire thee!_ wilt thou stand
+    All day with bonnet in thy hand?'
+
+And,
+
+    '_Stint in thy prate_,' quoth Blount, '_thou'dst best_,
+    And listen to our Lord's behest.'
+
+Neither can we be brought to admire the simple dignity of Sir Hugh the
+Heron, who thus encourageth his nephew,
+
+    ----'_By my fay_,
+    Well hast thou spoke--say forth thy say.'
+
+There are other passages in which the flatness and tediousness of the
+narrative is relieved by no sort of beauty, nor elegance of diction, and
+which form an extraordinary contrast with the more animated and finished
+portions of the poem. We shall not afflict our readers with more than
+one specimen of this falling off. We select it from the Abbess's
+explanation to De Wilton.
+
+    'De Wilton and Lord Marmion wooed
+    Clara de Clare, of Gloster's blood;
+    (Idle it were of Whitby's dame,
+    To say of that same blood I came;)
+    And once, when jealous rage was high,
+    Lord Marmion said despiteously,
+    Wilton was traitor in his heart,
+    And had made league with Martin Swart,
+    When he came here on Simnel's part;
+    And only cowardice did restrain
+    His rebel aid on Stokefield's plain,--
+    And down he threw his glove:--the thing
+    Was tried, as wont, before the king;
+    Where frankly did De Wilton own,
+    That Swart in Guelders he had known;
+    And that between them then there went
+    Some scroll of courteous compliment.
+    For this he to his castle sent;
+    But when his messenger returned,
+    Judge how De Wilton's fury burned!
+    For in his packet there were laid
+    Letters that claimed disloyal aid,
+    And proved King Henry's cause betrayed.' p. 272-274.
+
+In some other places, Mr Scott's love of variety has betrayed him into
+strange imitations. This is evidently formed on the school of Sternhold
+and Hopkins.
+
+    'Of all the palaces so fair,
+      Built for the royal dwelling,
+    In Scotland, far beyond compare,
+      Linlithgow is excelling.'
+
+The following is a sort of mongrel between the same school, and the
+later one of Mr Wordsworth.
+
+    'And Bishop Gawin, as he rose,
+    Said--Wilton, grieve not for thy woes,
+      Disgrace, and trouble;
+    For He, who honour best bestows,
+      May give thee double.'
+
+There are many other blemishes, both of taste and of diction, which we
+had marked for reprehension, but now think it unnecessary to specify;
+and which, with some of those we have mentioned, we are willing to
+ascribe to the haste in which much of the poem seems evidently to have
+been composed. Mr Scott knows too well what is due to the public, to
+make any boast of the rapidity with which his works are written; but the
+dates and the extent of his successive publications show sufficiently
+how short a time could be devoted to each; and explain, though they do
+not apologize for, the many imperfections with which they have been
+suffered to appear. He who writes for immortality should not be sparing
+of time; and if it be true, that in every thing which has a principle of
+life, the period of gestation and growth bears some proportion to that
+of the whole future existence, the author now before us should tremble
+when he looks back on the miracles of his own facility.
+
+We have dwelt longer on the beauties and defects of this poem, than we
+are afraid will be agreeable either to the partial or the indifferent;
+not only because we look upon it as a misapplication, in some degree, of
+very extraordinary talents, but because we cannot help considering it as
+the foundation of a new school, which may hereafter occasion no little
+annoyance both to us and to the public. Mr Scott has hitherto filled the
+whole stage himself; and the very splendour of his success has probably
+operated, as yet, rather to deter, than to encourage, the herd of rivals
+and imitators: but if, by the help of the good parts of his poem, he
+succeeds in suborning the verdict of the public in favour of the bad
+parts also, and establishes an indiscriminate taste for chivalrous
+legends and romances in irregular rhime, he may depend upon having as
+many copyists as Mrs Radcliffe or Schiller, and upon becoming the
+founder of a new schism in the catholic poetical church, for which, in
+spite of all our exertions, there will probably be no cure, but in the
+extravagance of the last and lowest of its followers. It is for this
+reason that we conceive it to be our duty to make one strong effort to
+bring back the great apostle of the heresy to the wholesome creed of
+his instructors, and to stop the insurrection before it becomes
+desperate and senseless, by persuading the leader to return to his duty
+and allegiance. We admire Mr Scott's genius as much as any of those who
+may be misled by its perversion; and, like the curate and the barber in
+Don Quixote, lament the day when a gentleman of such endowments was
+corrupted by the wicked tales of knight-errantry and enchantment.
+
+We have left ourselves no room to say any thing of the epistolary
+effusions which are prefixed to each of the cantos. They certainly are
+not among the happiest productions of Mr Scott's muse. They want
+interest in the subjects, and finish in the execution. There is too much
+of them about the personal and private feelings and affairs of the
+author; and too much of the remainder about the most trite commonplaces
+of politics and poetry. There is a good deal of spirit, however, and a
+good deal of nature intermingled. There is a fine description of St
+Mary's loch, in that prefixed to the second canto; and a very pleasing
+representation of the author's early tastes and prejudices, in that
+prefixed to the third. The last, which is about Christmas, is the worst;
+though the first, containing a threnody on Nelson, Pitt, and Fox,
+exhibits a more remarkable failure. We are unwilling to quarrel with a
+poet on the score of politics; but the manner in which he has chosen to
+praise the last of these great men, is more likely, we conceive, to give
+offence to his admirers, than the most direct censure. The only deed for
+which he is praised, is for having broken off the negotiation for peace;
+and for this act of firmness, it is added, Heaven rewarded him with a
+share in the honoured grave of Pitt! It is then said, that his errors
+should be forgotten, and that he _died_ a Briton--a pretty plain
+insinuation, that, in the author's opinion, he did not live one; and
+just such an encomium as he himself pronounces over the grave of his
+villain hero Marmion. There was no need, surely, to pay compliments to
+ministers or princesses, either in the introduction or in the body of a
+romance of the 16th century. Yet we have a laboured lamentation over the
+Duke of Brunswick, in one of the epistles; and in the heart of the poem,
+a triumphant allusion to the siege of Copenhagen--the last exploit,
+certainly, of British valour, on which we should have expected a
+chivalrous poet to found his patriotic gratulations. We have no
+business, however, on this occasion, with the political creed of the
+author; and we notice these allusions to objects of temporary interest,
+chiefly as instances of bad taste, and additional proofs that the author
+does not always recollect, that a poet should address himself to more
+than one generation.--_The Edinburgh Review_.
+
+
+
+
+GEORGE GORDON, LORD BYRON
+
+
+_Hours of Idleness: A Series of Poems, Original and Translated_. By
+GEORGE GORDON, Lord Byron, a Minor. 8vo. pp. 200. Newark. 1807.
+
+The poesy of this young lord belongs to the class which neither gods nor
+men are said to permit. Indeed, we do not recollect to have seen a
+quantity of verse with so few deviations in either direction from that
+exact standard. His effusions are spread over a dead flat, and can no
+more get above or below the level, than if they were so much stagnant
+water. As an extenuation of this offence, the noble author is peculiarly
+forward in pleading minority. We have it in the title-page, and on the
+very back of the volume; it follows his name like a favourite part of
+his _style_. Much stress is laid upon it in the preface, and the poems
+are connected with this general statement of his case, by particular
+dates, substantiating the age at which each was written. Now, the law
+upon the point of minority, we hold to be perfectly clear. It is a plea
+available only to the defendant; no plaintiff can offer it as a
+supplementary ground of action. Thus, if any suit could be brought
+against Lord Byron, for the purpose of compelling him to put into court
+a certain quantity of poetry; and if judgment were given against him; it
+is highly probable that an exception would be taken, were he to deliver
+_for poetry_, the contents of this volume. To this he might plead
+_minority_; but as he now makes voluntary tender of the article, he hath
+no right to sue, on that ground, for the price in good current praise,
+should the goods be unmarketable. This is our view of the law on the
+point, and, we dare to say, so will it be ruled. Perhaps, however, in
+reality, all that he tells us about his youth, is rather with a view to
+increase our wonder, than to soften our censures. He possibly means to
+say, 'See how a minor can write! This poem was actually composed by a
+young man of eighteen, and this by one of only sixteen!'--But, alas, we
+all remember the poetry of Cowley at ten, and Pope at twelve; and so far
+from hearing, with any degree of surprise, that very poor verses were
+written by a youth from his leaving school to his leaving college,
+inclusive, we really believe this to be the most common of all
+occurrences; that it happens in the life of nine men in ten who are
+educated in England; and that the tenth man writes better verse than
+Lord Byron.
+
+His other plea of privilege, our author rather brings forward in order
+to wa[i]ve it. He certainly, however, does allude frequently to his
+family and ancestors--sometimes in poetry, sometimes in notes; and while
+giving up his claim on the score of rank, he takes care to remember us
+of Dr Johnson's saying, that when a nobleman appears as an author, his
+merit should be handsomely acknowledged. In truth, it is this
+consideration only, that induces us to give Lord Byron's poems a place
+in our review, beside our desire to counsel him, that he do forthwith
+abandon poetry, and turn his talents, which are considerable, and his
+opportunities, which are great, to better account.
+
+With this view, we must beg leave seriously to assure him, that the mere
+rhyming of the final syllable, even when accompanied by the presence of
+a certain number of feet,--nay, although (which does not always happen)
+those feet should scan regularly, and have been all counted accurately
+upon the fingers,--is not the whole art of poetry. We would entreat him
+to believe, that a certain portion of liveliness, somewhat of fancy, is
+necessary to constitute a poem; and that a poem in the present day, to
+be read, must contain at least one thought, either in a little degree
+different from the ideas of former writers, or differently expressed. We
+put it to his candour, whether there is any thing so deserving the name
+of poetry in verses like the following, written in 1806, and whether, if
+a youth of eighteen could say any thing so uninteresting to his
+ancestors, a youth of nineteen should publish it.
+
+    'Shades of heroes, farewell! your descendant, departing
+      From the seat of his ancestors, bids you, adieu!
+    Abroad, or at home, your remembrance imparting
+      New courage, he'll think upon glory, and you.
+
+    Though a tear dim his eye, at this sad separation,
+      'Tis nature, not fear, that excites his regret:
+    Far distant he goes, with the same emulation;
+      The fame of his fathers he ne'er can forget.
+
+    That fame, and that memory, still will he cherish,
+      He vows, that he ne'er will disgrace your renown;
+    Like you will he live, or like you will he perish;
+      When decay'd, may he mingle his dust with your own.' p. 3.
+
+Now we positively do assert, that there is nothing better than these
+stanzas in the whole compass of the noble minor's volume.
+
+Lord Byron should also have a care of attempting what the greatest poets
+have done before him, for comparisons (as he must have had occasion to
+see at his writing-master's) are odious.--Gray's Ode on Eton College,
+should really have kept out the ten hobbling stanzas 'on a distant view
+of the village and school of Harrow.'
+
+    'Where fancy, yet, joys to retrace the resemblance,
+      Of comrades, in friendship and mischief allied;
+    How welcome to me, your ne'er fading remembrance,
+      Which rests in the bosom, though hope is deny'd.' p. 4.
+
+In like manner the exquisite lines of Mr Rogers, '_On a Tear_,' might
+have warned the noble author off those premises, and spared us a whole
+dozen such stanzas as the following.
+
+        'Mild Charity's glow,
+        To us mortals below,
+    Shows the soul from barbarity clear;
+        Compassion will melt,
+        Where this virtue is felt,
+    And its dew is diffus'd in a Tear.
+
+        The man doom'd to sail,
+        With the blast of the gale,
+    Through billows Atlantic to steer,
+        As he bends o'er the wave,
+        Which may soon be his grave,
+    The green sparkles bright with a Tear.' p. 11.
+
+And so of instances in which former poets had failed. Thus, we do not
+think Lord Byron was made for translating, during his non-age, Adrian's
+Address to his Soul, when Pope succeeded so indifferently in the
+attempt. If our readers, however, are of another opinion, they may look
+at it.
+
+    'Ah! gentle, fleeting, wav'ring sprite,
+    Friend and associate of this clay!
+      To what unknown region borne,
+    Wilt thou now wing thy distant flight?
+    No more, with wonted humour gay,
+      But pallid, cheerless, and forlorn.' p. 72.
+
+However, be this as it may, we fear his translations and imitations are
+great favourites with Lord Byron. We have them of all kinds, from
+Anacreon to Ossian; and, viewing them as school exercises, they may
+pass. Only, why print them after they have had their day and served
+their turn? And why call the thing in p. 79 a translation, where _two_
+words ([Greek: thelo legein]) of the original are expanded into four
+lines, and the other thing in p. 81, where [Greek: mesonychtiois poth'
+ho rais], is rendered by means of six hobbling verses?--As to his
+Ossianic poesy, we are not very good judges, being, in truth, so
+moderately skilled in that species of composition, that we should, in
+all probability be criticizing some bit of the genuine Macpherson
+itself, were we to express our opinion of Lord Byron's rhapsodies. _If_,
+then, the following beginning of a 'Song of bards,' is by his Lordship,
+we venture to object to it, as far as we can comprehend it. 'What form
+rises on the roar of clouds, whose dark ghost gleams on the red stream
+of tempests? His voice rolls on the thunder; 'tis Orla, the brown chief
+of Otihoma. He was,' &c. After detaining this 'brown chief' some time,
+the bards conclude by giving him their advice to 'raise his fair locks;'
+then to 'spread them on the arch of the rainbow;' and 'to smile through
+the tears of the storm.' Of this kind of thing there are no less than
+_nine_ pages; and we can so far venture an opinion in their favour, that
+they look very like Macpherson; and we are positive they are pretty
+nearly as stupid and tiresome.
+
+It is a sort of privilege of poets to be egotists; but they should 'use
+it as not abusing it;' and particularly one who piques himself (though
+indeed at the ripe age of nineteen), of being 'an infant bard,'--('The
+artless Helicon I boast is youth;')--should either not know, or should
+seem not to know, so much about his own ancestry. Besides a poem above
+cited on the family seat of the Byrons, we have another of eleven pages,
+on the self-same subject, introduced with an apology, 'he certainly had
+no intention of inserting it;' but really, 'the particular request of
+some friends,' &c., &c. It concludes with five stanzas on himself, 'the
+last and youngest of a noble line.' There is a good deal also about his
+maternal ancestors, in a poem on Lachin-y-gair, a mountain where he
+spent part of his youth, and might have learned that _pibroch_ is not a
+bagpipe, any more than duet means a fiddle.
+
+As the author has dedicated so large a part of his volume to immortalize
+his employments at school and college, we cannot possibly dismiss it
+without presenting the reader with a specimen of these ingenious
+effusions. In an ode with a Greek motto, called Granta, we have the
+following magnificent stanzas.
+
+    'There, in apartments small and damp,
+      The candidate for college prizes,
+    Sits poring by the midnight lamp,
+      Goes late to bed, yet early rises.
+
+    Who reads false quantities in Sele,
+      Or puzzles o'er the deep triangle;
+    Depriv'd of many a wholesome meal,
+      In barbarous Latin doom'd to wrangle.
+
+    Renouncing every pleasing page,
+      From authors of historic use;
+    Preferring to the lettered sage,
+      The square of the hypothenuse.
+
+    Still harmless are these occupations,
+      That hurt none but the hapless student,
+    Compar'd with other recreations
+      Which bring together the imprudent.' p. 123, 124, 125.
+
+We are sorry to hear so bad an account of the college psalmody as is
+contained in the following Attic stanzas.
+
+    'Our choir would scarcely be excus'd.
+      Even as a band of new beginners;
+    All mercy, now, must be refus'd
+      To such a set of croaking sinners.
+
+    If David, when his toils were ended,
+      Had heard these blockheads sing before him
+    To us, his psalms had ne'er descended,
+      In furious mood, he would have tore 'em.' p. 126, 127.
+
+But whatever judgment may be passed on the poems of this noble minor, it
+seems we must take them as we find them, and be content; for they are
+the last we shall ever have from him. He is at best, he says, but an
+intruder into the groves of Parnassus; he never lived in a garret, like
+thorough-bred poets; and 'though he once roved a careless mountaineer in
+the Highlands of Scotland,' he has not of late enjoyed this advantage.
+Moreover, he expects no profit from his publication; and whether it
+succeeds or not 'it is highly improbable, from his situation and
+pursuits hereafter,' that he should again condescend to become an
+author. Therefore, let us take what we get and be thankful. What right
+have we poor devils to be nice? We are well off to have got so much from
+a man of this Lord's station, who does not live in a garret, but 'has
+the sway' of Newstead Abbey. Again we say, let us be thankful; and, with
+honest Sancho, bid God bless the giver, nor look the gift horse in the
+mouth.--_The Edinburgh Review_.
+
+
+_Childe Harolde's Pilgrimage. A Romaunt_. _By_ LORD BYRON. The Second
+Edition. London: Murray, Fleet Street. 1812. 8vo. pp. 300. Price 12s.
+
+If the object of poetry is to instruct by pleasing, then every poetical
+effort has a double claim upon the attention of the Christian observer.
+For we are anxious that the world should be instructed at all rates, and
+that they should be pleased where they innocently may. We are,
+therefore, by no means among those spectators who view the occasional
+ascent of a poetic luminary upon the horizon of literature, as a
+meteoric flash which has no relation to ourselves; but we feel instantly
+an eager desire to find its altitude, to take its bearings, to trace its
+course, and to calculate its influence upon surrounding bodies. When
+especially it is no more an "oaten reed" that is blown; or a "simple
+shepherd" who blows it; but when the song involves many high and solemn
+feelings, and a man of rank and notoriety strikes his golden harp, we
+feel, at once, that the increased influence of the song demands the more
+rigid scrutiny of the critic.
+
+Lord Byron is the author, beside the book before us, of a small volume
+of poems, which gave little promise, we think, of the present work; and
+of a satyrical poem, which, as far as temper is concerned, did give some
+promise of it. It had pleased more than one critic to treat his
+Lordship's first work in no very courtier-like manner; and especially
+the Lion of the north had let him feel the lashing of his angry tail.
+Not of a temperament to bear calmly even a "look that threatened him
+with insult," his Lordship seized the tomahawk of satire, mounted the
+fiery wings of his muse, and, like Bonaparte, spared neither rank, nor
+sex, nor age, but converted the republic of letters into one universal
+field of carnage. The volume called English Bards and Scotch Reviewers
+is, in short, to be considered, among other works, as one of those
+playful vessels which are said to have accompanied the Spanish armada,
+manned by executioners, and loaded with nothing but instruments of
+torture.
+
+This second work was of too sanguinary a complexion to beget a very
+pleasant impression upon the public mind; and all men, who wished well
+to peace, politeness and literature, joined in the paean sung by the
+immediate victims of his Lordship's wrath, when he embarked to soften
+his manners, and, as it were, oil his tempers, amidst the gentler
+spirits of more southern climes. Travelling, indeed, through any climes,
+may be expected to exert this mitigating influence upon the mind. Nature
+is so truly gentle, or, to speak more justly, the God of nature displays
+so expansive a benevolence in all his works; so prodigally sheds his
+blessings "upon the evil and the good;" builds up so many exquisite
+fabrics to delight the eyes of his creatures; tinges the flowers with
+such colours, and fills the grove with such music; that anyone who
+becomes familiar with nature, can scarcely remain angry with man. With
+what mitigating touches the scenery of Europe has visited our author,
+remains to be seen. That he did not disarm it of its force by regarding
+it with a cold or contemptuous eye, he himself teaches us--
+
+    "Dear Nature is the kindest mother still,
+    Though always changing in her aspect mild;
+    From her bare bosom let me take my fill,
+    Her never-weaned, though not her favoured child.
+    O she is fairest in her features wild,
+    Where nothing polished dares pollute her path;
+    To me by day or night she ever smiled,
+    Though I have marked her when none other hath,
+    And sought her more and more, and loved her most in wrath." p. 79.
+
+Our author having re-landed upon his native shores, his first deed is to
+present to his country the work before us, as the fruits of his travels.
+It is a kind of poetical journal of journeys and voyages through Spain
+and Portugal, along the shores of the Mediterranean and Archipelago, and
+through the states of ancient Greece. When we speak of journal, we mean
+rather to designate the topics of the work than the manner of its
+execution; for it is highly poetical. Most contrary to the spirit of
+those less fanciful records, his Lordship sublimely discards all facts
+and histories; all incidents; A.M. and P.M.; and bad inns and worse
+winds; and battles and feasts. Seizing merely upon the picturesque
+features in every object and event before him, he paints and records
+them with such reflections, moral or immoral, as arise in his ardent
+mind.
+
+The "Childe Harolde" is the traveller; and as he is a mighty surly
+fellow, neither loves nor is loved by any one; "through sin's long
+labyrinth had run, nor made atonement when he did amiss;" as, moreover,
+he is licentious and sceptical; Lord Byron very naturally, and
+creditably to himself, sets out in his Preface with disclaiming any
+connection with this imaginary personage. It is somewhat singular,
+however, that most of the offensive reflections in the poem are made,
+not by the "Childe," but the poet.
+
+[Here follows a summary of the two cantos, with extensive quotations.]
+
+Having by these extracts endeavoured to put our readers in possession of
+some of the finest parts of this poem, and also of those passages which
+determine its moral complexion, we shall proceed to offer a few remarks
+upon its character and pretensions in both points of view.
+
+The poem is in the stanza of Spenser--a stanza of which we think it
+difficult to say whether the excellencies or defects are the greatest.
+The paramount advantage is the variety of tone and pause of which it
+admits. The great disadvantages are, the constraint of such complicated
+rhymes, and the long suspension of the sense, especially in the latter
+half of the stanza. The noblest conception and most brilliant diction
+must be sacrificed, if four words in one place, and three in another
+cannot be found rhyming to each other. And as to the suspension of the
+sense, we are persuaded that no man reads a single stanza without
+feeling a sort of strain upon the intellect and lungs--a kind of
+suffocation of mind and body, before he can either discover the
+lingering meaning, or pronounce the nine lines. To us, we confess that
+the rhyming couplets of Mr. Scott, sometimes deviating into alternate
+rhymes, are, on both accounts, infinitely preferable. One of the ends of
+poetry is to relax, and the artificial and elaborate stanza of Spenser
+costs us too much trouble, even in the reading, to accomplish this end.
+To effect this, the sense should come to us, instead of our going far
+and wide in quest of the sense. In our conception also, the heroic line
+of ten syllables, though favourable to the most dignified order of
+poetry, appears to limp when forced into the service of sonneteers: and
+poems in the metre before us, are, after all, little better than a
+string of sonnets; of which it is the constituent principle to be rather
+pretty than grand--rather tender than martial--rather conceited than
+wise--to keep the sense suspended for eight lines, and to discharge it
+with a point in the ninth. These observations are by no means designed
+to apply especially to the author--the extreme gravity of whose general
+manner and matter, in a measure covet the dignity of the heroic line.
+But it is this discordancy of measure and subject, together with the
+obviously laboured rhymes and the halting of the sense, which in
+general, we think, have shut out the Spenserian school from popular
+reading, and have caused a distinguished critic[J] to say, that the
+"Faiery Queen will not often be read through;" and that, although it
+maintains its place upon the shelf, it is seldom found on the table of
+the modern library.
+
+Whilst, however, Lord Byron participates in this defect of his great
+original, he is to be congratulated, as a poet, but alas! in his
+poetical character alone, on much happy deviation from him. In the first
+place, he has altogether washed his hands of allegory; a species of
+fiction open to a thousand objections. In the next place, he is
+infinitely more brief than his prototype. And in the third place, he
+philosophizes and moralizes (though not indeed in a very sound strain),
+as well as paints--provides food for the mind as well as the
+eye--kindles the feeling as well as gratifies the sense. Thus far, then,
+we are among the admirers of his Lordship. But it is to be lamented,
+that what was well conceived is, from the temperament of his mind, ill
+executed; that his philosophy is, strictly speaking, "only philosophy so
+called;" that the moral emotions he feels, and is likely to communicate,
+are of a character rather to offend and pollute the mind, than to sooth
+or to improve it. This defect, however, we fear, is to be charged, not
+upon the poet, but upon the man, at least upon his principles. But,
+whatever be the cause, the consequences are dreadful. Indeed, we do not
+hesitate to say, that the temperament of his mind is the ruin of his
+poem. We shall take the liberty, as we have intimated, of touching upon
+these defects as moral delinquincies, under another head; but for the
+present we wish to notice them merely as poetical errors.
+
+The legitimate object, then, of poetry, as we have said, is to
+_instruct_ by _pleasing_; and, caeteris paribus, that poem is the best
+which conveys the noblest lessons in the most attractive form. If, in
+reply to this, it is urged that the heathen poets, and especially Homer,
+taught no lesson to his readers; we answer, that he taught all the
+lessons which, in his own days, were deemed of highest importance to his
+country. The first object of philosophers and other teachers, in those
+days, was to make good soldiers, and therefore to condemn the vices
+which interfered with successful warfare. Now be it remembered, that the
+grand topic of the Iliad is the fatal influence of the wrath of kings on
+the success of armies. Its first words are [Greek: MENIN aeide]. Besides
+this, the Iliad upholds the national mythology, or the only accredited
+religion; and by a bold fiction, bordering upon truth, displays in an
+Elysium and Tartarus, the eternal mansions of the good and bad, the
+strongest incentive to virtue and penalty to vice. Indeed, that both
+this and the Odyssey had a moral object, and that this object was
+recognized by the ancients, may be inferred from Horace, who says of
+Homer, in reference to the first poem:
+
+    "Qui, quid sit pulchrum, quid turpe, quid utile, quid non,
+    Plenius ac melius Chrysippo aut Crantore dicit."
+
+And as to the second:
+
+    "Rursum--quid virtus, et quid sapientia possit,
+    Utile proposuit nobis exemplar Ulyssem." Epist. I. 2.
+
+Many of the Odes of Horace had a patriotic subject--his Epistles and
+Satires, with those of Juvenal and Persius, were the sermons of the
+day. Virgil chiefly proposed to himself to exalt in his hero the
+character of a patriot, and, in his fictitious history, the dignity of
+his country. If the lessons they taught were of small importance or
+doubtful value, or if they often forget to "teach" in their ambition to
+"please," this is to be charged rather on the age than on the poet. They
+taught the best lessons they knew; and were satisfied to please only
+when they had nothing better to do. In modern times, it will not be
+questioned that the greatest poets have ever endeavoured to enshrine
+some moral or intellectual object in their verse. Milton calls Spenser
+"our sage serious Spenser, whom I dare be known to think a better
+teacher than Scotus or Aquinas." In like manner, the Absalom and
+Achitophel, the Hind and Panther of Dryden, the philosophic strain of
+Pope, the immortal page of Milton, and the half-inspired numbers of the
+Task, are all, in their various ways, attempts of poets to improve or
+reform the world. Every species of poetry, indeed, has received fresh
+lustre, and even taken a new place in Parnassian dignity, by a larger
+infusion of moral sentiment into its numbers. The ancient ballad has
+arisen to new dignity through the moral touches, we wish they had been
+less rare, of a Scott; and the stanza of Spenser has acquired new
+interest in the hands of Lord Byron, from the philosophical air which it
+wears. Numbers without morals are the man without "the glory." We
+sincerely wish that the moral tone of his Lordship's poem had been less
+liable to exception.
+
+His Lordship, we believe, is acquainted with ancient authors. Let him
+turn to Quinctilian, and he will find a whole chapter to prove that a
+great writer must be a good man. Let him go to Longinus, and he will
+read that a man who would write sublimely, "must spare no labour to
+educate his soul to grandeur, and impregnate it with great and generous
+ideas"--that "the faculties of the soul will then grow stupid, their
+spirit will be lost, and good sense and genius lie in ruins, when the
+care and study of man is engaged about the mortal, the worthless part of
+himself, and he has ceased to cultivate virtue, and polish his nobler
+part, his soul." Or, if poetical authority alone will satisfy a poet,
+let him learn from one of the finest of our modern poems:
+
+    "But of our souls the high-born loftier part,
+    Th' ethereal energies that touch the heart,
+    Conceptions ardent, laboring thought intense,
+    Creative fancy's wild magnificence,
+    And all the dread sublimities of song:
+    These, Virtue, these to thee alone belong:
+    Chill'd, by the breath of vice, their radiance dies,
+    And brightest burns when lighted at the skies:
+    Like vestal flames to purest bosoms given,
+    And kindled only by a ray from heaven."[K]
+
+That the object of poetry, however, is not simply to instruct, but to
+"instruct by _pleasing_," is too obvious to need a proof. However the
+original object of measure and rhythm may have been to graft truth on
+the memory, and associate it with music; they are perpetuated by the
+universal conviction that they delight the ear. Like the armour which
+adorns the modern hall, they were contrived for use, but are continued
+for ornament.
