Christian and sirnames get confused among a vast multitude of the same sound, engraved on tombstones or printed in Directories. The moment a man mounts up on the scale of mediocrity, he is safe from oblivion, and may snap his fingers at time. A mediocre Poet may be shortly defined a man of a million. In poetry, about a devil's dozen of celestial spirits stand in the first order of the seraphim or cherubim. The second and third orders contain about fifty lesser angels-but all of them radiant creatures, with wings. All "the rest," who have names on earth and in heaven, in number about a hundred, are marshalled in the Mediocre phalanx-and constitute the main body of the Immortals; and a pretty fellow for impudence you would be, to refuse the gold guinea put into the palm of your hand by Apollo enlist ing you as a young recruit into the battalion. We verily believe that the numbers of the grenadier company -though there be no positive law against it-will never go beyond the devil's dozen-so high is the standard to which the men must come up, on their stocking-soles and with shaved heads. The Light-bobs-now a smart company of fifty-may, perhaps, on some future day, amount to threescore-and the battalion, it is probable, may yet reach the number of those who died at Thermopylæ. But were Apollo to constitute us his recruiting sergeant, and allow us ten gallons of Glenlivet on each poet's head, we are free to confess that the mountain-dew would not lie heavy on the land, for we do not know above a couple of mediocre young gentlemen to whom we should offer the king's bounty-and one of them, we believe, would go off in a huff, and the other hesitate to enlist into the service, for fear of angering his mother. We therefore love all poets, and all poetry; and the rank of the man having once been ascertained-which is done by the human race holding up its hand-we never thenceforth dream of making odious comparisons -but enough for us to know from his uniform-green and gold-from the stars on his breast, and the sun on his standard-that such or such a hero belongs to the Immortals. But when the whole regiment deploys into line, on some grand review dayhundreds of thousands of spectators glorying in the sublime spectacleHeavens! what a rabble of camp-followers! Of gillies pretending to be real soldiers-in green corduroys-with wooden muskets-and paper-caps→→ treading down the heels of each other's shoes-or marking time, like so many "hens on a het girdle," to a band of instrumental music, consisting of three penny trumpets, and six sonorous small-teeth combs, playing Hey tutie tatie," in a style far su perior to that in which it ever could have been skirled up to the Scots wha had wi' Wallace bled, Scots wham Bruce had aften ledat the battle of Bannockburn. Such being the nature of true Poets and true poetry, and such the light in which they are regarded by the race whom they elevate-what,pray,it may be asked, did Mr Jeffrey mean, t'other day, by saying that all the Poets of this Age are forgotten? There are few people whom we love and admire more than Mr Jeffrey-though we believe he does not know it; but why will he, in his elegant and graceful way, speak such nonsense? Scott, Byron, Southey, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Moore, are, he assures us, already all forgotten -or nearly so-fading away-mere specks on the distant horizon of men's clouded memories! Why, our dear sir, you might just as well affirm that the stars are forgotten, because thousands of coachfuls of people, coming and going to and from evening parties, are not at the time aware that the heavens are full of themthat shepherds are watching by them on the hills-and sailors sailing by them on the seas and astronomers counting them in observatories-and occasionally discovering one that had been invisible to the mole-eyes of men since the creation. Yet in all the nonsense Mr Jeffrey ever spoke, or may speak, you always may find some grains of sense-for who doubts his sagacity and his genius? True it is that much admiration do gaping people ejaculate for things that are admirable, without knowing why or wherefore they admire; their jaws get wearied-they begin to yawn-they doze-they sleep-they snore, and the stars, which are the poetry of heaven, and poetry, which is the flowerage as well as herbage of earth are of course forgotten by their loud-nosed worshippers. But "millions of spiritual creatures" are awake amid that snore; they forget not the stars of heaven nor the Poets of earth. They hear still the music of the celestial spheres and the terrestrial singers. In their memories all the hymns have an abiding place - while they live, think not "That heaven can want spectators-God want praise !" The distinction at which we have now pointed, seems to us to be one which deserves to be attended to by those who might be disposed to bow to the authority of the most accomplished Ex-Editor of the Edinburgh Review, and, without thought, to adopt the shallow dictum which lately dropped from his ingenious pen. Your great and good living Poets are indeed forgotten by thousands who are incapable of remembering what they never felt nor understood, the creations of inspired genius. All such