ADDRESSED TO THE YOUNG. SAY, are you sure that mercy will extend To you a certain space? Alas, ye sigh! Nor think the muse, whose sober voice ye hear, Casts round religion's orb the mists of fear, Or shades with horrors what with smiles should glow. No-she would warm you with seraphic fire, Know, ye were form'd to range yon azure field, Is this the bigot's rant? Away, ye vain, Your hopes, your fears, in doubt in dulness steep; Go, soothe your souls, in sickness, grief, or pain, With the sad solace of eternal sleep. Yet know, vain sceptics! know, th' Almighty Mind, Nor shall the pile of hope his mercy rear'd Shall be by all or suffer'd or enjoy'd! SACRED. FROM COWPER TO THE PRESENT TIME. How beautiful is Genius when combined With Holiness! Oh how divinely sweet The tones of earthly harp, whose chords are touch'd Upon Religion's shrine. WILSON'S "ISLE OF PALMS." THE specimens of Sacred Poetry, comprised in the preceding part of this work, afford sufficient proof that the greatest masters of the lyre, who flourished from the age of Elizabeth till the Restoration, consecrated their poetical talents, in a greater or less degree, to the service of religion; and that several eminent authors, not strictly entitled to be ranked as Sacred poets, have infused into many of their most finished compositions a spirit of sincere and unaffected devotion. From the reign of Charles the Second to the period when YOUNG published his "Night Thoughts," and BLAIR his celebrated poem of the "Grave," there was no Sacred poet of high reputation. The "Messiah" of POPE, and DRYDEN'S few pieces of a devotional character, do not give these authors a claim to be enrolled among poets of the same class as GILES FLETCHER, WITHER, HERBERT, QUARLES, CRASHAW, and MILTON. The writings of CoWPER, however, formed a new era in religious poetry, and gave a higher tone both of morals and piety to the poetical compositions of the last century. To appreciate thoroughly the originality and vigour exhibited in the compositions of this great writer, some knowledge is necessary of the changes which took place in the character of English poetry from the reign of Queen Anne to the restoration of our literature at the opening of the present century. This is a wide and interesting field of inquiry to the student of poetry, who should make himself acquainted with all those great revolutions in taste which constitute the principal eras in our literary history. The intellectual character of the Elizabethan age, to which reference has been made in some of the pre-ceding sketches,-of the Commonwealth, and of the Restoration, has been drawn with consummate ability by Sir JAMES MACKINTOSH and Lord JEFFREY, in volumes 18 and 27 of the "Edinburgh Review;" by Mr. THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY, in his masterly criticism on "Moore's Life of Lord Byron," published in the same Journal, for June, 1830; and by Mr. CRAIK, in his able essay on the "History of Literature and Learning in England," from the Revolution of 1688 to the present day. The following extracts from those admirable dissertations are transferred to the pages of this volume, in the hope that the reader may be induced to peruse them with attention in the works in which they originally appeared. After delineating the characters of the eminent English poets from the commencement of Elizabeth's reign to the publication of PRIOR'S works, Sir JAMES MACKINTOSH thus proceeds:-"With the wits of Queen Anne this foreign school attained the summit of its reputation; and has ever since, we think, been declining, though by slow and almost imperceptible gradations. THOMSON was the first writer of any eminence who seceded from it, and made some steps back to the force and animation of our original poetry. THOMSON, however, was educated in Scotland, where the new style, we believe, had not yet become familiar; and lived, for a long time, a retired and unambitious life, with very little intercourse with those who gave the tone in literature at the period of his first appearance. THOMSON, accordingly, has always been popular with a much wider circle of readers, than either POPE or ADDISON : and, in spite of considerable vulgarity and signal cumbrousness of diction, has drawn, even from the fastidious, a much deeper and more constant admiration. "YOUNG exhibits, we think, a curious combination, or contrast rather, of the two styles of which we have been speaking. Though incapable either of tenderness or passion, he had a richness and activity of fancy, that belonged rather to the days of James and Elizabeth than to those of George and Anne;-but then, instead of indulging it, as the older writers would have done, in easy and playful inventions, in splendid descriptions, or glowing illustrations, he is led by the restraints and established taste of his age to work it up into strange and fantastical epigrams, or into cold and revolting hyperboles. Instead of letting it flow gracefully on, in an easy and sparkling current, he perpetually forces it out in jets, or makes it stagnate in formal canals;—and thinking it necessary to write like POPE, when the bent of his genius led him rather to copy what was best in COWLEY and most fantastic in SHAKSPEARE, he has produced something which excites wonder instead of admiration, and is felt by every one to be at once ingenious, incongruous, and unnatural. "After YOUNG, there was a plentiful lack of poetical talent, down to a period comparatively recent. AKENSIDE and GRAY, indeed, in the interval, discovered a new way of imitating the ancients;-and COLLINS and GOLDSMITH produced some small specimens of exquisite and original poetry. At last, CowPER threw off the whole trammels of French criticism and artificial refinement; and, setting at defiance all the imaginary requisites of poetical diction and classical imagery-dignity of style, and politeness of phraseology-ventured to write again with the force and the freedom which formed the great characteristic of the old school of English literature, and had been so unhappily sacrificed upwards of a century before. COWPER had many faults, and some radical deficiencies;-but this atoned for all. There was something so delightfully refreshing, in seeing natural phrases and natural images again displaying their unforced graces, and waving their unpruned heads in the enchanted gardens of poetry, that no one complained of the taste displayed in the selection ;and CowPER is, and is likely to continue, the most popular of all who have written for the present or the last generation." SACRED POETRY. 