+
+Assuming this, then, to be a just definition of poetry, we repeat our
+assertion, that, in the work before us, the temperament of mind in the
+poet creates the grand defect of the poetry. If poetry should instruct,
+then he is a defective poet whose lessons rather revolt than improve the
+mind. If poetry should please, then he is a bad poet who offends the
+eye by calling up the most hideous images--who shews the world through a
+discoloured medium--who warms the heart by no generous feelings--who
+uniformly turns to us the worst side of men and things--who goes on his
+way grumbling, and labours hard to make his readers as peevish and
+wretched as himself. The tendency of the strain of Homer is to transform
+us for the moment into heroes; of Cowper, into saints; of Milton, into
+angels: but Lord Byron would almost degrade us into a Thersites or a
+Caliban; or lodge us, as fellow-grumblers, in the style of Diogenes, or
+any of his two or four-footed snarling or moody posterity. Now his
+Lordship, we trust, is accessible upon much higher grounds; but he will
+perceive that mere regard for his poetical reputation ought to induce
+him to change his manner. If, as Longinus instructs us, a man must feel
+sublimely to write sublimely, a poet must find pleasure in the objects
+of nature before him, if he hope to give pleasure to others. Let him
+remember, that not merely his conceptions, but his mind and character
+are to be imparted to us in his verse. He will, in a measure, "stamp an
+image of himself!" The fire with which we are to glow must issue from
+him. Till this change take place in him, then, he can be no great poet.
+It is Heraclitus who mourns in his pages, or Zeno who scolds, or Zoilus
+who lashes; but we look in vain for the poet, for the living fountain of
+our innocent pleasures, for the artificer of our literary delight, for
+the hand which, as by enchantment, snatches us from the little cares of
+life, whirls us into the boundless regions of imagination, "exhausting"
+one "world," and imagining others, to supply pictures which may refresh
+and charm the mind.[L] Lord Byron shews us man and nature, like the
+phantasmagoria, _in shade_; whereas, in poetry at least, we desire to
+see them illuminated by all the friendly rays which a benevolent
+imagination can impart.
+
+We have hitherto confined ourselves to an examination of the influence
+of the principles and temper of this work upon its literary pretensions;
+but his Lordship will forgive us if we now put off the mere critic for a
+moment, and address him in that graver character which we assume to
+ourselves in the title of our work. In truth, we are deeply affected by
+the spectacle his poem presents to us. As the minor poems at the
+conclusion of the work breathe the same spirit, suggest the same doubts,
+and employ the same language with the "Childe Harold" we are compelled
+to recognise the author in the hero whom he has painted. In fact, the
+disclaimer, already noticed in the Preface, seems merely like one of
+those veils worn to draw attention to the face rather than to baffle it:
+and in the work before us we are forced to recognise a character, which,
+since Rousseau gave his Confessions to the public, has scarcely ever, we
+think, darkened the horizon of letters. The reader of the "Confessions"
+is dismayed to find a man frankly avowing the most disgraceful vices;
+abandoning them, not upon principle, but merely because they have ceased
+to gratify; prepared to return to them if they promise to reward him
+better; without natural affection, neither loving, nor beloved by any;
+without peace, without hope, "without God in the world." When we search
+into the mysterious cause of this autobiographical phenomenon, we at
+once discover that Rousseau's immeasurable vanity betrayed him into a
+belief, that even his vices would vanish in the blaze of his
+excellencies; and that the world would worship him, as idolaters do
+their mishapen gods, in spite of their ugliness. The confessions of
+Lord Byron, we regret to say, bear something of an analogy to those of
+the philosopher of Geneva. Are they, then, to be traced to the _same
+source_? He plainly is far from indifferent to the opinion of
+by-standers: can he, then, conceive that this peep into the window of
+his breast must not revolt every virtuous eye? Can he boldly proclaim
+his violations of decency and of sobriety; his common contempt for all
+modifications of religion; his monstrous belief in the universal rest or
+annihilation of man in a future state; and forget that he is one of
+those who
+
+    "Play such tricks before high heaven,
+    As make the angels weep;"
+
+as offend against all moral taste; as attempt to shake the very pillars
+of domestic happiness and of public security?
+
+It is, however, a matter of congratulation, that his Lordship, in common
+with the republican Confessor, has not revealed his creed without very
+honestly displaying the influence of this creed upon his own mind. We
+should not, indeed, have credited a man of his sentiments, had he
+assured us he was happy: happiness takes no root in such soils. But it
+is still better to have his own testimony to the unmixed misery of
+licentiousness and unbelief. It is almost comforting to be told, if we
+dared to draw comfort out of the well of another man's miseries, that
+
+    "Though gay companions o'er the bowl
+      Dispel awhile the sense of ill;
+    Though pleasure fires the maddening soul,
+      The heart--the heart is lonely still."
+
+It is consolatory also to contrast the peace and triumph of the dying
+Christian, with the awful uncertainty, or rather the sullen despair,
+which breathe in these verses.
+
+    "'Aye--but to die and go'--alas,
+      Where all have gone, and all must go;
+    To be the nothing that I was,
+      Ere born to life and living woe.
+
+    "Count o'er the joys thine hours have seen,
+      Count o'er thy days from anguish free;
+    And know, whatever thou hast been,
+      'Tis something better not to be."
+
+Nor can religion be more powerfully recommended than by the following
+avowal of an apostle of the opposite system.
+
+    "No, for myself, so dark my fate
+      Through every turn of life has been,
+    Man and the world I so much hate,
+      I care not when I quit the scene."
+
+But whilst, for the benefit of others, we thus avail ourselves of the
+antidote supplied by his Lordship to his own poison, we would wish also
+that he might feel the efficacy of it himself. Could we hope that so
+humble a work as this would reach the lofty sphere in which he moves, we
+would solemnly say to him: "You are wretched, but will nothing make you
+happy? You hate all men; will nothing warm you with new feelings? You
+are (as you say) hated by all; will nothing make you an object of
+affection? Suppose yourself the victim of some disease, which resisted
+many ordinary applications; but that all who used one medicine uniformly
+pronounced themselves cured:--would it be worthy of a philosopher not
+merely to neglect the remedy, but to traduce it? Such, however, my Lord,
+is the fatuity of your own conduct as to the religion of Christ.
+Thousands, as wretched as yourself, have found 'a Comforter' in Him;
+thousands, having stepped into these waters, have been healed of their
+disease; thousands, touching the hem of His garment, have found 'virtue
+go out of it.' Beggared then of every other resource, try this.
+'Acquaint yourself with God, and be at peace.'" His Lordship may
+designate this language by that expressive monosyllable, cant; and may
+possibly, before long, hunt us down, as a sort of mad March hare, with
+the blood-hounds of his angry muse. But we hope better things of him. We
+assure him, that, whatever may be true of others, we do not "hate him."
+As Christians, even he who professes to be unchristian is dear to us. We
+regard the waste of his fine talents, and the laboured suppression and
+apparent extinction of his better feelings, with the deepest
+commiseration and sorrow. We long to see him escape from the black cloud
+which, by what may fairly be called his "black art," he has conjured up
+around himself. We hope to know him as a future buttress of his shaken
+country, and as a friend of his yet "unknown God." Should this change,
+by the mercy of God, take place, what pangs would many passages of his
+present work cost him! Happy should we be, could we persuade him, in the
+bare anticipation of such a change, even now to contrive for his future
+happiness, by expunging sentiments that would then so much embitter it.
+Should he never change; yet, such an act would prove, that, at least, he
+meditated no cruel invasion upon the joys of others. Even Rousseau
+taught his child religion, as a delusion essential to happiness. The
+philosophic Tully also, if a belief in futurity were an error, deemed it
+one with which it was impossible to part. Let the author then, at all
+events, leave us in unmolested possession of our supposed privileges.
+_He_ plainly knows no noble or "royal way" to happiness. _We_ find in
+religion a bark that rides the waves in every storm; a sun that never
+goes down; a living fountain of waters. Religion is suffered to change
+its aspect and influence according to the eye and faith of the
+examiner. Like one side of the pillar of the wilderness, it may merely
+darken and perplex his Lordship's path: to millions it is like the
+opposite side of that pillar to the Israelites, the symbol of Deity; the
+pillar of hallowed flame, which lights and guides, and cheers them as
+they toil onward through the pilgrimage of life. Could we hear any voice
+proclaim of him, as of one reclaimed from as inveterate, though more
+honest, prejudices, "behold, he prayeth;" we should hope that here also
+the scales would drop from the eyes, and his Lordship become an eloquent
+defender and promulgator of the religion which he now scorns.--_The
+Christian Observer_.
+
+[Footnote J: Hume.]
+
+[Footnote K: Grant's Restoration of Learning in the East.]
+
+[Footnote L: We cannot resist the temptation of saying, that in this
+highest department of the poet's art, we know of no living poet who will
+bear a comparison with Mr. Southey.]
+
+
+
+
+PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
+
+
+_Alastor_; or, The Spirit of Solitude; and other Poems. By Percy Bysshe
+Shelley. Crown 8vo. pp. 101. Baldwin, and Co. 1816.
+
+We must candidly own that these poems are beyond our comprehension; and
+we did not obtain a clue to their sublime obscurity, till an address to
+Mr. Wordsworth explained in what school the author had formed his taste.
+We perceive, through the "darkness visible" in which Mr. Shelley veils
+his subject, some beautiful imagery and poetical expressions: but he
+appears to be a poet "whose eye, in a fine phrenzy rolling," seeks only
+such objects as are "above this visible diurnal sphere;" and therefore
+we entreat him, for the sake of his reviewers as well as of his other
+readers, (if he has any,) to subjoin to his next publication an _ordo_,
+a glossary, and copious notes, illustrative of his allusions and
+explanatory of his meaning.--_The Monthly Review_.
+
+
+_The Cenci. A Tragedy, in Five Acts_. By PERCY BYSSHE SHELL[E]Y. Italy.
+1819. pp. 104.
+
+There has lately arisen a new-fangled style of poetry, facetiously
+yclept the Cockney School, that it would really be worth any one's while
+to enter as a candidate. The qualifications are so easy, that he need
+never doubt the chance of his success, for he has only to knock, and it
+shall be opened unto him. The principal requisites for admission, in a
+literary point of view, are as follows. First, an inordinate share of
+affectation and conceit, with a few occasional good things sprinkled,
+like green spots of verdure in a wilderness, with a "parca quod satis
+est manu." Secondly, a prodigious quantity of assurance, that neither
+God nor man can daunt, founded on the honest principle of "who is like
+unto me?" and lastly, a contempt for all institutions, moral and divine,
+with secret yearnings for aught that is degrading to human nature, or
+revolting to decency. These qualifications ensured, a regular initiation
+into the Cockney mysteries follows as a matter of course, and the novice
+enlists himself under their banners, proud of his newly-acquired honors,
+and starched up to the very throat in all the prim stiffness of his
+intellect. A few symptoms of this literary malady appeared as early as
+the year 1795, but it then assumed the guise of simplicity and pathos.
+It was a poetical Lord Fanny. It wept its pretty self to death by
+murmuring brooks, and rippling cascades, it heaved delicious sighs over
+sentimental lambs, and love-lorn sheep, apostrophized donkies in the
+innocence of primaeval nature; sung tender songs to tender nightingales;
+went to bed without a candle, that it might gaze on the chubby faces of
+the stars; discoursed sweet nothings to all who would listen to its
+nonsense; and displayed (_horrendum dictu_) the acute profundity of its
+grief in ponderous folios and spiral duodecimos. The literary world,
+little suspecting the dangerous consequences of this distressing malady,
+suffered it to germinate in silence; and not until they became
+thoroughly convinced that the disorder was of an epidemical nature, did
+they start from their long continued lethargy. But it was then too late!
+The evil was incurable; it branched out into the most vigorous
+ramifications, and following the scriptural admonition, "Increase and
+multiply," disseminated its poetry and its prose throughout a great part
+of England. As a dog, when once completely mad, is never satisfied until
+he has bitten half a dozen more, so the Cockney professors, in laudable
+zeal for the propagation of their creed, were never at rest until they
+had spread their own doctrines around them. They stood on the house tops
+and preached, 'till of a verity they were black in the face with the
+heating quality of their arguments; they stationed themselves by the bye
+roads and hedges, to discuss the beauties of the country; they looked
+out from their garrett [_sic_] windows in Grub-street, and exclaimed,
+"_O! rus, quando ego te aspiciam_;" and gave such afflicting tokens of
+insanity, that the different reviewers and satirists of the day kindly
+laced them in the strait jackets of their criticism. "But all this
+availeth _us_ nothing," exclaimed the critics, "so long as _we_ see
+Mordecai the Jew sitting at the gate of the Temple; that is to say, as
+long as there is one Cockney pericranium left unscalped by the tomahawks
+of our satire." But notwithstanding the strenuous exertions of all those
+whose brains have not been cast in the mould of this new species of
+intellectual dandyism, the evil has been daily and even hourly
+increasing; and so prodigious is the progressive ratio of its march,
+that the _worthy_ Society for the Suppression of Vice should be called
+upon to eradicate it. It now no longer masks its real intentions under
+affected purity of sentiment; its countenance has recently acquired a
+considerable addition of brass, the glitter of which has often been
+mistaken for sterling coin, and incest, adultery, murder, blasphemy, are
+among other favorite topics of its discussion. It seems to delight in an
+utter perversion of all moral, intellectual, and religious qualities. It
+gluts over the monstrous deformities of nature; finds gratification in
+proportion to the magnitude of the crime it extolls; and sees no virtue
+but in vice; no sin, but in true feeling. Like poor Tom, in Lear, whom
+the foul fiend has possessed for many a day, it will run through
+ditches, through quagmires, and through bogs, to see a man stand on his
+head for the exact space of half an hour. Ask the reason of this raging
+appetite for eccentricity, the answer is, such a thing is out of the
+beaten track of manhood, _ergo_, it is praiseworthy.
+
+Among the professors of the Cockney school, Mr. Percy Bysshe Shell[e]y
+is one of the most conspicuous. With more fervid imagination and
+splendid talents than nine-tenths of the community, he yet prostitutes
+those talents by the utter degradation to which he unequivocally
+consigns them. His Rosalind and Helen, his Revolt of Islam, and his
+Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude, while they possess beauties of a
+superior order, are lamentably deficient in morality and religion. The
+doctrines they inculcate are of the most evil tendency; the characters
+they depict are of the most horrible description; but in the midst of
+these disgraceful passages, there are beauties of such exquisite, such
+redeeming qualities, that we adore while we pity--we admire while we
+execrate--and are tempted to exclaim with the last of the Romans, "Oh!
+what a fall is _here_, my countrymen." In the modern Eclogue of Rosalind
+and Helen in particular, there is a pensive sadness, a delicious
+melancholy, nurst in the purest, the deepest recesses of the heart, and
+springing up like a fountain in the desert, that pervades the poem, and
+forms its principal attraction. The rich yet delicate imagery that is
+every where scattered over it, is like the glowing splendor of the
+setting sun, when he retires to rest, amid the blessings of exulting
+nature. It is the balmy breath of the summer breeze, the twilight's last
+and holiest sigh. In the dramatic poem before us, the interest is of a
+different nature; it is dark--wild, and unearthly. The characters that
+appear in it are of no mortal stamp; they are daemons in human guise,
+inscrutable in their actions, subtle in their revenge. Each has his
+smile of awful meaning--his purport of hellish tendency. The tempest
+that rages in his bosom is irrepressible but by death. The phrenzied
+groan that diseased imagination extorts from his perverted soul, is as
+the thunder-clap that reverberates amid the cloud-capt summits of the
+Alps. It is the storm that convulses all nature--that lays bare the face
+of heaven, and gives transient glimpses of destruction yet to be. Then
+in the midst of all these accumulated horrors comes the gentle Beatrice,
+
+    "Who in the gentleness of thy sweet youth
+    Hast never trodden on a worm, or bruised
+    A living flower, but thou hast pitied it
+    With needless tears." Page 50.
+
+She walks in the light of innocence; in the unclouded sunshine of
+loveliness and modesty; but her felicity is transient as the calm that
+precedes the tempest; and in the very whispers of her virtue, you hear
+the indistinct muttering of the distant thunder. She is conceived in
+the true master spirit of genius; and in the very instant of her
+parricide, comes home to our imagination fresh in the spring time of
+innocence--hallowed in the deepest recesses of melancholy. But
+notwithstanding all these transcendant qualities, there are numerous
+passages that warrant our introductory observations respecting the
+Cockney school, and plunge "full fathom five," into the profoundest
+depths of the Bathos. While, therefore, we do justice to the abilities
+of the author, we shall bestow a passing smile or two on his unfortunate
+Cockney propensities.
+
+The following are the principal incidents of the play. Count Cenci, the
+_daemon_ of the piece, delighted with the intelligence of the death of
+two of his sons, recounts at a large assembly, specially invited for the
+purpose, the circumstances of the dreadful transaction. Lucretia, his
+wife, Beatrice, his daughter, and the other guests, are of course
+startled at his transports; but when they hear his awful imprecations,
+
+    "Oh, thou bright wine whose purple splendor leaps
+    And bubbles gaily in this golden bowl
+    Under the lamp light, as my spirits do,
+    To hear the death of my accursed sons!
+    Could I believe thou wert their mingled blood,
+    Then would I taste thee like a sacrament,
+    And pledge with thee the mighty Devil in Hell,
+    Who, if a father's curses, as men say,
+    Climb with swift wings after their children's souls,
+    And drag them from the very throne of Heaven,
+    Now triumphs in my triumph!--But thou art
+    Superfluous; I have drunken deep of joy
+    And I will taste no other wine tonight--"
+
+their horror induces them to leave the room. Beatrice, in the meantime,
+who has been rating her parent for his cruelty, is subjected to every
+species of insult; and he sends her to her own apartment, with the
+hellish intention of prostituting her innocence, and contaminating, as
+he pithily expresses it, "both body and soul." The second act introduces
+us to a tete-a-tete between Bernardo (another of Cenci's sons) and
+Lucretia; when their conference is suddenly broken off, by the abrupt
+entrance of Beatrice, who has escaped from the pursuit of the Count. She
+recapitulates the injuries she has received from her father, the most
+atrocious of which appear to be, that he has given them all "ditch
+water" to drink, and "buffalos" to eat. But before we proceed further,
+we have a word or two respecting this same ditch water, and buffalo's
+flesh, which we shall mention, as a piece of advice to the author. It is
+well known, we believe, in a case of lunacy, that the first thing
+considered is, whether the patient has done any thing sufficiently
+foolish, to induce his relatives to apply for a statute against him: now
+any malicious, evil-minded person, were he so disposed, might make
+successful application to the court against the luckless author of the
+_Cenci, a tragedy in five acts_. Upon which the judge with all the
+solemnity suitable to so melancholy a circumstance as the decay of the
+mental faculties, would ask for proofs of the defendant's lunacy; upon
+which the plaintiff would produce the affecting episode of the ditch
+water and buffalo flesh; upon which the judge would shake his head, and
+acknowledge the insanity; upon which the defendant would be incarcerated
+in Bedlam.
+
+To return from this digression, we are next introduced to Giacomo,
+another of Cenci's hopeful progeny, who, like the rest, has a dreadful
+tale to unfold of his father's cruelty towards him. Orsino, the favored
+lover of Beatrice, enters at the moment of his irritation; and by the
+most artful pleading ultimately incites him to the murder of his
+father, in which he is to be joined by the rest of the family. The plot,
+after one unlucky attempt, succeeds; and at the moment of its
+accomplishment, is discovered by a messenger, who is despatched to the
+lonely castle of Petrella (one of the Count's family residences), with a
+summons of attendance from the Pope. We need hardly say that the
+criminals are condemned; and not even the lovely Beatrice is able to
+escape the punishment of the law. The agitation she experiences after
+the commission of the incest, is powerfully descriptive.
+
+              "How comes this hair undone?
+    Its wandering strings must be what blind me so,
+    And yet I tied it fast.--O, horrible!
+    The pavement sinks under my feet! The walls
+    Spin round! I see a woman weeping there,
+    And standing calm and motionless, whilst I
+    Slide giddily as the world reels--My God!
+    The beautiful blue heaven is flecked with blood!
+    The sunshine on the floor is black! The air
+    Is changed to vapours such as the dead breathe
+    In charnel pits! Pah! I am choaked! There creeps
+    A clinging, black, contaminating mist
+    About me--'tis substantial, heavy, thick,
+    I cannot pluck it from me, for it glues
+    My fingers and my limbs to one another,
+    And eats into my sinews, and dissolves
+    My flesh to a pollution, poisoning
+    The subtle, pure, and inmost spirit of life!"
+
+At first she concludes that she is mad; but then pathetically checks
+herself by saying, "No, I am dead." Lucretia naturally enough inquires
+into the cause of her disquietude, and but too soon discovers, by the
+broken hints of the victim, the source of her mental agitation.
+Terrified at their defenceless state, they then mutually conspire with
+Orsino against the Count; and Beatrice proposes to way-lay him (a plot,
+however, which fails) in a _deep and dark ravine_, as he journeys to
+Petrella.
+
+              "But I remember
+    Two miles on this side of the fort, the road
+    Crosses a deep ravine; 'tis rough and narrow,
+    And winds with short turns down the precipice;
+    And in its depth there is a mighty rock,
+    Which has, from unimaginable years,
+    Sustained itself with terror and with toil
+    Over a gulph, and with the agony
+    With which it clings seems slowly coming down;
+    Even as a wretched soul hour after hour,
+    Clings to the mass of life; yet clinging, leans;
+    And leaning, makes more dark the dread abyss
+    In which it fears to fall: beneath this crag
+    Huge as despair, as if in weariness,
+    The melancholy mountain yawns--below,
+    You hear but see not an impetuous torrent
+    Raging among the caverns, and a bridge
+    Crosses the chasm; and high above there grow,
+    With intersecting trunks, from crag to crag,
+    Cedars, and yews, and pines; whose tangled hair
+    Is matted in one solid roof of shade
+    By the dark ivy's twine. At noon day here
+    'Tis twilight, and at sunset blackest night."
+
+Giacomo, meanwhile, who was privy to the transaction, awaits the arrival
+of Orsino, with intelligence of the murder, in a state of the most
+fearful torture and suspence.
+
+          "Tis midnight, and Orsino comes not yet.
+              (_Thunder, and the sound of a storm._)
+    What! can the everlasting elements
+    Feel with a worm like man? If so, the shaft
+    Of mercy-winged lightning would not fall
+    On stones and trees. My wife and children sleep:
+    They are now living in unmeaning dreams:
+    But I must wake, still doubting if that deed
+    Be just which was most necessary. O,
+    Thou unreplenished lamp! whose narrow fire
+    Is shaken by the wind, and on whose edge
+    Devouring darkness hovers! Thou small flame,
+    Which, as a dying pulse rises and falls,
+    Still flickerest up and down, how very soon,
+    Did I not feed thee, thou wouldst fail and be
+    As thou hadst never been! So wastes and sinks
+    Even now, perhaps, the life that kindled mine:
+    But that no power can fill with vital oil
+    That broken lamp of flesh. Ha! 'tis the blood
+    Which fed these veins that ebbs till all is cold:
+    It is the form that moulded mine that sinks
+    Into the white and yellow spasms of death:
+    It is the soul by which mine was arrayed
+    In God's immortal likeness which now stands
+    Naked before Heaven's judgment seat!
+                        (_a bell strikes_)
+                    One! Two!
+    The hours crawl on; and when my hairs are white
+    My son will then perhaps be waiting thus.
+    Tortured between just hate and vain remorse;
+    Chiding the tardy messenger of news
+    Like those which I expect. I almost wish
+    He be not dead, although my wrongs are great;
+    Yet--'tis Orsino's step."
+
+We envy not the feelings of any one who can read the curses that Cenci
+invokes on his daughter, when she refuses to repeat her guilt, without
+the strongest disgust, notwithstanding the intense vigor of the
+imprecations
+
+      "_Cen._ (_Kneeling_) God!
+    Hear me! If this most specious mass of flesh,
+    Which thou hast made my daughter; this my blood,
+    This particle of my divided being;
+    Or rather, this my bane and my disease,
+    Whose sight infects and poisons me; this devil
+    Which sprung from me as from a hell, was meant
+    To aught good use; if her bright loveliness
+    Was kindled to illumine this dark world;
+    If nursed by thy selectest dew of love
+    Such virtues blossom in her as should make
+    The peace of life, I pray thee for my sake
+    As thou the common God and Father art
+    Of her, and me, and all; reverse that doom!
+    Earth, in the name of God, let her food be
+    Poison, until she be encrusted round
+    With leprous stains! Heaven, rain upon her head
+    The blistering drops of the Maremma's dew,
+    Till she be speckled like a toad; parch up
+    Those love-enkindled lips, warp those fine limbs
+    To loathed lameness! All beholding sun,
+    Strike in thine envy those life darting eyes
+    With thine own blinding beams!
+      _Lucr._ Peace! Peace!
+    For thine own sake unsay those dreadful words.
+    When high God grants he punishes such prayers.
+      _Cen._ (_Leaping up, and throwing his right hand toward Heaven_)
+    He does his will, I mine! This in addition,
+    That if she have a child--
+      _Lucr._ Horrible thought!
+      _Cen._ That if she ever have a child; and thou,
+    Quick Nature! I adjure thee by thy God,
+    That thou be fruitful in her, and encrease
+    And multiply, fulfilling his command,
+    And my deep imprecation! May it be
+    A hideous likeness of herself, that as
+    From a distorting mirror, she may see
+    Her image mixed with what she most abhors,
+    Smiling upon her from her nursing breast.
+    And that the child may from its infancy
+    Grow, day by day, more wicked and deformed,
+    Turning her mother's love to misery:
+    And that both she and it may live until
+    It shall repay her care and pain with hate,
+    Or what may else be more unnatural.
+    So he may hunt her thro' the clamorous scoffs
+    Of the loud world to a dishonoured grave.
+    Shall I revoke this curse? Go, bid her come,
+    Before my words are chronicled in Heaven.
+                              (_Exit_ LUCRETIA.)
+    I do not feel as if I were a man,
+    But like a fiend appointed to chastise
+    The offences of some unremembered world.
+    My blood is running up and down my veins;
+    A fearful pleasure makes it prick and tingle:
+    I feel a giddy sickness of strange awe;
+    My heart is beating with an expectation
+    Of horrid joy."
+
+_Ohe! jam satis est!!_--The _minutiae_ of this _affectionate_ parent's
+curses forcibly remind us of the equally minute excommunication so
+admirably recorded in Tristram Shandy. But Sterne has the start of him;
+for though Percy Bysshe Shell[e]y, Esquire, has contrived to include in
+the imprecations of Cenci, the eyes, head, lips, and limbs of his
+daughter, the other has anticipated his measures, in formally and
+specifically anathematizing the lights, lungs, liver, and _all odd
+joints_, without excepting even the great toe of his victim.--To proceed
+in our review; the dying expostulations of poor Beatrice, are beautiful
+and affecting, though occasionally tinged with the Cockney style of
+burlesque; for instance, Bernado asks, when they tear him from the
+embraces of his sister,
+
+    "Would ye divide body from soul?"
+
+On which the judge sturdily replies--"That is the headsman's business."
+The idea of approaching execution paralyses the soul of Beatrice, and
+she thus frantically expresses her horror.
+
+      "_Beatr._ (_Wildly_) Oh,
+    My God! Can it be possible I have
+    To die so suddenly? So young to go
+    Under the obscure, cold, rotting, wormy ground!
+    To be nailed down into a narrow place;
+    To see no more sweet sunshine; hear no more
+    Blithe voice of living thing; muse not again
+    Upon familiar thoughts, sad, yet thus lost.
+    How fearful! to be nothing! Or to be--
+    What? O, where am I? Let me not go mad!
+    Sweet Heaven, forgive weak thoughts! If there should be
+    No God, no Heaven, no Earth in the void world;
+    The wide, grey, lampless, deep, unpeopled world!
+    If all things then should be--my father's spirit
+    His eye, his voice, his touch surrounding me;
+    The atmosphere and breath of my dead life!
+    If sometimes, as a shape more like himself,
+    Even the form which tortured me on earth,
+    Masked in grey hairs and wrinkles, he should come
+    And wind me in his hellish arms, and fix
+    His eyes on mine, and drag me down, down, down!"
+
+The author, in his preface, observes that he has committed only one
+plagiarism in his play. But with all the triumph of vanity, we here
+stoutly convict him of having wilfully, maliciously and despitefully
+stolen, the pleasing idea of the repetition of "down, down, down," from
+the equally pathetic and instructive ditty of "up, up, up," in Tom
+Thumb; the exordium or prolegomena to which floweth _sweetly_ and
+_poetically_ thus:--
+
+    "Here we go up, up, up,
+    And here we go _down, down, down_!"
