tuation; and Mr Stockdale is entitled to the same sort of gratitude which we feel to a dull landlord who has invited us to dine with an interesting visitor. In fact, after the one has bewildered us, the other puts us right. It is not easy to add to what Johnson has said; still less should we presume to take away from the truly admirable summary of Pope's character which he has drawn. But when we assent to the opinions of a superior mind, we generally find its utterance so conveyed, that we can assent in a qualified manner, where assent is, on the whole, due, and yet find room for some partial distinction of our own. " If Pope is not a poet, (says Johnson), where is poetry to be found? This is certainly true; for though the forte of Pope be neither pathos, sublimity, nor daring originality, yet that he moves the affections, approaches to majesty of thought, and possesses much of his own creation, who shall deny? The indiscriminate praise of our author is, that Pope united apparently inconsistent excellences. Dr Johnson touches off his picture more rationally, by saying, that he had, in proportions very nicely suited to each other, all the qualities which constitute genius. The excellences of Pope were adjusted by proportion to each other, and not incompatible qualities. He had invention, (Dr Johnson continues), by which new trains of ideas are formed, and new scenes of imagery displayed, as in the Rape of the Lock; or extrinsic embellishments and illustrations are connected with a known subject, as in the Essay on Criticism. The adaptation of his Rosicrucian machinery in the Rape of the Lock, is indeed an inventive and happy creation, in the limited sense of the word, to which all poetical creation must be restricted. There is no finer gem than this poem in all the lighter treasures of English fancy. Compared with any other mock-heroic in our language, it shines in pure supremacy for elegance, completeness, point and playfulness. It is an epic poem in that delightful miniature which diverts us by its mimicry of greatness, and yet astonishes by the beauty of its parts, and the fairy brightness of its ornaments. In its kind, it is matchless ; but still it is but mock-heroic, and depends, in some measure, for effect on a ludicrous reference in our own minds to the veritable heroics whose solemnity it so wittily affects. His aerial puppets of divinity, his sylphs and gnomes, and his puppet heroes and heroines, the beaux and belles of high life, required rather a subtle than a strong hand to guide them through the mazes of poetry. Among inventive poets, this single poem will place him high. But if our language contains any true heroic creations of fancy, the agents of Spencer's and Milton's machinery will always claim a superior dignity to their Lilliputian counterfeits.

'He

He had imagination, Johnson observes, which enables him to convey to the reader the various forms of nature, incidents of life, and energies of passion, as in his Elosia, his Windsor Forest, and his Ethic Epistles.' It is true that Pope's imagination could convey the forms of nature, yet many poets have looked upon nature much less through a medium than Pope, and have seen her and painted her in less artificial circumstances. The landscapes of Pope are either such as the tourist would sketch within ten miles of London; or, if he attempts more enchanting scenery, he gives, by his vague and general epithets, only the picture of a picture; he writes more by rote than by conception, like a man who saw nature through the medium of the classics, and not with the naked eye. In vain we shall search his Pastorals, or Windsor Forest, for such a landscape as surrounds the Castle of Indolence, the Bower of Eden, or the inimitable Hermitage of Beattie.

Without defining the picturesque, we all feel that it is a charm poetry seldom applicable to Pope. In the knowledge and description of refined life, Pope is the mirror of his times. He saw through human character as it rose in the living manners of his age, with the eye of a judge and a satyrist; and he must be fond of exceptions, who should say that such a satyrist did not understand human nature. Yet, when we use the trite phrase of Shakespeare understanding human nature, we mean something greatly more extensive than when we apply the same praise to Pope. From the writings of the former, we learn the secrets of the human heart, as it subsists in all ages, independent of the form and pressure of the times. From Pope we learn its foibles and peculiarities in the 18th century. We have men and women described by Shakespeare; by Pope we have the ladies and gentlemen of England. Whatever distinctions of mental expression and physiognomy the latter delineates, we see those distinctions, whether leaning to vice or virtue, originate partly in nature, but still more in the artificial state of society. The standard of his ridicule and morality, is for ever connected with fashion and polite life. Amidst all his wit, it has been the feeling of many in reading him, that we miss the venerable simplicity of the poet, in the smartness of the gentleman. To this effect, the tune of his versification certainly contributes. Without entering into an inquiry whether his practice of invariably closing up the sense completely within the couplet is right or wrong, it is clear that Pope has made the melody of his general measure as perfect as it can be made by exactness: whether a slight return to negligence, might not be preferable to the very acmè of smoothness which

he

he has chosen, is a subject which, interesting as it is, we will not now encroach on the reader's patience by examining.

The epistle of Eloisa evinces his knowledge of one passion, and his feeling of it to have been genuine. It is possibly a fair inference from this, that his poetical sympathy could have followed with the same success any other of the leading passions or their combinations, and exhibited a picture of the human heart, (in Epic poetry for instance,) under the influence of other emotions and situations, with the same bold originality as he has pourtrayed Eloisa. We state this as a fair doubt, from reverence to so great a name, and because the boundaries of a short article make us distrust our power of exactly justifying a contradiction. But, with deference, we state our opinion, that Pope, from his writings, appears to know human nature more as a satyrist than a man of feeling; that none of his writings (least of all his elegy on an unfortunate lady) demonstrate power in the pathetic; that a gay life, of high polish and conversation, while it brightened his wit, and pointed his shrewdness, probably diminished the reflective energy of his mind, and made him more observant of foibles than of passions, of manners than of nature in the abstract. There is one sacred passion which nature has ordained to be independent of fashion and artificial manners, for its eternal vehemence. Hence, the poet who may have been limited in observing other secrets of the human bosom, by the greatest bane to originality, an intercourse with the narrow limits of the fashionable world, may even, with that disadvantage, observe and paint the omnipotence of love in all its greatness and simplicity. After all, we should rather forego this theory, than the pleasure of reading the works of our great modern; so that we piously hope Mr Stockdale's melancholy test of his merit, their eternal and irreparable loss, will never be resorted to.