81 Lord JEFFREY, with equal strength and felicity of diction, gives a summary of the merits of the most distinguished of our poetical writers, from the reign of George I., to the memorable period when CowPER first sent forth his inspiring strains, as an original poet, who "composed, as he thought, with the force and freedom of an older and better time." "There never was, on the whole, a quieter period than the reigns of the two first Georges, and the greater part of that which ensued. There were two little provincial rebellions indeed, and a fair proportion of foreign war; but there was nothing to stir the minds of the people at large, to rouse their passions, or excite their imaginations-nothing like the agitations of the Reformation in the 16th century, or the civil wars in the 17th. They went on, accordingly, minding their old business, and reading their old books, with great patience and stupidity: and certainly there never was so remarkable a dearth of original talent-so long an interruption of native genius-as during about sixty years in the middle of the last century. The dramatic art was dead fifty years before,—and poetry seemed verging to a similar extinction. The few sparks that appeared, however, showed that the old fire was burnt out, and that the altar must hereafter be heaped up with fuel of another quality. GRAY, with the talents, rather of a critic than a poet-with learning, fastidiousness, and scrupulous delicacy of taste, instead of fire, tenderness, or invention-began and ended a small school, which we could scarcely have wished to become permanent, admirable in many respects as some of its productions are-being far too elaborate and artificial, either for grace or for fluency, and fitter to excite the admiration of scholars, than the delight of ordinary men. However, they had the merit of not being in any degree French, and of restoring to our poetry the dignity of seriousness, and the tone at least of force and energy. The WHARTONS, both as critics and as poets, were of considerable service in discrediting the high pretensions of the former race, and in bringing back to public notice the great stores and treasures of poetry which lay hid in the records of our ancient literature. AKENSIDE attempted a sort of classical and philosophical rapture, which no elegance of language could easily have rendered popular, but which had merits of no vulgar order for those who could study it. GOLDSMITH wrote with perfect elegance and beauty, in a style of mellow tenderness and elaborate simplicity. He had the harmony of POPE without his quaintness, and his selectness of diction without his coldness and eternal vivacity. And, last of all, came COWPER, with a style of complete originality, and, for the first time, made it apparent to readers of all descriptions, that POPE and ADDISON were no longer to be the models of English Poetry." Mr. MACAULAY'S observations on the diction and versification of Eng. lish poetry, during the thirty years which preceded JOHNSON'S Lives, have all that ease, vigour, and raciness of style which distinguish the criticisms of that eminent judge of poetic genius. "Those thirty years are, as respects poetry," he observes, "the most deplorable part of our literary history. They have indeed bequeathed to us scarcely any poetry which deserves to be remembered. Two or three hundred lines of GRAY, twice as many of GOLDSMITH, a few stanzas of BEATTIE and COLLINS, a few strophes of MASON, and a few clever prologues and satires, were the masterpieces of this age of consummate excellence. They may all be printed in one volume, and that volume would be by no means a volume of extraordinary merit. It would contain no poetry of the very highest class, and little which could be placed very high in the second class: the 'Paradise Regained' or 'Comus' would outweigh it all. A "At last, when poetry had fallen into such utter decay, that Mr. HAYLEY was thought a great poet, it began to appear that the excess of the evil was about to work the cure. Men became tired of an insipid conformity to a standard which derived no authority from nature or reason. shallow criticism had taught them to ascribe a superstitious value to the spurious correctness of poetasters. A deeper criticism brought them back to the true correctness of the first great masters. The eternal laws of poetry regained their power, and the temporary passions which had superseded those laws went after the wig of LOVELACE, and the hoop of CLARISSA. "It was in a cold and barren season that the seeds of that rich harvest which we have reaped were first sown. While poetry was every year becoming more feeble and more mechanical-while the monotonous versification which POPE had introduced, no longer redeemed by his brilliant wit and his compactness of expression, palled on the ear of the public, the great works of the old masters were every day attracting more and more of the admiration which they deserved. The plays of SHAKSPEARE were better acted, better edited, and better known than they had ever been. Our fine ancient ballads were again read with pleasure, and it became a fashion to imitate them. Many of the imitations were altogether contemptible; but they showed that men had at least begun to admire the excellence which they could not rival. A literary revolution was evidently at hand. There was a ferment in the minds of men, a vague craving for something new, a disposition to hail with delight any thing which might at first sight wear the appearance of originality. A re. forming age is always fertile of impostors. The same stir in the public mind of Europe which overthrew the abuses of the old French government, produced the Jacobins and Theophilanthropists. The success of CHATTERTON'S forgeries and of the far more contemptible forgeries of IRELAND showed that people had begun to love the old poetry well, though not wisely. The public was never more disposed to believe stories without evidence, and to admire books without merit. Any thing which could break the dull monotony of the correct school was acceptable. The forerunner of the great restoration of our literature was COWPER." Mr. CRAIK, following the example of the foregoing critics, has drawn his estimate of COWPER'S poetical merits, in reference to the characteristics of our poetry, at the time when he first appeared as a candidate for literary fame. Our space will not admit of more than one short extract: "Not creative imagination, nor deep melody, nor even, in general, much of fancy or grace or tenderness, is to be met with in the poetry of CowPER; but yet it is not without both high and various excellence. Its main charm, and that which is never wanting, is its earnestness. This |