full of fancy and imagery, and splendour, than those who, for the sake of such qualities, have shrunk back from the delineation of character or passion, and declined the discussion of human duties and cares. More full of wisdom and ridicule and sagacity, than all the moralists and satirists in existence he is more wild, airy, and inventive, and more pathetic and fantastic, than all the poets of all regions and ages of the world—and has all those elements so happily mixed up in him, and bears his high faculties so temperately, that the most severe reader cannot complain of him for want of strength or of reason-nor the most sensitive for defect of ornament or ingenuity. Every thing in him is in unmeasured abundance, and unequalled perfection-but every thing so balanced and kept in subordination, as not to jostle or disturb, or take the place of another. The most exquisite poetical conceptions, images, and descriptions, are given with such brevity, and introduced with such skill, as merely to adorn, without loading, the sense they accompany. Although his sails are purple and perfumed, and his prow of beaten gold, they waft him on his voyage, not less but more rapidly and directly than if they had been composed of baser materials. All his excellences, like those of Nature herself, are thrown out together; and, instead of interfering with, support and recommend each other. His flowers are not tied up in garlands, nor his fruits crushed into baskets-but spring living from the soil, in all the dew and freshness of youth; while the graceful foliage in which they lurk, and the ample branches, the rough and vigorous stem, and the wide-spreading roots on which they depend, are present along with them, and share, in their places, the equal care of their Creator. What other poet has put all the charm of a moonlight landscape into a single line?—and that by an image so true to nature, and so simple, as to seem obvious to the most common observation?— "See how the Moonlight SLEEPS on yonder bank!"— Who else has expressed in three lines, all that is picturesque and lovely in a summer's dawn?-first setting before our eyes, with magical precision, the visible appearances of the infant light, and then, by one graceful and glorious image, pouring on our souls all the freshness, cheerfulness, and sublimity of returning morning? 66 See, love! what envious streaks Do lace the severing clouds in yonder East : Where shall we find sweet sounds and odours so luxuriously blended and illustrated, as in these few words of sweetness and melody, where the author says of soft music—— "Oh, it came o'er my ear, like the sweet South That breathes upon a bank of violets, Stealing and giving odour." * If the advocates for the grand style object to this expression, we shall not stop to defend it; but, to us, it seems equally beautiful, as it is obvious and natural, to a person coming out of a lighted chamber into the pale dawn. The word candle, we admit, is rather homely in modern language, while lamp is sufficiently dignified for poetry. The moon hangs her silver lamp on high, is in every schoolboy's copy of verses; but she could not be called the candle of heaven without manifest absurdity. Such are the caprices of usage. Yet we like the passage before us much better as it is, than if the candles were changed into lamps. If we should read, "the lamps of heaven are quenched," or wax dim," it appears to us that the whole charm of the expression would be lost. 66 This is still finer, we think, than the noble speech on music in the Merchant of Venice, and only to be compared with the enchantments of Prospero's island; where all the effects of sweet sounds are expressed in miraculous numbers, and traced in their operation on all the gradations of being, from the delicate Ariel to the brutish Caliban, who, savage as he is, is still touched with those supernatural harmonies, and thus exhorts his less poetical associates Observe, too, that this and the other poetical speeches of this incarnate demon, are not mere ornaments of the poet's fancy, but explain his character, and describe his situation more briefly and effectually, than any other words could have done. In this play, and in the Midsummer Night's Dream, all Eden is unlocked before us, and the whole treasury of natural and supernatural beauty poured out profusely to the delight of all our faculties. We dare not trust ourselves with quotations; but we refer to those plays generally to the forest scenes in "As You Like it"-the rustic parts of the Winter's Tale-several entire scenes in Cymbeline, and in Romeo and Juliet-and many passages in all the other plays-as illustrating this love of nature and natural beauty of which we have been speaking-the power it had over the poet, and the power it imparted to him. Who else would have thought, on the very threshold of treason and midnight murder, of bringing in so sweet and rural an image at the portal of that blood-stained castle? "This guest of summer, The temple-haunting martlet, does approve 'Has made his pendent bed, and procreant cradle." Nor is this brought in for the sake of an elaborate contrast between the peaceful innocence of this exterior, and the guilt and horrors that are to be enacted within. There is no hint of any such suggestion-but it is set down from the pure love of nature and reality-because the kindled mind of the poet brought the whole scene before his eyes, and he painted all that he saw in his vision. The same taste predominates in that emphatic exhortation to evil, where Lady Macbeth says, "Look like the innocent flower, But be the serpent under it." And in that proud boast of the bloody Richard "But I was born so high: Our