CHRISTOPHER SMART. One parte dyd rotte onne Kynwulph-hylle, One onne the mynster-tower, And one from off the castle gate The crowen dydd devoure: The other onne Seyncte Powle's goode gate, Hys hedde was placed onne the hyghe crosse, Thus was the ende of Bawdin's fate: Godde prosper longe oure kynge, CHRISTOPHER SMART. [Born, 1722. Died, 1770.] CHRISTOPHER SMART was borne at Shipbourne, in Kent. Being an eight months child, he had from his birth an infirm constitution, which unfortunately his habits of life never tended to strengthen. His father, who was steward of the Kentish estates of Lord Barnard, (afterward Earl of Darlington,) possessed a property in the neighbourhood of Shipbourne of about 3001. a year; but it was so much encumbered by debt that his widow was obliged to sell it at his death at a considerable loss. This happened in our poet's eleventh year, at which time he was taken from the school of Maidstone, in Kent, and placed at that of Durham. Some of his paternal relations resided in the latter place. An ancestor of the family, Mr. Peter Smart, had been a prebendary of Durham in the reign of Charles the First, and was regarded by the puritans as a proto-martyr in their cause, having been degraded, fined, and imprisoned for eleven years, on account of a Latin poem which he published in 1643, and which the high-church party chose to consider as a libel. What services young Smart met with at Durham from his father's relations we are not informed; but he was kindly received by Lord Barnard, at his seat of Raby Castle; and through the interest of his lordship's family obtained the patronage of the Duchess of Cleveland, who allowed him for several years an annuity of forty pounds. In his seventeenth year he went from the school of Durham to the university of Cambridge, where he obtained a fellowship of Pembroke-hall, and took the degree of master of arts. About the time of his obtaining his fellowship he wrote a farce, entitled "the Grateful Fair, or the trip to Cambridge," which was acted in the hall of his college. Of this production only a few songs, and the mockheroic soliloquy of the Princess Periwinkle, have been preserved; but from the draught of the plot given by his biographer, the comic ingenuity of the piece seems not to have been remarkable.* He distinguished himself at the university, both by his Latin and English verses: among the former was his translation of Pope's Ode on St. Cecilia's Day, on the subject of which, and of other versions which he projected from the same author, he had the honour of corresponding with Pope. He also obtained, during several years, [* See Gray's Works by Mitford, vol. iii. pp. 41 and 47.] the Seatonian prize for poetical essays on the attributes of the Deity. He afterward printed those compositions, and probably rested on them his chief claims to the name of a poet. In one of them he rather too loftily denominates himself "the poet of his God." From his verses upon the Eagle chained in a College Court, in which he addresses the bird, "Thou type of wit and sense, confined, Chain'd by th' oppressors of the mind," it does not appear that he had great respect for his college teachers; nor is it pretended that the oppressors of the mind, as he calls them, had much reason to admire the application of his eagle genius to the graver studies of the university; for the life which he led was so dissipated, as to oblige him to sequester his fellowship for tavern debts. In the year 1753 he quitted college, upon his marriage with a Miss Carnan, the step-daughter of Mr. Newbery the bookseller. With Newbery he had already been engaged in several schemes of authorship, having been a frequent contributor to the "Student, or Oxford and Cambridge Miscellany," and having besides conducted the "Midwife, or Old Woman's Magazine." He had also published a collection of his poems, and having either detected or suspected that the notorious Sir John (formerly Dr.) Hill had reviewed them unfavourably, he proclaimed war with the paper knight, and wrote a satire on him, entitled the Hilliad. One of the bad effects of the Dunciad had been to afford to indignant witlings, an easily copied example of allegory and vituperation. Every versifier, who could echo Pope's numbers, and add an iad to the name of the man or thing that offended him, thought himself a Pope for the time being, and however dull, an hereditary champion against the powers of Dulness. Sir John Hill, who wrote also a book upon Cookery, replied in a Smartiad; and probably both of his books were in their different ways useful to the pastry-cooks. If the town was interested in such a warfare, it was to be pitied for the dearth of amusement. But though Smart was thus engaged, his manners were so agreeable, and his personal character so inoffensive, as to find friends among some of the most eminent men