the flush of his gay hopes and busy projects ter minated in despair. The particular causes which led to his catastrophe have not been distinctly traced. His own descriptions of his prospects are but little to be trusted; for while apparently exchanging his shadowy visions of Rowley for the real adventures of life, he was still moving under the spell of an imagination that saw every thing in exaggerated colours. Out of this dream he was at length awakened, when he found that he had miscalculated the chances of patronage and the profits of literary labour.

did not bring home to her children traits of undefinable expression which had escaped every eye but that of familiar affection. Ramsay had not the force of Burns; but, neither, in just proportion to his merits, is he likely to be felt by an English reader. The fire of Burns' wit and passion glows through an obscure dialect by its confinement to short and concentrated bursts. The interest which Ramsay excites is spread over a long poem, deline ating manners more than passions, and the mind must be at home both in the language and manners, to appreciate the skill and comic archness with which he has heightened the display of rustic character "The heart which can peruse the fate of Chatwithout giving it vulgarity, and refined the view terton without being moved, is little to be envied of peasant life by situations of sweetness and ten- for its tranquillity; but the intellects of those men derness, without departing in the least degree from must be as deficient as their hearts are uncharitable, its simplicity. The Gentle Shepherd stands quite who, confounding all shades of moral distinction, apart from the general pastoral poetry of modern have ranked his literary fiction of Rowley in the Europe. It has no satyrs, nor featureless simple-same class of crimes with pecuniary forgery; and tons, nor drowsy and still landscapes of nature, but have calculated that if he had not died by his own distinct characters and amusing incidents. The hand he would have probably ended his days upon principal shepherd never speaks out of consistency a gallows! This disgusting sentence has been with the habits of a peasant; but he moves in that pronounced upon a youth who was exemplary for sphere with such a manly spirit, with so much severe study, temperance, and natural affection cheerful sensibility to its humble joys, with max- His Rowleian forgery must indeed be pronounced ims of life so rational and independent, and with improper by the general law which condemns all an ascendency over his fellow swains so well main serious and deliberate falsifications; but it deprived tained by his force of character, that if we could no man of his fame; it had no sacrilegious interfer suppose the pacific scenes of the drama to be sud-ence with the memory of departed genius; it had denly changed into situations of trouble and danger, not, like Lauder's imposture, any malignant motive we should. in exact consistency with our former to rob a party, or a country, of a name which was idea of him, expect him to become the leader of its pride and ornament. the peasants, and the Tell of his native hamlet. Nor is the character of his mistress less beautifully conceived. She is represented, like himself, as elevated, by a fortunate discovery, from obscure to opulent life, yet as equally capable of being the ornament of either. A Richardson or a D'Arblay, had they continued her history, might have height ened the portrait, but they would not have altered its outline. Like the poetry of Tasso and Ariosto, that of the Gentle Shepherd is engraven on the memory, and has sunk into the heart, of its native country. Its verses have passed into proverbs, and it continues to be the delight and solace of the peasantry whom it describes."-pp. 344-346.

Setting aside the opinion of those uncharitable biographers, whose imaginations have conducted him to the gibbet, it may be owned that his unformed character exhibited strong and conflicting elements of good and evil. Even the momentary project of the infidel boy to become a Methodist preacher, betrays an obliquity of design and a contempt of human credulity that is not very amiable. But had he been spared, his pride and ambition would probably have come to flow in their proper channels. His understanding would have taught him the practical value of truth and the dignity of virtue, and he would have despised artifice, when he had felt the strength and security of wisdom. In estimating the promises of his genius, I would We think the merits of Akenside under- rather lean to the utmost enthusiasm of his admirrated, and those of Churchill exaggerated: ers, than to the cold opinion of those who are afraid But we have found no passage in which the of being blinded to the defects of the poems attrib amiable but equitable and reasonable indulg-uted to Rowley, by the veil of obsolete phraseology which is thrown over them. ence of Mr. Campbell's mind is so conspicuous, as in his account of Chatterton-and it ductions may be compared to the disproportions of "The inequality of Chatterton's various prois no slight thing for a poet to have kept him- the ungrown giant. His works had nothing of the self cool and temperate, on a theme which definite neatness of that precocious talent which has hurried so many inferior spirits into pas-ledge was that of a being taught by instinct to lay stops short in early maturity. His thirst for know. sion and extravagance. up materials for the exercise of great and unde"When we conceive," says Mr. C., "the in-veloped powers. Even in his favourite maxim, spired boy transporting himself in imagination back to the days of his fictitious Rowley, embodying his ideal character, and giving to airy nothing a local habitation and a name." we may forget the impostor in the enthusiast, and forgive the falsehood of his reverie for its beauty and ingenuity. One of his companions has described the air of rapture and inspiration with which he used to repeat his passages from Rowley, and the delight which he took to contemplate the church of St. Mary Redcliffe, while it awoke the associations of antiquity in his romantic mind. There was one spot in particular, full in view of the church, where he "Goldsmith's poetry enjoys a calm and steady would often lay himself down, and fix his eyes, as popularity. It inspires us, indeed, with no admira it were, in a trance. On Sundays, as long as day-tion of daring design, or of fertile invention; but it light lasted, he would walk alone in the country around Bristol, taking drawings of churches, or other objects that struck his imagination.

