enjoyments is enhanced by a certain mixture of pity for their general condition, which, by purifing it from that taint of envy which almost always adheres to our admiration of the great, renders it more welcome and satisfactory to our bosoms; while our concern for their sufferings is at once softened and endeared to us by the recollection of our own exemption from them, and by the feeling that, we frequently have it in our power to relieve them. From these, and from other causes, it appears to us to be certain, that where subjects taken from humble life can be made sufficiently interesting to overcome the distaste and the prejudices with which the usages of polished society too generally lead us to regard them, the interest which they excite will commonly be more profound and more lasting than any that can be raised upon loftier themes; and the poet of the Village and the Borough be oftener and longer read, than the poet of the Court or the Camp. The most popular passages of Shakspeare and Cowper, we think, are of this description; and there is much, both in the volume before us, and in Mr. Crabbe's former publications, to which we might now venture to refer, as proofs of the same doctrine. When such representations have once made an impression on the imagination, they are remembered daily, and for ever. We can neither look around nor within us, without being reminded of their truth and their importance; and, while the more brilliant effusions of romantic fancy are recalled only at long intervals, and in rare situations, we feel that we cannot walk a step from our own doors, nor cast a glance back on our departed years, without being indebted to the poet of vulgar life for some striking image or touching reflection, of which the occasions were always before us, buttill he taught us how to improve them-were almost always allowed to escape. Such, we conceive, are some of the advantages of the subjects which Mr. Crabbe has in a great measure introduced into modern poetry;and such the grounds upon which we venture to predict the durability of the reputation which he has acquired. That they have their disadvantages also is obvious; and it is no less obvious, that it is to these we must ascribe the greater part of the faults and deformities with which this author is fairly chargeable. The two great errors into which he has fallen, are that he has described many things not worth describing;-and that he has frequently excited disgust, instead of pity or indignation, in the breasts of his readers. These faults are obvious,-and, we believe, are popularly laid to his charge: yet there is, in so far as we have observed, a degree of misconception as to the true grounds and limits of the charge, which we think it worth while to take this opportunity of correcting.

The poet of humble life must describe a great deal,—and must even describe minutely many things which possess in themselves no beauty or grandeur. The reader's fancy must be awakened, and the power of his own pencil displayed:-a distinct locality and imaginary reality must be given to his characters and agents, and the ground colour of their common condition must be laid in, before his peculiar and selected groups can be presented with any effect or advantage. In the same way he must study characters with a minute and anatomical precision; and must make both himself and his readers familiar with the ordinary traits and general family features of the beings among whom they are to move, before they can either understand or take much interest in the individuals who are to engross their attention. Thus far, there is no excess or unnecessary minuteBut this faculty of observation, and this power of description, hold out great temptations to go farther. There is a pride and a delight in the

ness.

exercise of all peculiar power; and the poet, who has learned to describe external objects exquisitely with a view to heighten the effect of his moral designs, and to draw characters with accuracy to help forward the interest or the pathos of the picture, will be in great danger of describing scenes, and drawing characters, for no other purpose but to indulge his taste, and to display his talents. It cannot be denied, we think, that Mr. Crabbe has on many occasions proved unequal to this temptation. He is led away, every now and then, by his lively conception of external objects, and by his nice and sagacious observation of human character, and wantons and luxuriates in descriptions and moral portrait-painting, while his readers are left to wonder to what end so much industry has been exerted.

His chief fault, however, is his frequent lapse into disgusting representations; and this, we will confess, is an error for which we find it far more difficult either to account or to apologise. We are not, however, of the opinion which we have often heard stated, that he has represented human nature under too unfavourable an aspect, or that the distate which his poetry sometimes produces, is owing merely to the painful nature of the scenes and subjects with which it abounds. On the contrary, we think he has given a juster, as well as a more striking picture, of the true character and situation of the lower orders of this country, than any other writer, whether in verse or in prose; and that he has made no more use of painful emotions than was necessary to the production of a pathetic effect.