despicable ídolaters drop away from their own superstitions; and soon cease to worship at shrines built only for those who belong to the true religion. But the true religion stands fast-such secession strengthens the established faith-nor will the Poets we have named-and others little less illustrious-ever be forgotten, till Lethe bursts its banks and overflows the globe. Not one of our great or good living Poets is forgotten at this hour by Mr Jeffrey himself-nor any of those critiques of his own either, in which he did noble justice to some of them, and ignoble injustice to others, according to the transient or permanent moods by which his taste, feeling, and judgment were swayed. Nor are his critiques themselves likely to be forgotten-soon or ever; for many of them belong, we verily believe, to our philosophical literature. But they hold the tenure of their existence by the existence of the poetry which they sought to illustrate or obscure; from the " golden urns of those Poets" did he "draw light"the light in which he is himself conspicuous and were it extinguished, his literary life would be a blank. But if the name of Francis Jeffrey will not be forgotten, till those of Scott, Crabbe, Wordsworth, Byron, and the Rest, are dark or dead, he may be assured of immortality; nor, without ingratitude, can he assert present, or predict future oblivious doom to Luminaries, who, whatever be its own native lustre, have certainly showered over his genius no small portion of the brilliance with which it now burns. Nothing that blockheads are so proud of as to retail the paradoxes of some distinguished man. T'other evening we allowed one to bother a company for some minutes with a preachment of the above; and having got him fairly to entangle himself in the net, out of which Mr Jeffrey would have nibbled himself in a moment, and made his escape with all the agility of a squirrel, we wrapt it so round his body from snout to tail, that he literally seemed one bunch of small-twine, and had not left in him so much as the squeak of a mouse. On being let out of the toils, he took his toddy in silence during the rest of the evening, and prated no more about the oblivion of Byron. Two living Poets, however, it seems there are, who, according to Mr Jeffrey, are never to be dead ones-two who are unforgetable, and who owe their immortality-to what think ye? their elegance! That "Gracilis Puer," Samuel Rogers, is one of the dual number. His perfect beauties will never be brought to decayin the eyes of an enamouredworld. He is so polished, that time can never take the shine out of him-so classically correct are his charms, that to the end of time they will be among the principal Pleasures of Memory. Jacqueline, in her immortal loveliness, seeming Juno, Minerva, and Venus all in one, will shed in vain "tears such as angels weep," over the weeds that have in truth 66 business there," on the forgotten grave of Childe Harold! Very like a whale. Thomas Campbell is the other petpoet-" the last of all the flock." Aye-he, we allow, is a star that will know no setting; but of this we can assure the whole world, not excluding Mr Jeffrey, that were Mr Campbell's soul deified, and a star in the sky, and told by Apollo, who placed him in the blue region, that Scott and Byron were both buried somewhere between the Devil and the no Deep Sea, he, the author of Lochiel's Warning, would either leap from Heaven in disdain, or insist on there being instanter one triple constellation. What to do with his friend Mr Rogers, it might not be easy for Mr Campbell to imagine or propose at such a critical juncture; but we think it probable that he would hint to Apollo, on the appearance of his Lordship and the Baronet, that the Banker, with a few other pretty poets, might be permitted to scintillate away to all eternity as their-Tail. We have long been indulging the hope of getting at Mr Bowles-and, through the golden mist of the last six paragraphs, we have occasionally had a glimpse of him at the end of a long vista-standing in sables, and with a shovel hat—beckoning us onwards to Banwell Hill. Well-we have neared him at last, and must accompany him to that respectable eminence, as to the top of Fesole, to "descry new lands"" rivers and mountains"-not, however, in the "spotted globe" of the moon-but in merry England. Mr Bowles has been a poet for good forty years-and if his genius do not burn quite so bright as it did some lustres bygone-yet we do not say there is any abatement even of its brightness-it shines with a mellower and also with a more cheerful light. Long ago, he was perhaps rather too pensive-too melancholy too pathetic-too woe-begone-in too great bereavement. Like the nightingale, he sung with a thorn at his breast-from which one wondered the point had not been broken off by perpetual pressure. Yet though rather monotonous, his strains were most musical as well as melancholy; feeling was often relieved by fancy; and one dreamed, in listening to his elegies, and hymns, and sonnets, of moonlit rivers flowing through hoary woods, and of the yellow sands of dim-imaged seas murmuring round "the shores of old Romance." A fine enthusiasm, too, was his-in those youthful years-inspired by