pushed it might be to hyperbole, that a man by abstinence and perseverance might accomplish whatever he pleased, may be traced the indications of a genius which nature had meant to achieve works of immortality. Tasso alone can be compared to him as a juvenile prodigy. No English poet ever equalled him at the same age.”—Vol. vi. pp. 156–162.

The account of Gray is excellent, and that of Goldsmith delightful. We can afford to give but an inconsiderable part of it.

presents, within its narrow limits, a distinct and unbroken view of poetical delightfulness. His descrip tions and sentiments have the pure zest of nature. He is refined without false delicacy, and correct without insipidity. Perhaps there is an intellectual composure in his manner, which may, in some pas sages, be said to approach to the reserved and pro

In his observations on Joseph Warton, Mr. C. resumes the controversy about the poetical character of Pope, upon which he had entered at the close of his Essay; and as to which we hope to have some other opportunity of giving our opinions. At present, however, we must hasten to a conclusion; and shall make our last extracts from the notice of Cowper, which is drawn up on somewhat of a larger scale than any other in the work. The abstract of his life is given with great tenderness and beauty, and with considerable fulness of detail. But the remarks on his poetry are the most precious,—and are all that we have now room to borrow.

sale; but he unbends from this graver strain of | certain tone of exaggeration is incident, we reflection, to tenderness, and even to playfulness, fear, to the sort of writing in which we are with an ease and grace almost exclusively his own: engaged. Reckoning a little too much, perand connects extensive views of the happiness and interests of society, with pictures of life, that touch haps, on the dulness of our readers, we are the heart by their familiarity. His language is cer- often led, unconsciously, to overstate our ainly simple, though it is not cast in a rugged or sentiments, in order to make them undercareless mould. He is no disciple of the gaunt and stood; and, where a little controversial famished school of simplicity. Deliberately as he warmth is added to a little love of effect, wrote, he cannot be accused of wanting natural and an excess of colouring is apt to steal over idiomatic expression; but still it is select and re- the canvass which ultimately offends no fined expression. He uses the ornaments which must always distinguish true poetry from prose; eye so much as our own. We gladly make and when he adopts colloquial plainness, it is with this expiation to the shade of our illustrious the utmost care and skill, to avoid a vulgar humility. countryman. There is more of this elegant simplicity, of this chaste economy and choice of words, in Goldsmith, than in any modern poet, or perhaps than would be attainable or desirable as a standard for every writer of rhyme. In extensive narrative poems such a style would be too difficult. There is a noble propriety even in the careless strength of great poems as in the roughness of castle walls; and. generally speaking, where there is a long course of story, or observation of life to be pursued, such exquisite touches as those of Goldsmith would be too costly materials for sustaining it. The tendency towards abstracted observation in his poetry agrees peculiarly with the compendious form of expression which he studied; whilst the homefelt joys, on which his fancy loved to repose, required at once the chastest and sweetest colours of language, to make them harmonize with the dignity of a philosophical poem. His whole manner has a still depth of feeling and reflection, which gives back the image of nature anruffled and minutely. He has no redundant thoughts, or false transports; but seems on every occasion to have weighed the impulse to which he Burrendered himself. Whatever ardour or casual felicities he may have thus sacrificed, he gained a high degree of purity and self-possession. His chaste pathos makes him an insinuating moralist; and throws a charm of Claude-like softness over his descriptions of homely objects, that would seem only fit to be the subjects of Dutch painting. But his quiet enthusiasm leads the affections to humble things without a vulgar association; and he inspires us with a fondness to trace the simplest recollections of Auburn, till we count the furniture of its alehouse, and listen to the varnished clock that clicked behind the door." "-pp. 261–263.

