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THE LITERARY CHARACTER OF POPE.
From an English Periodical Publication.

HATEVER might be the imperfections of our great poet's perfon or temper, yet the vigour, force, and activity of his mind were almost unparalleled. His whole life, and every hour of it, in fickness and in health, was devoted solely and with unremitting diligence, to cultivate that one art in which he had determined to excel. Many other poets have been unavoidably immersed in business, in wars, in politics, and diverted from their favourite bias and pursuits. Of Pope it might truly and solely be faid, Verfus amat, hoc ftudet unum. His whole thoughts, time, and talents were spent on his works alone: which works, if we dispassionately and carefully review, we shall find, that the largest portion of them, for he attempted nothing of the epic or dramatic, is of the didactic, moral, and fatiric kind; and, confequently, not of the most poetic species of poetry. There is nothing in so sublime a style as the bard of Gray. This is a matter of fat, not of reasoning; and means to point out, what Pope has actually done, not what, if he had put out his full strength, he was capable of doing. No man can poffibly think, or can hint, that the author of the Rape of the Lock, and the Eloifa, wanted imagination, or fenfibility, or pathetic; but he certainly did not fo often indulge and exert those talents, nor give fo many proofs of them, as he did of strong sense and judgement. This turn of mind led him to admire French models; he studied Boileau attentively; formed himself upon him, as Milton formed himself upon the Grecian and Italian Sons of Fancy. He stuck to defcribing modern manners; but these manners, because they are familiar, uniform, artificial, and polished, are, for these four reasons in their very nature unfit for any lofty effort of the muse. He gradually became one of the most correct, even, and exact poets that ever wrote; but yet with force and spirit, finishing his pieces with a patience, a care, and affiduity, that no business nor avocation ever interrupted; so that if he does not frequently ravish and transport his reader, like his master Dryden, yet he does not fo often disgust him, like Dryden, with unexpected inequalities and abfurd improprieties. He is never above or below his subject. Whatever poetical enthusiasm he actually poffeffed, he withheld and fuppressed. The perufal of him, in most of his pieces, affects not our minds with fuch strong emotions as we feel from Homer and Milton; so that no man, of a true poetical spirit, is master of himself while he reads them. Hence he is a writer fit for univerfal perusal, and of general utility; adapted to all ages and all stations; for the old and for the young; the man of business and the scholar. He who would think, and there are many fuch, the Fairy Queen, Palamon and Arcite, the Tempest, or Comus, childish and romantic, may relish Pope. Surely it is no narrow, nor invidious, nor niggardly encomium to fay, he is the great Poet of Reafon; the first of ethical authors in verfe; which he was by choice, not necessity. And this species of writing is, after all, the surest road to an extensive and immediate reputation. It lies more level to the general capacities of men, than the higher flights of more exalted and genuine poetry. Waller was more applauded than the Paradise loft; and we all remember when Churchill was more in vogue than Gray.

We live in a reasoning and profaic age. The forests of Fairyland have been rooted up and destroyed; the castles and the palaces of fancy are in ruins; the magic wand of Profpero is broken and buried many fathoms in the earth. Telemachus was so univerfally read and admired in France, not fo much on account of the poetical images and the fine imitations of Homer which it contained, but for the many artful and fatirical allufions to the profligate court of Louis XIV. scattered up and down. He that treats of fashionable follies, and the topics of the day, that describes present persons and recent events, as Dryden did in his Abfalom and Achitophel, finds many readers, whose understandings and whose passions he gratifies, and who love politics far more than poetry.

The name of Chesterfield on one hand, and of Walpole on the other, failed not to make a poem bought up, and talked of. And it cannot be doubted, that the Odes of Horace which celebrated, and Satires which ridiculed, well-known and real characters at Rome, were more eagerly read, and more frequently cited, than the Eneid and the Georgic of Virgil. Malignant and insensible must be the critic, who should impotently dare to affert, that Pope. wanted genius and imagination; but perhaps it may fafely be affirmed, that his peculiar and characteristical excellencies were good fenfe and judgment. And this was the opinion of Atterbury and Bol ingbroke; and it was alfo his own opinion.