aery buildeth in the cedar's top, And dallies with the wind, and scorns the sun." The same splendour of natural imagery, brought simply and directly to bear upon stern and repulsive passions, is to be found in the cynic rebukes of Apemantus to Timon: "Will these moist trees That have outlived the cgle, page thy heels, And skip when thou point'st out? will the cold brook, To cure thine o'er-night's surfeit?" No one but Shakspeare would have thought of putting this noble picture into the taunting address of a snappish misanthrope-any more than the following into the mouth of a mercenary murderer: "Their lips were four red roses on a stalk, And in their summer beauty kiss'd each other," Or this delicious description of concealed love into that of a regretful and moralising parent: "But he, his own affections' Counsellor, Is to himself so secret and so close, As is the bud bit with an envious worm Or dedicate his beauty to the sun." And yet all these are so far from being unnatural, that they are no sooner put where they are, than we feel their beauty and effect; and acknowledge our obligations to that exuberant genius which alone could thus throw out graces and attractions where there seemed to be neither room nor call for them. In the same spirit of prodigality he puts this rapturous and passionate exaltation of the beauty of Imogen into the mouth of one who is not even a lover: : "It is her breathing that Perfumes the chamber thus! the flame o' th' taper Under the windows, white and azure, laced With blue of Heaven's own tinct-on her left breast LORD LEVESON GOWER'S POEMS AND TRANSLATIONS.* The extremes of life, high and low, are more likely to comprise close resemblances in what form really the most important particulars of human character and conduct, than any other portion of the community. There is as much, and nearly the same danger in being above opinion as below it-in receiving a sugar-and-water education, as in receiving none at all— in the humours which follow from being underworked, overfed, and from false indulgences, as in the feverish exhaustion that accompanies overwork, underfeeding, and neglect. One of the main evils to which these extremes are alike exposed, and from which, one way or another, they suffer almost equally, is the want of sure regular employment. The difficulty, which the great must frequently experience in finding themselves in occupation, * I. Translations from the German; and Original Poems. By Lord Francis Leveson Gower. 2. Faust, a Drama, by Goethe! with Translations from the German. By Lord F. L. Gower. 3. Wallenstein's Camp, from the German; and Original Poems. By Lord F. L. Gower.-Vol. lii. p. 231. October, 1830. may be conceived by the envy with which such a man as even Dr. Johnson looked on persons who were brought up to a profession. Pride, Young says, was not made for man; leisure, we fear, quite as little. Notwithstanding Fox's favourite lines "How various his employments whom the world Calls idle, and who justly, in return, Esteems that busy world an idler too," our race is not sufficiently aërial to lead a gay uncankered life "under the blossom that hangs on the bough." The undertaking of our fine gentlemen to make a business of pleasure, answers much worse, they may depend upon it, than the opposite experiment of the industrious classes how far a pleasure may be made of business. The misery of conjugating that verb ennuyer, through any one of its hundred moods, and the apparent impossibility of providing the great vulgar, or the small, with respectable amusements, must dispose a reasonable person to look with much complacency on every attempt made by members of either class to extend their sphere of innocent enjoyment. Sufficient numbers for all the waste purposes of life are sure to be left behind. There are enow whom education and civilisation will never reach, and who, consequently, must remain in the station in which it has pleased God to place them, either the mere figurante figures, or the beasts of burden for society,-the prey for its sharpers, or company for its fools. Were a taste for literature to be valued only at its chance of affording some protection against degrading or destructive pleasures (the blandishments of the gaming-table and the public-house), it could never, even whilst thus negatively appreciated, either mount too high or descend too low. The cause of letters must gain something in the end. In the mean time, a solid advantage is gained to a still better cause ; although our village minstrels should fail to give us any strain more powerful than that of Bloomfield and Clare, or although Byron's extinct volcano should find in the present generation of noble poets, no more bright and burning representative than scrawls of phosphorus rubbed into a sort of glimmer on a dark wall. It has been rumoured lately, on high bibliopolist authority, that the rage for poetry is over. If verses can no longer be made so as to yield a remunerating price, professional dealers in them will turn their intellectual capital into some other line of business, and amateurs, who can afford to print, although the gentle reader, and still more gentle purchaser, may not be forthcoming, will have Parnassus entirely to themselves. Notwithstanding any sneaking kindness we may feel for "the mob of gentlemen who write with ease," and who have married themselves to immortal verse for love, and not for money, it must be admitted that merely starving out one's competitors is not the most flattering species of success, if success can be predicated in a case where, by the supposition, the artists have withdrawn, and the public are become indifferent. In the mean time, it is evident that no great stream of national taste can suddenly change its channel without occasioning terrible distress. Considering what extensive manufactories of rhyme had been now, for many years, successfully established thoughout the realm, and how completely "the inspiration of the poet's dream" were become subject to the ordinary laws of trade, it is melancholy to think on the necessary consequences of this supposed caprice of fashion. What a loss to unlucky publishers, whose floors are creaking under waste editions of condemned authors!