of his day, such as Dr. Johnson, Garrick, and Dr. Burney. Distress brought on by imprudence, and insanity, produced, by dis tress, soon made him too dependent on the kindness of his friends. Some of them contributed money. Garrick gave him a free benefit at Drury-lane theatre, and Dr. Johnson furnished him with several papers for one of his periodical publications. During the confinement which his alienation of mind rendered necessary, he was deprived of pen and ink and paper; and used to indent his poetical thoughts with a key on the wainscot of the wall. On his recovery he resumed his literary employments, and for some time conducted himself with industry. Among the compositions of his saner period, was a verse translation of the Fables of Phædrus, executed with tolerable spirit and accuracy. But he gave a lamentable proof of his declining powers in his translation of the Psalms, and in his "Parables of Jesus Christ, done into familiar verse," which were dedicated to Master Bonnel Thornton, a child in the nursery. He was also committed for debt to the King's Bench prison, within the Rules of which he died, after a short illness, of a disorder in the liver. If Smart had any talent above mediocrity, it was a slight turn for humour. In his serious attempts at poetry, he reminds us of those "Whom Phoebus in his ire Hath blasted with poetic fire."t The history of his life is but melancholy. Such was his habitual imprudence, that he would bring home guests to dine at his house, when his wife and family had neither a meal, nor money to provide one. He engaged, on one occasion, to write the Universal Visitor, and for no other work, by a contract which was to last ninety-nine years. The publication stopped at the end of two years. During his bad health, he was advised to walk for exercise, and he used to walk for that purpose to the ale-house; but he was ab ways carried back. IN THE MOCK PLAY OF "A TRIP TO CAMBRIDGE, OR THE GRATEFUL FAIR." SOLILOQUY OF THE PRINCESS PERIWINKLE. [PRINCESS PERIWINKLE sola, attended by fourteen maids of great honour.] SURE such a wretch as I was never born, But tender, gentle love, with every wish complies. Pride, love, and reason, fight till they are cloy'd, spread, And beats the collier and the barber-red; Black, red, and white, in various clouds are toss'd, And in the dust they raise the combatants are lost. An instance of his wit is given in his extemporary spondaic on the three fat beadles of the university: "Pinguia tergeminorum abdomina bedellorum." [t See however an extract made by Mr. Southey from his " 'Song of David," in the Quarterly Review, vol. xi. p. 497. He sung of God the mighty source From whose right arm, beneath whose eyes, Commence and reign and end. The world, the clustering spheres He made, ODE ON AN EAGLE CONFINED IN A COLLEGE COURT. IMPERIAL bird, who wont to soar High o'er the rolling cloud, Where Hyperborean mountains hoar Their heads in ether shroud;— Thou servant of almighty Jove, Who, free and swift as thought, couldst rove Oh, cruel fate! what barbarous hand, Has placed thee in this servile cell, Where genius ne'er was seen to roam; But lurks and sneaks at home! Though dimm'd thine eye, and clipt thy wing, The grief-inspired Muse shall sing Dale, champaign, grove, and hill; And wisdom hides her skill. Tell them I AM, Jehovah said At once above, beneath, around, This Smart, when in a state of insanity, indented with a key on the wainscot of a madhouse. Poor Nat. Lee when on the verge of madness made a sensible saying, "It is very difficult to write like a madman, but very easy to write like a fool!"] 2v 2 What time by thee scholastic pride Takes his precise pedantic stride, Nor on thy mis'ry casts a care, The stream of love ne'er from his heart Flows out, to act fair pity's part; But stinks, and stagnates there. Yet useful still, hold to the throng- That not untutor'd at thy wrong The passenger may pass! Who study downward on the ground; Type of the fall of Greece and Rome; While more than mathematic gloom Envelopes all around. THOMAS GRAY. [Born, 1716. Died, 1771.] MR. MATTHIAS, the accomplished editor of Gray, in delineating his poetical character, dwells with peculiar emphasis on the charm of his lyrical versification, which he justly ascribes to the naturally exquisite ear of the poet having been trained to consummate skill in harmony, by long familiarity with the finest models in the most poetical of all languages, the Greek and Italian. 