the poetry of Greece and Rome; and in some of his happiest inspirations, there was a delightful and original union-to be found nowhere else that we can remember-of the spirit of that ancient song-the pure classical spirit that murmured by the banks of the Eurotas and Ilissus, in "music sweeter than their own"with the spirit of our own poetry, that, like a noble Naiad, dwells in the "clear well of English undefiled." In almost all his strains you felt the scholar; but his was no affected or pedantic scholarship-intrusive most when least requiredbut the growthof a consummate classical education, of which the career was not inglorious among the towers of Oxford. Bowles was a pupil of the Wartons-Joe and Tom-God bless their souls-and his name may be joined, not unworthily, with theirs --and with Mason's, and Gray's, and Collins's-academics all; the works of them all shewing a delicate and exquisite colouring of classical art, that enriches their own English nature. Bowles's muse is always loath to forget-wherever she roam or linger-Winchester and Oxfordthe Itchin and the Isis. None educated in those delightful and divine haunts will ever forget them, who can read Homer, and Pindar, and Sophocles, and Theocritus, and Bion, and Moschus, in the original. Rhedicyna's ungrateful or renegade sons are those alone who pursued their poetical studies-in transla tions. They never knew the nature of the true old Greek fire, But we are forgetting what we are about, that we are along with Mr Bowles,-each with an oaken towel in his hand, ascending Banwell Hill, from the summit of which we shall sing a duet, called by him a Lay of the Severn Sea. No; we are hoarse as any crow;-therefore, now for the Rector's Solo. But, stop a little. There is no occasion to hurry ourselves; for we have just breakfasted, and 'tis six hours till dinner. Let us sit down, then, on the turf, and discuss Mr Bowles's Preface. In it, he informs us that "Shakspeare and Milton are the great masters of the verse (blank verse) I have adopted." True; but besides Shakspeare, there are all the old dramatists; and besides Milton, there are Thomson, Armstrong, Dyer, Wordsworth, Southey, and many others who must be nameless. Now, Mr Bowles's versification seems to us to bear much more resemblance to that of several of those other writers, than to that of either Shakspeare or Milton, which, in fact, it does not resemble at all; and, therefore, he needed not to have mentioned Shak speare and Milton. That they are the great masters of blank verse, as well as of every thing else belonging to poetry, all the world knows; but here they are brought in by the head and shoulders, for no purpose whatever, and instantly make their exeunt. For this, then, we blame-we find fault with Mr Bowles. He admits his error, apologizes for it, is forgiven, and restored to one of the highest places in our favour. He then facetiously and justly remarks, that in his poem the reader will find no specimens of sonorous harmony, ending with such significant words as, of," "and," " if," "but," of which we have lately had some splendid examples. We remember, so far back as the first appearance of Manfred, shewing the absurdity of such lame and impotent conclusions; yet all the blockheads have since that drama imitated those crying sins of its versification, and a few who are not wholly blockheads. Of blank verse of the kind alluded to, Mr Bowles-by way of quizz-is tempted to give the following speci The scene delightful; while we gazed on Mr Bowles next defends in his Poem an intermixture of " images and characters from common life," which might, he opines, be thought at first sight out of keeping with its higher tone of general colouring; but the interspersion of the comic, provided the due mock-heroic stateliness be kept up in the language, has often the effect of light and shade,-saith he well,-as will be apparent, on looking at Cowper's exquisite Task,"though he has often offended against taste." The only difficulty is, "happily to steer" from grave to gay. All this is very true; but then it is so very true, and the exceeding truth of it is denied by such a scanty remnant of the race, and that remnant entirely tailors, that it was not worth our excellent bard's while to vindi cate it against the fractions. We must likewise be once more severe on Mr Bowles, for saying, that Cowper often offends against taste in the Task. He does not,-but very rarely indeed,-if ever. You might cut out a few expressions here and there, and by serving them up, one by one on a plate, to a critic, might thereby induce him to exclaim,-" Shocking bad taste, indeed!" but both you and the critic would be fools for your pains, and the expressions would continue, long after you were both dead and buried, to be in good taste, and in perfect accordance with the strong, rough raciness of Cowper's style, surpassed in such essential by that of no poet in any language. Let Wordsworth and Bowles let Cowper alone, and mind their own points, which are frequently so loose, that we wonder their breeches do not fall down among their heels, which would be awkward any where out of the profoundest solitude. Our readers will recollect the gentlemanly castigation which the