+
+In taking leave of Mr. Shelley, we have a few observations to whisper in
+his ear. That he has the seedlings of poetry in his composition no one
+can deny, after the perusal of many of our extracts; that he employs
+them worthily, is more than can be advanced. His style, though disgraced
+by occasional puerilities, and simpering affectations, is in general
+bold, vigorous, and manly; but the disgraceful fault to which we object
+in his writings, is the scorn he every where evinces for all that is
+moral or religious. If he must be skeptical--if he must be lax in his
+human codes of excellence, let him be so; but in God's name let him not
+publish his principles, and cram them down the throats of others.
+Existence in its present state is heavy enough; and if we take away the
+idea of eternal happiness, however visionary it may appear to some, who
+or what is to recompence us for the loss we have sustained? Will
+scepticism lighten the bed of death?--Will vice soothe the pillow of
+declining age? If so! let us all be sceptics, let us all be vicious; but
+until their admirable efficacy is proved, let us jog on the beaten
+course of life, neither influenced by the scoff of infidelity, nor
+fascinated by the dazzling but flimsy garb of licentiousness and
+immorality.--_The London Magazine_.
+
+
+ADONAIS. _An Elegy, on the Death of Mr. John Keats_. By P.B. Shelley.
+
+We have already given some of our columns to this writer's merits, and
+we will not now repeat our convictions of his incurable absurdity. On
+the last occasion of our alluding to him, we were compelled to notice
+his horrid licentiousness and profaneness, his fearful offences to all
+the maxims that honorable minds are in the habit of respecting, and his
+plain defiance of Christianity. On the present occasion we are not met
+by so continued and regular a determination of insult, though there are
+atrocities to be found in the poem quite enough to make us caution our
+readers against its pages. Adonais is an elegy after _the manner of
+Moschus_, on a foolish young man, who, after writing some volumes of
+very weak, and, in the greater part, of very indecent poetry, died some
+time since of a consumption: the breaking down of an infirm constitution
+having, in all probability, been accelerated by the discarding his neck
+cloth, a practice of the cockney poets, who look upon it as essential to
+genius, inasmuch as neither Michael Angelo, Raphael or Tasso are
+supposed to have worn those antispiritual incumbrances. In short, as the
+vigour of Sampson lay in his hair, the secret of talent with these
+persons lies in the neck; and what aspirations can be expected from a
+mind enveloped in muslin. Keats caught cold in training for a genius,
+and, after a lingering illness, died, to the great loss of the
+Independents of South America, whom he had intended to visit with an
+English epic poem, for the purpose of exciting them to liberty. But
+death, even the death of the radically presumptuous profligate, is a
+serious thing; and as we believe that Keats was made presumptuous
+chiefly by the treacherous puffing of his cockney fellow gossips, and
+profligate in his poems merely to make them saleable, we regret that he
+did not live long enough to acquire common sense, and abjure the
+pestilent and perfidious gang who betrayed his weakness to the grave,
+and are now panegyrising his memory into contempt. For what is the
+praise of cockneys but disgrace, or what honourable inscription can be
+placed over the dead by the hands of notorious libellers, exiled
+adulterers, and avowed atheists.
+
+Adonais, an Elegy, is the form in which Mr. Shelley puts forth his woes.
+We give a verse at random, premising that there is no story in the
+elegy, and that it consists of fifty-five stanzas, which are, to our
+seeming, altogether unconnected, interjectional, and nonsensical. We
+give one that we think among the more comprehensible. An address to
+Urania:--
+
+      "Most musical of mourners, weep anew!
+      Not all to that bright station dared to climb;
+    And _happier they their happiness who knew_,
+      Whose _tapers yet burn thro' that night of time
+    In which suns perish'd_; Others more sublime,
+      Struck by the _envious_ wroth of man or GOD!!
+    _Have sunk extinct in their refulgent prime_;
+      And some yet live," &c.----
+
+Now what is the meaning of this, or of any sentence of it, except indeed
+that horrid blasphemy which attributes crime to the Great Author of all
+virtue! The rest is mere empty absurdity. If it were worth our while to
+dilate on the folly of the production, we might find examples of every
+species of the ridiculous within those few pages.
+
+Mr. Shelley summons all kinds of visions round the grave of this young
+man, who, if he has now any feeling of the earth, must shrink with
+shame and disgust from the touch of the hand that could have written
+that impious sentence. These he classifies under names, the greater
+number as new we believe to poetry as strange to common sense. Those
+are--
+
+                  ----"Desires and _Adorations_
+      Winged _Persuasions_ and veiled Destinies,
+    _Splendours_, and _Glooms_, and glimmering _Incarnations_
+      Of hopes and fears and twilight Phantasies,
+    And Sorrow with her family of _Sighs_,
+      And Pleasure, _blind with tears_! led by the _gleam_
+    Of her own _dying_ SMILE instead of eyes!!"
+
+Let our readers try to imagine these weepers, and close with "_blind_
+Pleasure led," by what? "by the _light_ of _her own dying
+smile_--instead of _eyes_!!!"
+
+We give some specimens of Mr. S.'s
+
+                _Nonsense--pastoral._
+      "_Lost Echo_ sits amid the _voiceless mountains_,[M]
+      And feeds her grief with his remember'd lay,
+    _And will no more reply_ to winds and fountains."
+                _Nonsense--physical._
+    --"for whose disdain she (Echo) pin'd away
+    Into a _shadow_ of all _sounds_!"
+                _Nonsense--vermicular._
+    "Flowers springing from the corpse
+    ----------------------illumine death
+    And _mock_ the _merry_ worm that wakes beneath."
+                _Nonsense--pathetic._
+      "Alas! that all we lov'd of him should be
+      But for our grief, as if it had not been,
+    And _grief itself be mortal_! WOE IS ME!"
+                _Nonsense--nondescript._
+      "In the death chamber for a moment Death,
+    _Blush'd to annihilation_!"
+                _Nonsense--personal._
+    "A pardlike spirit, beautiful and swift--
+      A love in _desolation mask'd_;--a Power
+    Girt _round with weakness_;--it can scarce _uplift_
+    The _weight_ of the _superincumbent hour_!"
+
+We have some idea that this fragment of character is intended for Mr.
+Shelley himself. It closes with a passage of memorable and ferocious
+blasphemy:--
+
+      ---------------"He with a sudden hand
+    Made bare his branded and ensanguin'd brow,
+    Which was like Cain's or CHRIST'S!!!"
+
+What can be said to the wretched person capable of this daring
+profanation. The name of the first murderer--the accurst of God--brought
+into the same aspect image with that of the Saviour of the World! We are
+scarcely satisfied that even to quote such passages may not be criminal.
+The subject is too repulsive for us to proceed even in expressing our
+disgust for the general folly that makes the Poem as miserable in point
+of authorship, as in point of principle. We know that among a certain
+class this outrage and this inanity meet with some attempt at
+palliation, under the idea that frenzy holds the pen. That any man who
+insults the common order of society, and denies the being of God, is
+essentially mad we never doubted. But for the madness, that retains
+enough of rationality to be wilfully mischievous, we can have no more
+lenity than for the appetites of a wild beast. The poetry of the work is
+_contemptible_--a mere collection of bloated words heaped on each other
+without order, harmony, or meaning; the refuse of a schoolboy's
+common-place book, full of the vulgarisms of pastoral poetry, yellow
+gems and blue stars, bright Phoebus and rosy-fingered Aurora; and of
+this stuff is Keats's wretched Elegy compiled.
+
+We might add instances of like incomprehensible folly from every stanza.
+A heart _keeping_, a mute _sleep_, and death _feeding_ on a mute
+_voice_, occur in one verse (page 8); Spring in despair "throws down her
+_kindling_ buds as if she Autumn were," a thing we never knew Autumn do
+with buds of any sort, the kindling kind being unknown to our botany; a
+_green lizard_ is like an _unimprisoned flame_, _waking_ out of its
+_trance_ (page 13). In the same page the _leprous corpse_ touched by the
+tender spirit of Spring, so as to exhale itself in flowers, is compared
+to "_incarnations of the stars, when splendour is changed to
+fragrance_!!!" Urania (page 15) _wounds_ the "invisible palms" of her
+tender feet by treading on human hearts as she journeys to see the
+corpse. Page 22, somebody is asked to "clasp with panting soul the
+pendulous earth," an image which, we take it, exceeds that of
+Shakespeare, to "put a girdle about it in forty minutes."
+
+It is so far a fortunate thing that this piece of impious and utter
+absurdity can have little circulation in Britain. The copy in our hands
+is one of some score sent to the Author's intimates from Pisa, where it
+has been printed in a quarto form "with the types of Didot," and two
+learned Epigraphs from Plato and Moschus. Solemn as the subject is, (for
+in truth we must grieve for the early death of any youth of literary
+ambition,) it is hardly possible to help laughing at the mock solemnity
+with which Shelley charges the Quarterly Review for having murdered his
+friend with--a critique![N] If criticism killed the disciples of that
+school, Shelley would not have been alive to write an Elegy on
+another:--but the whole is most farcical from a pen which on other
+occasions, has treated of the soul, the body, life and death agreeably
+to the opinions, the principles, and the practice of Percy Bysshe
+Shelley.--_The Literary Gazette_.
+
+[Footnote M: Though there is _no Echo_ and the mountains are
+_voiceless_, the woodmen, nevertheless, in the last line of this verse
+hear "a drear murmur between their Songs!!"]
+
+[Footnote N: This would have done excellently for a coroner's inquest
+like that on _Honey_, which lasted _thirty_ days, and was facetiously
+called the "Honey-moon."]
+
+
+
+
+JOHN KEATS
+
+
+_Endymion: A Poetic Romance_. By John Keats. London. 1818. pp. 207.
+
+Reviewers have been sometimes accused of not reading the works which
+they affected to criticise. On the present occasion we shall anticipate
+the author's complaint, and honestly confess that we have not read his
+work. Not that we have been wanting in our duty--far from it--indeed, we
+have made efforts almost as superhuman as the story itself appears to
+be, to get through it; but with the fullest stretch of our perseverance,
+we are forced to confess that we have not been able to struggle beyond
+the first of the four books of which this Poetic Romance consists. We
+should extremely lament this want of energy, or whatever it may be, on
+our parts, were it not for one consolation--namely, that we are no
+better acquainted with the meaning of the book through which we have so
+painfully toiled, than we are with that of the three which we have not
+looked into.
+
+It is not that Mr. Keats, (if that be his real name, for we almost doubt
+that any man in his senses would put his real name to such a rhapsody,)
+it is not, we say, that the author has not powers of language, rays of
+fancy, and gleams of genius--he has all these; but he is unhappily a
+disciple of the new school of what has been somewhere called Cockney
+poetry; which may be defined to consist of the most incongruous ideas in
+the most uncouth language.
+
+Of this school, Mr. Leigh Hunt, as we observed in a former Number,
+aspires to be the hierophant. Our readers will recollect the pleasant
+recipes for harmonious and sublime poetry which he gave us in his
+preface to 'Rimini,' and the still more facetious instances of his
+harmony and sublimity in the verses themselves; and they will recollect
+above all the contempt of Pope, Johnson, and such like poetasters and
+pseudo-critics, which so forcibly contrasted itself with Mr. Leigh
+Hunt's self-complacent approbation of
+
+    --'all the things itself had wrote,
+    Of special merit though of little note.'
+
+This author is a copyist of Mr. Hunt; but he is more unintelligible,
+almost as rugged, twice as diffuse, and ten times more tiresome and
+absurd than his prototype, who, though he impudently presumed to seat
+himself in the chair of criticism, and to measure his own poetry by his
+own standard, yet generally had a meaning. But Mr. Keats has advanced no
+dogmas which he was bound to support by examples; his nonsense therefore
+is quite gratuitous; he writes it for its own sake, and, being bitten by
+Mr. Leigh Hunt's insane criticism, more than rivals the insanity of his
+poetry.
+
+Mr. Keats's preface hints that his poem was produced under peculiar
+circumstances.
+
+     'Knowing within myself (he says) the manner in which this Poem has
+     been produced, it is not without a feeling of regret that I make it
+     public.--What manner I mean, will be _quite clear_ to the reader,
+     who must soon perceive great inexperience, immaturity, and every
+     error denoting a feverish attempt, rather than a deed
+     accomplished.'--_Preface_, p. vii.
+
+We humbly beg his pardon, but this does not appear to us to be _quite so
+clear_--we really do not know what he means--but the next passage is
+more intelligible.
+
+     'The two first books, and indeed the two last, I feel sensible are
+     not of such completion as to warrant their passing the
+     press.'--_Preface_, p. vii.
+
+Thus 'the two first books' are, even in his own judgment, unfit to
+appear, and 'the two last' are, it seems, in the same condition--and as
+two and two make four, and as that is the whole number of books, we have
+a clear and, we believe, a very just estimate of the entire work.
+
+Mr. Keats, however, deprecates criticism on this 'immature and feverish
+work' in terms which are themselves sufficiently feverish; and we
+confess that we should have abstained from inflicting upon him any of
+the tortures of the '_fierce hell_' of criticism, which terrify his
+imagination, if he had not begged to be spared in order that he might
+write more; if we had not observed in him a certain degree of talent
+which deserves to be put in the right way, or which, at least, ought to
+be warned of the wrong; and if, finally, he had not told us that he is
+of an age and temper which imperiously require mental discipline.
+
+Of the story we have been able to make out but little; it seems to be
+mythological, and probably relates to the loves of Diana and Endymion;
+but of this, as the scope of the work has altogether escaped us, we
+cannot speak with any degree of certainty; and must therefore content
+ourselves with giving some instances of its diction and
+versification:--and here again we are perplexed and puzzled.--At first
+it appeared to us, that Mr. Keats had been amusing himself and wearying
+his readers with an immeasurable game at _bouts-rimes_; but, if we
+recollect rightly, it is an indispensable condition at this play, that
+the rhymes when filled up shall have a meaning; and our author, as we
+have already hinted, has no meaning. He seems to us to write a line at
+random, and then he follows not the thought excited by this line, but
+that suggested by the _rhyme_ with which it concludes. There is hardly
+a complete couplet enclosing a complete idea in the whole book. He
+wanders from one subject to another, from the association, not of the
+ideas but of sounds, and the work is composed of hemistichs which, it is
+quite evident, have forced themselves upon the author by the mere force
+of the catchwords on which they turn.
+
+We shall select, not as the most striking instance, but as that least
+liable to suspicion, a passage from the opening of the poem.
+
+    ----'Such the sun, the moon,
+    Trees old and young, sprouting a shady boon
+    For simple sheep; and such are daffodils
+    With the green world they live in; and clear rills
+    That for themselves a cooling covert make
+    'Gainst the hot season; the mid forest brake,
+    Rich with a sprinkling of fair musk-rose blooms:
+    And such too is the grandeur of the dooms
+    We have imagined for the mighty dead; &c. &c.'--pp. 3, 4.
+
+Here it is clear that the word, and not the idea, _moon_ produces the
+simple sheep and their shady _boon_, and that 'the _dooms_ of the mighty
+dead' would never have intruded themselves but for the '_fair musk-rose
+blooms_.'
+
+Again.
+
+    'For 'twas the morn: Apollo's upward fire
+    Made every eastern cloud a silvery pyre
+    Of brightness so unsullied, that therein
+    A melancholy spirit well might win
+    Oblivion, and melt out his essence fine
+    Into the winds: rain-scented eglantine
+    Gave temperate sweets to that well-wooing sun;
+    The lark was lost in him; cold springs had run
+    To warm their chilliest bubbles in the grass;
+    Man's voice was on the mountains; and the mass
+    Of nature's lives and wonders puls'd tenfold,
+    To feel this sun-rise and its glories old.'--p. 8.
+
+Here Apollo's _fire_ produces a _pyre_, a silvery pyre of clouds,
+_wherein_ a spirit may _win_ oblivion and melt his essence _fine_, and
+scented _eglantine_ gives sweets to the _sun_, and cold springs had
+_run_ into the _grass_, and then the pulse of the _mass_ pulsed
+_tenfold_ to feel the glories _old_ of the new-born day, &c.
+
+One example more.
+
+    'Be still the unimaginable lodge
+    For solitary thinkings; such as dodge
+    Conception to the very bourne of heaven,
+    Then leave the naked brain: be still the leaven,
+    That spreading in this dull and clodded earth
+    Gives it a touch ethereal--a new birth.'--p. 17.
+
+_Lodge, dodge_--_heaven, leaven_--_earth, birth_; such, in six words, is
+the sum and substance of six lines.
+
+We come now to the author's taste in versification. He cannot indeed
+write a sentence, but perhaps he may be able to spin a line. Let us see.
+The following are specimens of his prosodial notions of our English
+heroic metre.
+
+    'Dear as the temple's self, so does the moon,
+    The passion poesy, glories infinite.'--p. 4.
+
+    'So plenteously all weed-hidden roots.'--p. 6.
+
+    'Of some strange history, potent to send.'--p. 18.
+
+    'Before the deep intoxication.'--p. 27.
+
+    'Her scarf into a fluttering pavilion.'--p. 33.
+
+    'The stubborn canvass for my voyage prepared--.'--p. 39.
+
+    '"Endymion! the cave is secreter
+    Than the isle of Delos. Echo hence shall stir
+    No sighs but sigh-warm kisses, or light noise
+    Of thy combing hand, the while it travelling cloys
+    And trembles through my labyrinthine hair."'--p. 48.
+
+By this time our readers must be pretty well satisfied as to the meaning
+of his sentences and the structure of his lines: we now present them
+with some of the new words with which, in imitation of Mr. Leigh Hunt,
+he adorns our language.
+
+We are told that 'turtles _passion_ their voices,' (p. 15); that 'an
+arbour was _nested_,' (p. 23); and a lady's locks '_gordian'd_ up,' (p.
+32); and to supply the place of the nouns thus verbalized Mr. Keats,
+with great fecundity, spawns new ones; such as 'men-slugs and human
+_serpentry_,' (p. 41); the '_honey-feel_ of bliss,' (p. 45); 'wives
+prepare _needments_,' (p. 13)--and so forth.
+
+Then he has formed new verbs by the process of cutting off their natural
+tails, the adverbs, and affixing them to their foreheads; thus, 'the
+wine out-sparkled,' (p. 10); the 'multitude up-followed,' (p. 11); and
+'night up-took,' (p. 29). 'The wind up-blows,' (p. 32); and the 'hours
+are down-sunken,' (p. 36.)
+
+But if he sinks some adverbs in the verbs, he compensates the language
+with adverbs and adjectives which he separates from the parent stock.
+Thus, a lady 'whispers _pantingly_ and close,' makes '_hushing_ signs,'
+and steers her skiff into a '_ripply_ cove,' (p. 23); a shower falls
+'_refreshfully_,' (45); and a vulture has a '_spreaded_ tail,' (p. 44.)
+
+But enough of Mr. Leigh Hunt and his simple neophyte.--If any one should
+be bold enough to purchase this 'Poetic Romance,' and so much more
+patient, than ourselves, as to get beyond the first book, and so much
+more fortunate as to find a meaning, we entreat him to make us
+acquainted with his success; we shall then return to the task which we
+now abandon in despair, and endeavour to make all due amends to Mr.
+Keats and to our readers.--_The Quarterly Review_.
+
+
+COCKNEY SCHOOL OF POETRY.
+
+No[.] IV.
+
+    ------------------------------OF KEATS,
+    THE MUSES' SON OF PROMISE, AND WHAT FEATS
+    HE YET MAY DO, &C.
+
+CORNELIUS WEBB.
+
+Of all the manias of this mad age, the most incurable as well as the
+most common, seems to be no other than the _Metromanie_. The just
+celebrity of Robert Burns and Miss Baillie has had the melancholy effect
+of turning the heads of we know not how many farm-servants and unmarried
+ladies; our very footmen compose tragedies, and there is scarcely a
+superannuated governess in the island that does not leave a roll of
+lyrics behind her in her band-box. To witness the disease of any human
+understanding, however feeble, is distressing; but the spectacle of an
+able mind reduced to a state of insanity is of course ten times more
+afflicting. It is with such sorrow as this that we have contemplated the
+case of Mr John Keats. This young man appears to have received from
+nature talents of an excellent, perhaps even of a superior
+order--talents which, devoted to the purposes of any useful profession,
+must have rendered him a respectable, if not an eminent citizen. His
+friends, we understand, destined him to the career of medicine, and he
+was bound apprentice some years ago to a worthy apothecary in town. But
+all has been undone by a sudden attack of the malady to which we have
+alluded. Whether Mr John had been sent home with a diuretic or composing
+draught to some patient far gone in the poetical mania, we have not
+heard. This much is certain, that he has caught the infection, and that
+thoroughly. For some time we were in hopes, that he might get off with a
+violent fit or two; but of late the symptoms are terrible. The phrenzy
+of the "Poems" was bad enough in its way; but it did not alarm us half
+so seriously as the calm, settled, imperturbable, drivelling idiocy of
+"Endymion." We hope, however, that in so young a person, and with a
+constitution originally so good, even now the disease is not utterly
+incurable. Time, firm treatment, and rational restraint, do much for
+many apparently hopeless invalids; and if Mr Keats should happen, at
+some interval of reason, to cast his eye upon our pages, he may perhaps
+be convinced of the existence of his malady, which, in such cases, is
+often all that is necessary to put the patient in a fair way of being
+cured.
+
+The readers of the Examiner newspaper were informed, some time ago, by a
+solemn paragraph, in Mr Hunt's best style, of the appearance of two new
+stars of glorious magnitude and splendour in the poetical horizon of the
+land of Cockaigne. One of these turned out, by and by, to be no other
+than Mr John Keats. This precocious adulation confirmed the wavering
+apprentice in his desire to quit the gallipots, and at the same time
+excited in his too susceptible mind a fatal admiration for the character
+and talents of the most worthless and affected of all the versifiers of
+our time. One of his first productions was the following sonnet,
+"_written on the day when Mr Leigh Hunt left prison_." It will be
+recollected, that the cause of Hunt's confinement was a series of libels
+against his sovereign, and that its fruit was the odious and incestuous
+"Story of Rimini."
+
+    "What though, for shewing truth to flattered state,
+    _Kind Hunt_ was shut in prison, yet has he,
+    In his immortal spirit been as free
+    As the sky-searching lark and as elate.
+    Minion of grandeur! think you he did wait?
+    Think you he nought but prison walls did see,
+    Till, so unwilling, thou unturn'dst the key?
+    Ah, no! far happier, nobler was his fate!
+    _In Spenser's halls!_ he strayed, and bowers fair,
+    Culling enchanted flowers; and he flew
+    _With daring Milton!_ through the fields of air;
+    To regions of his own his genius true
+    Took happy flights. Who shall his fame impair
+    When thou art dead, and all thy wretched crew?"
+
+The absurdity of the thought in this sonnet is, however, if possible,
+surpassed in another, "_addressed to Haydon_" the painter, that clever,
+but most affected artist, who as little resembles Raphael in genius as
+he does in person, notwithstanding the foppery of having his hair curled
+over his shoulders in the old Italian fashion. In this exquisite piece
+it will be observed, that Mr Keats classes together WORDSWORTH, HUNT,
+and HAYDON, as the three greatest spirits of the age, and that he
+alludes to himself, and some others of the rising brood of Cockneys, as
+likely to attain hereafter an equally honourable elevation. Wordsworth
+and Hunt! what a juxta-position! The purest, the loftiest, and, we do
+not fear to say it, the most classical of living English poets, joined
+together in the same compliment with the meanest, the filthiest, and the
+most vulgar of Cockney poetasters. No wonder that he who could be guilty
+of this should class Haydon with Raphael, and himself with Spencer
+[_sic_].
+
+    "Great spirits now on earth are sojourning;
+    He of the cloud, the cataract, the lake,
+    Who on Helvellyn's summit, wide awake,
+    Catches his freshness from Archangel's wing:
+    _He of the rose, the violet, the spring,
+    The social smile, the chain for Freedom's sake_:
+    And lo!--whose steadfastness would never take
+    A meaner sound than Raphael's whispering.
+    And other spirits there are standing apart
+    Upon the forehead of the age to come;
+    These, these will give the world another heart,
+    And other pulses. _Hear ye not the hum
+    Of mighty workings?----
+    Listen awhile ye nations, and be dumb._"
+
+The nations are to listen and be dumb! and why, good Johnny Keats?
+because Leigh Hunt is editor of the Examiner, and Haydon has painted the
+judgment of Solomon, and you and Cornelius Webb, and a few more city
+sparks, are pleased to look upon yourselves as so many future
+Shakespeares and Miltons! The world has really some reason to look to
+its foundations! Here is a _tempestas in matula_ with a vengeance. At
+the period when these sonnets were published Mr Keats had no hesitation
+in saying that he looked on himself as "_not yet_ a glorious denizen of
+the wide heaven of poetry," but he had many fine soothing visions of
+coming greatness, and many rare plans of study to prepare him for it.
+The following we think is very pretty raving.
+
+              "Why so sad a moan?
+    Life is the rose's hope while yet unblown;
+    The reading of an ever-changing tale;
+    The light uplifting of a maiden's veil;
+    A pigeon tumbling in clear summer air;
+    A laughing school-boy, without grief or care,
+    Riding the springing branches of an elm.
+
+    "O for ten years, that I may overwhelm
+    Myself in poesy; so I may do the deed
+    That my own soul has to itself decreed.
+    Then will I pass the countries that I see
+    In long perspective, and continually
+    Taste their pure fountains. First the realm I'll pass
+    Of Flora, and old Pan: sleep in the grass,
+    Feed on apples red, and strawberries,
+    And choose each pleasure that my fancy sees.
+    Catch the white-handed nymphs in shady places,
+    To woo sweet kisses from averted faces,--
+    Play with their fingers, touch their shoulders white
+    Into a pretty shrinking with a bite
+    As hard as lips can make it: till agreed,
+    A lovely tale of human life we'll read.
+    And one will teach a tame dove how it best
+    May fan the cool air gently o'er my rest;
+    Another, bending o'er her nimble tread,
+    Will set a green robe floating round her head,
+    And still will dance with ever varied ease,
+    Smiling upon the flowers and the trees:
+    Another will entice me on, and on
+    Through almond blossoms and rich cinnamon;
+    Till in the bosom of a leafy world
+    We rest in silence, like two gems upcurl'd
+    In the recesses of a pearly shell."
+
+Having cooled a little from this "fine passion," our youthful poet
+passes very naturally into a long strain of foaming abuse against a
+certain class of English Poets, whom, with Pope at their head, it is
+much the fashion with the ignorant unsettled pretenders of the present
+time to undervalue. Begging these gentlemens' pardon, although Pope was
+not a poet of the same high order with some who are now living, yet, to
+deny his genius, is just about as absurd as to dispute that of
+Wordsworth, or to believe in that of Hunt. Above all things, it is most
+pitiably ridiculous to hear men, of whom their country will always have
+reason to be proud, reviled by uneducated and flimsy striplings, who are
+not capable of understanding either their merits, or those of any other
+_men of power_--fanciful dreaming tea-drinkers, who, without logic
+enough to analyze a single idea, or imagination enough to form one
+original image, or learning enough to distinguish between the written
+language of Englishmen and the spoken jargon of Cockneys, presume to
+talk with contempt of some of the most exquisite spirits the world ever
+produced, merely because they did not happen to exert their faculties in
+laborious affected descriptions of flowers seen in window-pots, or
+cascades heard at Vauxhall; in short, because they chose to be wits,
+philosophers, patriots, and poets, rather than to found the Cockney
+school of versification, morality and politics, a century before its
+time. After blaspheming himself into a fury against Boileau, &c. Mr
+Keats comforts himself and his readers with a view of the present more
+promising aspect of affairs; above all, with the ripened glories of the
+poet of Rimini. Addressing the manes of the departed chiefs of English
+poetry, he informs them, in the following clear and touching manner, of
+the existence of "him of the Rose," &c.
+
+              "From a thick brake,
+    Nested and quiet in a valley mild,
+    Bubbles a pipe; fine sounds are floating wild
+    About the earth. Happy are ye and glad."
+
+From this he diverges into a view of "things in general." We smile when
+we think to ourselves how little most of our readers will understand of
+what follows.
+
+    "Yet I rejoice: a myrtle fairer than
+    E'er grew in Paphos, from the bitter weeds
+    Lifts its sweet head into the air, and feeds
+    A silent space with ever sprouting green.
+    All tenderest birds there find a pleasant screen,
+    Creep through the shade with jaunty fluttering,
+    Nibble the little cupped flowers and sing.
