In the earlier stages of civilization, while the bonds of society hang yet loose upon the individual, before the benefits of mutual assistance and dependence are felt or understood, the savage, elate with the idea of absolute independence, and unacquainted with all the advantages which accompany the arts of society, looks down with supreme contempt on a state, whose every individual is entirely dependent upon and connected with the community*. The wretched Esquimaux give themselves the exclusive title of men, and the Indian of North America, bestows on the Europeans, as compared with himself, the epithet of the accursed race.

In a state of absolute barbarism the arts of life are few, and agreeably to that all-sufficiency which the savage so much affects, practised and understood by each individual. The Indian, unacquainted with the arts of polished life, is to himself, what society is to the members which compose it: he raises himself the roof of his humble hut, and ventures upon the ocean in the canoe which his own hands have hollowed; his weapons for war or for the chase are such as his own industry, or sometimes a casual intercourse with politer nations, have furnished for him+. The component members of barbarous societies are seldom numerous, owing to the extreme difficulty which attends the education of infancy among the hazards and hardships of savage life, and joined to it produces that extreme tenderness which all uncivilized communities entertain for the life of an individual. Where the numbers are comparatively few, the principle of patriotism is concentrated; the loss or misconduct of a North American Indian would be more sensibly felt by his tribe, than that of a thousand Englishmen, by the parent country.

the original genius of these authors; were I to draw the line of affinity, I should call Blackmore the caricatura of Dryden. * Robertson's History of America, book iv. ↑ Ibid.

It remains after a consideration of the causes, to trace their effects in the artless essays of the more remote periods. Ossian's poems, if allowed to be authentic, are the only specimen of this species generally known; Homer being, according to the testimony of Aristotle, posterior to a long line of poets, his predecessors and perhaps his patterns: the decided preference given through every poem, to the nation, the family, and person, of the poet, strongly mark the national character as well as that of the times. Allusions to the inferior arts are so unusual and so simple as must speak them in their first period of progression; or evince a taste and judgment in the author far beyond the times in which he is supposed to have flourished. He is himself, agreeable to that idea of self-importance, the invariable attendant on savage life, the hero of his own tale. Filial duty, and regard to the merits of an illustrious warrior, might contribute to give Fingal a conspicuous character in poems, the production of his son; but no reason can be given why Ossian, the bard of song, should be the hero of it. The battle,' says Regnor Lodbrog, a prince, pirate, and poet, of a succeeding age, 'is grateful to me as the smile of a virgin in the bloom of youth; as the kiss of a young widow in a retired apartment.' An egotism which moderns must suppose agreeable to the character of those times. The pride of family, a prevailing passion where arts and commerce have not set mankind on a level, was indulged by the poet, who comprised in his profession that of the genealogist. Homer frequently traced the descent of his heroes into remote and fabulous antiquity; probably with a view to gratify such of his patrons as piqued themselves on their pedigree.

The poetry of ruder ages is seldom distinguished for elegance of diction or variety of imagery; yet there are advantages so strongly peculiar to it, as must raise it high in the esteem of all admirers of

nature, while yet simple and unsophisticated. The state of the arts, as yet rude and imperfect, renders it impossible to deviate from simplicity. The distinctions of property being as yet faintly delineated, no idea of superiority can obtain but what arises from personal qualifications; and poetic praise, unprostituted to power and wealth, must be the genuine tribute of gratitude and admiration. That property was in a very unsettled state in the days of Homer, may be gathered from numberless passages in his writings; among the calamities which awaited an aged father on the death of his only son, the plunder of his possessions is mentioned; and Achilles laments, that life, unlike every other human possession, was not to be obtained by theft. Accordingly in the epithets which accompany the name of each hero, through the Iliad and Odyssey, we see no allusions to the adventitious circumstances of wealth and power, if we except the title of lord of rich Mycence, sometimes, though rarely bestowed on Agamemnon. While the subtlety of Ulysses, the swiftness of Achilles, the courage and strength of Diomed, are mentioned as often as the names of those heroes occur.

The intermediate step between barbarity and perfection, is perhaps the least favourable to the cultivation of poetry; for the necessity of writing with simplicity is taken away long before its beauty is discovered or attended to. The arts, if we may believe the picture of them, as exhibited in the shield of Achilles, had attained this intermediate stage of their progress in the days of Homer; and accordingly we find in the works of that great master, some allusions to the meaner arts, as well as illustrations drawn from them; which, however the antiquary might regard as throwing light on so remote a period, criticism must reject as repugnant to that simplicity and universality which form the essential

characteristics of poetry. When Hector tells Paris, that he deserved a coat of stone, that is, to be stoned to death, I cannot help suspecting it to have been a cant word of that time; and am rather disgusted than satisfied, to find the security which Neptune gives for Mars, was agreeable to the form of procedure in the Athenian courts. Though in this instance a modern, and especially a modern of this country, may be easily prejudiced; the laws here, by the uncouthness of their language, and other particularities, wearing an air of ridicule by no means connected with the ideas of laws in general. Yet, whatever allowances we admit in consideration of the distant period which produced this patriarch of poetry and literature, and however we abstract ourselves from the prevailing prejudices of modern manners, we still find ourselves better pleased with those images, which, from their simplicity in so long a period, have undergone the smallest variation. The following lines are perhaps the most pleasing to a modern reader of any in the whole Iliad.

What time in some sequestered vale,

The weary woodman spreads his sparing meal;
When his tir'd arm refuse the axe to rear,

And claim a respite from the sylvan war;

But not till half the prostrate forest lay,

Stretch'd in long ruin, and expos'd to day.-POPE.

And it is a curious consideration, that in a period which has exhausted the variety of wealth and vanity, the simple life of the labourer has not undergone the most trifling alteration. Milton, a strict observer as well as a constant imitator of the ancients, has adopted the same idea in the following lines, What time the labour'd ox,

With loosen'd traces from the furrow came,
And the swink'd hedger at his supper sat.

The father of English poetry, like that of the Grecian, lived in a period little favourable to sim

plicity in poetry; and several meannesses occur throughout his works, which in an age more refined, or more barbarous, he must have avoided. among the worthie acts of Duke Theseus,

How he took the nobil cite after,

We see

And brent the walls and tore down roof and rafter. And among the horrid images which crowd the temple of Mars,

The child stranglid in the cradil,

The coke scaldid for alle his long ladil.

The state of equipoise between horror and laughter, which the mind must here experience, may be ranked among its most unpleasing sensations.-The period at which the arts attain to their highest degree of perfection, may be esteemed more favourable to the productions of the Muses, than either of the foregoing; the mind is indulged in free retrospect of antiquity, and sometimes in conjectural glimpses of futurity; with such a field open before him, the objects which we must suppose should more immediately attract the attention of the poet, would be the failure or success of his predecessors; and the causes to which either was to be attributed. Pope has fully availed himself of the dear-bought experience of all who went before him; there is perhaps no poet more entirely free from this failing. I shall however only cite one instance in which he may seem to have carried his regard for simplicity so far, as to shew himself guilty of inaccuracy and inattention.

The hungry judges now the sentence sign,

And wretches hang that jurymen may dine.

That judges in England never sign a sentence is well known; and hunger, whatever effect it might have had on the jurymen of ancient days, with those of modern times, seems to operate rather as an incitement to mercy. Clifden's proud Alcove has not at