From the higher region of poetry, our lecturer seems sensible that he is coming down a considerable step when he proceeds to Young. His general character of him will be acknowledged to be just.

Nature had beftowed on Young an exubérant, vigorous and original genius. It was boundlefs in its verfatility; it was inexhaustible in its refources. But its uncommon and fplendid qualities were darkened and difhonoured by their oppofite characteristics. He has left us many proofs that he could be extremely injudicious; his tafte was extremely vitiated. He often tires us with what I can term no better than poetical tricks or legerdemain. He is apt to prolong a forcible and fhining thought to its debility and its death, by an Ovidian redundance and puerility; and he feems to have exerted the whole ftretch and grasp of his mind to unite remote images and thoughts, which could never have been associated but by the moft elaborate affectation. By an overheated fancy breaking

through

through every pale of judgement, he fometimes lofes himself in fuftian, when he imagines that he has attained fublimity. ’

In one respect, our author puts us in mind of a rower in a boat; he looks one way and proceeds another. In Young we find him treating of Pope, and in Thomson looking back upon Young. A Johnson, or a Croft, are ever and anon present to receive some castigation; and are seemingly thrown in his way, that he may have the pleasure of kicking them out of it. His remarks on Young are, nevertheless, in general judicious, except where he praises the minor poems of that author. The prose of Young is clearly and happily described by the frequent manliness of its originality, and its grotesque and whimsical decorations.

With higher genius, and with a milder spirit of religion, Thomson adorned the contemporary age of Young, and drew from that, as from the succeeding, a deeper admiration. Whether the object of poetry be to please, or to mend the heart, either definition will suit the muse of Thomson. His inspiration awakens, and almost creates anew, that moral sense which polished life, and the petty agitations of artificial society, are most apt to obliterate, viz. the sense of beauty in external nature; a prin ciple on which so much innocence and happiness depend. Other poets have shown us choice scenes of nature; Thomson leads us abroad to look at her whole horizon, and all her vicissitudes. He gives us (we might almost say) a separate and new enthusiasm for the beauties of creation, which, in other poets, we only feel by occasions, as the scenery is connected with some transient action or event. When we consider the nature of this moral charm in the author of the Seasons, we find a reason for his popularity exceeding that of all other poets, even those who are not his inferiors in genius. The narrative and dramatic poets, who appeal to the more tumultuous and palpable passions, depend on curio sity for the delight we find in them. When the story is told, or the drama wound up, it is difficult to bring our curiosity fresh to their perusal. But the Seasons present to us imitations of nature, which the eye delights not merely to revisit, but to rest and to muse upon. In the placid and still nature of the objects, we have time to gather a multitude of associations. There is scarce a reader of Thomson, whose own mind will not furnish recollections in proof of this. The features of nature, in Thomson's description, are without vagueness or indistinctness, but still general, and applicable, by association, to the particular scenery which is freshest and pleasantest in the actual remembrance of every individual among the million who read him. All descriptive poetry, it is true, possesses, to a certain degree, this charm of general applicability to individual association; but it could be easi

ly

ly proved, that an event and an agent, by being more particular themselves, lose, in generality of association, what they gain to the reader in curiosity and interest. This will not prove that Thomson's poetry yields more intense delight in the present perusal, than others of high merit; but, by the calmness and permanence of the pleasure, it accounts for our recurring to it so often.

Amidst the profuse and noble praise which Johnson has lavished upon this poet, Mr Stockdale seems highly offended that he should have ventured to hint at a blemish. Yet, surely, for the sake of taste, and, above all, for the sake of preserving poetical style free from the most dangerous, because the most fascinating fault, florid and excessive ornament, it may be said, with all reverence to Thomson, that he is frequently too exuberant, and fills the ear rather than the mind. Many of his epithets are barren blossoms, gaudy, but unprofitable. Yet, if faults are to be found, they ought also to be distinguished. The faults of Thomson, whether useless epithets, or occasional redundance, are not great defects. in his poetry. He never provokes us, like Young, with disgust at fustian or nonsense. When Thomson sacrifices a thought to false taste, he only dresses the victim in flowers, and leads it on in procession. Young butchers it outright, and dissects it on the altar. On the subject of Thomson's minor poems, of which some are exquisitely beautiful, and others of unequal merit, we should perhaps do no justice either to Mr Stockdale's or our own thoughts, by entering in the narrow bounds of a short paper; but no admirer of Thomson can forbear to mention his Castle of Indolence a poem in which there appears an immaculate simplicity, which he had not attained in his Seasons. In the first part, at least, he has realized the idea of perfect poetry. Of the superior purity of Thomson's style, in this enchanting production, Mr Stockdale seems not to be aware. The inequality of the second part of the Castle of Indolence is known and acknowledged; yet one cause of this is perhaps the finished perfection of the first. It was enough; it needed no second part. It resembles the well-known air of pastoral simplicity, to which all the skill of an inventive master could not furnish a second. Yet in the second part, as we have it, what inimitable stanzas are found! The poetry of the Castle of Indolence can only be described in poetry.

A more vehement chapter of criticism is scarcely to be found, than Mr Stockdale's remarks on the poet next in succession, whose genius he idolizes, and whose memory he defends, with a fervour beyond all the other worshippers, and all the other defenders of Chatterton. What that wonderful boy would have been, F

VOL. XII. NO. 23.

is