+    Then let us clear away the choaking _thorns_
+    From round its gentle stem; let the young _fawns_,
+    Yeaned in after times, when we are flown,
+    Find a fresh sward beneath it, overgrown
+    With simple flowers: let there nothing be
+    More boisterous than a lover's bended knee;
+    Nought more ungentle than the placid look
+    Of one who leans upon a closed book;
+    Nought more untranquil than the grassy slopes
+    Between two hills. All hail delightful hopes!
+    As she was wont, th' imagination
+    Into most lovely labyrinths will be gone,
+    And they shall be accounted poet kings
+    Who simply tell the most heart-easing things.
+    O may these joys be ripe before I die.
+    Will not some say that I presumptuously
+    Have spoken? that from hastening disgrace
+    'Twere better far to hide my foolish face?
+    That whining boyhood should with reverence bow
+    Ere the dreadful thunderbolt could reach? How!
+    If I do hide myself, it sure shall be
+    In the very fane, the light of poesy."
+
+From some verses addressed to various amiable individuals of the other
+sex, it appears, notwithstanding all this gossamer-work, that Johnny's
+affections are not entirely confined to objects purely etherial. Take,
+by way of specimen, the following prurient and vulgar lines, evidently
+meant for some young lady east of Temple-bar.
+
+              "Add too, the sweetness
+    Of thy honied voice; the neatness
+    Of thine ankle lightly turn'd:
+    With those beauties, scarce discern'd,
+    Kept with such sweet privacy,
+    That they seldom meet the eye
+    Of the little loves that fly
+    Round about with eager pry.
+    Saving when, with freshening lave,
+    Thou dipp'st them in the taintless wave;
+    Like twin water lilies, born
+    In the coolness of the morn
+    O, if thou hadst breathed then,
+    Now the Muses had been ten.
+    Couldst thou wish for lineage _higher_
+    Than twin sister of _Thalia_?
+    At last for ever, evermore,
+    Will I call the Graces four."
+
+Who will dispute that our poet, to use his own phrase (and rhyme),
+
+    "Can mingle music fit for the soft _ear_
+    Of Lady _Cytherea_."
+
+So much for the opening bud; now for the expanded flower. It is time to
+pass from the juvenile "Poems," to the mature and elaborate "Endymion, a
+Poetic Romance." The old story of the moon falling in love with a
+shepherd, so prettily told by a Roman Classic, and so exquisitely
+enlarged and adorned by one of the most elegant of German poets, has
+been seized upon by Mr John Keats, to be done with as might seem good
+unto the sickly fancy of one who never read a single line either of Ovid
+or of Wieland. If the quantity, not the quality, of the verses dedicated
+to the story is to be taken into account, there can be no doubt that Mr
+John Keats may now claim Endymion entirely to himself. To say the truth,
+we do not suppose either the Latin or the German poet would be very
+anxious to dispute about the property of the hero of the "Poetic
+Romance." Mr Keats has thoroughly appropriated the character, if not the
+name. His Endymion is not a Greek shepherd, loved by a Grecian goddess;
+he is merely a young Cockney rhymester, dreaming a phantastic dream at
+the full of the moon. Costume, were it worth while to notice such a
+trifle, is violated in every page of this goodly octavo. From his
+prototype Hunt, John Keats has acquired a sort of vague idea, that the
+Greeks were a most tasteful people, and that no mythology can be so
+finely adapted for the purposes of poetry as theirs. It is amusing to
+see what a hand the two Cockneys make of this mythology; the one
+confesses that he never read the Greek Tragedians, and the other knows
+Homer only from Chapman; and both of them write about Apollo, Pan,
+Nymphs, Muses, and Mysteries, as might be expected from persons of their
+education. We shall not, however, enlarge at present upon this subject,
+as we mean to dedicate an entire paper to the classical attainments and
+attempts of the Cockney poets. As for Mr Keats' "Endymion," it has just
+as much to do with Greece as it has with "old Tartary the fierce;" no
+man, whose mind has ever been imbued with the smallest knowledge or
+feeling of classical poetry or classical history, could have stooped to
+profane and vulgarise every association in the manner which has been
+adopted by this "son of promise." Before giving any extracts, we must
+inform our readers, that this romance is meant to be written in English
+heroic rhyme. To those who have read any of Hunt's poems, this hint
+might indeed be needless. Mr Keats has adopted the loose, nerveless
+versification, and the Cockney rhymes of the poet of Rimini; but in
+fairness to that gentleman, we must add, that the defects of the system
+are tenfold more conspicuous in his disciple's work than in his own. Mr
+Hunt is a small poet, but he is a clever man. Mr Keats is a still
+smaller poet, and he is only a boy of pretty abilities, which he has
+done everything in his power to spoil.
+
+[Quotes almost two hundred lines of _Endymion_ with brief interpolated
+comment.]
+
+And now, good-morrow to "the Muses' son of Promise;" as for "the feats
+he yet may do," as we do not pretend to say, like himself, "Muse of my
+native land am I inspired," we shall adhere to the safe old rule of
+_pauca verba_. We venture to make one small prophecy, that his
+bookseller will not a second time venture L50 upon any thing he can
+write. It is a better and a wiser thing to be a starved apothecary than
+a starved poet; so back to the shop Mr John, back to "plasters, pills,
+and ointment boxes," &c. But, for Heaven's sake, young Sangrado, be a
+little more sparing of extenuatives and soporifics in your practice than
+you have been in your poetry.
+
+Z.
+
+--_Blackwood's Magazine_.
+
+
+
+
+ALFRED LORD TENNYSON
+
+
+_Timbuctoo: a Poem, which obtained the Chancellor's Medal at the
+Cambridge Commencement_, _by A. Tennyson, of Trinity College,
+Cambridge._
+
+We have accustomed ourselves to think, perhaps without any good reason,
+that poetry was likely to perish among us for a considerable period
+after the great generation of poets which is now passing away. The age
+seems determined to contradict us, and that in the most decided manner,
+for it has put forth poetry by a young man, and that where we should
+least expect it, namely, in a prize-poem. These productions have often
+been ingenious and elegant, but we have never before seen one of them
+which indicated really first-rate poetical genius, and which would have
+done honour to any man that ever wrote. Such, we do not hesitate to
+affirm, is the little work before us; and the examiners seem to have
+felt about it like ourselves, for they have assigned the prize to its
+author, though the measure in which he writes was never before (we
+believe) thus selected for honour. We extract a few lines to justify our
+admiration.
+
+[Quotes fifty lines beginning:--
+
+    "A curve of whitening, flashing, ebbing light!
+    A rustling of white wings! the bright descent," etc.]
+
+How many men have lived for a century who could equal this?--_The
+Athenaeum_.
+
+
+_Poems by Alfred Tennyson_. pp. 163. London. 12mo. 1833.
+
+This is, as some of his marginal notes intimate, Mr. Tennyson's second
+appearance. By some strange chance we have never seen his first
+publication, which, if it at all resembles its younge[r] brother, must
+be by this time so popular that any notice of it on our part would seem
+idle and presumptuous; but we gladly seize this opportunity of repairing
+an unintentional neglect, and of introducing to the admiration of our
+more sequestered readers a new prodigy of genius--another and a brighter
+star of that galaxy or _milky way_ of poetry of which the lamented Keats
+was the harbinger; and let us take this occasion to sing our palinode on
+the subject of 'Endymion.' We certainly did not[O] discover in that poem
+the same degree of merit that its more clear-sighted and prophetic
+admirers did. We did not foresee the unbounded popularity which has
+carried it through we know not how many editions; which has placed it on
+every table; and, what is still more unequivocal, familiarized it in
+every mouth. All this splendour of fame, however, though we had not the
+sagacity to anticipate, we have the candour to acknowledge: and we
+request that the publisher of the new and beautiful edition of Keats's
+works now in the press, with graphic illustrations by Calcott and
+Turner, will do us the favour and the justice to notice our conversion
+in his prolegomena.
+
+Warned by our former mishap, wiser by experience, and improved, as we
+hope, in taste, we have to offer Mr. Tennyson our tribute of unmingled
+approbation, and it is very agreeable to us, as well as to our readers,
+that our present task will be little more than the selection, for their
+delight, of a few specimens of Mr. Tennyson's singular genius, and the
+venturing to point out, now and then, the peculiar brilliancy of some of
+the gems that irradiate his poetical crown.
+
+A prefatory sonnet opens to the reader the aspirations of the young
+author, in which, after the manner of sundry poets, ancient and modern,
+he expresses his own peculiar character, by wishing himself to be
+something that he is not. The amorous Catullus aspired to be a sparrow;
+the tuneful and convivial Anacreon (for we totally reject the
+supposition that attributes the [Greek: Eithe lure chale genoimen] to
+Alcaeus) wished to be a lyre and a great drinking cup; a crowd of more
+modern sentimentalists have desired to approach their mistresses as
+flowers, tunicks, sandals, birds, breezes, and butterflies;--all poor
+conceits of narrow-minded poetasters! Mr. Tennyson (though he, too,
+would, as far as his true love is concerned, not unwillingly 'be an
+earring,' 'a girdle,' and 'a necklace,' p. 45) in the more serious and
+solemn exordium of his works ambitions a bolder metamorphosis--he wishes
+to be--_a river_!
+
+SONNET.
+
+    'Mine be the strength of spirit fierce and free,
+    Like some broad river rushing down _alone_'--
+
+rivers that travel in company are too common for his taste--
+
+    'With the self-same impulse wherewith he was thrown'--
+
+a beautiful and harmonious line--
+
+    'From his loud fount upon the echoing lea:--
+    Which, with _increasing_ might, doth _forward flee_'--
+
+Every word of this line is valuable--the natural progress of human
+ambition is here strongly characterized--two lines ago he would have
+been satisfied with the _self-same_ impulse--but now he must have
+_increasing_ might; and indeed he would require all his might to
+accomplish his object of _fleeing forward_, that is, going backwards and
+forwards at the same time. Perhaps he uses the word _flee_ for _flow_;
+which latter he could not well employ in _this_ place, it being, as we
+shall see, essentially necessary to rhyme to _Mexico_ towards the end of
+the sonnet--as an equivalent to _flow_ he has, therefore, with great
+taste and ingenuity, hit on the combination of _forward flee_--
+
+    ------------'doth forward flee
+    By town, and tower, and hill, and cape, and isle,
+    And in the middle of the green _salt_ sea
+    Keeps his blue waters fresh for many a mile.'
+
+A noble wish, beautifully expressed, that he may not be confounded with
+the deluge of ordinary poets, but, amidst their discoloured and briny
+ocean, still preserve his own bright tints and sweet savor. He may be at
+ease on this point--he never can be mistaken for any one else. We have
+but too late become acquainted with him, yet we assure ourselves that if
+a thousand anonymous specimens were presented to us, we should
+unerringly distinguish his by the total absence of any particle of
+_salt_. But again, his thoughts take another turn, and he reverts to the
+insatiability of human ambition:--we have seen him just now content to
+be a river, but as he _flees forward_, his desires expand into
+sublimity, and he wishes to become the great Gulfstream of the Atlantic.
+
+    'Mine be the power which ever to its sway
+    Will win _the wise at once_--
+
+We, for once, are wise, and he has won _us_--
+
+    'Will win the wise at once; and by degrees
+    May into uncongenial spirits flow,
+    Even as the great gulphstream of Flori_da_
+    Floats far away into the Northern seas
+    The lavish growths of southern Mexi_co_!'--p. 1.
+
+And so concludes the sonnet.
+
+The next piece is a kind of testamentary paper, addressed 'To ----,' a
+friend, we presume, containing his wishes as to what his friend should
+do for him when he (the poet) shall be dead--not, as we shall see, that
+he quite thinks that such a poet can die outright.
+
+    'Shake hands, my friend, across the brink
+      Of that deep grave to which I go.
+    Shake hands once more; I cannot sink
+      So far--far down, but I shall know
+      Thy voice, and answer from below!'
+
+Horace said 'non omnis moriar,' meaning that his fame should
+survive--Mr. Tennyson is still more vivacious, 'non _omnino_
+moriar,'--'I will not die at all; my body shall be as immortal as my
+verse, and however _low I may go_, I warrant you I shall keep all my
+wits about me,--therefore'
+
+    'When, in the darkness over me,
+      The four-handed mole shall scrape,
+    Plant thou no dusky cypress tree,
+      Nor wreath thy cap with doleful crape,
+      But pledge me in the flowing grape.'
+
+Observe how all ages become present to the mind of a great poet; and
+admire how naturally he combines the funeral cypress of classical
+antiquity with the crape hat-band of the modern undertaker.
+
+He proceeds:--
+
+    'And when the sappy field and wood
+      Grow green beneath the _showery gray_,
+    And rugged barks begin to bud,
+      And through damp holts, newflushed with May,
+      Ring sudden _laughters_ of the jay!'
+
+Laughter, the philosophers tell us, is a peculiar attribute of man--but
+as Shakespeare found 'tongues in trees and sermons in stones,' this true
+poet endows all nature not merely with human sensibilities but with
+human functions--the jay _laughs_, and we find, indeed, a little further
+on, that the woodpecker _laughs_ also; but to mark the distinction
+between their merriment and that of men, both jays and woodpeckers laugh
+upon melancholy occasions. We are glad, moreover, to observe, that Mr.
+Tennyson is prepared for, and therefore will not be disturbed by, human
+laughter, if any silly reader should catch the infection from the
+woodpeckers and the jays.
+
+    'Then let wise Nature work her will,
+      And on my clay her darnels grow,
+    Come only when the days are still,
+      And at my head-stone whisper low,
+      And tell me'--
+
+Now, what would an ordinary bard wish to be told under such
+circumstances?--why, perhaps, how his sweetheart was, or his child, or
+his family, or how the Reform Bill worked, or whether the last edition
+of his poems had been sold--_papae_! our genuine poet's first wish is
+
+    'And tell me--_if the woodbines blow_!'
+
+When, indeed, he shall have been thus satisfied as to the _woodbines_,
+(of the blowing of which in their due season he may, we think, feel
+pretty secure,) he turns a passing thought to his friend--and another to
+his mother--
+
+    'If _thou_ art blest, my _mother's_ smile
+    Undimmed'--
+
+but such inquiries, short as they are, seem too common-place, and he
+immediately glides back into his curiosity as to the state of the
+weather and the forwardness of the spring--
+
+    'If thou art blessed--my mother's smile
+    Undimmed--_if bees are on the wing_?'
+
+No, we believe the whole circle of poetry does not furnish such another
+instance of enthusiasm for the sights and sounds of the vernal
+season!--The sorrows of a bereaved mother rank _after_ the blossoms of
+the _woodbine_, and just before the hummings of the _bee_; and this is
+_all_ that he has any curiosity about; for he proceeds:--
+
+    'Then cease, my friend, a little while
+    That I may'--
+
+'send my love to my mother,' or 'give you some hints about bees, which I
+have picked up from Aristaeus, in the Elysian Fields,' or 'tell you how I
+am situated as to my own personal comforts in the world below'?--oh no--
+
+    'That I may--hear the _throstle sing_
+    His bridal song--the boast of spring.
+
+    Sweet as the noise, in parched plains,
+      Of bubbling wells that fret the stones,
+    (_If any sense in me remains_)
+      Thy words will be--thy cheerful tones
+      As welcome to--my _crumbling bones_!'--p. 4.
+
+'_If any sense in me remains!_'--This doubt is inconsistent with the
+opening stanza of the piece, and, in fact, too modest; we take upon
+ourselves to re-assure Mr. Tennyson, that, even after he shall be dead
+and buried, as much '_sense_' will still remain as he has now the good
+fortune to possess.
+
+We have quoted these first two poems in _extenso_, to obviate any
+suspicion of our having made a partial or delusive selection. We cannot
+afford space--we wish we could--for an equally minute examination of the
+rest of the volume, but we shall make a few extracts to show--what we
+solemnly affirm--that every page teems with beauties hardly less
+surprising.
+
+_The Lady of Shalott_ is a poem in four parts, the story of which we
+decline to maim by such an analysis as we could give, but it opens
+thus--
+
+    'On either side the river lie
+    Long fields of barley and of rye,
+    That clothe the wold and _meet the sky_--
+    And _through_ the field the road runs _by_.'
+
+The Lady of Shalott was, it seems, a spinster who had, under some
+unnamed penalty, a certain web to weave.
+
+    'Underneath the bearded barley,
+    The reaper, reaping late and early,
+    Hears her ever chanting cheerly,
+    Like an angel singing clearly....
+
+    'No time has she for sport or play,
+    A charmed web she weaves alway;
+    A curse is on her if she stay
+    Her weaving either night or day....
+
+    'She knows not'--
+
+Poor lady, nor we either--
+
+    'She knows not what that curse may be,
+    Therefore she weaveth steadily;
+    Therefore no other care has she
+              The Lady of Shalott.'
+
+A knight, however, happens to ride past her window, coming
+
+              ----'from Camelot;[P]
+    From the bank, and _from_ the _river_,
+    He flashed _into_ the crystal _mirror_--
+    "Tirra lirra, tirra _lirra_," (_lirrar_?)
+                Sang Sir Launcelot.'--p. 15.
+
+The lady stepped to the window to look at the stranger, and forgot for
+an instant her web:--the curse fell on her, and she died; why, how, and
+wherefore, the following stanzas will clearly and pathetically
+explain:--
+
+    'A long drawn carol, mournful, holy,
+    She chanted loudly, chanted lowly,
+    Till her eyes were darkened _wholly_,
+    And her smooth face sharpened _slowly_,
+            Turned to towered Camelot.
+    For ere she reached upon the tide
+    The first house on the water side,
+    Singing in her song she died,
+            The Lady of Shalott!
+    Knight and burgher, lord and dame,
+    To the planked wharfage came;
+    Below _the stern_ they read her name,
+            The Lady of Shalott.'--p. 19.
+
+We pass by two--what shall we call them?--tales, or odes, or sketches,
+entitled 'Mariana in the South' and 'Eleaenore,' of which we fear we
+could make no intelligible extract, so curiously are they run together
+into one dreamy tissue--to a little novel in rhyme, called 'The Miller's
+Daughter.' Millers' daughters, poor things, have been so generally
+betrayed by their sweethearts, that it is refreshing to find that Mr.
+Tennyson has united himself to _his_ miller's daughter in lawful
+wedlock, and the poem is a history of his courtship and wedding. He
+begins with a sketch of his own birth, parentage, and personal
+appearance--
+
+    'My father's mansion, mounted high,
+      Looked down upon the village-spire;
+    I was a long and listless boy,
+      And son and heir unto the Squire.'
+
+But the son and heir of Squire Tennyson often descended from the
+'mansion mounted high;' and
+
+    'I met in all the close green ways,
+      While walking with my line and rod,'
+
+A metonymy for 'rod and line'--
+
+    'The wealthy miller's mealy face,
+      Like the _moon in an ivytod_.
+
+    'He looked so jolly and so good--
+      While fishing in the mill-dam water,
+    I laughed to see him as he stood,
+      And dreamt not of the miller's daughter.'--p. 33.
+
+He, however, soon saw, and, need we add, loved the miller's daughter,
+whose countenance, we presume, bore no great resemblance either to the
+'mealy face' of the miller, or 'the moon in an ivy-tod;' and we think
+our readers will be delighted at the way in which the impassioned
+husband relates to his wife how his fancy mingled enthusiasm for rural
+sights and sounds, with a prospect of the less romantic scene of her
+father's occupation.
+
+    'How dear to me in youth, my love,
+      Was everything about the mill;
+    The black, the silent pool above,
+      The pool beneath that ne'er stood still;
+
+    The meal-sacks on the whitened floor,
+      The dark round of the dripping wheel,
+    _The very air about the door,
+      Made misty with the floating meal!_'--p. 36.
+
+The accumulation of tender images in the following lines appears not
+less wonderful:--
+
+    'Remember you that pleasant day
+      When, after roving in the woods,
+    ('Twas April then) I came and lay
+      Beneath those _gummy_ chestnut-buds?
+
+    'A water-rat from off the bank
+      Plunged in the stream. With idle care,
+    Downlooking through the sedges rank,
+      I saw your troubled image there.
+
+    'If you remember, you had set,
+      Upon the narrow casement-edge,
+    A _long green box_ of mignonette
+      And you were leaning on the ledge.'
+
+The poet's truth to Nature in his 'gummy' chestnut-buds, and to Art in
+the 'long green box' of mignonette--and that masterful touch of likening
+the first intrusion of love into the virgin bosom of the Miller's
+daughter to the plunging of a water-rat into the mill-dam--these are
+beauties which, we do not fear to say, equal anything even in Keats.
+
+We pass by several songs, sonnets, and small pieces, all of singular
+merit, to arrive at a class, we may call them, of three poems derived
+from mythological sources--Oenone, the Hesperides, and the
+Lotos-eaters. But though the subjects are derived from classical
+antiquity, Mr. Tennyson treats them with so much originality that he
+makes them exclusively his own. Oenone, deserted by
+
+    'Beautiful Paris, evilhearted Paris,'
+
+sings a kind of dying soliloquy addressed to Mount Ida, in a formula
+which is _sixteen_ times repeated in this short poem.
+
+    'Dear mother Ida, hearken ere I die.'
+
+She tells her 'dear mother Ida,' that when evilhearted Paris was about
+to judge between the three goddesses, he hid her (Oenone) behind a
+rock, whence she had a full view of the _naked_ beauties of the rivals,
+which broke her heart.
+
+    '_Dear mother Ida, hearken ere I die_:--
+    It was the deep mid noon: one silvery cloud
+    Had _lost his way_ among the pined hills:
+    They came--_all three_--the Olympian goddesses.
+    Naked they came--
+
+        *    *    *    *    *    *
+
+    How beautiful they were! too beautiful
+    To look upon; but Paris was to me
+    _More lovelier_ than all the world beside.
+    _O mother Ida, hearken ere I die._'--p. 56.
+
+In the place where we have indicated a pause, follows a description,
+long, rich, and luscious--Of the three naked goddesses? Fye for
+shame--no--of the 'lily flower violet-eyed,' and the 'singing pine,' and
+the 'overwandering ivy and vine,' and 'festoons,' and 'gnarled boughs,'
+and 'tree tops,' and 'berries,' and 'flowers,' and all the _inanimate_
+beauties of the scene. It would be unjust to the _ingenuus pudor_ of the
+author not to observe the art with which he has veiled this ticklish
+interview behind such luxuriant trellis-work, and it is obvious that it
+is for our special sakes he has entered into these local details,
+because if there was one thing which 'mother Ida' knew better than
+another, it must have been her own bushes and brakes. We then have in
+detail the tempting speeches of, first--
+
+              'The imperial Olympian,
+    With arched eyebrow smiling sovranly,
+    Full-eyed Here;'
+
+secondly of Pallas--
+
+              'Her clear and bared limbs
+    O'er-thwarted with the brazen-headed spear,'
+
+and thirdly--
+
+              'Idalian Aphrodite ocean-born,
+    Fresh as the foam, new-bathed in Paphian _wells_--'
+
+for one dip, or even three dips in one well, would not have been enough
+on such an occasion--and her succinct and prevailing promise of--
+
+    'The fairest and most loving _wife_ in Greece;'--
+
+upon evil-hearted Paris's catching at which prize, the tender and chaste
+Oenone exclaims her indignation, that she herself should not be
+considered fair enough, since only yesterday her charms had struck awe
+into--
+
+              'A wild and wanton pard,
+    Eyed like the evening-star, with playful tail--'
+
+and proceeds in this anti-Martineau rapture--
+
+              '_Most_ loving is _she_?'
+    'Ah me! my mountain shepherd, that my arms
+    Were wound about thee, and my hot lips prest
+    Close--close to thine in that quick-falling dew
+    Of _fruitful_ kisses ...
+    Dear mother Ida! hearken ere I die!--p. 62.
+
+After such reiterated assurances that she was about to die on the spot,
+it appears that Oenone thought better of it, and the poem concludes
+with her taking the wiser course of going to town to consult her swain's
+sister, Cassandra--whose advice, we presume, prevailed upon her to live,
+as we can, from other sources, assure our readers she did to a good old
+age.
+
+In the 'Hesperides' our author, with great judgment, rejects the common
+fable, which attributes to Hercules the slaying of the dragon and the
+plunder of the golden fruit. Nay, he supposes them to have existed to a
+comparatively recent period--namely, the voyage of Hanno, on the coarse
+canvas of whose log-book Mr. Tennyson has judiciously embroidered the
+Hesperian romance. The poem opens with a geographical description of the
+neighbourhood, which must be very clear and satisfactory to the English
+reader; indeed, it leaves far behind in accuracy of topography and
+melody of rhythm the heroics of Dionysius _Periegetes_.
+
+    'The north wind fall'n, in the new-starred night.'
+
+Here we must pause to observe a new species of _metabole_ with which Mr.
+Tennyson has enriched our language. He suppresses the E in _fallen_,
+where it is usually written and where it must be pronounced, and
+transfers it to the word _new-starred_, where it would not be
+pronounced if he did not take due care to superfix a _grave_ accent.
+This use of the grave accent is, as our readers may have already
+perceived, so habitual with Mr. Tennyson, and is so obvious an
+improvement, that we really wonder how the language has hitherto done
+without it. We are tempted to suggest, that if analogy to the accented
+languages is to be thought of, it is rather the acute ([']) than the
+grave ([`]) which should be employed on such occasions; but we speak
+with profound diffidence; and as Mr. Tennyson is the inventor of the
+system, we shall bow with respect to whatever his final determination
+may be.
+
+    'The north wind fall'n, in the new-starred night
+    Zidonian Hanno, voyaging beyond
+    The hoary promontory of Soloe,
+    Past Thymiaterion in calmed bays.'
+
+We must here note specially the musical flow of this last line, which is
+the more creditable to Mr. Tennyson, because it was before the tuneless
+names of this very neighbourhood that the learned continuator of
+Dionysius retreated in despair--
+
+    ----[Greek: eponymias nyn ellachen allas
+    Aithiopon gain, dysphonous oud' epierons
+    Mousais ouneka tasd' ego ouk agoreusom' apasas.]
+
+but Mr. Tennyson is bolder and happier--
+
+    'Past Thymiaterion in calmed bays,
+    Between the southern and the western Horn,
+    Heard neither'--
+
+We pause for a moment to consider what a sea-captain might have expected
+to hear, by night, in the Atlantic ocean--he heard
+
+    --'neither the warbling of the _nightingale_
+    Nor melody o' the Libyan lotusflute,'
+
+but he did hear the three daughters of Hesper singing the following
+song:--
+
+    'The golden apple, the golden apple, the hallowed fruit,
+    Guard it well, guard it warily,
+    Singing airily,
+    Standing about the charmed root,
+    Round about all is mute'--
+
+_mute_, though they sung so loud as to be heard some leagues out at
+sea--
+
+      ----'all is mute
+    As the snow-field on mountain peaks,
+    As the sand-field at the mountain foot.
+    Crocodiles in briny creeks
+    Sleep, and stir not: all is mute.'
+
+How admirably do these lines describe the peculiarities of this charmed
+neighbourhood--fields of snow, so talkative when they happen to lie at
+the foot of the mountain, are quite out of breath when they get to the
+top, and the sand, so noisy on the summit of a hill, is dumb at its
+foot. The very crocodiles, too, are _mute_--not dumb but _mute_. The
+'red-combed dragon curl'd' is next introduced--
+
+    'Look to him, father, lest he wink, and the golden apple be stolen
+        away,
+    For his ancient heart is drunk with overwatchings night and day,
+    Sing away, sing aloud evermore, in the wind, without stop.'
+
+The north wind, it appears, has by this time awaked again--
+
+    'Lest his scaled eyelid drop,
+    For he is older than the world'--
+
+older than the _hills_, besides not rhyming to 'curl'd,' would hardly
+have been a sufficiently venerable phrase for this most harmonious of
+lyrics. It proceeds--
+
+    'If ye sing not, if ye make false measure,
+    We shall lose eternal pleasure,
+    Worth eternal want of rest.
+    Laugh not loudly: watch the treasure
+    Of the wisdom of the west.
+    In _a corner_ wisdom whispers. Five and three
+    (_Let it not be preached abroad_) make an awful mystery.'--p. 102.
+
+This recipe for keeping a secret, by singing it so loud as to be heard
+for miles, is almost the only point, in all Mr. Tennyson's poems, in
+which we can trace the remotest approach to anything like what other men
+have written, but it certainly does remind us of the 'chorus of
+conspirators' in the Rovers.
+
+Hanno, however, who understood no language but Punic--(the Hesperides
+sang, we presume, either in Greek or in English)--appears to have kept
+on his way without taking any notice of the song, for the poem
+concludes,--
+
+    'The apple of gold hangs over the sea,
+    Five links, a gold chain, are we,
+    Hesper, the Dragon, and sisters three;
+    Daughters three,
+    Bound about
+    All around about
+    The gnarled bole of the charmed tree,
+    The golden apple, the golden apple, the hallowed fruit,
+    Guard it well, guard it warily,
+    Watch it warily,
+    Singing airily
+    Standing about the charmed root.'--p. 107.