66 He was indeed (says Mr. Matthias) the inventor, it may be strictly said so, of a new lyrical metre in his own tongue. The peculiar formation of his strophe, antistrophe, and epode, was unknown before him; and it could only have been planned and perfected by a master genius, who was equally skilled by long and repeated study, and by transfusion into his own mind of the lyric compositions of ancient Greece and of the higher canzoni' of the Tuscan poets, 'di maggior carme e suono,' as it is termed in the commanding energy of their language. Antecedent to The Progress of Poetry,' and to The Bard,' no such lyrics | had appeared. There is not an ode in the English language which is constructed like these two compositions; with such power, such majesty, and such sweetness, with such proportioned pauses and just cadences, with such regulated measures of the verse, with such master principles of lyrical art displayed and exemplified, and, at the same time, with such a concealment of the difficulty, which is lost in the softness and uninterrupted flowing of the lines in each stanza, with such a musical magic, that every verse in it in succession dwells on the ear and harmonizes with that which has gone before." So far as the versification of Gray is concerned, I have too much pleasure in transcribing these sentiments of Mr. Matthias, to encumber them with any qualifying remarks of my own on that particular subject; but I dissent from him in his more general estimate of Gray's genius, [* For poetry in its essence, in its purest signification and realization, Johnson had no kind of soul. He tried the creative flights of the fancy, the mid-air and heavenward soarings of the Muse, by work-day-world rules; and that kind of verse was with him the most commendable, which contained the greatest quantity of forcible truth and reasoning elegantly and correctly set forth. The when he afterward speaks of it, as "second to none." In order to distinguish the positive merits of Gray from the loftier excellence ascribed to him by his editor, it is unnecessary to resort to the criticisms of Dr. Johnson. Some of them may be just, but their general spirit is malignant and exaggerated. When we look to such beautiful passages in Gray's odes, as his Indian poet amidst the forests of Chili, or his prophet bard scattering dismay on the array of Edward and his awestruck chieftains on the side of Snowdon-when we regard his elegant taste, not only gathering classical flowers from the Arno and Ilyssus, but revealing glimpses of barbaric grandeur amidst the darkness of Runic mythology-when we recollect his "thoughts that breathe, and words that burn"-his rich personifications, his broad and prominent images, and the crowning charm of his versification, we may safely pronounce that Johnson's critical fulminations have passed over his lyrical character with more noise than destruction.* At the same time it must be recollected, that his beauties are rather crowded into a short compass, than numerous in their absolute sum. The spirit of poetry, it is true, is not to be computed mechanically by tale or measure; and abundance of it may enter into a very small bulk of language. But neither language nor poetry are compressible. beyond certain limits; and the poet whose thoughts have been concentrated into a few pages, cannot be expected to have given a very full or interesting image of life in his compositions. A few odes, splendid, spirited, and harmonious, but by no means either faultless or replete with subjects that come home to universal sympathy, and an Elegy, unrivalled as it is in that species of composition, these achievements of our poet form, after all, no such extensive elder Warton tried a person's love for, and judgment in poetry, by a different standard-by his admiration of Lycidas; nor could a better criterion be taken. Speaking of the Reasoning and the Imaginative Schools, Hallam justly says that Johnson admired Dryden as much as he could admire any man. He seems to have read his writings with the greatest attention.] * pronounce, contains many richly poetical conceptions. It is, however, exclusively in the opening of The Bard, that Gray can be ever said to have portrayed a grand, distinct, and heroic scene of fiction. grounds of originality, as to entitle their author | history which we could suppose Inspiration to to be spoken of as in genius "second to none." He had not, like Goldsmith, the art of unbending from grace to levity. Nothing can be more unexhilarating than his attempts at wit and humour, either in his letters or lighter poetry. In his graver and better strains some of the most exquisite ideas are his own; and his taste, for the most part, adorned, and skilfully recast, the forms of thought and expression which he borrowed from others. If his works often "whisper whence they stole their balmy spoils," it is not from plagiarism, but from a sensibility that sought and selected the finest impressions of genius from other gifted minds. But still there is a higher appearance of culture than fertility, of acquisition than originality, in Gray. He is not that being of independent imagination, that native and creative spirit, of whom we should say, that he would have plunged into the flood of