Madam Mauchling 18th Nov. 1785 yesterday. - Men are said to flatter Thead. I had the very great pleasure of dining at Dunlop women because they are weak, f it is so, Peets must be weaker still, for Messes Rachel eith Worth Mis georgina Mckay, with their flattering attentions Yartful compliments are over as a Pext does his Pation of absolutely turned my I own they did not lard me still more his Patrones, omar did they sugar me ups as Camerenian Preacher does J.f. s...ft., but they 10 intoxicated me with their sly insinuations & delicate nnuendoes of Compliment that if it had not been for a lucky recollection how much additional weight a your good opinion &friendships must give in that civele. I had certainly looked self as a person of no small consequence - I dive not say one word how much I was charmed with "The Mayor's friendly welcome, elegant manner & acute remark, left I should be thought to balance my + lustre me on my omencatioms of applause ever against the finest Deney in Ayrshire which he made me a Vadorn I am my...farm. present of to help. farm-stock. — As it was on Hallowday "determined annually as that day returns t decorate her horns with an Ode of gratitude to the family of Dunlop. 5 The Longy in the 2 Tel. of the Museum, marked, &. are Dr D: Blacklock's; but as I am sorry to say they are far short of his other works, I, who arily kne the cyphers of them all, shall never let it be know These marked., J, are the work of an obscure, tif bling, but extraordinary body of the name of Tytler: a mortal, who though the drudges about "din by a common Printer, with leaky shoes, a sky-lighted hat, & knee-buckles as unlike as George- by the grace: of God, & plemen- the son of Daved, yet. unknown drinken Mortal is author & compiler. three fourths of Elliot's pompous Encyclopedia B tanica. Those marked, 20, I have given to the world old verses to their respective tures; but in fact: as yet that. sam of a good many of them, little more than the trovis s ancient; the there is no reason for telling every body this piece of intelligence : _ Kept letter I write you, I shall or two sets of verfes I intend for Johnson's send 3 one 39 Volume. an "What you mention of the thanksgiving. day is inspiration from above - Is it not remarkable, odiously remarkable, that the manners are more civilized, & the rights of mankind better understood, by an Augustan Century's improvement, yet in this very reign of heavenly Hanoverianion, & almost in this very year, empire beyond the billantic has had its Peers: lution too; & for the very same maladministration & legislative misdemeanors in the Mustrious & sapient ipatent Ofamily of $- as was A complained of in the tyranical & bloedy house of Stuart." Jo soon as I know of your arrival at Dunlop, I shall take the first conveniency to dedicate a day of or fe. haps two to you & Friendships, under the guaranter was con that of the Mayor's hospitality. I there will soon be three Love & ten miles of hermanent distance between us; & now your friendship & friendly correspondence is entivised with the heart strings of my enjoyment of life, I must induly myself in a festive day of the feast of reason & the flow. of soul. I have the honor to be Madam, your grateful humble ver Mob Burns THE PROTEST AGAINST RHETORIC 31 sincere. It was this that gave Cowper his directness and his delicacy; it was this which stamps with the harsh mark of truth the sombre vignettes of Crabbe, just as truly as it gave voluptuous ecstasy to the songs of Blake, and to the strong, homely verse of Burns its potent charm and mastery. It was reality that was rising to drive back into oblivion the demons of conventionality, of "regular diction," of the proprieties and machinery of composition, of all the worn-out bogies with which poetical old women frightened the baby talents of the end of the eighteenth century. Not all was done, even by these admirable men: in Burns himself we constantly hear the verbiage grating and grinding on; in his slow movements Crabbe is not to be distinguished from his predecessors of a hundred years; Cowper is for ever showing qualities of grace and elegant amenity which tempt us to call him, not a forerunner of the nineteenth, but the finest example of the eighteenth-century type. Yet the revolt against rhetorical convention is uppermost, and that it is which is really the characteristic common feature of this singularly dissimilar quartette; and when the least inspired, the least revolutionary of the four takes us along the dismal coast that his childhood knew so well, and bids us mark how "Here on its wiry stem, in rigid bloom, Grows the salt lavender that lacks perfume; And the soft, shiny mallow of the marsh," we observe that the reign of empty verbiage is over, and that the poets who shall for the future wish to bring concrete ideas before us will do so in sincere and exact language. That position once regained, the revival of imaginative writing is but a question of time and of opportunity. A very singular circumstance was the brevity of duration of this school of the eighties, if school it can be called. Burns was unknown until 1786, and in 1796 he died. Cowper's original productions, so far as they were not posthumous, were presented to the world in 1782 and 1785, and for nine years before his death in 1800 he had been removed from human intercourse. Blake remained as completely invisible as any one of his own elemental angels, and his successive collections can scarcely be said to have done more than exist, since even those which were not, like the Prophetic Books, distributed in a species of manuscript were practically unobserved. Crabbe had a very curious literary history: his career was divided into two distinct portions, the one extending from 1780 to 1785, the other continued from 1807; from his thirty-first to his fifty-third year Crabbe was obstinately silent. We may say, therefore, that the transitional period in English poetry, hanging unattached between the classical and the romantic age, lasted from 1780 to 1786. During these seven years a great deal of admirable verse was brought before the observation of English readers, who had to make the best they could of it until the real romantic school began in 1798. In Cowper, Crabbe, Burns, and Blake, we look in vain for any exotic influence of any importance. Cowper was |