+
+We hardly think that, if Hanno had translated it into Punic, the song
+would have been more intelligible.
+
+The 'Lotuseaters'--a kind of classical opium-eaters--are Ulysses and his
+crew. They land on the 'charmed island,' and 'eat of the charmed root,'
+and then they sing--
+
+    'Long enough the winedark wave our weary bark did carry.
+    This is lovelier and sweeter,
+    Men of Ithaca, this is meeter,
+    In the hollow rosy vale to tarry,
+    Like a dreamy Lotuseater--a delicious Lotuseater!
+    We will eat the Lotus, sweet
+    As the yellow honeycomb;
+    In the valley some, and some
+    On the ancient heights divine,
+    And no more roam,
+    On the loud hoar foam,
+    To the melancholy home,
+    At the limits of the brine,
+    The little isle of Ithaca, beneath the day's decline.'--p. 116.
+
+Our readers will, we think, agree that this is admirably characteristic,
+and that the singers of this song must have made pretty free with the
+intoxicating fruit. How they got home you must read in Homer:--Mr.
+Tennyson--himself, we presume, a dreamy lotus-eater, a delicious
+lotus-eater--leaves them in full song.
+
+Next comes another class of poems,--Visions. The first is the 'Palace of
+Art,' or a fine house, in which the poet _dreams_ that he sees a very
+fine collection of well-known pictures. An ordinary versifier would, no
+doubt, have followed the old routine, and dully described himself as
+walking into the Louvre, or Buckingham Palace, and there seeing certain
+masterpieces of painting:--a true poet dreams it. We have not room to
+hang many of these _chefs-d'oeuvre_, but for a few we must find
+space.--'The Madonna'--
+
+    'The maid mother by a crucifix,
+      In yellow pastures sunny warm,
+    Beneath branch work of costly sardonyx
+      Sat smiling--_babe in arm_.'--p. 72.
+
+The use of the latter, apparently, colloquial phrase is a deep stroke of
+art. The form of expression is always used to express an habitual and
+characteristic action. A knight is described '_lance in rest_'--a
+dragoon, '_sword in hand_'--so, as the idea of the Virgin is inseparably
+connected with her child, Mr. Tennyson reverently describes her
+conventional position--'_babe in arm_.'
+
+His gallery of illustrious portraits is thus admirably arranged:--The
+Madonna--Ganymede--St. Cecilia--Europa--Deep-haired
+Milton--Shakspeare--Grim Dante--Michael Angelo--Luther--Lord
+Bacon--Cervantes--Calderon--King David--'the Halicarnassean' (_quaere_,
+which of them?)--Alfred, (not Alfred Tennyson, though no doubt in any
+other man's gallery _he_ would have a place) and finally--
+
+    'Isaiah, with fierce Ezekiel,
+      Swarth Moses by the Coptic sea,
+    Plato, _Petrarca_, Livy, and Raphael,
+      And eastern Confutzee!'
+
+We can hardly suspect the very original mind of Mr. Tennyson to have
+harboured any recollections of that celebrated Doric idyll, 'The groves
+of Blarney,' but certainly there is a strong likeness between Mr.
+Tennyson's list of pictures and the Blarney collection of statutes--
+
+    'Statues growing that noble place in,
+      All heathen goddesses most rare,
+    Homer, Plutarch, and Nebuchadnezzar,
+      All standing naked in the open air!'
+
+In this poem we first observed a stroke of art (repeated afterwards)
+which we think very ingenious. No one who has ever written verse but
+must have felt the pain of erasing some happy line, some striking
+stanza, which, however excellent in itself, did not exactly suit the
+place for which it was destined. How curiously does an author mould and
+remould the plastic verse in order to fit in the favourite thought; and
+when he finds that he cannot introduce it, as Corporal Trim says, _any
+how_, with what reluctance does he at last reject the intractable, but
+still cherished offspring of his brain! Mr. Tennyson manages this
+delicate matter in a new and better way; he says, with great candour and
+simplicity, 'If this poem were not already too long, _I should have
+added_ the following stanzas,' and _then he adds them_, (p. 84;)--or,
+'the following lines are manifestly superfluous, as a part of the text,
+but they may be allowed to stand as a separate poem,' (p. 121,) _which
+they do_;--or, 'I intended to have added something on statuary, but I
+found it very difficult;'--(he had, moreover, as we have seen, been
+anticipated in this line by the Blarney poet)--'but I have finished the
+statues of _Elijah_ and _Olympias_--judge whether I have succeeded,' (p.
+73)--and then we have these two statues. This is certainly the most
+ingenious device that has ever come under our observation, for
+reconciling the rigour of criticism with the indulgence of parental
+partiality. It is economical too, and to the reader profitable, as by
+these means
+
+    'We lose no drop of the immortal man.'
+
+The other vision is 'A Dream of Fair Women,' in which the heroines of
+all ages--some, indeed, that belong to the times of 'heathen goddesses
+most rare'--pass before his view. We have not time to notice them all,
+but the second, whom we take to be Iphigenia, touches the heart with a
+stroke of nature more powerful than even the veil that the Grecian
+painter threw over the head of her father.
+
+      ----'dimly I could descry
+    The stern blackbearded kings with wolfish eyes,
+      Watching to see me die.
+
+    The tall masts quivered as they lay afloat;
+      The temples, and the people, and the shore;
+    One drew a sharp knife through my tender throat--
+      Slowly,--and _nothing more_!'
+
+What touching simplicity--what pathetic resignation--he cut my
+throat--'_nothing more_!' One might indeed ask, 'what _more_' she would
+have?
+
+But we must hasten on; and to tranquillize the reader's mind after this
+last affecting scene, shall notice the only two pieces of a lighter
+strain which the volume affords. The first is elegant and playful; it is
+a description of the author's study, which he affectionately calls his
+_Darling Room_.
+
+    'O darling room, my heart's delight;
+    Dear room, the apple of my sight;
+    With thy two couches, soft and white,
+    There is no room so exquis_ite_;
+    No little room so warm and bright,
+    Wherein to read, wherein to write.'
+
+We entreat our readers to note how, even in this little trifle, the
+singular taste and genius of Mr. Tennyson break forth. In such a dear
+_little_ room a narrow-minded scribbler would have been content with
+_one_ sofa, and that one he would probably have covered with black
+mohair, or red cloth, or a good striped chintz; how infinitely more
+characteristic is white dimity!--'tis as it were a type of the purity of
+the poet's mind. He proceeds--
+
+    'For I the Nonnenwerth have seen,
+    And Oberwinter's vineyards green,
+    Musical Lurlei; and between
+    The hills to Bingen I have been,
+    Bingen in Darmstadt, where the _Rhene_
+    Curves toward Mentz, a woody scene.
+
+    'Yet never did there meet my sight,
+    In any town, to left or right,
+    A little room so exquis_ite_,
+    With _two_ such couches soft and white;
+    Nor any room so warm and bright,
+    Wherein to read, wherein to write.'--p. 153.
+
+A common poet would have said that he had been in London or in Paris--in
+the loveliest villa on the banks of the Thames, or the most gorgeous
+chateau on the Loire--that he has reclined in Madame de Stael's boudoir,
+and mused in Mr. Roger's comfortable study; but the _darling room_ of
+the poet of nature (which we must suppose to be endued with sensibility,
+or he would not have addressed it) would not be flattered with such
+common-place comparisons;--no, no, but it is something to have it said
+that there is no such room in the ruins of the Drachenfels, in the
+vineyard of Oberwinter, or even in the rapids of the _Rhene_, under the
+Lurleyberg. We have ourselves visited all these celebrated spots, and
+can testify in corroboration of Mr. Tennyson, that we did not see in any
+of them anything like _this little room so exquis_ITE.
+
+The second of the lighter pieces, and the last with which we shall
+delight our readers, is a severe retaliation on the editor of the
+Edinburgh Magazine, who, it seems, had not treated the first volume of
+Mr. Tennyson with the same respect that we have, we trust, evinced for
+the second.
+
+      'To CHRISTOPHER NORTH.
+    You did late review my lays,
+      Crusty Christopher;
+    You did mingle blame and praise
+      Rusty Christopher.
+
+    When I learnt from whom it came
+    I forgave you all the blame,
+      Musty Christopher;
+    I could _not_ forgive the praise,
+      Fusty Christopher.'--p. 153.
+
+Was there ever anything so genteelly turned--so terse--so sharp--and the
+point so stinging and _so true_?
+
+    'I could not forgive the _praise_,
+      Fusty Christopher!'
+
+This leads us to observe on a phenomenon which we have frequently seen,
+but never been able to explain. It has been occasionally our painful lot
+to excite the displeasure of authors whom we have reviewed, and who have
+vented their dissatisfaction, some in prose, some in verse, and some in
+what we could not distinctly say whether it was verse or prose; but we
+have invariably found that the common formula of retort was that adopted
+by Mr. Tennyson against his northern critic, namely, that the author
+would always
+
+      --Forgive us all the _blame_,
+    But could _not_ forgive the _praise_.
+
+Now this seems very surprising. It has sometimes, though we regret to
+say rarely, happened, that, as in the present instance, we have been
+able to deal out unqualified praise, but never found that the dose in
+this case disagreed with the most squeamish stomach; on the contrary,
+the patient has always seemed exceedingly comfortable after he had
+swallowed it. He has been known to take the 'Review' home and keep his
+wife from a ball, and his children from bed, till he could administer it
+to them, by reading the article aloud. He has even been heard to
+recommend the 'Review' to his acquaintance at the clubs, as the best
+number which has yet appeared, and one, who happened to be an M.P. as
+well as an author, gave a _conditional_ order, that in case his last
+work should be favourably noticed, a dozen copies should be sent down by
+the mail to the borough of ----. But, on the other hand, when it has
+happened that the general course of our criticism has been unfavourable,
+if by accident we happened to introduce the smallest spice of _praise_,
+the patient immediately fell into paroxysms--declaring that the part
+which we foolishly thought might offend him had, on the contrary, given
+him pleasure--positive pleasure, but _that_ which he could not possibly
+either forget or forgive, was the grain of praise, be it ever so small,
+which we had dropped in, and for which, and _not for our censure_, he
+felt constrained, in honour and conscience, to visit us with his extreme
+indignation. Can any reader or writer inform us how it is that praise in
+the wholesale is so very agreeable to the very same stomach that rejects
+it with disgust and loathing, when it is scantily administered; and
+above all, can they tell us why it is, that the indignation and nausea
+should be in the exact inverse ratio to the quantity of the ingredient?
+These effects, of which we could quote several cases much more violent
+than Mr. Tennyson's, puzzle us exceedingly; but a learned friend, whom
+we have consulted, has, though he could not account for the phenomenon,
+pointed out what he thought an analogous case. It is related of Mr.
+Alderman Faulkner, of convivial memory, that one night when he expected
+his guests to sit late and try the strength of his claret and his head,
+he took the precaution of placing in his wine-glass a strawberry, which
+his doctor, he said, had recommended to him on account of its cooling
+qualities: on the faith of this specific, he drank even more deeply,
+and, as might be expected, was carried away at an earlier period and in
+rather a worse state, than was usual with him. When some of his friends
+condoled with him next day, and attributed his misfortune to six bottles
+of claret which he had imbibed, the Alderman was extremely
+indignant--'the claret,' he said, 'was sound, and never could do any man
+any harm--his discomfiture was altogether caused by that damned single
+strawberry' which he had kept all night at the bottom of his
+glass.--_The Quarterly Review_.
+
+[Footnote O: See Quarterly Review, vol. XIX, p. 204.]
+
+[Footnote P: The same Camelot, in Somersetshire, we presume, which is
+alluded to by Kent in 'King Lear'--
+
+    'Goose! if I had thee upon Sarum plain,
+    I'd drive thee cackling home to Camelot.'
+]
+
+
+_The Princess; a Medley_. By Alfred Tennyson. Moxon.
+
+That we are behind most even of our heaviest and slowest contemporaries
+in the notice of this volume, is a fact for which we cannot
+satisfactorily account to ourselves, and can therefore hardly hope to be
+able to make a valid excuse to our readers. The truth is, that whenever
+we turned to it we became, like the needle between positive and negative
+electric poles, so attracted and repelled, that we vibrated too much to
+settle to any fixed condition. Vacillation prevented criticism, and we
+had to try the experiment again and again before we could arrive at the
+necessary equipose to indicate the right direction of taste and opinion.
+We will now, however, note our variations, and leave them to the public
+judgment.
+
+The first lines of the prologue were repulsive, as a specimen of the
+poorest Wordsworth manner and style--
+
+    "Sir Walter Vivian all a summer's day
+    Gave his broad lawns until the set of sun
+    Up to his people: thither flock'd at noon
+    His tenants, wife and child, and thither half
+    The neighbouring borough with their Institute
+    Of which he was the patron. I was there
+    From college, visiting the son,--the son
+    A Walter too,--with others of our set."
+
+The "wife and child" of the tenants is hardly intelligible; and the
+"set" is but a dubious expression. Nor can we clearly comprehend the
+next line and a half--
+
+    "And me that morning Walter show'd the house,
+    Greek, set with busts:"
+
+Does this mean that Sir Walter Vivian inhabited a Greek house, and that
+the college "set" were guests in that dwelling "set with busts"? To say
+the least, this is inelegant, and the affectations proceed--
+
+                        "From vases in the hall
+    _Flowers of all heavens, and lovelier than their names_,
+    Grew side by side."
+
+Persons conversant with the botanical names of flowers will hardly be
+able to realize (as the Yankees have it) the idea of their loveliness;
+the loveliness of Hippuris, Dolichos, Syngenesia, Cheiranthus,
+Artocarpus, Arum dracunculus, Ampelopsis hederaca, Hexandria, Monogynea,
+and the rest.
+
+A good description of the demi-scientific sports of the Institute
+follows; but the house company and inmates retire to a ruined abbey:--
+
+              "High-arch'd and ivy-claspt,
+    Of finest Gothic, lighter than a fire."
+
+This is a curious jumble in company, two lights of altogether a
+different nature; but the party get into a rattling conversation, in
+which the noisy babble of the College Cubs is satirically characterized:
+we
+
+                                          "Told
+    Of college: he had climb'd across the spikes,
+    And he had squeez'd himself betwixt the bars,
+    And he had breathed the Proctor's dogs; and one
+    Discuss'd his tutor, rough to common men
+    But honeying at the whisper of a lord;
+    And one the Master, as a rogue in grain
+    Veneer'd with sanctimonious theory."
+
+The dialogue happily takes a turn, and the task of writing the
+_Princess_ is assigned to the author, as one of the tales in the
+Decameron of Boccaccio. A neighbouring princess of the south (so the
+story runs as the prince tells it) is in childhood betrothed to a like
+childish prince of the north:--
+
+                  "She to me
+    Was proxy-wedded with a _bootless calf_ [?]
+    At eight years old."
+
+Both grew up, the prince, all imaginative, filling his mind with
+pictures of her perfections; but she turning a female reformer of the
+Wolstencroft [_sic_] school, resolved never to wed till woman was raised
+to an equality with men, and establishing a strange female colony and
+college to carry this vast design into effect. In consequence of this
+her father is obliged to violate the contract, and his indignant father
+prepares for war to enforce it. The prince, with two companions, flies
+to the south, to try what he can do for himself; and in the disguise of
+ladies they obtain admission to the guarded precincts of the new
+Amazonian league. He, meanwhile, sings sweetly of his mistress--
+
+    "And still I wore her picture by my heart,
+    And one dark tress; and all around them both
+    Sweet thoughts would swarm as bees about their queen."
+
+And of his friend--
+
+                    "My other heart,
+    My shadow, my half-self, for still we moved
+    Together, kin as horse's ear and eye."
+
+His evasion is also finely told--
+
+      "But when the council broke, I rose and past
+    Through the wild woods that hang about the town;
+    Found a still place, and pluck'd her likeness out:
+    Laid it on flowers, and watch'd it lying bathed
+    In the green gleam of dewy-tassell'd trees:
+    What were those fancies? wherefore break her troth?
+    Proud look'd the lips: but while I meditated
+    A wind arose and rush'd upon the South,
+    And shook the songs, the whispers, and the shrieks
+    Of the wild woods together; and a Voice
+    Went with it 'Follow, follow, thou shalt win!'"
+
+Almost in juxtaposition with these beauties, we find one of the
+disagreeable blots, so offensive to good taste, which disfigure the
+poem. The travellers are interrogating the host of an inn close to the
+liberties where the princess holds her petticoated sway:--
+
+                      "And at the last--
+    The summer of the vine in all his veins--
+    'No doubt that we might make it worth his while.
+    For him, he reverenced his liege-lady there;
+    He always made a point to post with mares;
+    His daughter and his housemaid were the boys.
+    The land, he understood, for miles about
+    Was till'd by women; all the swine were sows,
+    And all the dogs'"--
+
+This is too bad, even for medley; but proceed we into the interior of
+the grand and luxurious feminine institution, where their sex is
+speedily discovered, but for certain reasons concealed by the
+discoverers. Lectures on the past and what might be done to accomplish
+female equality, and description of the boundaries, the dwelling place,
+and the dwellers therein, fill many a page of mingled excellence and
+defects. Here is a sample of both in half a dozen lines:--
+
+                          "We saw
+    The Lady Blanche's daughter where she stood,
+    Melissa, with her hand upon the lock,
+    A rosy blonde, and in a college gown
+    _That clad her like an April daffodilly_
+    (Her mother's colour) with her lips apart,
+    And all her thoughts as fair within her eyes,
+    _As bottom agates seem to wave and float
+    In crystal currents of clear morning seas_."
+
+Curious contradictions in mere terms, also occasionally occur. Thus, of
+a frightened girl, we are told that--
+
+                              "_Light_
+    As flies the _shadow_ of a bird she fled."
+
+Events move on. The prince reasons as a man in a colloquy with the
+princess, and speaks of the delights of maternal affections, and she
+replies--
+
+              "We are not talk'd to thus:
+    Yet will we say for children, would they grew
+    Like field-flowers everywhere! we like them well:
+    But children die; and let me tell you, girl,
+    Howe'er you babble, great deeds cannot die:
+    They with the sun and moon renew their light
+    Forever, blessing those that look on them:
+    Children--that men may pluck them from our hearts,
+    Kill us with pity, break us with ourselves--
+    O--children--there is nothing upon earth
+    More miserable than she that has a son
+    And sees him err:"
+
+A song on "The days that are no more," seems to us to be too laboured,
+nor is the other lyric introduced, "The Swallow," much more to our
+satisfaction. It is a mixture of prettinesses: the first four triplets
+run thus, ending in a poetic beauty--
+
+    "O Swallow, Swallow, flying, flying South,
+    Fly to her, and fall upon her gilded eaves,
+    And tell her, tell her what I tell to thee.
+
+    "O tell her, Swallow, thou that knowest each,
+    That bright and fierce and fickle is the South,
+    And _dark_ and true and tender is the North.
+
+    "O Swallow, Swallow, if I could follow, and light
+    Upon her lattice, I would pipe and trill,
+    And _cheep and twitter twenty million loves_.
+
+    "O were I thou that she might take me in,
+    And lay me on her bosom, _and her heart
+    Would rock the snowy cradle till I died_."
+
+The prince saves the princess from being drowned, when the secret
+explodes like a roll of gun cotton, and a grand turmoil ensues. The
+rival kings approach to confines in battle array, and the princess
+resumes the declaration of war:--
+
+                              "A tide of fierce
+    Invective seem'd to wait behind her lips,
+    As waits a river level with the dam
+    Ready to burst and flood the world with foam:
+    And so she would have spoken, but there rose
+    A hubbub in the court of half the maids
+    Gather'd together; from the illumin'd hall
+    Long lanes of splendour slanted o'er a press
+    Of snowy shoulders, thick as herded ewes,
+    And rainbow robes, and gems and gemlike eyes,
+    And gold and golden heads; they to and fro
+    Fluctuated, as flowers in storm, some red, same pale,
+    All open-mouth'd, all gazing to the light,
+    Some crying there was an army in the land,
+    And some that men were in the very walls,
+    And some they cared not; till a clamour grew
+    As of a new-world Babel, woman-built,
+    And worse-confounded: high above them stood
+    The placid marble Muses, looking peace."
+
+She denounces the perils outside and in--
+
+                                    "I dare
+    All these male thunderbolts: what is it ye fear?
+    Peace! there are those to avenge us and they come:
+    If not,--myself were like enough, O girls,
+    To unfurl the maiden banner of our rights,
+    And clad in iron burst the ranks of war,
+    Or, falling, protomartyr of our cause,
+    Die: yet I blame ye not so much for fear;
+    Six thousand years of fear have made ye that
+    From which I would redeem ye: but for those
+    That stir this hubbub--you and you--I know
+    Your faces there in the crowd--to-morrow morn
+    We meet to elect new tutors; then shall they
+    That love their voices more than duty, learn
+    With whom they deal, dismiss'd in shame to live
+    No wiser than their mothers, household stuff,
+    Live chattels, mincers of each other's fame,
+    Full of weak poison, turnspits for the clown,
+    The drunkard's football, laughing-stocks of Time,
+    Whose brains are in their hands and in their heels,
+    But fit to flaunt, to dress, to dance, to thrum,
+    To tramp, to scream, to burnish, and to scour
+    For ever slaves at home and fools abroad."
+
+Ay, just as Shakspere hath it--
+
+    "To suckle fools and chronicle small beer."
+
+The hero also meets the shock, at least in poetic grace:--
+
+                        "Upon my spirits
+    Settled a gentle cloud of melancholy,
+    Which I shook off, for I was young, and one
+    To whom the shadow of all mischance but came
+    As night to him that sitting on a hill
+    Sees the midsummer, midnight, Norway sun,
+    Set into sunrise."
+
+It is agreed to decide the contest by a combat of fifty on each
+side--the one led by the prince, and the other by Arac, the brother of
+the princess. And clad in "harness"--
+
+              "Issued in the sun that now
+    Leapt from the dewy shoulders of the Earth,
+    And hit the northern hills."
+
+To the fight--
+
+    "Then rode we with the old king across the lawns
+    Beneath huge trees, a thousand rings of Spring
+    In every bole, a song on every spray
+    Of birds that piped their Valentines."
+
+The prince and his companions are defeated; and he, wounded almost to
+the death, is consigned at her own request to be nursed by the
+princess:--
+
+    "So was their sanctuary violated,
+    So their fair college turn'd to hospital;
+    At first with all confusion; by and by
+    Sweet order lived again with other laws;
+    A kindlier influence reign'd; and everywhere
+    Low voices with the ministering hand
+    Hung round the sick."
+
+The result may be foreseen--
+
+    "From all a closer interest flourish'd up.
+    Tenderness touch by touch, and last, to these,
+    Love, like an Alpine harebell hung with tears
+    By some cold morning glacier; frail at first
+    And feeble, all unconscious of itself,
+    But such as gather'd colour day by day."
+
+And the agreement is filled up:--
+
+                "Dear, but let us type them now
+    In our lives, and this proud watchword rest
+    Of equal; seeing either sex alone
+    Is half itself, and in true marriage lies
+    Nor equal, nor unequal: each fulfils
+    Defect in each, and always thought in thought,
+    Purpose in purpose, will in will, they grow,
+    The single pure and perfect animal,
+    The two-cell'd heart beating with one full stroke
+    Life"
+
+              "O we will walk this world,
+    Yoked in all exercise of noble end,
+    And so through those dark gates across the wild
+    That no man knows. Indeed I love thee; come,
+    Yield thyself up; my hopes and thine are one;
+    Accomplish thou my manhood and thyself
+    Lay thy sweet hands in mine and trust to me."
+
+Who will question the true poetry of this production, or who will deny
+the imperfections, (mostly of affectation, though some of tastelessness)
+which obscure it? Who will wonder at our confessed wavering when they
+have read this course of alternate power, occasionally extravagant, and
+feebleness as in the long account of the _emeute_? Of the extravagant,
+the description of the princess, on receiving the declaration of war, is
+an example:--
+
+                    "She read, till over brow
+    And cheek and bosom brake the wrathful bloom
+    As of some fire against a stormy cloud,
+    When the wild peasant rights himself, and the rick
+    Flames, and his anger reddens in the heavens."
+
+The heroine, it must be acknowledged, is much of the virago throughout,
+and the prince rather of the softest; but the tale could not be
+otherwise told. We add four examples--two to be admired, and two to be
+contemned, in the fulfilment of our critique.
+
+    "For was, and is, and will be, are but is,"
+
+is a noble line; and the following, on the promised restoration of a
+child to its mother, is very touching--
+
+    "Again she veiled her brows, and prone she sank, and so
+    Like tender things that being caught feign death,
+    Spoke not, nor stirr'd."
+
+Not so the burlesque eight daughters of the plough, the brawny ministers
+of the princess' executive, and their usage of a herald. They were--
+
+    "Eight daughters of the plough, stronger than men,
+    Huge women blowzed with health, and wind, and rain
+    And labour. Each was like a Druid rock;
+    Or like a spire of land that stands apart
+    Cleft from the main, and clang'd about with mews."
+
+And they--
+
+    "Came sallying through the gates, and caught his hair,
+    And so belabour'd him on rib and cheek
+    They made him wild."
+
+Nor the following--
+
+    "When the man wants weight the woman takes it up,
+    And topples down the scales; but this is fixt
+    As are the roots of earth and base of all.
+    Man for the field and woman for the hearth;
+    Man for the sword and for the needle she;
+    Man with the head and woman with the heart;
+    Man to command and woman to obey;
+    All else confusion. Look to it; the gray mare
+    Is ill to live with, when her whinny shrills
+    From tile to scullery, and her small goodman
+    Shrinks in his arm-chair while the fires of Hell
+    Mix with his hearth; but take and break her, you!
+    She's yet a colt. Well groom'd and strongly curb'd
+    She might not rank with those detestable
+    That to the hireling leave their babe, and brawl
+    Their rights or wrongs like potherbs in the street.
+    They say she's comely; there's the fairer chance:
+    _I_ like her none the less for rating at her!
+    Besides, the woman wed is not as we,
+    But suffers change of frame. A lusty brace
+    Of twins may weed her of her folly. Boy,
+    The bearing and the training of a child
+    Is woman's wisdom."
+
+--_The Literary Gazette_.
+
+
+
+
+ROBERT BROWNING
+
+
+_Paracelsus_. By Robert Browning.
+
+There is talent in this dramatic poem, (in which is attempted a picture
+of the mind of this celebrated character,) but it is dreamy and obscure.
+Writers would do well to remember, (by way of example,) that though it
+is not difficult to imitate the mysticism and vagueness of Shelley, we
+love him and have taken him to our hearts as a poet, not _because_ of
+these characteristics--but _in spite_ of them.--_The Athenaeum_.
+
+
+_Sordello_. By Robert Browning. London: Moxon. 1840.
+
+The scene of this poem is laid in Italy, when the Ghibelline and Guelph
+factions were in hottest contest. The author's style is rather peculiar,
+there being affectations of language and invertions of thought, and
+other causes of obscurity in the course of the story which detract from
+the pleasure of perusing it. But after all, we are much mistaken if Mr.
+Browning does not prove himself a poet of a right stamp,--original,
+vigorous, and finely inspired. He appears to us to possess a true sense
+of the dignity and sacredness of the poet's kingdom; and his imagination
+wings its way with a boldness, freedom and scope, as if he felt himself
+at home in that sphere, and was resolved to put his allegiance to the
+test.--_The Monthly Review_.
+
+
+_Men and Women_. By Robert Browning. Two Volumes. Chapman and Hall.
+
+It is really high time that this sort of thing should, if possible, be
+stopped. Here is another book of madness and mysticism--another
+melancholy specimen of power wantonly wasted, and talent deliberately
+perverted--another act of self-prostration before that demon of bad
+taste who now seems to hold in absolute possession the fashionable
+masters of our ideal literature. It is a strong case for the
+correctional justice of criticism, which has too long abdicated its
+proper functions. The Della Crusca of Sentimentalism perished under the
+_Baviad_--is there to be no future Gifford for the Della Crusca of
+Transcendentalism? The thing has really grown to a lamentable head
+amongst us. The contagion has affected not only our sciolists and our
+versifiers, but those whom, in the absence of a mightier race, we must
+be content to accept as the poets of our age. Here is Robert Browning,
+for instance--no one can doubt that he is capable of better things--no
+one, while deploring the obscurities that deface the _Paracelsus_ and
+the _Dramatic Lyrics_, can deny the less questionable qualities which
+characterized those remarkable poems--but can any of his devotees be
+found to uphold his present elaborate experiment on the patience of the
+public? Take any of his worshippers you please--let him be "well up" in
+the transcendental poets of the day--take him fresh from Alexander
+Smith, or Alfred Tennyson's _Maud_, or the _Mystic_ of Bailey--and we
+will engage to find him at least ten passages in the first ten pages of
+_Men and Women_, some of which, even after profound study, he will not
+be able to construe at all, and not one of which he will be able to
+read off at sight. Let us take one or two selections at random from the
+first volume, and try. What, for instance, is the meaning of these four
+stanzas from the poem entitled "By the Fireside"?--
+
+    My perfect wife, my Leonor,
+      Oh, heart my own, oh, eyes, mine too,
+    Whom else could I dare look backward for,
+      With whom beside should I dare pursue
+    The path grey heads abhor?
