CHAPTER VII.

CONTRIBUTIONS TO REVIEWS-EARLY POEMSLINES TO BYRON.

1811.

HAVING previously engaged to contribute to the 'Monthly' and 'Critical' Reviews, Hodgson was reluctantly compelled to terminate his connection with the 'Quarterly' after the publication of its first few numbers. The similarity of the subjects discussed, and the arduousness of his other avocations, rendered this step necessary, although the almost immediate success of the Quarterly' must have made such a step doubly distasteful. But in the 'Critical' and 'Monthly' Reviews of this period nearly all the articles on classical subjects, and very many others on English and French literature, were written by Hodgson, and display impartial criticism, an extensive and profound erudition, and a correct, cultivated taste. Girdlestone's edition of the 'Odes of Pindar, for instance; Butler's Eschylus' and

'Musæ Cantabrigienses' were thoroughly congenial subjects, while two extremely learned and diffusely interesting essays on recent discoveries at Herculaneum and on Christie's 'Etruscan Vases' prove the minuteness of his archæological and philological researches.

In the article on the 'Musæ Cantabrigienses' there are some curious criticisms of contemporary scholarship at Cambridge. The early effusions of the great Dr. Keate are there characterised by his old pupil as 'boyish ;' but it is also admitted that a bold and original spirit pervades his poems, and that, if they be not correctly classical in their flow, they must be forgiven for their unborrowed harmony and for that first of poetical virtues—

Wild Nature's vigour stirring at the root.

But while Dr. Keate is pronounced to possess more fire than any other contributor, both he and Dr. Butler are found guilty of a fault which, to modern head-masters, will appear sufficiently astonishing. Each of them, more than once, uses a final vowel short before 'sp' and 'sc'! The ode of C. J. Blomfield (afterwards Bishop of London) on the assassination of the Duc d'Enghien, is declared to be below criticism. 'Who but his French assassins,' it

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is asked, 'could have been guilty of such rudeness as to put such language into the mouth of that unfortunate prince.'

But the Greek ode of this poet is said to redeem his Latin peccadilloes, and he is understood to be a very promising scholar of Trinity College. Other contributors are commemorated as follows: J. Lonsdale, of King's College, 1807, elegantly and forcibly bewails the death of Pitt. Rennell's (King's College, 1808) Greek ode on 'Spring' is a very spirited and elegant production; and Joseph Goodall, the present Provost of Eton, commemorates the earthquake in the West Indies, in an ode dated 1781, with much poetic spirit; while of the epigrams, the 'Bellus Homo Academicus,' by the last-named author, both in Latin and Greek, is tame mediocrity—one of those cheap displays of wisdom which nobody values because everybody possesses it, yet, in point of expression, these are perhaps two of the best in the epigrammatic collection. Keate on a 'Donkey Race,' ὕστερον πρότερον, is not bad. Frere on a 'Dumb Beggar' is excellent. B. Drury on the 'Mutilated Statue of Ceres' demands praise. Silence best describes the rest.

In his review on 'An Essay on Plato by M. CombeDounous,' Hodgson writes a masterly vindication of

Christianity against the attacks of the French sceptic, who professes a preference for Platonism, and who, like other infidels, 'proudly limits the power of the Creator by the creature's ignorance.' At the conclusion of his essay M. Dounous explains the extraordinary influence of early Christianity by an astonishing assertion, 'Le sage Hébreu s'etait attaché des disciples parmi les lettres de sa nation,' and is thus answered by his reviewer :—

Arise in judgment against your false historian, ye poor and humble propagators of the Gospel of Christ, and bid him blush for that philosophy which can condescend to advocate its cause by unmanly misrepresentations. Who but St. Paul was learned among you? Who were the deep and plotting philosophers, who, after the death of their Master, met at Jerusalem to lay the doctrines of Plato, and Pythagoras, and Zeno under contribution; and by this eclectic method to form a syncretism of moral and religious opinions for the learned, and of prodigies and miracles for the vulgar? Where is the record, the history, the hint of such a proceeding? Who were the actors in this drama? What secondary causes, in a word, supposing all the unwarrantable assertions of this fanatic Platonist (for in charity we must suppose

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that he is an enthusiast) to be true, will account for the promulgation of Christianity? The speech of Gamaliel has never been and can never be answered: If this counsel or this work be of men, it will come to nought; but if it be of God, ye cannot overthrow it.' It is melancholy, indeed, that this clever and learned Frenchman, whose style is so superior, should have perverted his distinguished talents to so malignant an attempt as the substitution of the wild chimeras of Platonism, the ignis fatuus of pagan philosophy, for the clear and steady light of Christianity.

On English literature Hodgson's reviews are so numerous and extensive as to render even the most partial reproduction impossible; but there are a few concluding remarks in that one which treats of Scott's 'Lady of the Lake,' which, from the world-wide celebrity of the poem, and from the interest which belongs to contemporary criticism, may well be quoted here. The various imitators of Scott, who copied his style without sharing his genius, are mentioned with becoming severity. Numerous verbal and grammatical lapses are pointed out, and are attributed to the glowing haste with which the poem was composed; and then, after many eulogistic remarks expressive of