Another, more humorous example, was given in part iii., chap. xv. SECTION XII. GEORGE CRABBE. His powers of imagination are not uncommon, but he possessed a talent for making accurate and minute observations on the realities of life. The moral tendency of his writings is good. His portraits are mostly from humble life-exhibiting virtues as well as vices. Crabbe, if not the most natural, is, in the opinion of Hazlitt, the most literal of descriptive poets. He exhibits the smallest circumstances of the smallest things-the non-essentials of every trifling incident. He describes the interior of a cottage like a person sent there to distrain for rent. You know the Christian and surnames of every one of his heroes the dates of their achievements, whether on a Sunday or a Monday-their place of birth and burial, the color of their clothes and of their hair, and whether they squinted or not. He takes an inventory of the human heart exactly in the same manner as of the furniture of a sick room; his sentiments have very much the air of fixtures; he gives you the petrifaction of a sigh, and carves a tear, to the life, in stone. Almost all his characters are tired of their lives, and you heartily wish them dead. Crabbe's poetry is like a mu seum or a curiosity-shop: every thing has the same posthu mous appearance, the same inanimateness and identity of character. He seems to rely, for the delight he is to convey to his reader, on the truth and accuracy with which he describes only what is disagreeable. SECTION XIII. SAMUEL ROGERS. Distinguished for a melodious flow of verse, a hap py choice of expression, a power of touching the finer feelings, and of describing mental as well as visible objects with effect. It is thought by some that the English language does not afford a more finished composition, in regard to language, than the " Pleasures of Memory." Upon his poems he bestowed the greatest labor and cultivation. "Italy" is another fine poem, as you may learn from the extract here appended: ROME. "I am in Rome! Oft as the morning ray Visits these eyes, waking at once, I cry, Whence this excess of joy? What has befallen mo? And from within a thrilling voice replies, Thou art in Rome! A thousand busy thoughts And I spring up as girt to run a race! * * * Thou art in Rome! the city that so long * Thou art in Rome! the city where the Gauls, Where now she dwells, withdrawn into the wild, Ah, little thought I, when in school I sat. Where, on his mule, I might have met so oft * Nero That shoots and spreads within those very walls SECTION XIV. THOMAS CAMPBELL (1777-1844). To the suggestion and eloquent advocacy of this distinguished man the London University is said to have owed its origin. "The Pleasures of Hope" is a splendid poem. "Its polish is exquisite, its topics felicitously chosen, and its illustrations natural and beautiful. He lifts you up to an exceedingly high mountain, and you see all nature in her loveliness, and man in the truth of his character, with hope irradiating, cheering, and sustaining him in the numerous ills of life. 'Gertrude of Wyoming' is preferred by some readers even to his Pleasures of Hope.' It is a sad tale, told with tenderness as well as genius. But if these had never been written, his songs would have given him claims as a first-rate poet. They cover sea and land. Their spirit stirs the brave, whatever may be their field of fame; whether the snow is to be their winding-sheet, or the deep their grave. National songs are of the most difficult production and of the highest value. They are the soul of national feeling and a safeguard of national honor."-(See Knapp's Pursuits of Literature.) Of" The Pleasures of Hope," "the music," says Professor Wilson, 66 now deepens into a majesti march-now it swells into a holy hymn-and now i dies away, elegiac-like, as if mourning over a tomb; never else than beautiful, and ever and anon, we know not why, sublime. As for Gertrude of Wyoming, we love her as if she were our only daughter-filling our life with bliss, and then leaving it desolate. Never. saw we a ship till Campbell indited Ye Mariners of England.' Sheer hulks before our eyes were all ships till that strain arose, but ever since in our imag. ination have they brightened the roaring ocean." STANZAS ON THE THREATENED INVASION, 1803. Our bosoms we'll bare for the glorious strife, To prevail in the cause that is dearer than life, Then rise, fellow-freemen, and stretch the right hand, Should a conqueror tread on our forefathers' dust, * * ON REVISITING A SCOTTISH RIVER. And call they this improvement? to have changed With sooty exhalations cover'd o'er; And for the daisied green-sward, down thy stream 'The hunger and the hope of life to feel, Yon pale Mechanic bending o'er his loom, From morn till midnight task'd to earn its little meal. * * * * * ROGERS and CAMPBELL are thus described by Hazlitt: Rogers is a very lady-like poet. He is an elegant, but a feeble writer. He wraps up obvious thoughts in a glittering cover of fine words; is studiously inverted and scrupu lously far-fetched; and his verses are poetry, chiefly because no particle, line, or syllable of them reads like prose. You can not see the thought for the ambiguity of the language, the figure for the finery, the picture for the varnish. Campbell's Pleasures of Hope is of the same school, in which a painful attention is paid to the expression, in proportion as there is little to express, and the decomposition of prose is substituted for the composition of poetry. He too often maims and mangles his ideas before they are full formed, to form them to the Procrustes' bed of criticism; or strangles his intellectual offspring in the birth, lest they should come to an untimely end in the Edinburgh Review. No writer who thinks habitually of the critics, either to tremble at their censures or set them at defiance, can write well. In his Gertrude, the structure of the fable is too mechanical. The story is cut into the form of a parallelogram. SECTION XV. MARK AKENSIDE (1721-1770). His "Pleasures of the Imagination" is deservedly celebrated. The following is an extract: "Different minds Incline to different objects: one pursues And gentlest beauty. Hence, when lightning fires And ocean, groaning from his lowest bed, The nations tremble, Shakspeare looks abroad * * * * Such and so rario is are the tastes of men! OH BLESS'D OF HEAVEN! whom not the languid songs Of Luxury, the Siren; not the bribes Of sordid Wealth, nor all the gaudy spoils Of pageant Honor can seduce to leave |