+
+    For it leads to a crag's sheer edge with them;
+      Youth, flowery all the way, there stops--
+    Not they; age threatens and they contemn,
+      Till they reach the gulf wherein youth drops,
+    One inch from our life's safe hem!
+
+    With me, youth led--I will speak now,
+      No longer watch you as you sit
+    Reading by fire-light, that great brow
+      And the spirit-small hand propping it
+    Mutely--my heart knows how--
+
+    When, if I think but deep enough,
+      You are wont to answer, prompt as rhyme;
+    And you, too, find without a rebuff
+      The response your soul seeks many a time
+    Piercing its fine flesh-stuff--
+
+We really should think highly of the powers of any interpreter who could
+"pierce" the obscurity of such "stuff" as this. One extract more and we
+have done. A gold medal in the department of Hermeneutical Science to
+the ingenious individual, who, after any length of study, can succeed in
+unriddling this tremendous passage from "Master Hugues of Saxe-Gotha,"
+the organist:--
+
+    First you deliver your phrase
+      --Nothing propound, that I see,
+    Fit in itself for much blame or much praise--
+      Answered no less, where no answer needs be:
+    Off start the Two on their ways!
+
+    Straight must a Third interpose,
+      Volunteer needlessly help--
+    In strikes a Fourth, a Fifth thrusts in his nose,
+      So the cry's open, the kennel's a-yelp,
+    Argument's hot to the close!
+
+    One disertates, he is candid--
+      Two must dicept,--has distinguished!
+    Three helps the couple, if ever yet man did:
+      Four protests, Five makes a dart at the thing wished--
+    Back to One, goes the case bandied!
+
+    One says his say with a difference--
+      More of expounding, explaining!
+    All now is wrangle, abuse, and vociferance--
+      Now there's a truce, all's subdued, self-restraining--
+    Five, though, stands out all the stiffer hence.
+
+    One is incisive, corrosive--
+      Two retorts, nettled, curt, crepitant--
+    Three makes rejoinder, expansive, explosive--
+      Four overbears them all, strident and strepitant--
+    Five ... O Danaides, O Sieve!
+
+    Now, they ply axes and crowbars--
+      Now they prick pins at a tissue
+    Fine as a skein of the casuist Escobar's
+      Worked on the bone of a lie. To what issue?
+    Where is our gain at the Two-bars?
+
+    _Est fuga, volvitur rota!_
+      On we drift. Where looms the dim port?
+    One, Two, Three, Four, Five, contribute their quota--
+      Something is gained, if one caught but the import--
+    Show it us, Hugues of Saxe-Gotha!
+
+    What [with] affirming, denying,
+      Holding, risposting, subjoining,
+    All's like ... it's like ... for an instance I'm trying ...
+      There! See our roof, its gilt moulding and groining
+    Under those spider-webs lying?
+
+    So your fugue broadens and thickens,
+      Greatens and deepens and lengthens,
+    Till one exclaims--"But where's music, the dickens?
+      Blot ye the gold, while your spider-web strengthens,
+    Blacked to the stoutest of tickens?"
+
+Do our readers exclaim, "But where's poetry--the dickens--in all this
+rigmarole?" We confess we can find none--we can find nothing but a set
+purpose to be obscure, and an idiot captivity to the jingle of
+Hudibrastic rhyme. This idle weakness really appears to be at the bottom
+of half the daring nonsense in this most daringly nonsensical book.
+Hudibras Butler told us long ago that "rhyme the rudder is of verses;"
+and when, as in his case, or in that of Ingoldsby Barham, or
+Whims-and-Oddities Hood, the rudder guides the good ship into tracks of
+fun and fancy she might otherwise have missed, we are grateful to the
+double-endings, not on their own account, but for what they have led us
+to. But Mr. Browning is the mere thrall of his own rudder, and is
+constantly being steered by it into whirlpools of the most raging
+absurdity. This morbid passion for double rhymes, which is observable
+more or less throughout the book, reaches its climax in a long copy of
+verses on the "Old Pictures of Florence," which, with every disposition
+to be tolerant of the frailties of genius, we cannot hesitate to
+pronounce a masterpiece of absurdity. Let the lovers of the Hudibrastic
+admire these _tours de force_:--
+
+    Not that I expect the great Bigordi
+      Nor Sandro to hear me, chivalric, bellicose;
+    Nor wronged Lippino--and not a word I
+      Say of a scrap of Fra Angelico's.
+    But you are too fine, Taddeo Gaddi,
+      So grant me a taste of your intonaco--
+    Some Jerome that seeks the heaven with a sad eye?
+      No churlish saint, Lorenzo Monaco?
+
+        *    *    *    *    *    *    *
+
+    Margheritone of Arezzo,
+      With the grave-clothes garb and swaddling barret,
+    (Why purse up mouth and beak in a pet so,
+      You bald, saturnine, poll-clawed parrot?)
+    No poor glimmering Crucifixion,
+      Where in the foreground kneels the donor?
+    If such remain, as is my conviction,
+      The hoarding does you but little honour.
+
+The conclusion of this poem rises to a climax:--
+
+    How shall we prologuise, how shall we perorate,
+      Say fit things upon art and history--
+    Set truth at blood-heat and the false at zero rate,
+      Make of the want of the age no mystery!
+    Contrast the fructuous and sterile eras,
+      Show, monarchy its uncouth cub licks
+    Out of the bear's shape to the chimaera's--
+      Pure Art's birth being still the republic's!
+
+    Then one shall propose (in a speech, curt Tuscan,
+      Sober, expurgate, spare of an "_issimo_,")
+    Ending our half-told tale of Cambuscan,
+      Turning the Bell-tower's altaltissimo.
+    And fine as the beak of a young beccaccia
+      The Campanile, the Duomo's fit ally,
+    Soars up in gold its full fifty braccia,
+      Completing Florence, as Florence, Italy.
+
+How really deplorable is all this! On what theory of art can it possibly
+be defended? In all the fine arts alike--poetry, painting, sculpture,
+music--the master works have this in common, that they please in the
+highest degree the most cultivated, and to the widest extent the less
+cultivated. _Lear_ and the _Divine Comedy_ exhaust the thinking of the
+profoundest student, yet subdue to hushed and breathless attention the
+illiterate minds that know not what study means. The "Last Judgment,"
+the "Transfiguration," the "Niobe," and the "Dying Gladiator" excite
+alike the intelligent rapture of artists, and the unintelligent
+admiration of those to whom art and its principles are a sealed book.
+Handel's _Israel in Egypt_--the wonder of the scientific musician in his
+closet--yet sways to and fro, like a mighty wind upon the waters, the
+hearts of assembled thousands at an Exeter Hall oratorio. To take an
+instance more striking still, Beethoven, the sublime, the rugged, the
+austere, is also, as even Mons. Jullien could tell us, fast becoming a
+popular favourite. Now why is this? Simply because these master minds,
+under the divine teaching of genius, have known how to clothe their
+works in a beauty of form incorporate with their very essence--a beauty
+of form which has an elective affinity with the highest instincts of
+universal humanity. And it is on this beauty of form, this exquisite
+perfection of style, that the Baileys and the Brownings would have us
+believe that they set small account, that they purposely and scornfully
+trample. We do not believe it. We believe that it is only because they
+are half-gifted that they are but half-intelligible. Their mysticism is
+weakness--weakness writhing itself into contortions that it may ape the
+muscles of strength. Artistic genius, in its higher degrees, necessarily
+involves the power of beautiful self-expression. It is but a weak and
+watery sun that allows the fogs to hang heavy between the objects on
+which it shines and the eyes it would enlighten; the true day-star
+chases the mists at once, and shows us the world at a glance.
+
+Our main object has been to protest against what we feel to be the false
+teachings of a perverted school of art; and we have used this book of
+Mr. Browning's chiefly as a means of showing the extravagant lengths of
+absurdity to which the tenets of that school can lead a man of admitted
+powers. We should regret, however in the pursuit of this object to
+inflict injustice on Mr. Browning. This last book of his, like most of
+its predecessors, contains some undeniable beauties--subtle thoughts,
+graceful fancies, and occasionally a strain of music, which only makes
+the chaos of surrounding discords jar more harshly on the ear. The
+dramatic scenes "In a Balcony" are finely conceived and vigorously
+written; "Bishop Blougram's Apology," and "Cleon," are well worth
+reading and thinking over; and there is a certain grace and beauty in
+several of the minor poems. That which, on the whole, has pleased us
+most--really, perhaps, because we could read it off-hand--is "The Statue
+and the Bust," of which we give the opening stanzas:--
+
+[Quotes fourteen stanzas of _The Statue and the Bust_.]
+
+Why should a man, who, with so little apparent labour, can write
+naturally and well, take so much apparent labour to write affectedly and
+ill? There can be but one of two solutions. Either he goes wrong from
+want of knowledge, in which case it is clear that he wants the highest
+intuitions of genius; or he sins against knowledge, in which case he
+must have been misled by the false promptings of a morbid vanity, eager
+for that applause of fools which always waits on quackery, and which is
+never refused to extravagance when tricked out in the guise of
+originality. It is difficult, from the internal evidence supplied by
+his works, to know which of these two theories to adopt. Frequently the
+conclusion is almost irresistible, that Mr. Browning's mysticism must be
+of _malice prepense_: on the whole, however, we are inclined to clear
+his honesty at the expense of his powers, and to conclude that he is
+obscure, not so much because he has the vanity to be thought original,
+as because he lacks sufficient genius to make himself clear.--_The
+Saturday Review_.
+
+
+
+
+NOTES
+
+
+THOMAS GRAY
+
+When Gray's _Elegy Written in a Country Church-Yard_ appeared in 1751,
+the _Monthly Rev._, IV, p. 309, gave it the following curious
+notice:--"The excellence of this little piece amply compensates for its
+want of quantity." The immediate success and popularity of the _Elegy_
+established Gray's poetical reputation; hence his _Odes_ (1757) were
+received and criticized as the work of a poet of whom something entirely
+different was expected. The thin quarto volume containing _The Progress
+of Poesy_ and _The Bard_ (entitled merely Ode I and Ode II in that
+edition) was printed for Dodsley by Horace Walpole at Strawberry Hill,
+and was published on August 8, 1757. Within a fortnight Gray wrote to
+Thomas Warton that the poems were not at all popular, the great
+objection being their obscurity; a week later he wrote to Hurd:--"Even
+my friends tell me they [the Odes] do not succeed ... in short, I have
+heard nobody but a player [Garrick] and a doctor of divinity [Warburton]
+that profess their esteem for them." For further comment, see Gray's
+_Works_, ed. Gosse, II, pp. 321-328.
+
+Our review, which is reprinted from _Monthly Rev._, XVII (239-243)
+(September, 1757), was written by Oliver Goldsmith, and is included in
+most of the collected editions of his works. Although it was practically
+wrung from Goldsmith while he was the unwilling thrall of Griffiths, it
+is a noteworthy piece of criticism for its time--certainly far superior
+to the general standard of the _Monthly Review_. While recognizing the
+scholarly merit of the poet's work, Goldsmith showed clearly why the
+Odes could not become popular. A more favorable notice of the volume
+appeared in the _Critical Rev._, IV, p. 167.
+
+In reprinting this review, the long quotations from both odes have been
+omitted. This precedent is followed in all cases where the quotations
+are of inordinate length, or are offered merely as "specimens" without
+specific criticism. No useful end would be served in reprinting numerous
+pages of classic extracts that are readily accessible to every student.
+All omissions are, of course, properly indicated.
+
+1. _Quinault_. Philippe Quinault (1635-1688), a popular French dramatist
+and librettist.
+
+2. _Mark'd for her own_. An allusion to the line in the Epitaph appended
+to the _Elegy_: "And Melancholy marked him for her own."
+
+
+OLIVER GOLDSMITH
+
+Goldsmith's _Traveller_ (1764) was begun as early as 1755--before he had
+expressed what Professor Dowden calls his "qualified enthusiasm" and
+"official admiration" for Gray's _Odes_. In criticizing Gray, he quoted
+Isocrates' advice--_Study the people_--and properly bore that precept in
+mind while he was shaping his own verses. The _Odes_ and the _Traveller_
+are respectively characteristic utterances of their authors--of the
+academic recluse, and of the warm-hearted lover of humanity.
+
+The review, quoted from the _Critical Rev._, XVIII (458-462) (December,
+1764), is from the pen of Dr. Samuel Johnson. Apart from its
+distinguished authorship and the strong words of commendation in the
+final sentence, it possesses slight interest as literary criticism. It
+is, in fact, little more than a brief summary of the poem, enriched by a
+few well-chosen illustrative extracts. The fact that Johnson contributed
+nine or ten lines to the poem (see Boswell, ed. Hill, I, p. 441, n. 1,
+and II, p. 6) may account partly for the character of the review.
+Johnson's quotations from the poem are not continuous and show several
+variations from authoritative texts.
+
+
+WILLIAM COWPER
+
+Cowper stands almost alone among English poets as an instance of late
+manifestation of poetic power. He was over fifty years of age when he
+offered his first volume of _Poems_ (1782) to the public. This
+collection, which included _Table-Talk_ and other didactic poems,
+appeared at the beginning of the most prosaic age in the history of
+modern English literature; yet the critics did not find it sufficiently
+striking in quality to differentiate it from the level of contemporary
+verse, or to forecast the success of _The Task_ and _John Gilpin's Ride_
+three years later.
+
+The notice in the _Critical Rev._, LIII (287-290), appeared in April,
+1782. While the same poems are but slightly esteemed to-day, it must be
+recognized that the attitude of the reviewer was severe for his time.
+The age had grown accustomed to large draughts of moralizing and
+didacticism in verse, and the quality of Cowper's contribution was
+assuredly above the average. The _Monthly Rev._, LXVII, p. 262, gave the
+_Poems_ a much more favorable reception.
+
+10. _Non Dii, non homines, etc._ Properly, _non homines, non di_,
+Horace, _Ars Poetica_, l. 373.
+
+10. _Caraccioli_. _Jouissance de soi-meme_ (ed. 1762), cap. xii.
+
+11. _There needs no ghost, etc._ See _Hamlet_, I, 5. 110.
+
+
+ROBERT BURNS
+
+The Kilmarnock edition (1786) of Burns' _Poems_ was published during the
+most eventful period of the poet's life; the almost universally kind
+reception accorded to this volume was the one source of consolation amid
+many sorrows and distractions. Two reviews have been selected to
+illustrate both the Scottish and English attitude toward the newly
+discovered "ploughman-poet." The _Edinburgh Magazine_, IV (284-288), in
+October, 1786, gave Burns a welcome that was hearty and sincere; though
+we may smile to-day at the information that he has neither the "doric
+simplicity" of Ramsay, nor the "brilliant imagination" of Ferguson.
+Besides the poems mentioned in brackets, the magazine published further
+extracts from Burns in subsequent numbers. The _Critical Review_, LXIII
+(387-388), gave the volume a belated notice in May, 1787, exceeding even
+the Scotch magazine in its generous appreciation. With the generally
+accepted fact in mind that all of Burns' enduring work is in the
+Scottish dialect, and that his English poems are comparatively inferior,
+it is interesting to note the _Critical Review's_ regret that the
+dialect must "obscure the native beauties" and be often unintelligible
+to English readers. The same sentiment was expressed by the _Monthly
+Review_, LXXV, p. 439, in the critique reprinted (without its curious
+anglified version of _The Cotter's Saturday Night_) in Stevenson's
+_Early Reviews_.
+
+There is perhaps no other English poet whose fame was so suddenly and
+securely established as Burns'. At no time since the appearance of the
+Kilmarnock volume has the worth of his lyrical achievement been
+seriously questioned. The _Reliques_ of Burns, edited by Dr. Cromek in
+1808, were reviewed by Walter Scott in the first number of the
+_Quarterly Review_, and by Jeffrey in the corresponding number of the
+_Edinburgh_. Both articles are valuable to the student of Burns, but
+their great length made their inclusion in the present volume
+impracticable.
+
+14. _Rusticus abnormis sapiens, etc._ Horace, Sat. II, l. 3.
+
+15. _A great lady ... and celebrated professor_. Evidently Mrs. Dunlop
+and Professor Dugald Stewart, who both took great interest in Burns
+after the appearance of the Kilmarnock volume.
+
+
+WILLIAM WORDSWORTH
+
+The thin quartos containing _An Evening Walk_ and _Descriptive Sketches_
+were published by Wordsworth in 1793. The former was practically a
+school-composition in verse, written between 1787-89 and dedicated to
+his sister; the latter was composed in France during 1791-92 and was
+revised shortly before publication. The dedication was addressed to the
+Rev. Robert Jones, fellow of St. John's College, Cambridge, who was
+Wordsworth's companion during the pedestrian tour in the Alps. Though
+_An Evening Walk_ was published first, the _Monthly Review_, XII, n.s.
+(216-218), in October, 1793, noticed both in the same issue and
+naturally gave precedence to the longer poem. Specific allusions in the
+text necessitate the same order in the present reprint.
+
+The impatience of the reviewer at the prospect of "more descriptive
+poetry" was due to the fact that many such productions had recently been
+noticed by the _Monthly_, and that the volumes then under consideration
+evidently belonged to the broad stream of mediocre verse that had been
+flowing soberly along almost since the days of Thomson. These first
+attempts smacked so decidedly of the older manner that we cannot censure
+the critic for failing to foresee that Wordsworth was destined to
+glorify the "poetry of nature," and to rescue it from the rut of
+listless and soporific topographical description. Both poems, in the
+definitive text, are readable, and exhibit here and there a glimmer of
+the poet's future greatness; yet it must be borne in mind that
+Wordsworth was continually tinkering at his verse, to the subsequent
+despair of conscientious variorum editors, and that most of the
+absurdities and infelicities in his first editions disappeared under the
+correcting influence of his sarcastic critics and his own maturing
+taste.
+
+A collation of the accepted text with the _Monthly Review's_ quotations
+will repay the student; thus, the twelve opening lines quoted by the
+reviewer are represented by eight lines in Professor Knight's edition,
+and only four of these correspond to the original text. The reviewer
+confined his remarks to the first thirty lines of the poem and very
+properly neglected the rest. He followed, with moderate success, the
+method of quotation with interpolated sarcasm and badinage--a method
+that was afterwards effectively pursued by the early Edinburgh Reviewers
+and the Blackwood coterie. There are few examples of that style in the
+eighteenth century reviews, but some noteworthy specimens of a later
+period--_e.g._, the _Edinburgh Review_ on Coleridge's _Christabel_ and
+the _Quarterly_ on Tennyson's _Poems_--are reprinted in this volume.
+
+The review of _An Evening Walk_ is simply an appended paragraph to the
+previous article. Wordsworth evidently appreciated the advice conveyed
+in the reviewer's final sentence and found many of the lines that
+"called loudly for amendment." More favorable notices of both poems will
+be found in _Critical Review_, VIII, pp. 347 and 472.
+
+
+_Lyrical Ballads_
+
+The _Lyrical Ballads_ by Wordsworth and Coleridge were published
+anonymously early in September, 1798--a few days before the joint
+authors sailed for Germany. Coleridge's contributions were _The Rime of
+the Ancient Mariner_, _The Foster-Mother's Tale_, _The Nightingale_, and
+_The Dungeon_; the remaining nineteen poems were by Wordsworth. As the
+publication of this volume has been accepted by most critics as the
+first fruit of the new romantic spirit and the virtual beginning of
+modern English poetry, the reception accorded to the _Lyrical Ballads_
+becomes a matter of prime importance. It is well known that the effort
+was a failure at first and that the apparent triumph of romanticism did
+not occur until the publication of Scott's _Lay of the Last Minstrel_
+(1805); but a contemporary blindness to the beauty of two of the finest
+poems in English literature cannot be permitted to figure in the
+critics' dispassionate investigation of causes and influences.
+
+There were four interesting reviews of the first edition of the _Lyrical
+Ballads_, namely, (1) _Critical Rev._, XXIV, n.s. (197-204), in October,
+1798, which is reprinted here; (2) _Analytical Rev._, XXVIII (583-587),
+in December, 1798; (3) _Monthly Rev._, XXIX, n.s. (202-210), in May,
+1799, reprinted in Stevenson's _Early Reviews_; (4) _British Critic_,
+XIV (364-369) in October, 1799.
+
+The article in the _Critical Review_ was written by Robert Southey under
+conditions most favorable for such a malicious procedure. The publisher,
+his friend Cottle, had transferred the copyright of the _Lyrical
+Ballads_ to Arch, a London publisher, within two weeks of the appearance
+of the volume, giving as a shallow excuse the "heavy sale" of the book.
+Both Wordsworth and Coleridge were in Germany. Southey had quarreled
+with Coleridge, and was probably jealous of the latter's extravagant
+praise of Wordsworth. He accordingly seized the opportunity to assail
+the work without injuring Cottle's interests or entailing the immediate
+displeasure of the travelling bards.
+
+He covered his tracks to some extent by referring several times to "the
+author," although the joint authorship was well known to him. While
+severe in most of his strictures on Wordsworth, Southey reserved his
+special malice for _The Ancient Mariner_. He called it "a Dutch attempt
+at German sublimity"; and in a letter written to William Taylor on
+September 5, 1798--probably while he was writing his discreditable
+critique--he characterized the poem as "the clumsiest attempt at German
+sublimity I ever saw." Southey's responsibility for the article became
+known to Cottle, who communicated the fact to the poets on their return
+a year later. Wordsworth declared that "if Southey could not
+conscientiously have spoken differently of the volume, he ought to have
+declined the task of reviewing it." Coleridge indited an epigram, _To a
+Critic_, and let the matter drop. Shortly afterwards he showed his
+renewed good-will by aiding Southey in preparing the second _Annual
+Anthology_ (1800).
+
+The subsequent reviews of the _Lyrical Ballads_ adopted the tone of the
+_Critical_ (then recognized as the leading review) and internal evidence
+shows that they did not hesitate to borrow ideas from Southey's article.
+The _Analytical Review_ also saw German extravagances in _The Ancient
+Mariner_; the _Monthly_ borrowed Southey's figure of the Italian and
+Flemish painters, and called _The Ancient Mariner_ "the strangest story
+of a cock and bull that we ever saw on paper ... a rhapsody of
+unintelligible wildness and incoherence." The belated review in the
+_British Critic_ was probably written by Coleridge's friend, Rev.
+Francis Wrangham, and was somewhat more appreciative than the rest. For
+further details, consult Mr. Thomas Hutchinson's reprint (1898) of the
+_Lyrical Ballads_, pp. (xiii-xxviii). Despite the unfavorable reviews,
+the Ballads reached a fourth edition in 1805 (besides an American
+edition in 1802), thus achieving the popularity alluded to by Jeffrey at
+the beginning of our next review.
+
+
+_Poems_ (1807)
+
+Wordsworth's fourth publication, the _Poems_ (1807), included most of
+the pieces written after the first appearance of the _Lyrical Ballads_.
+It was likewise his first venture subsequent to the founding of the
+_Edinburgh Review_. Jeffrey had assailed the theories of the "Lake
+Poets" (and, incidentally, coined that unfortunate term) in the first
+number of the _Review_, in an article on Southey's _Thalaba_, and three
+years later (1805), in criticizing _Madoc_, he again expressed his views
+on the subject. Now came the first opportunity to deal with the
+recognized leader of the "Lakers"--the poet whose work most clearly
+illustrated the poetic theories that Jeffrey deemed pernicious.
+
+The article here reprinted from the _Edinburgh Rev._, XI (214-231), of
+October, 1807, and Jeffrey's review of _The Excursion_, in _ibid._, XXIV
+(1-30), are perhaps the two most important critiques of their kind. No
+student of Wordsworth's theory of poetry, as set forth in his various
+prefaces, can afford to ignore either of these interesting discussions
+of the subject. (For details, see A.J. George's edition of the
+_Prefaces_ of Wordsworth, Gates' _Selections_ from Jeffrey, Beers'
+_Nineteenth Century Romanticism_, Hutchinson's edition of _Lyrical
+Ballads_, etc.) It was undoubtedly true that Jeffrey, although an able
+critic, failed to grasp the real significance of the new poetic
+movement, and to appreciate the influence wrought by the doctrines of
+the Lake Poets on modern conceptions of poetry. Yet he was far from
+wrong in many of his criticisms of Wordsworth. While deprecating the
+latter's theories, it is clear that Jeffrey regarded him as a poet of
+great power who was being led astray by his perverse practice. The
+popular conception of Jeffrey as a hectoring and blatant opponent of
+Wordsworth is not substantiated by the review. The impartial reader must
+agree with Jeffrey at many points, and if he will take the trouble to
+collate Jeffrey's quotations with the revised text of Wordsworth, he
+will learn that the poet did not disdain to take an occasional
+suggestion for the improvement of his verse.
+
+We recognize Wordsworth to-day as the most unequal of English poets.
+There is little that is common to the inspired bard of _Tintern Abbey_,
+the _Immortality Ode_ and the nobler _Sonnets_, and the unsophisticated
+scribe of _Peter Bell_ and _The Idiot Boy_. Like Browning, he wrote too
+much to write well at all times, and if both poets were capable of the
+sublimest flights, they likewise descended to unimagined depths; but the
+fault of Wordsworth was perhaps the greater, because his bathos was the
+result of a deliberate and persistent attempt to enrich English poetry
+with prosaically versified incidents drawn at length from homely rural
+life.
+
+
+SAMUEL TAYLOR COLERIDGE
+
+The first part of Coleridge's _Christabel_ was written in 1797 during
+the brief period of inspiration that also gave us _The Ancient Mariner_
+and _Kubla Khan_--in short, that small group of exquisite poems which in
+themselves suffice to place Coleridge in the front rank of English
+poets. The second part was written in 1800, after the author's return
+from Germany. The fragment circulated widely in manuscript among
+literary men, bewitched Scott and Byron into imitating its fascinating
+rhythms, and, at Byron's suggestion, was finally published by Murray in
+1816 with _Kubla Khan_ and _The Pains of Sleep_. It is probable that the
+high esteem in which these poems were held by Coleridge's literary
+friends led him to expect a favorable reception at the hands of the
+critics; hence his keen disappointment at the general tone of their
+sarcastic analysis and their protests against the absurdity and
+obscurity of the poems. The principal critiques on _Christabel_
+were:--(1) _Edinburgh Rev._, XXVII (58-67), which is here reprinted; (2)
+_Monthly Rev._, LXXXII, n.s. (22-25), reprinted in Stevenson's _Early
+Reviews_; (3) _The Literary Panorama_, IV, n.s. (561-565); and (4)
+_Anti-Jacobin Rev._, L (632-636).
+
+It is evident that Coleridge was eminently successful in the gentle art
+of making enemies. We have seen that Southey's attack on the _Lyrical
+Ballads_ was a direct result of his ill-will toward Coleridge; the
+outrageous article in the _Edinburgh Review_ was written by William
+Hazlitt under similar inspiration, and was followed by abusive papers in
+_The Examiner_ (1816, p. 743, and 1817, p. 236). There was no
+justification for Hazlitt, and none has been attempted by his
+biographers. Judged by its intrinsic merits, the Edinburgh article is
+one of the most absurd reviews ever written by a critic of recognized
+ability. Hazlitt followed the method of outlining the story by quotation
+with interspersed sarcasm and ironical criticism. As a coarse boor might
+crumple a delicate and beautifully wrought fabric to prove that it has
+not the wearing qualities of a blacksmith's apron, Hazlitt seized upon
+the ethereal story of _Christabel_, with its wealth of mediaeval and
+romantic imagery, and held up to ridicule the incidents that did not
+conform to modern English conceptions of life. It requires no great art
+to produce such a critique; the same method was applied to _Christabel_
+with hardly less success by the anonymous hack of the _Anti-Jacobin_.