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CRITICISM ON GRAY.

HE few compofitions of Gray appear to be the productions of their operation on the materials of learning, and we were impressed with more respect for his powers by the pe." rufal of his letters, than by that of his poems. In these we can diftinguish no strong cast of original thought, or any of those flashes of fancy, which strike in the pages Dryden, and cover their faults with splendour. In Gray all is order and elegance, harmony and beauty; but all, at the fame time, is, too obviously, felection and labour. The whole is richly sweet; but it is drawn, under our very eyes, from a thousand flowers, and we are witnesses of the long and painful process, with which it is strained and wrought into the tasteful and golden mass. "The Bard," which Dr. Warton seems disposed to place above the first lyric effufions of Dryden, is undoubtedly a noble compofition: but it is rather stiff and heavy in its march

and betrays too manifestly, in our opinion, the effort, which was necessary for its production. In fome fingle stanzas of Dryden we can diftinguith more of the "mens divinor," a brighter eruption of the fiery foul of genuine inspiration, than in all the Odes of Gray.

Before we leave this subject, we are tempted to obferve, that an admired passage in "The Bard,"

" Loofe his beard and hoary hair

Stream'd, like a meteor, to the troubled air,"

has always appeared to us as an attempt, which, having overshot the fublime, had fallen into the burlesque. When Milton talks of

" The imperial enfign, which full high advanc'd,
Shone, like a meteor, streaming to the wind;"

he paints to our eyes the floating banner of the prince of hell, with as much justice as magnificence; and we admire the imagination, which could at once illustrate and enlarge so grand an object: but when the fame image is transferred to the "loofe beard and hoary hair" of an old bard, we are ftruck with the disproportion between the subject, and its intended illustration, and we are urged to smile rather than admire. In Milton also, it may be remarked, that not only the streaming, but the luftre of the imperial ensign, which "shone," and, like the other banners, no doubt, "with orient colours waved," forms its resemblance to a meteor: whilft, in Gray, the fimilitude confists merely in the motion of the things which are compared; and the image, already too bulky for the poet's purpose, is further most injudiciously heightened by the interpofition of the epithet "troubled." Dryden has introduced a fimilar allusion with great fublimity into a speech of Antony's in the "All for Love."

" Why was I raised the meteor of the world,
Hung in the skies, and blazing as I travell'd,
'Till all my fires were spent; and then cast downward,
To be trod out by Cæfar?".

Among the odes of Gray, "The Bard" incontestibly afferts the first place: of the rest, that " on the Death of a favourite Cat," "the Triumps of Owen," and the "Fatal Sisters," cannot be allowed any pre-eminent or impressive merit. The "Elegy" is an unique; a gem of rare beauty, which it is not easy to praife beyond its worth.

M

CRITICISM ON Mr. SOUTEY'S JOAN OF ARC.
From Drake's Literary Hours.

R. SOUTHEY's Joan of Arc, though incorrect and written with inexcufable rapidity, reflects great credit on his genius and abilities; the fentiments are noble and generous, and burn with

an enthusiastic ardour for liberty; the characters, especially that of his Heroine, are well supported, and his visionary scenes are rich with bold and energetic imagery. His fable, however, I cannot but confider peculiarly unfortunate, as directly militating against national pride and opinion; most epic writers have been folicitous to acquire popularity by aggrandizing the heroic deeds and bold emprise of their respective nations, but in Joan of Arc the tide of censure falls upon one of our most gallant Kings, and who has ever been a favourite with the multitude. It is true that the votaries of ambition scatter defolation in their train, and merit the indignant reprobation of every friend to humanity, but had Mr. Southey confulted his own fame and popularity he had chofen a different subject as the vehicle of his fentiments. The verfification of this poem is in many parts very beautiful, and would have been altogether so, had the author condescended to bestow more time on its elaboration.* In his promised epic on the Discovery of America by Madoc, the ingenious poet it is hoped, will apply more care and affiduity to the necessary work of perfecting and polishing.