All powerful and pathetic poetry, it is obvious, abounds in images of distress. The delight which it bestows partakes strongly of pain; and by a sort of contradiction which has long engaged the attention of the reflecting, the compositions that attract us most powerfully, and detain us the longest, are those that produce in us most of the effects of actual suffering and wretchedness. The solution of this paradox is to be found, we think, in the simple fact, that pain is a far stronger sensation than pleasure in human existence; and that the cardinal virtue of all things that are intended to delight the mind, is to produce a strong sensation. Life itself appears to consist in sensation; and the universal passion of all beings that have life seems to be, that they should be made intensely conscious of it, by a succession of powerful and engrossing emotions. All the mere gratifications or natural pleasures that are in the power even of the most fortunate, are quite insufficient to fill this vast craving for sensation; and a more violent stimulus is sought for by those who have attained the vulgar heights of life, in the pains and dangers of war,-the agonies of gaming,-or the feverish toils of ambition. To those who have tasted of these potent cups, where the bitter however so obviously predominates, the security, the comforts, and what are called the enjoyments of common life, are intolerably insipid and disgusting. Nay, we think we have observed, that even those who without any effort or exertion have experienced unusual misery frequently appear, in like manner, to acquire a laste for it, and come to look on the tranquillity of ordinary life with a kind of indifference not unmingled with contempt. It is certain, at least, that they dwell with most apparent satisfaction on the memory of those days which have been marked by the deepest and most agonising sorrows, and derive a certain delight from the recollections of those overwhelming sensations which once occasior.ed so fierce a throb in the languishing pulse of their existence.

If any thing of this kind, however, can be traced in real life,-if the passion for emotion be so strong, as to carry us, not in imagination, but in

reality, over the rough edge of present pain,-it will not be difficult to explain why it should be so attractive in the copies and fictions of poetry. There, as in real life, the great demand is for emotion; while the pain with which it may be attended, can scarcely, by any possibility, exceed the limits of endurance. The recollection, that it is but a copy and a fiction, is quite sufficient to keep it down to a moderate temperature, and to make it welcome as the sign or the harbinger of that agitation of which the soul is avaricious. It is not then, from any peculiar quality in painful emotions that they become capable of affording the delight which attends them in tragic or pathetic poetry,-but merely from the circumstance of their being more intense and powerful than any other emotions of which the mind is susceptible. If it was the constitution of our nature to feel joy as keenly, or to sympathise with it as heartily as we do with sorrow, we have no doubt that no other sensation would ever be intentionally excited by the artists that minister to delight. But the fact is, that the pleasures of which we are capable are slight and feeble, compared with the pains that we may endure; and that, feeble as they are, the sympathy which they excite falls much more short of the original emotion. When the object, therefore, is to obtain sensation, then can be no doubt to which of the fountains we shall repair; and if there be but few pains in real life which are not, in some measure, endeared to us by the emotions with which they are attended, we may be pretty sure, that the more distress we introduce into poetry, the more we shall rivet the attention and attract the admiration of the reader.

There is but one exception to this rule,-and it brings us back from the apology of Mr. Crabbe, to his condemnation. Every form of distress, whether it proceed from passion or from fortune, and whether it fall upon vice or virtue, adds to the interest and the charm of poetry-except only that which is connected with ideas of disgust,-the least taint of which disenchants the whole scene, and puts an end both to delight and sympathy. But what is it, it may be asked, that is the proper object of disgust? and what is the precise description of things which we think Mr. Crabbe so inexcusable for admitting? It is not easy to define a term at once so simple and so significant; but it may not be without its use to indicate, in a general way, our conception of its force and comprehension.

It is needless, we suppose, to explain what are the objects of disgust in physical or external existences. These are sufficiently plain and unequivocal; and it is universally admitted, that all mention of them must be carefully excluded from every poetical description. With regard, again, to human character, action, and feeling, we should be inclined to term every thing disgusting, which represented misery, without making any appeal to our love or our admiration. If the suffering person be amiable, the delightful feeling of love and affection tempers the pain which the contemplation of suffering has a tendency to excite, and enhances it into the stronger, and therefore more attractive, sensation of pity. If there be great power or energy, however, united to guilt or wretchedness, the mixture of admiration exalts the emotion into something that is sublime and pleasing. Even in cases of mean and atrocious guilt, our sympathy with the victims upon whom it is practised, and our active indignation and desire of vengeance, reconcile us to the humiliating display, and make a compound that, upon the whole, is productive of pleasure.