+Whatever may have been Hazlitt's motives, we cannot understand how a
+critic of his unquestioned ability could quote with ridicule some of the
+very finest lines of _Kubla Khan_, and expect his readers to concur with
+his opinion. The lack of taste was more apparent because he quoted, with
+qualified praise, six lines of no extraordinary merit from _Christabel_
+and insisted, that with this one exception, there was not a couplet in
+the whole poem that achieved the standard of a newspaper poetry-corner
+or the effusions scratched by peripatetic bards on inn-windows. An
+interesting discussion between Mr. Thomas Hutchinson and Col. Prideaux
+concerning Hazlitt's responsibility for this and other critiques on
+Coleridge in the _Edinburgh Review_ will be found in _Notes and Queries_
+(Ninth Series), X, pp. 388, 429; XI, 170, 269.
+
+The other reviews of _Christabel_ were all unfavorable. Most extravagant
+was the utterance of the _Monthly Magazine_, XLVI, p. 407, in 1818, when
+it declared that the "poem of Christabel is only fit for the inmates of
+Bedlam. We are not acquainted in the history of literature with so great
+an insult offered to the public understanding as the publication of that
+r[h]apsody of delirium."
+
+Hazlitt's primitive remarks on the metre of _Christabel_ are of little
+interest. Coleridge was, of course, wrong in stating that his metre was
+founded on a new principle. The irregularly four-stressed line occurs in
+Spenser's _Shepherd's Calender_ and can be traced back through the
+halting tetrameters of Skelton. Coleridge himself alludes to this fact
+in his note to his poem _The Raven_, and elsewhere.
+
+Coleridge's earlier poetical publications were received with commonplace
+critiques usually mildly favorable. For reviews of his _Poems_ (1796)
+see _Monthly Rev._, XX, n.s., p. 194; _Analytical Rev._, XXIII, p. 610;
+_British Critic_, VII, p. 549; and _Critical Rev._, XVII, n.s., p. 209;
+the second edition of _Poems_ (1797) is noticed in _Critical Rev._,
+XXIII, n.s., p. 266; for _Lyrical Ballads_, see under Wordsworth; for
+the successful play _Remorse_ (1813), see _Monthly Rev._, LXXI, n.s., p.
+82, and _Quarterly Rev._, XI, p. 177.
+
+
+ROBERT SOUTHEY
+
+_Madoc_, a ponderous quarto of over five hundred pages and issued at two
+guineas, was published by Southey in 1805 as the second of that
+long-forgotten series of interminable epics including _Thalaba_, _The
+Curse of Kehama_, and _Roderick, Last of the Goths_. These huge unformed
+productions were not poems, but metrical tales, written in a kind of
+verse that could have flowed indefinitely from the author's pen. In
+short, Southey was not a poet, and the whole bulk of his efforts in
+verse, with but one or two exceptions, seems destined to oblivion. As
+poet-laureate for thirty years and the associate of Wordsworth and
+Coleridge in the "Lake School," Southey will, however, remain a figure
+of some importance in the history of English poetry.
+
+The review of _Madoc_ reprinted from the _Monthly Rev._, XLVIII
+(113-122) for October, 1805, was written in the old style then fast
+giving way to the sprightlier methods of the _Edinburgh_. Here we find a
+style abounding in literary allusions and classical quotations, and
+evincing a generally patronizing attitude toward the author under
+discussion. Most readers will agree with the sentiments expressed by the
+reviewer, who succeeded in making his article interesting without
+descending to the depths of buffoonery. No apology is necessary for the
+excision of the reviewer's unreasonably long extracts from the poem.
+_Madoc_ was also reviewed at great length in the _Edinburgh Review_ by
+Francis Jeffrey.
+
+61. _Ille ego, qui quondam, etc._ The lines usually prefixed to the
+_AEneid_.
+
+61. _Prorumpere in medias res_. Cf. Horace, _Ars Poetica_, l. 148.
+
+61. _Macklin's Tragedy_. _Henry VII_ (1746), his only tragedy, and a
+failure.
+
+61. _Toto carere possum_. Cf. Martial, _Epig._ XI, 56.
+
+61. _Camoens_. The author of the Portuguese _Lusiad_ (1572) which
+narrates the adventures of Vasco da Gama.
+
+62. _Milton_. Quoted from Sonnet XI.--_On the Detraction which followed
+upon my writing certain Treatises_.
+
+63. _Snatching a grace, etc._ Pope's _Essay on Criticism_, l. 153.
+
+
+CHARLES LAMB
+
+Most of Lamb's earlier poetical productions appeared in conjunction with
+the work of other poets. Four of his sonnets were printed with
+Coleridge's _Poems on Various Subjects_ (1796), and he was more fully
+represented in _Poems by S.T. Coleridge. Second Edition_. _To which are
+now added Poems by Charles Lamb and Charles Lloyd_ (1797). In the
+following year appeared _Blank Verse_, by Charles Lloyd and Charles
+Lamb. For new and interesting material concerning the three poets, see
+E.V. Lucas' _Charles Lamb and the Lloyds_ (1899). Lloyd (1775-1839)
+wrote melancholy verses and a sentimental, epistolary novel _Edmund
+Oliver_, but nothing of permanent value. However, in 1798, he was almost
+as well known as Coleridge, and was hailed in some quarters as a
+promising poet.
+
+The _Monthly Rev._, XXVII, n.s. (104-105), in September, 1798, published
+the critique of _Blank Verse_ which is here reprinted. Its principal
+interest lies in the scant attention shown to Lamb, although the volume
+contained his best poem--the tender _Old Familiar Faces_. Dr. Johnson's
+characterization of blank-verse as "poetry to the eye" will be found at
+the end of his _Life of Milton_ as a quotation from "an ingenious
+critic."
+
+Lamb's drama, _John Woodvil_ (1802), written in imitation of later
+Elizabethan models, was a failure. It was unfavorably noticed in the
+_Monthly Rev._, XL, n.s., p. 442 and at greater length in the _Edinburgh
+Rev._, II, p. 90 ff.
+
+Many years later (1830) Lamb prepared his collection of _Album-Verses_
+at the request of his friend Edward Moxon, who had achieved some fame as
+a poet and was enabled (by the generous aid of Samuel Rogers) to begin
+his more lucrative career as a publisher. Three years after the
+appearance of _Album-Verses_, he married Lamb's adopted daughter, Emma
+Isola. The _Album-Verses_, like most of their kind, were a collection of
+small value; the _Literary Gazette_, 1830 (441-442), consequently lost
+no time in assailing them. The _Athenaeum_, 1830, p. 435, at that time
+the bitter rival of the _Gazette_, published a more favorable review,
+and a few weeks later (p. 491) printed Southey's verses, _To Charles
+Lamb, on the Reviewal of his Album-Verses in the Literary Gazette_,
+together with a sharp commentary on the methods of the _Gazette_.
+Several times during that year the _Athenaeum_ assailed the system of
+private puffery which was followed by the _Gazette_ and eventually
+caused its downfall. There is a reply to the _Athenaeum_ in the _Literary
+Gazette_, 1833, p. 772.
+
+
+WALTER SAVAGE LANDOR
+
+Landor was twenty-three when he published _Gebir_ anonymously in
+1798--the year of the _Lyrical Ballads_--and he lived until 1864. The
+nine decades of his life covered an important period of literature. He
+was nine years old when the great Johnson died, yet he lived to see the
+best poetic achievements of Tennyson, Browning, and Arnold. However, he
+did not live to see _Gebir_ a popular poem. Southey gave it a favorable
+welcome in the _Critical Review_, and became a life-long admirer of
+Landor; but our brief notices reprinted from the _Monthly Rev._, XXXI,
+n.s., p. 206, and _British Critic_, XV, p. 190 of February, 1800,
+represent more nearly the popular verdict. Both reviewers complain of
+the obscurity of the poem, which, it will be remembered, had been
+originally written in Latin, then translated and abridged.
+Notwithstanding the fact that Landor declared himself amply repaid by
+the praise of a few appreciative readers, he prepared a violent and
+scornful reply to the _Monthly Review_, and would have published it but
+for the sensible dissuasion of a friend. Some interesting extracts from
+the letter are printed in Forster's _Life of Landor_, pp. (76-85). He
+protested especially against the imputed plagiarisms from Milton and
+gave ample evidence of the pugnacious spirit that brought him into
+difficulties several times during his life. See also the _Imaginary
+Conversation_ between Archdeacon Hare and Walter Landor, wherein the
+reception of _Gebir_ is discussed and Southey's poetry is praised at the
+expense of Wordsworth's. Landor's first publication, the _Poems_ (1795)
+was noticed in the _Monthly Rev._, XXI, n.s., p. 253.
+
+
+SIR WALTER SCOTT
+
+The successful series of metrical tales which Scott inaugurated with the
+_Lay of the Last Minstrel_ (1805) had for its second member the more
+elaborate _Marmion_ (1808). From the first, Scott's poems and romances
+were favorably received by the reviews and usually noticed at great
+length. There was always a story to outline and choice passages to
+quote. As suggested in the Preface, these paeans of praise are of
+comparatively little interest to the student, and need hardly be cited
+here in detail.
+
+The critique of _Marmion_, written by Jeffrey for the _Edinburgh Rev._,
+XII (1-35), had the place of honor in the number for April, 1808. It was
+chosen for the present reprints partly as a fitting example of Jeffrey's
+fearlessness in expressing his opinions, and partly for its historic
+interest as the article that contributed to Scott's rupture with the
+Edinburghers and to his successful founding of a Tory rival in the
+_Quarterly Review_. Although the article has here been abridged to about
+half of its original length by the omission of six hundred quoted lines
+and a synopsis of the poem, it is still the longest of these reprints.
+Jeffrey evidently felt that a detailed account of the story was
+necessary in order to justify his strictures on the plot.
+
+An author of those days could afford to ignore the decisions of the
+critical monthlies, but the brilliant criticism and incisive diction of
+the _Edinburgh Review_ carried weight and exerted far-reaching
+influence. Jeffrey's article was practically the only dissonant note in
+the chorus of praise that greeted _Marmion_, and Scott probably resented
+the critic's attitude. Lockhart, in his admirable chapter on the
+publication of _Marmion_, admits that "Jeffrey acquitted himself on this
+occasion in a manner highly creditable to his courageous sense of duty."
+The April number of the _Edinburgh_ appeared shortly before a particular
+day on which Jeffrey had engaged to dine with Scott. Fearing that under
+the circumstances he might be an unwelcome guest, he sent the following
+tactful note with the copy which was forwarded to the poet:--
+
+"Dear Scott,--If I did not give you credit for more magnanimity than any
+other of your irritable tribe, I should scarcely venture to put this
+into your hands. As it is, I do it with no little solicitude, and
+earnestly hope that it will make no difference in the friendship which
+has hitherto subsisted between us. I have spoken of your poem exactly as
+I think, and though I cannot reasonably suppose that you will be pleased
+with everything I have said, it would mortify me very severely to
+believe I had given you pain. If you have any amity left for me, you
+will not delay very long to tell me so. In the meantime, I am very
+sincerely yours, F. Jeffrey."
+
+There was but one course open to Scott; accordingly to Lockhart, "he
+assured Mr. Jeffrey that the article had not disturbed his digestion,
+though he hoped neither his booksellers nor the public would agree with
+the opinions it expressed, and begged he would come to dinner at the
+hour previously appointed. Mr. Jeffrey appeared accordingly, and was
+received by his host with the frankest cordiality, but had the
+mortification to observe that the mistress of the house, though
+perfectly polite, was not quite so easy with him as usual. She, too,
+behaved herself with exemplary civility during the dinner, but could not
+help saying, in her broken English, when her guest was departing, 'Well,
+good night, Mr. Jeffrey. Dey tell me you have abused Scott in de Review,
+and I hope Mr. Constable has paid _you_ very well for writing it.'"
+
+Jeffrey's article apparently had little influence on the sale of
+_Marmion_, which reached eight editions (25,000 copies) in three years.
+In October, 1808, the _Edinburgh Review_ published an appreciative
+review of Scott's edition of Dryden, and afterwards received with favor
+the later poems and the principal Waverley Novels.
+
+78. _Mr. Thomas Inkle_. The story of Inkle and Yarico was related by
+Steele in no. 11 of the _Spectator_. It was afterwards dramatized (1787)
+by George Colman.
+
+
+LORD BYRON
+
+The twentieth number of the _Edinburgh Review_ contained Jeffrey's long
+article on Wordsworth's _Poems_ (1807); the twenty-second contained his
+review of Scott's _Marmion_; and the twenty-first (January, 1808)
+contained a still more famous critique, long attributed to Jeffrey--the
+review of Byron's _Hours of Idleness_ (1807). It is reprinted from
+_Edinburgh Rev._, XI (285-289) in Stevenson's _Early Reviews_ and forms
+Appendix II of R.E. Prothero's edition of Byron's _Letters and
+Journals_. We know definitely that the article was written by Henry
+Brougham. (See Prothero, op. cit., II, p. 397, and Sir M.E. Grant Duff's
+_Notes from a Diary_, II, p. 189.)
+
+It is hardly within the province of literary criticism to deal with
+hypothetical conditions in authors' lives; but it is at least a matter
+of some interest to conjecture whether Byron would have become a great
+poet if this stinging review had not been published. It is evident that
+the _Hours of Idleness_ gave few signs of promise, and the poet, fully
+intent upon a political career, himself expressed his intention of
+abandoning the muse. Many an educated Englishman has published such a
+volume of _Juvenilia_ and sinned no more. But a nature like Byron's
+could not overlook the effrontery of the _Edinburgh Review_. The
+proud-spirited poet was evidently far more incensed by the patronizing
+tone of the article than by its strictures: what could be more galling
+than the reiterated references to the "noble minor," or the withering
+contempt that characterized a particular poem as "the thing in page 79"?
+Many years later, Byron wrote to Shelley:--"I recollect the effect on me
+of the _Edinburgh_ on my first poem; it was rage, and resistance, and
+redress--but not despondency nor despair." (Prothero, V, p. 267.)
+
+There was method in Byron's "rage and resistance and redress." For more
+than a year he labored upon a satire which he had begun even before the
+appearance of the _Edinburgh_ article. (See letter of October 26, 1807,
+in _Letters_, ed. Prothero, I, p. 147.) In the spring of 1809, _English
+Bards and Scotch Reviewers_ was given anonymously to the world. The
+publication of this vigorous satire virtually decided Byron's career.
+Not only did he abuse Jeffrey, whom he believed responsible for the
+offending critique, but he flung defiance in the face of almost all his
+literary contemporaries. The authorship of the satire was soon apparent,
+and in a flippant note to the second edition, Byron became still more
+abusive toward Jeffrey and his "dirty pack," and declared that he was
+ready to give satisfaction to all who sought it. A few years later he
+regretted his rashness in assailing the authors of his time. He also
+learned of the injustice done to Jeffrey and had ample reason to feel
+embarrassed by the tone of the eight reviews of his poems that Jeffrey
+did write for the _Edinburgh_. (See the list in Prothero, II, p. 248.)
+In _Don Juan_ (canto X, xvi), he made the following retraction:--
+
+    "And all our little feuds, at least all _mine_,
+      Dear Jeffrey, once my most redoubted foe
+    (As far as rhyme and criticism combine
+      To make such puppets of us things below),
+    Are over. Here's a health to 'Auld Lang Syne!'
+      I do not know you, and may never know
+    Your face--but you have acted, on the whole,
+    Most nobly; and I own it from my soul."
+
+The other reviews of _Hours of Idleness_ are of little interest. The
+_Monthly_ and the _Critical_ both praised the book; the _Literary
+Panorama_, III, p. 273, said the author was no imbecile, but an
+incautious writer.
+
+98. [Greek: thelo legein],--Anacreon, Ode I. ([Greek: thelo legein
+Atreidas, k. t. l.])
+
+98. [Greek: mesonyktiois, poth' horais],--Anacreon, Ode III. ([Greek:
+mesonyktiois poth' horais, k. t. l.])
+
+100. _Sancho_,--Sancho Panza in _Don Quixote_. The proverb is of ancient
+origin. See French, Latin, Italian and Spanish forms in Brewer's
+_Dictionary of Phrase and Fable_.
+
+
+_Childe Harold_
+
+Shortly after the appearance of the second edition of _English Bards and
+Scotch Reviewers_, Byron left England and travelled through the East, at
+the same time leisurely composing the first two cantos of _Childe
+Harold's Pilgrimage_. Their publication in 1812 placed him at the head
+of the popular poets of the day. Henceforth the reviews gave extensive
+notices to all his productions. (For references, see J.P. Anderson's
+bibliography appended to Hon. Roden Noel's _Life of Byron_.) _Childe
+Harold_ was reviewed in the _Edinburgh Rev._, XIX (466-477), by Jeffrey;
+in the _Quarterly_, VII (180-200), by George Ellis; in the _British
+Review_, III (275-302); and _Eclectic Review_, XV (630-641).
+
+The article here reprinted from the _Christian Observer_, XI (376-386),
+of June, 1812, is of special interest as an early protest from
+conservative, religious circles against the immoral and irreverent tone
+of Byron's poetry. As literary criticism, it is almost worthless, in
+spite of the elaborate allusions and quotations with which the
+critic--evidently a survivor of the old school--has interlarded his
+remarks. Little can be said in defense of an article which insists that
+the chief end of poetry is to be agreeably didactic and which (in 1812)
+cites Southey as the greatest of living poets. However, it probably
+represents the attitude of a large number of worthy people of the time,
+who recognized that Byron had genius, and wished to see him exercise his
+powers with due regard for the proprieties of civilized life. As
+Byron's offences grew more flagrant in his later poems, the criticisms
+in the conservative reviews became more vehement. For Byron's
+controversy with the _British Review_, which he facetiously dubbed "my
+grandmother's review" in _Don Juan_, see Prothero, IV, pp. (346-347),
+and Appendix VII. The ninth Appendix to the same volume is Byron's
+caustic reply to the brutal review of _Don Juan_ in _Blackwood's
+Magazine_, V, p. 512 ff.
+
+101. _Lion of the north_, Francis Jeffrey. The usual agnomen of Gustavus
+Adolphus. Cf. Walter Scott, the "Wizard of the North."
+
+105. _Faiery Queen will not often be read through_. Hume's _History of
+England_, Appendix III.
+
+106. _Qui, quid sit pulchrum_, etc. Horace, Epis. II (3-4).
+
+106. _Rursum--quid virtus_, etc. Horace, Epis. II (17-18).
+
+107. _Our sage serious Spenser, etc._ Milton's _Areopagitica_, _Works_,
+ed. Mitford, IV, p. 412.
+
+107. _Quinctilian_. See Quintilian, Book XII, Chap. I.
+
+107. _Longinus_. _On the Sublime_, IX, XIII, etc.
+
+108. _Restoration of Learning in the East_. A Cambridge prize poem
+(1805) by Charles Grant, Lord Glenelg (1778-1866).
+
+109. _Thersites_. See Shakespeare's _Troilus and Cressida_.
+
+109. _Caliban_. See Shakespeare's _The Tempest_.
+
+109. _Heraclitus_. The "weeping philosopher" (circa 500 B.C.).
+
+109. _Zeno_. The founder (342-270 B.C.) of the Stoic School.
+
+109. _Zoilus_. The ancient grammarian who assailed the works of Homer.
+The epithet Homeromastix is sometimes applied to him.
+
+113. _The philosophic Tully, etc._ See the concluding paragraph of
+Cicero's _De Senectute_.
+
+
+PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY
+
+It is doubtful whether any other poet was so widely and so continuously
+assailed in the reviews as Shelley. Circumstances have made certain
+critiques on Byron, Keats, and others more widely known, but nowhere
+else do we find the persistent stream of abuse that followed in the wake
+of Shelley's publications. The _Blackwood_ articles were usually most
+scathing, and those of the _Literary Gazette_ were not far behind.
+Fortunately, the poet spent most of his time in Italy and thus remained
+in ignorance of the great majority of these spiteful attacks in the
+less important periodicals.
+
+_Alastor_, which appeared in 1816, attracted comparatively little
+attention. The tone of the brief notice reprinted from the _Monthly
+Rev._, LXXIX, n.s., p. 433, shows that the poet was as yet unknown to
+the critics. _Blackwood's Magazine_, VI (148-154), gave a longer and, on
+the whole, more favorable account of the poem. In the same year, Leigh
+Hunt published his _Story of Rimini_, most noteworthy for its graceful
+rhythmical structure in the unrestricted couplets of Chaucer. This
+departure from the polished heroics of Pope, which were ill-adapted to
+narrative subjects in spite of his successful translation of Homer, was
+hailed with delight by the younger poets. Shelley imitated the measure
+in his _Julian_ and _Maddalo_, and Keats did likewise in _Lamia_ and
+_Endymion_. Hunt was soon recognized by the critics as the leader of a
+group of liberals whom they conveniently classified as the Cockney
+School. Shelley's ill-treatment at the hands of the reviewers dates from
+his association with this coterie. His _Revolt of Islam_ (1818) was
+assailed by John Taylor Coleridge in the _Quarterly Review_, XXI
+(460-471). _The Cenci_ was condemned as a horrible literary monstrosity
+by the scandalized critics of the _Monthly Rev._, XCIV, n.s. (161-168);
+the _Literary Gazette_, 1820 (209-10); and the _New Monthly Magazine_,
+XIII (550-553). The review here reprinted from the _London Mag._, I
+(401-405), is comparatively mild in its censure.
+
+One would naturally suppose that the death of Keats would have ensured
+at least a respectful consideration for Shelley's lament, _Adonais_
+(1821); but the callous critics were by no means abashed. The outrageous
+article in the _Literary Gazette_ of December 8, 1821, pp. (772-773), is
+one of the unpardonable errors of literary criticism; but it sinks into
+insignificance beside the brutal, unquotable review which _Blackwood's
+Magazine_ permitted to appear in its pages. In the same year Shelley's
+youthful poetical indiscretion, _Queen Mab_, which he himself called
+"villainous trash," was published under circumstances beyond his
+control, and forthwith the readers of the _Literary Gazette_ were
+regaled with ten columns of foul abuse from the pen of a critic who
+declared that he was driven almost speechless by the sentiments
+expressed in the poem. Well could the heartless reviewer of _Adonais_
+write:--"If criticism killed the disciples of that [the Cockney]
+school, Shelley would not have been alive to write an elegy on another."
+
+115. _Eye in a fine phrenzy rolling_. Shakespeare's _Midsummer-Night's
+Dream_, V, 1, 12.
+
+115. _Above this visible diurnal sphere_. Milton's _Paradise Lost_, Book
+VII, 22.
+
+116. _Parca quod satis est manu_. Horace, _Odes_, III, 16, 24.
+
+116. _Lord Fanny_. A nickname bestowed upon Lord Hervey, an effeminate
+noble of the time of George II.
+
+117. _O! rus, quando ego te aspiciam_. Horace, _Satires_, II, 6, 60.
+
+117. _Mordecai_. See Book of _Esther_, V, 13.
+
+118. _Last of the Romans_. Mark Antony in Shakespeare's _Julius Caesar_,
+III, 2, 194.
+
+120. _Full fathom five_. Shakespeare's _The Tempest_, I, 2, 396.
+
+126. _Ohe! jam satis est_. Horace, _Satires_, I, 5, 12-13.
+
+126. _Tristram Shandy_. The excommunication is in vol. III, chap. XI.
+
+133. _Put a girdle_, etc. See Shakespeare's _Midsummer-Night's Dream_,
+II, 1, 175.
+
+
+JOHN KEATS
+
+The history of English poetry offers no more interesting case between
+poet and critic than that of John Keats. The imputed influence of a
+savage critique in hastening the death of the poet has given the
+_Quarterly Review_ an unenviable notoriety which clings in spite of the
+efforts of scholars to establish the truth. To many students, Keats,
+_Endymion_, and _Quarterly_ are practically connotative terms; and this
+is a direct result of the righteous but misguided indignation of
+Shelley--misguided because his information was incomplete and the more
+guilty party escaped, thus inflicting upon the _Quarterly_ the brunt of
+the opprobrium of which far more than half should be accredited to
+_Blackwood's Magazine_.
+
+_Endymion_ was published in April, 1818. One of the publishers (Taylor
+and Hessey) requested Gifford, then editor of the _Quarterly Review_, to
+treat the poem with indulgence. This indiscreet move probably actuated
+Gifford to provide a severe critique; at any rate, in the belated April
+number of the _Quarterly_, XIX (204-208), which was not issued until
+September, appeared the famous review. A persistent error, which has
+crept into W.M. Rossetti's _Life of Keats_, into Anderson's
+bibliography, and even into the article on Gifford in the _Dictionary of
+National Biography_, attributes this article to Gifford himself; but it
+is known to be the work of John Wilson Croker. (See the article on
+Croker in _Dict. Nat. Biog._ From the article on John Murray (_ibid._)
+we learn that Gifford was not wholly responsible for a single article in
+the _Quarterly_.)
+
+Meanwhile, _Blackwood's Magazine_, III (519-524) had made _Endymion_ the
+text of its fourth infamous tirade against the Cockney School of Poetry.
+The signature "Z" was appended to all the articles, but the critic's
+identity has not yet been discovered. Leigh Hunt thought it was Walter
+Scott, Haydon suspected the actor Terry, but it is more probable that
+the honor belongs to John Gibson Lockhart. One account attributes the
+entire series to Lockhart; another attributes the series to Wilson, but
+holds Lockhart responsible for the _Endymion_ article. Mr. Andrew Lang,
+in his _Life and Letters of Lockhart_, dismissed the matter by saying
+that he did not know who wrote the article.
+
+The _Quarterly_ critique was reprinted in Stevenson's _Early Reviews_,
+in Rossetti's _Life of Keats_, in Buxton Forman's edition of Keats'
+_Poetical Works_ (Appendix V) and elsewhere. From a critical point of
+view, it is, as Forman terms it, a "curiously unimportant production."
+The student will at once question its power to cause distress in the
+mind of the poet; as for malignant severity, there are several reviews
+among the present reprints that put the brief _Quarterly_ article to
+shame. When we turn to what Swinburne calls the "obscener insolence" of
+the _Blackwood_ article, we find an unrestrained torrent of abuse
+against both Hunt and Keats that amply justified Landor's subsequent
+allusions to the _Blackguard's Magazine_. The _Quarterly_ critique was
+captious and ill-tempered; but the _Blackwood_ article was a personal
+insult.
+
+It is impossible to consider in detail the vexed question of the
+influence which these reviews had upon Keats. In Mr. W.M. Rossetti's
+_Life of Keats_, pp. (83-106) there is a full discussion of the evidence
+on the subject. Within a few months after the appearance of the
+articles, Keats wrote:--"Praise or blame has but a momentary effect on
+the man whose love of beauty in the abstract makes him a severe critic
+of his own works. My own domestic criticism has given me pain without
+comparison beyond what _Blackwood_ or _The Quarterly_ could possibly
+inflict." Some weeks later he wrote that the _Quarterly_ article had
+only served to make him more prominent among bookmen. After some time
+he expressed himself less confidently and deprecated the growing power
+of the reviews, but there is no evidence that he fretted over the
+critiques. Haydon tells us that Keats was morbid and silent for hours at
+a time; but it is quite likely that the consciousness of his physical
+affliction--hereditary consumption--was oppressing his mind. His death
+occurred on February 23, 1821--about two and a half years after the
+appearance of the _Endymion_ critiques.
+
+Shelley had gone to Italy before the reviews were published. He heard of
+the _Quarterly_ article, but knew nothing of _Blackwood's_ while writing
+_Adonais_; hence in both poem and preface, the former review is charged
+with having caused Keats' death. Shelley declared that Keats' agitation
+over the review ended in the rupture of a blood vessel in the lungs with
+an ensuing rapid consumption. These statements, which Shelley must have
+had indirectly, have not been substantiated. We are forced to the
+conclusion now generally accepted--that Keats, although sensitive to
+personal ridicule, was superior to the stings of review criticism and
+that the distressing events of the last year of his life were sufficient
+to assure the early triumph of the inherent and unconquerable disease.
+
+141. _Miss Baillie_. Joanna Baillie (1762-1851) authoress of numerous
+forgotten plays and poems which enjoyed great popularity in their day.
+
+142. _Land of Cockaigne_. Here means London, and refers specifically to
+the Cockney poets. An old French poem on the _Land of Cockaigne_
+described it as an ideal land of luxury and ease. The best authorities
+do not accept Cockney as a derivative form. The Cockney School was
+composed of Londoners of the middle-class, supposedly ill-bred and
+imperfectly educated. The critics took special delight in dwelling upon
+the humble origin of the Cockneys, their lack of university training,
+and especially their dependence on translations for their knowledge of
+the classics.
+
+142. _When Leigh Hunt left prison_. Hunt had been imprisoned for libel
+on the Prince Regent (1812).
+
+146. _Vauxhall_. The Gardens were a favorite resort for Londoners early
+in the eighteenth century and remained popular for a long time. See
+Thackeray's _Vanity Fair_ (chap. VI). The implication in the present
+passage is that the Cockney poet gets his ideas of nature from the
+immediate vicinity of London.