author of the "Essay on the Theory and Writings of Wordsworth" gave the Great Laker, for his senseless criticism on a beautiful stanza in Cowper's "Alexander Selkirk." Wordsworth had said, that the lines were so bad as poetry, that they could not the world, or Mrs Grundy, say to the be worse as prose. Now, what will following lines of Wordsworth's own? Are they bald, or not-as the palm of your hand, the crown of that old gentleman's head, the surface of this table? "A barking sound the shepherd hears-- And now he thinks he can discern We do love rarely to have a slap at the “sole King of rocky Cumberland," for not unfrequently,-as in the above instance, he writes like a demi-man; though, in general, it delights us to say, like a demi-god. This by the by,—and turn we again to Mr Bowles. He informeth us, that "the estimation of a poem of this nature must depend, first, on its arrangement, plan, and disposition; secondly, on the judgment, pro priety, and feeling, with which,-in just and proper succession and relief, -picture, pathos, moral and religious reflections, historical notices, or affecting incidents, are interwoven." True again,—true as steel,-true as blue, true as Toryism,-true, as that the Noctes Ambrosianæ are most entertaining and popular dialogues. But Mr Bowles's lips are not formed for the enunciation of truisms; they are too thin, and have too much of the fine downward Ciceronian curve of genius and eloquence about them-even,we suspect,for a sermon. But perhaps he is to be pardoned for such axioms, on the ground of their containing a sly insinuation, that his Poem, if so estimated, will be found first-rate. Eh? If so, we acquit him of stupidity, but convict him of an organ of self-esteem almost Wordsworthian. Mr Bowles would have done well had he, in his Preface, informed the ignorant where Banwell Hill lifts its head, instead of having prosed away at such length about the plan and execution of his Poem. No doubt it is highly celebrated in its own neighbourhood; and probably in its own county-certainly in its own parish-it would frown upon the present writer in Blackwood, who nevertheless contributed some matter to Malte Brun's System of Geography. Moreover, Banwell Hill, fortunately for itself and Mr Bowles, stands with in sight of the Sea-possesses a cave of fossil remains-looks over no inconsiderable extent of well-wooded, well-watered, and by no means crossgrained country, abounding in vilTages, granges, thorpes, mansions, halls, abbeys, churches, farm-houses, cottages, and what not, the haunts of Pan, Apollo, and Priapus, of Flora, Pomona, and Ceres, and prodigal of food to poet, man, and beast, throughout all seasons of the year. Such a Hill deserved a poem from Mr Bowles, just as well as Lewesdon Hill deserved one from Mr Crowe. Old Crowe was a fine fellow-a noble creature. He was in. deed a scholar; but, hang him, he was no poet. He knew the power of language the English language and could also use it; but he wrote it coldly and stiffly, though correctly and classically, just as if he had studied it as he had studied Latin and Greek, as a dead tongue. Therefore, his poem is read by nobody but college-men, who knew or have heard of his fame in Oxford as a public orator, as the glory of New-College, and at learned banquets, the tamer of Dr Parr. Not that it has not uncommon merit. It is often exceedingly picturesque; and throughout all the reflections with which it abounds, you see the man of talent and observation; but-the Pedant. He wants ease, and nature-of pathos he has not one single grain. There is affectation in his simplicity; and his manliness-for he is manly-is rather that of the Fellow of a College, than the Citizen of the World. If he has little smoke, it is because he has less fire. Crowe loved the country, and lived much in it; but though with his cudgel in his hand he trudged about the fields, and roads, and lanes, to please himself,—with his pen in his hand he thought too much of pleasing the Fellows' Commonrooms in Oxford. And he did please them; there he is quoted as one of the English classics; and let it be so, for with all his coldness, quaintness, and conceit, he was immeasurably superior to all the Cockneys that are now crowing among the rural villages and farms where Parnassus hill slopes down to the plain, and where the meadows are often sorely parched with long long drought. His Poem will live; but only as a book locked up in a library, not as volume lying at liberty on tables, and sofas, and chairs, and even on the carpet, tripping up grown boys and girls at play at blind-man's buff. Mr Bowles's Banwell Hill will have a far more lively life, because Mr Bowles, though inferior to Mr Crowe as a scholar, and perhaps as a man of general talents, as a poet is his superior far; and, in virtue of the divine gift of song, will hold a far more conspicuous place among the Immortals. Banwell Hill-we are speaking now of the two poems-is inferior to Lewesdon Hill-in conception. It wants the compactness and compression-and graphic proportions of Crowe's chef-d'œuvre. It is a lumbering and sprawling and shapeless poem, as ever rejoiced in the name of Descriptive. As a work of art, it is worthless-and offensive to |