RY.

THE DRAMA OF THE SEVENTEENTH CENTURY. From the fame.

T

HE Drama in the fixteenth, and during a great part of the seventeenth century was written with little attention to the rules of composition, and, except in the hands of Shakespeare, was for the most part either monstrous or abortive. The Plays of Maffinger, Beaumont and Fletcher abound with the wildest incongruities both in matter and form, and though Johnson was infinitely more regular yet he wanted the essential of genius. Succeeding poets have however made nearer approaches to the perfectability of art, and few tragedies have been produced within the prefent century without due regard to mechanism of fable, to decorum of scene, and propriety of style. But as attention to the dictates of criticifm will not alone constitute a good play, it is necessary to shew that the poets within our prescribed period want not what is otherwise vital and requifite to their art. In tragedy, as was observed before, we must avoid entering the lift with Shakespeare, but with his contemporary bards we can court comparison in triumph. With this exception who can produce a tragedy from the bosom of the fixteenth, or prior half of the seventeenth century, that, in genuine dramatic

* Since these observation were made Mr. Southey has published a second edition of the Joan of Arc, in which many and great alterations, and, for the most part, highly to the advantage of the work, have taken place.

excellence, shall rank with the Grecian Daughter or Gamefter of Moore, the Douglas of Home, the Elfrida and Caraclacas of Mason, or the Mysterious Mother of Walpole. Though the subject of this last piece be fingularly horrid and almost disgusting, yet the fable is conducted with such inimitable skill, that it may in this respect be confidered as approximating nearer to perfection than any other drama extant, the Edipus Tyrannus of Sophocles even not excepted. Some of the scenes in Douglas are of admirable pathos and beauty, and its diction has been justly and generally approved. The classical productions of Mason would have done honour to Athens in her most refined period, and the tragedies of Moore have been bathed with the tears of thousands. If we turn to comedy, the superiority of modern genius is decisive; for, I imagine, it will readily be conceded that the Suspicious Husband, the Jealous Wife, the Clandestine Marriage, and the School for Scandal, are perfectly unrivalled. The comedies of Mr. Cumberland likewise possess very confiderable merit, especially his West Indian and Wheel of Fortune. Comedy has in every nation been flow in attaining perfection. Ariftophanes, more remarkable for fcurrility than for wit and humour, was contemporary with Euripides, and though Shakespeare has many characters of the most genuine humour, he has not furnished us with an instance of legitimate comedy, unless indeed the Merry Wives of Windfor may be termed such. In fact before the time of Congreve and Cibber, pure and unmixed comedy was nearly unknown, and only acquired its more polished and perfect state when the drama of Colman and Sheridan appeared.

DR. DARWIN'S BOTANIC GARDEN.

From the fame.

R. DARWIN has lately favoured the world with poem

D perfectly original in its defign, and whose verification

is the

most correct and brilliant in our language. Nothing can exceed the exquifite taste with which the diction of the Botanic Garden is selected, and the facility which the author enjoys of defcribing, without the smallest injury to the polish and melody of his lines, the most intricate objects of nature and of art, is truly aftonishing. A playfulness of fancy, an unbounded variety of fiction, an imagination wild and terrific as that of Dante or Shakespeare, and an intimate knowledge of every branch of science and natural history, conspire to render this poem perfectly unique. Scripture narrative, ancient mythology, gothic fuperftition and the miracles of philofophy are drawn in to decorate or elucidate the history or metamorphoses of his plants, and the bold and beautiful perfonifications which every where start forward, and with a projection which indicates the hand of genius, infuse life and vigour through the work. The destruc tion of the armies of Cambyfes and, of Senacherib, the prosopopæia

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