+
+147. _East of Temple-bar_. That is, living in the City of London.
+
+150. _Young Sangrado_. An allusion to Doctor Sangrado, in Le Sage's _Gil
+Blas_ (1715).
+
+
+ALFRED LORD TENNYSON
+
+Tennyson's first poetical efforts, which appeared in _Poems by Two
+Brothers_ (1827) attracted little critical attention. His prize-poem,
+_Timbuctoo_ (1829) received the interesting notice here reprinted from
+the _Athenaeum_ (p. 456) of July 22, 1829. _Timbuctoo_ was printed in the
+_Cambridge Chronicle_ (July 10, 1829); in the _Prolusiones Academicae_
+(1829); and several times in _Cambridge Prize-Poems_. The use of heroic
+metre in prize-poems was traditional; hence the award was an enviable
+tribute to the blank-verse of _Timbuctoo_.
+
+Tennyson's success was emphasized by the remarkable series of reviews
+that greeted his earliest volumes of poems. The _Poems, chiefly Lyrical_
+(1830) were welcomed by Sir John Bowring in the _Westminster Review_, by
+Leigh Hunt in the _Tatler_, by Arthur Hallam in the _Englishman's
+Magazine_, and by John Wilson in _Blackwood's Magazine_. The _Poems_
+(1833) were reviewed by W.J. Fox in the _Monthly Repository_, and by
+John Stuart Mill in the _Westminster Review_. This array of names was
+indeed a tribute to the poet; but the unfavorable review, was, as usual,
+most significant. The article written by Lockhart for the _Quarterly
+Rev._, XLIX (81-97), has been characterized as "silly and brutal," but
+it was neither. Tennyson's fame is secure; we can at least be just to
+his early reviewer. It is true that the poet winced under the lash and
+that ten years elapsed before his next volume of collected poems
+appeared; but Canon Ainger is surely in error when he holds the
+_Quarterly Review_ mainly responsible for this long silence. The rich
+measure of praise elsewhere bestowed upon the volume would leave us no
+alternative but the conclusion that Tennyson was childish enough to
+maintain his silence for a decade because Lockhart took liberties with
+his poems instead of joining the chorus of adulation. We know that there
+were other and stronger reasons for Tennyson's silence and we also know
+that the effect of Lockhart's article was decidedly salutary. When the
+next collection of _Poems_ (1842) did appear, the shorter pieces
+ridiculed by Lockhart were omitted, and the derided passages in the
+longer poems were altered.
+
+We may, without conscientious scruples, take Mr. Andrew Lang's advice,
+and enjoy a laugh over Lockhart's performance. Its mock appreciations
+are, perhaps, far-fetched at times; but there are enough effective
+passages to give zest to the article. It has been said in all
+seriousness that Lockhart failed to appreciate the beauty of most of
+Tennyson's lines, and that he confined his remarks to the most
+assailable passages. Surely, when a critic undertakes to write a
+mock-appreciation, he will not quote the best verses, to the detriment
+of his plan. The poet must see to it that his volume does not contain
+enough absurdities to form a sufficient basis for such an article. There
+is a striking contrast to the humor of Lockhart in the little-known
+review of the same volume by the _Literary Gazette_, 1833, pp.
+(772-774). The latter seized upon some crudities that had escaped the
+_Quarterly's_ notice, and, with characteristic brutality, decided that
+the poet was insane and needed a low diet and a cell.
+
+Although the reception accorded to _Poems_ (1842) was generally
+favorable, the publication of _The Princess_ in 1847 afforded the
+critics another opportunity to lament Tennyson's inequalities. The
+spirit of the review of _The Princess_ here reprinted from the _Literary
+Gazette_ of August 8, 1848, is practically identical with that of the
+_Athenaeum_ on January 6, 1848, but specifies more clearly the critic's
+objections to the medley. It is noteworthy that Lord Tennyson made
+extensive changes in subsequent editions of _The Princess_, but left
+unaltered all of the passages to which the _Literary Gazette_ took
+exception. The beautiful threnody _In Memoriam_ (1850) and Tennyson's
+elevation to the laureateship in the same year established his position
+as the leading poet of the time; but the appearance of _Maud_ in 1856
+proved to be a temporary check to his popularity. A few personal friends
+admired it and praised its fine lyrics; but as a dramatic narrative it
+failed to please the reviews. The most interesting of the critiques
+(unfortunately too long to be reprinted here) appeared in _Blackwood's
+Magazine_, XLI (311-321), of September, 1855,--a forcible, well-written
+article, which, incidentally, shows how much the magazine had improved
+in respectability since the days of the lampooners of Byron, Shelley,
+and Keats. The authorship of the article has not been disclosed, but we
+know that W.E. Aytoun asked permission of the proprietor to review
+Tennyson's _Maud_. (See Mrs. Oliphant's _William Blackwood and his
+Sons_.) The publication of the _Idylls of the King_ (1859), turned the
+tide more strongly than before in Tennyson's favor, and subsequent
+fault-finding on the part of the critics was confined largely to his
+dramas.
+
+153. _Catullus_. See Catullus, II and III--(_Passer, deliciae meae
+puellae_, and _Lugete, O Veneres Cupidinesque_).
+
+153. [Greek: Eithe lyre, k. t. l.] Usually found in the remains of
+Alcaeus. Thomas Moore translates it with his _Odes of Anacreon_ (LXXVII),
+beginning "Would that I were a tuneful lyre," etc. Lockhart proceeds to
+ridicule Tennyson for wishing to be a river, which is not what the
+quoted lines state. Nor does Tennyson "ambition a bolder metamorphosis"
+than his predecessors. Anacreon (Ode XXII) wishes to be a stream, as
+well as a mirror, a robe, a pair of sandals and sundry other articles.
+See Moore's interesting note.
+
+155. _Non omnis moriar_. Horace, _Odes_, III, 30, 6.
+
+156. _Tongues in trees_, etc. Shakespeare's _As You Like It_, II, 1, 17.
+
+157. _Aristaeus_. A minor Grecian divinity, worshipped as the first to
+introduce the culture of bees.
+
+164. _Dionysius Periegetes_. Author of [Greek: periegesis tes ges], a
+description of the earth in hexameters, usually published with the
+scholia of Eustathius and the Latin paraphrases of Avienus and Priscian.
+For the account of AEthiopia, see also Pausanias, I, 33, 4.
+
+167. _The Rovers_. _The Rovers_ was a parody on the German drama of the
+day, published in the _Anti-Jacobin_ (1798) and written by Frere,
+Canning and others. It is reprinted in Charles Edmund's _Poetry of the
+Anti-Jacobin_. The chorus of conspirators is at the end of Act IV.
+
+169. _The Groves of Blarney_. An old Irish song. A version may be seen
+in the _Antiquary_, I, p. 199. The quotation by Lockhart differs
+somewhat from the corresponding stanza of the cited version.
+
+170. _Corporal Trim_. In Sterne's _Tristram Shandy_.
+
+173. _Christopher North_. John Wilson, of _Blackwood's Magazine_.
+
+
+ROBERT BROWNING
+
+The reviews of Browning's poems are singularly uninteresting from a
+historical standpoint. There is usually a protest against the obscurity
+of the poetry and a plea that the author should make better use of his
+manifest genius. For details concerning these reviews, see the
+bibliography of Browning in Nicoll and Wise's _Literary Anecdotes of the
+Nineteenth Century_. The list there given is extensive, but does not
+include several of the reviews mentioned below.
+
+The early poems were so abstruse that the critics were unable to make
+sport of them as they did in the case of Wordsworth, Byron, Tennyson,
+and the rest; and when Browning finally deigned to write within range of
+the average human intellect, that particular style of reviewing had lost
+favor. His earliest publication, _Pauline_ (1832) was well received by
+W.J. Fox in _Monthly Repository_, and in the _Athenaeum_. _Tait's
+Edinburgh Magazine_ called it a "piece of pure bewilderment." See also
+the brief notice in the _Literary Gazette_, 1833, p. 183. _Paracelsus_
+(1835) had a similar experience; the reprint from the _Athenaeum_, 1835,
+p. 640, is fairly characteristic of the rest, among which are the
+articles in the _Monthly Repository_, 1835, p. 716; the _Christian
+Remembrancer_, XX, p. 346, and the reviews written by John Forster for
+the _Examiner_, 1835, p. 563, and the _New Monthly Magazine_, XLVI
+(289-308).
+
+Neither the favorable review of _Sordello_ (1840) in the _Monthly Rev._,
+1840, II, p. 149, nor the partly appreciative article in the _Athenaeum_,
+1840, p. 431, seems to warrant the well-known anecdotes relating the
+difficulties of Douglas Jerrold and Tennyson in attempting to understand
+that poem. The _Athenaeum_ gave the poet sound advice, especially in
+regard to the intentional obscurity of his meaning. That this admonition
+was futile may be gathered from the _Saturday Review's_ article (I, p.
+69) on _Men and Women_ (1855) published fifteen years after _Sordello_.
+The critic reverted to the earlier style, and produced one of the most
+readable reviews of Browning. Whatever may be the final verdict yet to
+be passed upon Browning's poetic achievement, the fact remains that the
+contemporary reviews from first to last deplored in his work a
+deliberate obscurity which was wholly unwarranted and which precluded
+the universal appeal that is essential to a poet's greatness.
+
+189. _Della Crusca of Sentimentalism_. Robert Merry (1755-1798) under
+the name Della Crusca became the leader of a set of poetasters who
+flourished during the poetic dearth at the end of the eighteenth century
+and poured forth their rubbish until William Gifford exposed their
+follies in his satires _The Baviad_ (1794) and _The Maeviad_ (1795).
+
+189. _Alexander Smith_. A Scotch poet (1830-1867).
+
+189. _Mystic of Bailey_. Philip James Bailey (1816-1902), best known as
+the author of _Festus_, published _The Mystic_ in 1855.
+
+192. _Hudibras Butler, etc._ Samuel Butler, author of _Hudibras_
+(1663-78); Richard H. Barham, author of the _Ingoldsby Legends_ (1840);
+and Thomas Hood, author of _Whims and Oddities_ (1826-27). These poets
+are cited by the reviewer for their skill with unusual metres and
+difficult rhymes.
+
+
+
+
+INDEX
+
+
+_Academy_, xlii-xliii
+
+_Account of English Dramatic Poets_, xv
+
+_Adonais_, by Shelley, reviewed, 129-134; 214, 217
+
+_Advice to Young Reviewer_, xxiii
+
+Ainsworth, Harrison, xlv
+
+Akenside, Mark, xvi
+
+_Alastor_, by Shelley, reviewed, 115
+
+_Album Verses_, by Lamb, reviewed, 66-67
+
+Alford, Dean, xxxv
+
+Allingham, William, l
+
+_All the Year Round_, l
+
+_Analytical Review_, xxii
+
+_Anti-Jacobin Review_, xxiii
+
+Appleton, Dr. Charles, xlii
+
+Arber, Prof. Edward, xiii
+
+Arnold, Matthew, xxxii, xxxvi, xlii
+
+_Athenaeum_, xxxviii-xl, liv;
+  on Tennyson's _Timbuctoo_, 151;
+  on Browning's _Paracelsus_, 187
+
+_Athenian Mercury_, xiv
+
+_Atlas_, xl
+
+Austin, Mr. Alfred, xxxvi
+
+
+Bagehot, Walter, xxxii, xxxiv
+
+Barrow, Sir John, xxviii
+
+_Battle of the Reviews_, xx-xxi
+
+Bayle, Pierre, xiii
+
+_Bee_, xvi
+
+Behn, Mrs. Aphra, xv
+
+Beloe, William, xxiii
+
+Bentham, Jeremy, xxxi
+
+_Bentley's Miscellany_, l
+
+Bibliography, lvi-lix
+
+_Bibliotheca Literaria_, xvi
+
+_Bibliotheque Ancienne et Moderne_, xvi
+
+_Bibliotheque Angloise_, xv
+
+_Bibliotheque Choisee_, xvi
+
+Blackwood, John, xlvii
+
+Blackwood, William, xlv
+
+_Blackwood's Magazine_, xlv-xlvii;
+  on Keats' _Endymion_, 141-150; 216
+
+_Blank Verse_, by Lamb and Lloyd, reviewed, 65
+
+Blount, Sir Thomas Pope, xiv
+
+_Bookman_, xxxvii
+
+Bower, Archibald, xvi
+
+_British and Foreign Review_, xxxii
+
+_British Critic_, xxiii;
+  on Landor's _Gebir_, 68
+
+_British Librarian_, xvi
+
+_British Magazine_, xxii, xlv
+
+_British Review_, xxxii, 213
+
+Brougham, Henry, xxiv, xxvi-xxvii, xxx, 210
+
+Browning, Robert, _Paracelsus_ rev. in _Athenaeum_, 187;
+  _Sordello_ rev. in _Monthly Rev._, 188;
+  _Men and Women_ rev. in _Saturday Rev._, 189-196; 220-222
+
+Buckingham, James Silk, xxxviii
+
+Budgell, Eustace, xvi
+
+Bulwer, Edward, xxx, xlv
+
+Bunting, Mr. Percy, xxxvi
+
+Burns, Robert, _Poems_ rev. in _Edinburgh Mag._, 13-14;
+  in _Critical Rev._, 15; 199-200
+
+Byron, Lord, 47, 48;
+  _Hours of Idleness_ rev. in _Edinburgh Rev._, 94-100;
+  _Childe Harold_ rev. in _Christian Observer_, 101-114; 210-213
+
+
+Campbell, Thomas, xlv
+
+Carlyle, Thomas, xxx, xlv, xlix
+
+Cave, Edward, xliv
+
+_Cenci_, by Shelley, reviewed, 116-128, 214
+
+_Censura Celebrium Authorum_, xiv
+
+_Censura Temporum_, xv
+
+_Childe Harold_, by Byron, reviewed, 101-114; 212-213
+
+_Christabel_, by Coleridge, reviewed, 47-59
+
+_Christian Observer_, xxxiii;
+  on Byron's _Childe Harold_, 101-114
+
+_Christian Remembrancer_, xxxii
+
+Christie, Jonathan Henry, xlviii
+
+Cleghorn, James, xlvi
+
+Cobbett, William, xxxvii
+
+Cockney School, _Blackwood's Mag._ on, 141-150; 216-217
+
+Colburn, Henry, xxxvii, xlv
+
+Coleridge, John Taylor, xxix
+
+Coleridge, Samuel Taylor, xlvi;
+  _Christabel_ rev. in _Edinburgh Rev._, 47-59; 201-202, 204-206
+
+Collins, Mr. John Churton, li
+
+Colvin, Mr. Sidney, xlii, liv
+
+_Compleat Library_, xiv
+
+Conder, Josiah, xxxii
+
+_Contemporary Review_, xxxv
+
+Cook, John D., xli
+
+Copleston, Edward, xxiii
+
+_Cornhill Magazine_, l
+
+Cotton, Mr. James S., xliii
+
+Courthope, Mr. W.J., xxxvi
+
+Courtney, Mr. W.L., xxxv
+
+Cowper, William, _Poems_ rev. in _Critical Rev._, 10-12; 198-199
+
+_Critic_, xxxvii
+
+_Critical Review_, xviii-xxi, xxiii, xxv, xxxiii;
+  on Goldsmith's _Traveller_, 5-9;
+  on Cowper's _Poems_, 10-12;
+  on Burn's _Poems_, 15;
+  on _Lyrical Ballads_, 20-23
+
+Croker, John Wilson, xxviii
+
+
+Dennis, John, xv
+
+DeQuincey, Thomas, xlviii
+
+_De Re Poetica_, xiv
+
+_Descriptive Sketches_, by Wordsworth, reviewed, 16-18
+
+Dickens, Charles, l, liv
+
+Dilke, Charles W., xxxix
+
+Dixon, William H., xxxix
+
+Doble, Mr. C.E., xliii
+
+Dowden, Prof. Edward, xxxiv
+
+_Dublin Review_, xxxii
+
+_Dublin University Magazine_, l
+
+D'Urfey, Thomas, xv
+
+
+_Eclectic Review_, xxxii
+
+_Edinburgh Magazine_, xliv;
+  on Burns' _Poems_, 13-14
+
+_Edinburgh Review_, xxiv-xxvii, xxix-xxxi, xlvi, liv;
+  on Wordsworth's _Poems_, 24-46;
+  on Coleridge's _Christabel_, 47-59;
+  on Scott's _Marmion_, 70-93;
+  on Byron's _Hours of Idleness_, 94-100; 209-211
+
+Eliot, George, xxxiv, xlvii
+
+Elliott, Hon. A.R.D., xxxi
+
+Elwin, Whitwell, xxix
+
+Empson, William, xxx
+
+_Endymion_, by Keats, rev. in _Quarterly Rev._, 135-140;
+  rev. in _Blackwood's Mag._, 141-150; 215-218
+
+_English Review_, xxii, xxxii
+
+Escott, Mr. T.H.S., xxxv
+
+_Evening Walk_, by Wordsworth, reviewed, 19
+
+_Examiner_, xxxvii
+
+
+Fonblanque, Albany, xxxvii
+
+_Foreign Quarterly Review_, xxxii
+
+_Foreign Review_, xxxii
+
+Forster, John, xxxvii
+
+_Fortnightly Review_, xxxiii-xxxv
+
+Fox, W.J., xxxiii
+
+_Fraser's Magazine_, xlix-l
+
+Froude, James A., l
+
+
+_Gebir_, by Landor, rev. in _British Critic_, 68;
+  rev. in _Monthly Rev._, 69; 208
+
+_Gentleman's Journal_, xv, xliv
+
+_Gentleman's Magazine_, xv, xliv
+
+Gifford, William, xxvii, xxviii
+
+Goldsmith, Oliver, xviii, xxi, xxii, xlv;
+  _The Traveller_ rev. in _Critical Rev._, 5-9, 197, 198
+
+Grant, Charles, 108
+
+Gray, Thomas, _Odes_ rev. in _Monthly Rev._, 1-4; 197-198
+
+Green, John Richards, xxiii
+
+Griffiths, Ralph, xvii, xviii, xx
+
+
+Hallam, Henry, xxx
+
+Hamilton, Sir William, xxx
+
+Harris, Mr. Frank, xxxv, xli
+
+Harwood, Mr. Philip, xli
+
+Hazlitt, William, 204-205
+
+Hervey, Thomas K., xxxix
+
+Hind, Mr. C. Lewis, xliii
+
+_Historia Literaria_, xvi
+
+_History of Learning_, xiv
+
+_History of the Works of the Learned_, xv, xvi
+
+Hodge, Mr. Harold, xli
+
+Hood, Thomas, xlviii
+
+Hook, Theodore, xlv
+
+Horne, Richard Hengist, xxxiii
+
+Horner, Francis, xxiv, xxv
+
+_Hours of Idleness_, by Byron, reviewed, 94-100; 210-212
+
+_Household Words_, l
+
+Hume, David, 105
+
+Hunt, Leigh, xxxiii, xxxvii, 135, 136, 142
+
+Hutton, Richard Holt, xxxii, xl
+
+
+Introduction, xiii-lv
+
+
+Jebb, Samuel, xvi
+
+Jeffrey, Francis, xxiv-xxvi, xxix, xlviii, 203, 206, 209-210
+
+Jerdan, William, xxxvii, xxxix
+
+Johnson, Samuel, xxi, xxii, 198
+
+_Journal des Savans_, xiii, xiv, xxi
+
+
+Keats, John, _Endymion_, reviewed in _Quarterly Rev._, 135-140;
+  in _Blackwood's Mag._, 141-150; 152, 215-218
+
+Kenrick, William, xx, xxi, xxii
+
+Kingsley, Charles, l
+
+Knowles, Mr. James, xxxv, xxxvi
+
+
+Lamb, Charles, xlviii;
+  _Blank Verse_ rev. in _Monthly Rev._, 65;
+  _Album-Verses_ rev. in _Literary Gazette_, 66-67; 207-208
+
+Landor, Walter Savage, _Gebir_ rev. in _British Critic_, 68;
+  in _Monthly Rev._, 69; 208
+
+Langbaine, Gerald, xv
+
+Le Clerc, Daniel, xvi
+
+Le Clerc, Jean, xiv, xvi
+
+Lewes, George Henry, xxxiv
+
+Lewis, Sir George Cornewall, xxx
+
+_Literary Chronicle_, xxxviii
+
+_Literary Gazette_, xxxvii-xxxix;
+  on Lamb's _Album-Verses_, 66-67;
+  on Shelley's _Adonais_, 129-134;
+  on Tennyson's _The Princess_, 176-186; 207-208
+
+_Literary Journal_, xvi
+
+_Literary Magazine_, xvi, xxii
+
+Lloyd, Charles, _Blank Verse_, rev. in _Monthly Rev._, 65
+
+Lloyd, H.E., xxxvii
+
+Lockhart, John Gibson, xxii, xxxi, 216, 218-219
+
+_London Magazine_, xliv, xlvii-xlviii;
+  on Shelley's _Cenci_, 116-128
+
+_London Quarterly Review_, xxxii
+
+_London Review_, xxii, xxxi
+
+_Longman's Magazine_, l
+
+Lowth, Bishop, xvi
+
+_Lyrical Ballads_, by Wordsworth, reviewed, 20-23; 201-203
+
+
+Macaulay, Thomas Babington, xxix-xxx
+
+MacColl, Mr. Norman, xxxix
+
+Maclise, Daniel, xlix
+
+_Macmillan's Magazine_, l
+
+Macpherson, William, xxix
+
+_Madoc_, by Southey, reviewed, 60-64; 206-207
+
+_Marmion_, by Scott, reviewed, 70-93; 208-210
+
+Martin, Sir Theodore, l
+
+Martineau, James, xxxii
+
+Maty, Paul Henry, xxii
+
+Maurice, Frederick D., xxxviii
+
+Maxse, Mr. Louis J., xxxvi
+
+Melbourne, Lord, xxx
+
+_Memoirs for the Ingenious_, xiv
+
+_Memoirs of Literature_, xv
+
+_Memoires Litteraires_, xv
+
+_Men and Women_, by Browning, reviewed 189-196, 221
+
+_Mercurius Librarius_, xiii
+
+Meredith, Mr. George, xxxiv
+
+_Metropolitan_, l
+
+Mill, John Stuart, xxx, xxxi
+
+Minto, William, xxxvii
+
+_Miscellaneous Letters_, xiv
+
+_Monthly Censor_, xxxiii
+
+_Monthly Chronicle_, xxxiii
+
+_Monthly Magazine_, xlv
+
+_Monthly Miscellany_, xv
+
+_Monthly Repository_, xxxiii
+
+_Monthly Review_, xvii-xxi, xxv, xxxiii;
+  on Gray's _Odes_, 1-4;
+  on Wordsworth's _Descriptive Sketches_, 16-18;
+  on Wordsworth's _Evening Walk_, 19;
+  on Southey's _Madoc_, 60-64;
+  on Lamb's _Blank Verse_, 65;
+  on Landor's _Gebir_, 69;
+  on Shelley's _Alastor_, 115;
+  on Browning's _Sordello_, 188
+
+Moore, Thomas, xlviii
+
+Morley, Mr. John, xxxiv
+
+Motteux, Peter Anthony, xv, xliv
+
+Moxon, Edward, 207
+
+Murray, John, xxvii
+
+_Museum_, xvi
+
+
+Napier, Macvey, xxix
+
+Nares, Robert, xxxiii
+
+_National Review_ (quar.), xxxii;
+  (mon.), xxxvi
+
+_New Memoirs of Literature_, xvi
+
+_New Monthly Magazine_, xxxvii, xlv
+
+_New Review_, xxii
+
+Nicolas, Sir N.H., xxxii
+
+_Nineteenth Century_, xxxvi
+
+_North British Review_, xxxii
+
+_Nouvelles de la Republique des Lettres_, xiii
+
+
+Oldys, William, xvi
+
+Oliphant, Mrs. M.O.W., xlvii
+
+
+_Paracelsus_, by Browning, reviewed, 187
+
+Parkes, Samuel, xiv
+
+Pater, Walter, xlii, xliii
+
+Phillips, Sir Richard, xlv
+
+Phillips, Mr. Stephen, liv
+
+Pollock, Mr. W.H., xli
+
+_Porcupine's Gazette_, xxxvii
+
+Pratt, Josiah, xxxiii
+
+_Present State of the Republic of Letters_, xvi
+
+_Princess_, by Tennyson, reviewed, 176-186
+
+Pringle, Thomas, xlvi
+
+Prothero, Mr. George, xxix
+
+Prothero, Mr. Rowland, xxix
+
+
+_Quarterly Review_, xxvii-xxix, liv;
+  on Keats' _Endymion_, 135-140;
+  on Tennyson's _Poems_, 152-175; 215-217
+
+_Quarterly Theological Review_, xxiii
+
+Quintilian, 107
+
+
+Reeve, Henry, xxx
+
+Reid, Andrew, xvi
+
+Rendall, Mr. Vernon, xxxix
+
+_Retrospective Review_, xxxii
+
+_Revue des Deux Mondes_, xxxiii
+
+Ridpath, George, xv
+
+Rintoul, Robert S., xl
+
+Roche, M. de la, xv, xvi
+
+Roscoe, Mr. E.S., xxxi
+
+Roscoe, William C., xxxii
+
+Ross, Miss, xxxvii
+
+_Royal Magazine_, xliv
+
+Russell, Lord John, xxx
+
+
+Salisbury, Lord, xli
+
+Sallo, Denis de, xiii
+
+_Saturday Review_, xli, liv;
+  on Browning's _Men and Women_, 189-196
+
+_Scots Magazine_, xliv
+
+Scott, John, xlvii
+
+Scott, Sir Walter, xxvii;
+  _Marmion_ rev. in _Edinburgh Rev._, 70-93; 208-210
+
+Shelley, Percy Bysshe, _Alastor_ rev. in _Monthly Rev._, 115;
+  _Cenci_ rev. in _London Mag._, 116-128;
+  _Adonais_ rev. in _Literary Gazette_, 129-134, 213-215
+
+Shore, Mr. W. Teignmouth, xliii
+
+Smith, Sydney, xxiv, xxvi
+
+Smith, Sir William, xxix
+
+Smollett, Tobias xviii, xx, xlv
+
+_Sordello_, by Browning, reviewed, 188
+
+Southern, Henry, xxxi, xxxii
+
+Southey, Robert, xxviii;
+  _Madoc_ rev. in _Monthly Rev._, 60-64; 109, 202, 206-207
+
+_Spectator_, xl-xli
+
+Stebbing, Henry, xxxviii
+
+Stephen, (Sir) Leslie, xxxiv
+
+Sterling, John, xxxviii
+
+Strachey, Mr. J. St. L., xl
+
+Swinburne, Mr. A.C., xxxiv, liv
+
+Symonds, J.A., xxxiv
+
+Symons, Mr. Arthur, liv
+
+
+_Tait's Edinburgh Magazine_, l
+
+Taylor, William, xlv
+
+_Temple Bar_, l
+
+Tennyson, Alfred, (Lord), xxxvi;
+  _Timbuctoo_ rev. in _Athenaeum_, 151;
+  _Poems_ rev. in _Quarterly Rev._, 152-175;
+  _The Princess_ rev. in _Literary Gazette_, 176-186; 218-220
+
+Thackeray, W.M., xxx, xlix, l
+
+_Theatrum Poetarum_, xv
+
+_Timbuctoo_, by Tennyson, reviewed, 151
+
+Townsend, Meredith, xl
+
+_Traveller_, by Goldsmith, reviewed, 5-9
+
+
+_Universal Historical Bibliotheque_, xiv
+
+_Universal Magazine_, xliv
+
+_Universal Mercury_, xiv
+
+
+Walpole, Horace, xvi, xx
+
+Warton, J. and T., xvi
+
+Watkins, Dr., xlv
+
+Watts, Alaric A., xlv, xlviii
+
+_Weekly Memorial_, xiv
+
+_Weekly Register_, xxxvii
+
+_Westminster Review_, xxxi-xxxii
+
+Wilson, John, xlvi
+
+Wordsworth, William, _Descriptive Sketches_ rev. in _Monthly Rev._, 16-18;
+  _Evening Walk_ rev. in _ibid._, 19;
+  _Lyrical Ballads_ rev. in _Critical Rev._, 20-23;
+  _Poems_ rev. in _Edinburgh Rev._, 24-46; 200-204
+
+_Works of the Learned_, xiv
+
+
+_Young Student's Library_, xiv
+
+
+
+
+
+End of Project Gutenberg's Early Reviews of English Poets, by John Louis Haney
+
+*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBERG EBOOK EARLY REVIEWS OF ENGLISH POETS ***
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