poetry had there been none to leap before him. Nor were his learned acquisitions turned to the very highest account. He was the architect of no poetical design of extensive or intricate compass. One noble historical picture, it must be confessed, he has left in the opening scene of his Bard; and the sequel of that ode, though it is not perhaps the most interesting prophecy of English The obscurity so often objeeted to him is certainly a defect not to be justified by the authority of Pindar, more than any thing else that is intrinsically objectionable. But it has been exaggerated. He is nowhere so obscure as not to be intelligible by recurring to the passage. And it may be further observed, that Gray's lyrical obscurity never arises, as in some writers, from undefined ideas or paradoxical sentiments. On the contrary, his moral spirit is as explicit as it is majestic; and deeply read as he was in Plato, he is never metaphysically perplexed. The fault of his meaning is to be latent, not indefinite or confused. When we give his beauties re-perusal and attention, they kindle and multiply to the view. The thread of association that conducts to his remote allusions, or that connects his abrupt transitions, ceases then to be invisible. His lyrical pieces are like paintings on glass, which must be placed in a strong light to give out the perfect radiance of their colouring. THE BARD: A PINDARIC ODE.? [* Surely Gray is a greater poet than Goldsmith, in their individual classes, and Gray's class of a higher order than Goldsmith's. Nor is levity so desirable, unless Mr. Campbell means the poet's levity: "From grave to gay, from lively to severe;" which if Gray wants, Milton wants. Prior's levity and Goldsmith's liveliness are both proverbial.] [† From a memory filled with the essence of universal song, and from a mistrust of his own powers, it was that Gray composed his mosaic-like pieces. Nature had intended him to rely on his own resources, which were rich enough to have made him what he is; but Art got the better of Nature, and he wrote, it would seem, to exemplify a line of Marston and show us, Art above Nature, Judgment above Art.] Had Gray written nothing but his Elegy, high as he stands, I am not sure that he would not stand higher; it On a rock, whose haughty brow wave, Revenge on thee in hoarser murmurs breathe; is the corner-stone of his glory; without it, his odes would be insufficient for his fame.-BYRON, Works, vol. vi. p. 569. It is vain to look for that period when the multitude will relish Gray's Odes as they do his Elegy. They are above the level of ordinary comprehensions and every-day tastes, in subject, style, language, and allusions; while his Elegy comes home to their sympathies and knowledge, in matter and in manner. "In Poetry it is urged," says Shenstone, "that the vulgar discover the same beauties with the man of reading. Now half or more of the beauties of poetry depend on metaphor or allusion, neither of which, by a mind uncultivated, can be applied to their proper counter-parts." Milton is less read than Thomson, Cowper, Kirke White, or Bloomfield, but who would compare them for a moment?] [? Founded on a tradition current in Wales, that Edward I., when he completed the conquest of that country, ordered all the Bards that fell into his hands to be put to death.-GRAY.] Brave Urien sleeps upon his craggy bed: Made huge Plinlimmon bow his cloud-topp'd head. I see them sit, they linger yet, Avengers of their native land: With me in dreadful harmony they join, Above, below, the rose of snow, Twined with her blushing foe we spread: Wallows beneath the thorny shade. Now, brothers, bending o'er th' accursed loom, (Weave we the woof. The thread is spun.) Leave me unbless'd, unpitied, here to mourn: And weave with bloody hands the tissue of thy Ye unborn ages, crowd not on my soul! line. "Weave the warp, and weave the woof, The winding-sheet of Edward's race. Give ample room, and verge enough The characters of hell to trace. Mark the year, and mark the night, When Severn shall re-echo with affright, The shrieks of death through Berkeley's roofs that ring; Shrieks of an agonizing king! She-wolf of France, with unrelenting fangs, him wait! Amazement in his van, with Flight combined; Low on his funeral couch he lies! Is the sable warrior fled? Thy son is gone. He rests among the dead. Fair laughs the morn, and soft the zephyr blows, "Fill high the sparkling bowl, The rich repast prepare; Reft of a crown, he may yet share the feast: Fell thirst and Famine scowl A baleful smile upon their baffled guest. Lance to lance, and horse to horse! Ye towers of Julius, London's lasting shame, No more our long-lost Arthur we bewail. All hail, ye genuine kings; Britannia's issue, hail! And gorgeous dames, and statesmen old In the midst a form divine! Her eye proclaims her of the Briton-line; |