"The nature of Cowper's works makes us peculiarly identify the poet and the man in perusing them. As an individual, he was retired and weaned from the vanities of the world; and, as an original writer, he left the ambitious and luxuriant subjects of fiction and passion, for those of real life and simple nature, and for the development of his own earnest feelings, in behalf of moral and religious truth. His language has such a masculine idiom. atic strength, and his manner, whether he rises into grace or falls into negligence, has so much plain and familiar freedom, that we read no poetry with a deeper conviction of its sentiments having come from the author's heart; and of the enthu siasm, in whatever he describes, having been unfeigned and unexaggerated. He impresses us with the idea of a being, whose fine spirit had been long enough in the mixed society of the world to be polished by its intercourse, and yet withdrawn so simplicity. He was advanced in years before he soon as to retin an unworldly degree of purity and became an author; but his compositions display a tenderness of feeling so youthfully preserved, and even a vein of humour so far from being extinguished by his ascetic habits, that we can scarcely regret his For he blends the determination of age with an not having written them at an earlier period of life. exquisite and ingenuous sensibility; and though he sporis very much with his subjects, yet, when he is in earnest, there is a gravity of long-felt conviction in his sentiments, which gives an uncommon ripeness of character to his poetry.

There is too much of William Whitehead, and almost too much of Richard Glover, and a great deal too much of Amhurst Selden, Bramston, and Meston. Indeed the ne quid nimis seems to have been more forgotten by the learned editor in the last, than in any of the other volumes. Yet there is by no means too much of Burns, or Cowper, or even of the Wartous. The abstract of Burus' life is beautiful, and we are most willing to acknowledge that the defence of the poet, against some of the severities of this Journal, is substantially successful. No one who reads all that we unaffectedness and authenticity of his works, conIt is due to Cowper to fix our regard on this have written of Burns, will doubt of the sin-sidered as representations of himself, because he cerity of our admiration for his genius, or of forms a striking instance of genius writing the histhe depth of our veneration and sympathy for 'tory of its own secluded feelings, reflections, and his lofty character and his untimely fate. enjoyments, in a shape so interesting as to engage We still think he had a vulgar taste in letter- the imagination like a work of fiction. He has inwriting; and too frequently patronized the he has left a record of his own character, which vented no character in fable, nor in the drama; but belief of a connection between licentious in- forms not only an object of deep sympathy, but a dulgences and generosity of character. But, subject for the study of human nature. His versc on looking back on what we have said on it is true, considered as such a record, abounds with these subjects, we are sensible that we have opposite traits of severity and gentleness, of playexpressed ourselves with too much bitter-fulness and superstition, of solemnity and murth, which appear almost anomalous; and there is, un ness, and made the words of our censure far doubtedly, sometimes an air of moody versatility in more comprehensive than our meaning. A the extreme contrasts of his feelings. But looking

to his poetry as an entire structure, it has a massive | beauties of creation; but it gives his taste a conair of sincerity. It is founded in steadfast princi- tentment and fellowship with humble things. It ples of belief; and, if we may prolong the archi- makes him careless of selecting and refining his tectural metaphor, though its arches may be some- views of nature beyond their actual appearances times gloomy, its tracery sportive, and its lights and He contemplated the face of plain rural English shadows grotesquely crossed, yet altogether it still life, in moments of leisure and sensibility, till in forms a vast, various, and interesting monument of minutest features were impressed upon his fancy; the builder's mind. Young's works are as devout, and he sought not to embellish what he lovel as satirical, sometimes as merry, as those of Cow. Hence his landscapes have less of the ideally bear per; and, undoubtedly, more witty. But the melan-tiful than Thomson's; but they have an unrivalled choly and wit of Young do not make up to us the charm of truth and reality. idea of a conceivable or natural being. He has sketched in his pages the ingenious, but incongruous form of a fictitious mind-Cowper's soul speaks from his volumes."