-what a mournful prospect to veteran bards, at an advanced age, and without warning, to be thus suddenly thrown out of respectable employment! what an embarrassment, as well as disappointment, to prudent fathers, and sanguine sisters, where the hopes of a whole family may have hung on the youthful genius whom they were bringing up a poet! especially, since most other professions are already overflowing; not to mention that the spoiled children of the Muses lie under a traditional suspicion of not being easily convertible to the drudgery of daily prose. However, the evil is temporary only, and we must struggle through it as we can. We pity most the liberal booksellers who have speculated deeply in the three per cents. of poetry, and are large holders of a stock which will never charm "the leathern ears of stockbrokers or Jews." For the poets thus discountenanced, posterity will perhaps have little reason to regret the strangling of our "mute inglorious Miltons," the ebb and flow of whose imagination is duly regulated according as their golden couplets are at a discount or a premium in the London market. Let a poet arouse us from our sleep again, as with the first stanza of Branksome Hall, and we shall not fear. In case the above complaint of the falling off in the demand for poetry should be duly verified by appropriate returns to parliament, specifying the amount of the different sorts of verse become unsaleable, and distinguishing the cases of the supernumerary writers necessarily discharged, tender compassion for their poorer brethren may move some one of our noble versificators to propose in their behalf a mitigated form of compensation, such as putting them on a list of deputy or supplemental laureats; or employing them under a vote of credit upon a public work-as some great national poem. Should Lord Leveson Gower propose a grant of public money for this purpose, the most wasteful application hitherto recognised, of the fa Locke's spirit will rejoice in this news. He seems to have got his notion of a poet from Lord Rochester, and to have dreaded the thoughts of one in a republic or private house, as much as could be ever done by either Plato or Lord Burleigh. His admiration of Sir Richard Blackmore, compared with whom, he says, "all our English poets, except Milton, have been mere balladmakers," does not entitle his opinion, on the point of poetry itself, to much respect. It might also have been hoped, that his suggestion in behalf of a philosophic poem on the natural history of the universe would have inclined him to more forbearance. Whilst we think that he underrates the proficiency that pains-taking, without any genius, may give, we quite agree that the crop thus got is not worth the expenses of cultivation. It is wine made of out-of-doors grapes in England. We are equally satisfied, that a boyhood passed over a Gradus ad Parnassum, and metrical canons, is the surest way to secure having no crop at all. "If he has no genius to poetry, it is the most unreasonable thing in the world to torment a child, and waste his time about that which never can succeed; and if he has a poetic vein, it is to me the strangest thing in the world, that the father should desire or suffer it to be cherished or improved. Methinks the parents should labour to have it stifled and suppressed as much as may be; and I know not what reason a father can have to wish his son a poet, who does not desire to have him bid defiance to all other callings and business; which is not yet the worst of the case, for if he proves a successful rhymer, and once the reputation of a wit, I desire it may be considered what company and places he is like to spend his time in, nay, and estate too; for it is very seldom seen that any one discovers mines of gold or silver in Parnassus. It is a pleasant air, but a barren soil; and there are very few instances of those who have added to their patrimony by any thing they have reaped from thence. Poetry and gaming, which usually go together, are alike in this too, that they seldom bring any advantage, but to those who have nothing else to live on. Men of estates almost constantly go away losers; and it is well if they escape at a cheaper rate than their whole estates, or the greatest part of them. If, therefore, you would not have your son the fiddle to every jovial company, without whom the sparks could not relish their wine, nor know how to pass an afternoon idly; if you would not have him to waste his time and estate to divert others, and contemn the dirty acres left him by his ancestors, I do not think you will much care he should be a poet, or that his schoolmaster should enter him in versitying. But yet, if any one will think poetry a desirable quality in his son, and that the study of it would raise his fancy and parts, he must needs yet confess, that, to that end, reading the excellent Greek and Roman poets is of more use than making bad verses of his own, in a language that is not And he, whose design it is to excel in English poetry, would not, I guess, think the way to it were to make his first essays in Latin verses."-Thoughts concerning Education. his own. |