The only sufferers, then, upon whom we cannot bear to look, are those

that excite pain by their wretchedness, while they are too depraved to be the objects of affection, and too weak and insignificant to be the causes of misery to others, or, consequently, of indignation to the spectators. Such are the depraved, abject, diseased, and neglected poor,-creatures in whom every thing amiable or respectable has been extinguished by sordid passions or brutal debauchery,-who have no means of doing the mischief of which they are capable,-whom every one despises, and no one can either love or fear. On the characters, the miseries, and the vices of such beings, we look with disgust merely and, though it may perhaps serve some moral purpose, occasionally to set before us this humiliating spectacle of human nature sunk to utter worthlessness and insignificance, it is altogether in vain to think of exciting either pity or horror by the truest and most forcible representations of their sufferings or of their enormities. They have no hold upon any of the feelings that lead us to take an interest in our fellowcreatures;—we turn away from them, therefore, with loathing and dispassionate aversion;-we feel our imaginations polluted by the intrusion of any images connected with them; and are offended and disgusted when we are forced to look closely upon those festering heaps of moral filth and corruption. It is with concern we add, that we know no writer who has sinned so deeply in this respect as Mr. Crabbe,-who has so often presented us with spectacles which it is purely painful and degrading to contemplate, and bestowed such powers of conception and expression in giving us distinct ideas of what we must abhor to remember. If Mr. Crabbe had been a person of ordinary talents, we might have accounted for his error, in some degree, by supposing that his frequent success in treating of subjects which had been usually rejected by other poets, had at length led him to disregard altogether the common impressions of mankind as to what was allowable and what inadmissible in poetry, and to reckon the unalterable laws by which nature has regulated our sympathies, among the prejudices by which they were shackled and impaired. It is difficult, however, to conceive how a writer of his quick and exact observation should have failed to perceive, that there is not a single instance of a serious interest being excited by an object of disgust; and that Shakspeare himself, who has ventured every thing, has never ventured to shock our feelings with the crimes or the sufferings of beings absolutely without power or principle. Independent of universal practice, too, it is still more difficult to conceive how he should have overlooked the reason on which this practice is founded; for though it be generally true, that poetical representations of suffering and of guilt produce emotion, and consequently delight, yet it certainly did not require the penetration of Mr. Crabbe to discover, that there is a degree of depravity which counteracts our sympathy with suffering, and a degree of insignificance which extinguishes our interest in guilt.*

There is an exceedingly able essay on the character of Crabbe's poetry in vol. iv. p. 282. of the Quarterly Review. The poetical criticisms in that journal are, with a few exceptions, written with a praiseworthy impartiality; and not a few may fairly compete, in point of style and a profound knowledge of the subject, with some of the most brilliant dissertations of its distinguished rival. See Appendix, No II.

PARALLEL BETWEEN ROUSSEAU AND LORD BYRON. Scepticism of Byron's poetry.-Strictures on the fourth Canto of Childe Harold. †

There are two writers, in modern literature, whose extraordinary power over the minds of men, it may be truly said, has existed less in their works than in themselves,-Rousseau and Lord Byron. They have other points of resemblance. Both are distinguished by the most ardent and vivid delineations of intense conception, and by an intense sensibility of passion, rather than of affection. Both, too, by this double power, have held a dominion over the sympathy of their readers, far beyond the range of those ordinary feelings which are usually excited by the mere efforts of genius. The impression of this interest still accompanies the perusal of their writings: but there is another interest of more lasting, and far stronger power, which the one has possessed, and the other now possesses,-which lies in the continual embodying of the individual character, it might almost be said, of the very person, of the writer. When we speak or think of Rousseau or Byron, we are not conscious of speaking or thinking of an author. We have a vague but impassioned remembrance of men of surpassing genius, eloquence, and power,-of prodigious capacity both of misery and happiness. We feel as if we had transiently met such beings in real life, or had known them in the dim and dark communion of a dream. Each of their works presents, in succession, a fresh idea of themselves; and, while the productions of other great men stand out from them, like something they have created; theirs, on the contrary, are images, pictures, busts of their living selves, clothed, no doubt, at different times in different drapery, and prominent from a different background,-but uniformly impressed with the same form, and mien, and lineaments, and not to be mistaken for the representations of any other of the children of men.

But this view of the subject, though universally felt to be a true one, requires perhaps a little explanation. The personal character of which we have spoken, it should be understood, is not altogether, that on which the seal of life has been set,-and to which, therefore, moral approval or condemnation is necessarily annexed, as to the language or conduct of actual existence. It is the character, so to speak, which is prior to conduct, and yet open to good and to ill,-the constitution of the being, in body and in soul. Each of those illustrious writers has, in this light, filled his works with expressions of his own character,-has unveiled to the world the secrets of his own being-the mysteries of the framing of man. They have gone down into those depths which every man may sound for himself, though not for another; and they have made disclosures to the world of what they beheld and knew there-disclosures that have commanded and enforced a profound and universal sympathy, by proving that all mankind, the troubled and the untroubled, the lofty and the low, the strongest and the frailest, are linked together by the bonds of a common but inscrutable nature. Thus, each of these wayward and richly-gifted spirits has made himself the object of profound interest to the world,-and that, too, during periods of society when ample food was everywhere spread abroad for the meditations and passions of men. What love and desire,-what longing and passionate expectation hung upon the voice of Rousseau, the idol of his

+ Childe Harold's Pilgrimage. Canto IV. By Lord Byron.-Vol. xxx. p. 87, June, 1818.