survey; and he would probably regard, both with less enthusiasm and less offence, those contrasted and compensating beauties and defects, when presented together, and as it were in combination, than he can ever do when they come upon him in distinct masses, and without the relief and softening of so varied an assemblage. On the other hand, it cannot be dissembled, that such a work would be very trying to the unhappy editor's prophetic reputation, as well as to his impartiality and temper; and would, at all events,

subject him to the most furious imputations of unfairness and malignity. In point of courage and candour, we do not know anybody who would do it much better than ourselves! And if Mr. Campbell could only impart to us a fair share of his elegance, his fine perceptions, and his conciseness, we should like nothing better than to suspend, for a while, these periodical lucubrations, and furnish out a gallery of Living Bards, to match this exhibition of the Departed."

(August, 1811.)

The Dramatic Works of JOHN FORD; with an Introduction and Explanatory Notes. By HENRY WEBER, Esq. 2 vols. 8vo. pp. 950. Edinburgh and London: 1811.

reach of understanding, and of minds truly creative and original;-not perfecting art by the delicacy of their taste, or digesting knowledge by the justness of their reasonings; but making vast and substantial additions to the materials upon which taste and reason must hereafter be employed, and enlarging, to an incredible and unparalleled extent, both the stores and the resources of the human facul ties.

ALL true lovers of English poetry have-and Napier, and Milton, and Cudworth, been long in love with the dramatists of and Hobbes, and many others;-men, all of the time of Elizabeth and James; and them, not merely of great talents and acmust have been sensibly comforted by their complishments, but of vast compass and late restoration to some degree of favour and notoriety. If there was any good reason, indeed, to believe that the notice which they have recently attracted proceeded from any thing but that indiscriminate rage for editing and annotating by which the present times are so happily distinguished, we should be disposed to hail it as the most unequivocal symptom of improvement in public taste that has yet occurred to reward and animate our labours. At all events, however, it gives us a chance for such an improvement; by placing in the hands of many, who would not otherwise have heard of them, some of those beautiful performances which we have always regarded as among the most pleasing and characteristic productions of our native genius. Ford certainly is not the best of those neglected writers,-nor Mr. Weber by any means the best of their recent editors: But we cannot resist the opportunity which this publication seems to afford, of saying a word or two of a class of writers, whom we have long worshipped in secret with a sort of idolatrous veneration, and now find once more brought forward as candidates for public applause. The æra to which they belong, indeed, has always appeared to us by far the brightest in the history of English literature, or indeed of human intellect and capacity. There never was, any where, any thing like the sixty or seventy years that elapsed from the middle of Elizabeth's reign to the period of the Restoration. In point of real force and originality of genius, neither the age of Pericles, nor the age of Augustus, nor the times of Leo X., nor of Louis XIV., can come at all into comparison: For, in that short period, we shall find the names of almost all the very great men that this nation has ever produced, the names of Shakespeare, and Bacon, and Spenser, and Sydney, and Hooker, and Taylor, and Barrow, and Raleigh,

Whether the brisk concussion which was given to men's minds by the force of the Reformation had much effect in producing this sudden development of British genius, we cannot undertake to determine. For our own part, we should be rather inclined to hold, that the Reformation itself was but one symptom or effect of that great spirit of progression and improvement which had been set in operation by deeper and more general causes; and which afterwards blossomed out into this splendid harvest of authorship. But whatever may have been the causes that determined the appearance of those great works, the fact is certain, not only that they appeared together in great numbers, but that they possessed a common character, which, in spite of the great diversity of their subjects and designs, would have made them be classed together as the works of the same order or description of men, even if they had appeared at the most distant intervals of time. They are the works of Giants, in short, -and of Giants of one nation and family;-and their characteristics are, great force, boldness, and originality; together with a certain raciness of English peculiarity, which distinguishes them from all those performances that have since been produced among ourselves, upon a more vague and general idea of European excellence. Their sudden appearance, indeed, in all this splendour of native luxuriance, can only be com