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who is to be as faithful as Emma, while Mars is to copy the fidelity of Henry.

"And when thy tumults and thy fights are past,
And when thy laurels at my feet are cast,
Faithful may'st thou, like British Henry, prove,
And Emma-like, let me return thy love."

After this the Cyprian deity requests the "great god of days and verse" that one day may be set apart yearly for sports and floral play in honour of the true lover and the Nut-Brown Maid. What a passage is this, and how flatly it falls upon modern ears! The vivid imagination of Keats gave new life to the old mythology, but to the Queen Anne men it was for the most part mere lumber, and Prior, though he turns it to clever if not poetical uses elsewhere, has failed to catch from it the slightest inspiration in this poem.

We do not like to part from Prior in a mood of disparaging criticism. Like all poets, he has his

weak side. No admirer of Milton or of Wordsworth would care to dwell on their pitiful attempts at humour. Spenser is not famous for wit, or Butler for pathos. We go to Shelley, and not to Crabbe, for splendid bursts of imagination; we do not expect (M. Taine notwithstanding) an accurate description of natural objects from Pope, nor do we look to

Thomson for fine satire. In the poetry of Prior there is much that had its day and its meaning which is now meaningless and dead. Few, except curious students, will read his 'Alma,' still fewer his 'Solomon,' although in Wesley's opinion it contains some of the finest verses that ever appeared in the English tongue; and in spite of Cowper's admiration we venture to say that not one youth or maiden in this kingdom will ever again commit to memory his · Henry and Emma.' But if we sweep away as refuse a great deal that was once admired, and admired, perhaps, not altogether unreasonably, enough remains to give Matthew Prior a high position among the poets whose bright wit and fertile fancy have been expended on occasional verses, and to justify the opinion of Mr. Thackeray that his lyrical poems are "amongst the easiest, the richest, the most charmingly humourous" in the English language.

SIR RICHARD STEELE.

AMONG the Queen Anne writers there is no figure which we seem to see more vividly than that of Sir Richard Steele. The man was by no means a hero. He wanted strength of will and the invincible determination that struggles successfully with evil. He was always sinning, always repenting; and there was no doubt a want of backbone in a nature that could thus lightly yield to temptation. There are many persons whose characters are so firmly knit that the compassion they may feel for a man like Steele is closely allied to contempt; there are others, more generous and perhaps more wise, whose sorrow for the failings of such a life is largely blended with sympathy. They will feel that, if there be much to regret in the story of Steele's career, there is much also which gives us a higher opinion of humanity and claims the noblest kind of charity.

The period at which he lived and the men of letters with whom he associated have an interest for

us which has increased rather than diminished with the lapse of time. Half a century ago these writers were in less repute than they are now; fifty years hence it may be pretty safely asserted their reputation will not have waned. "A time comes," it has been well said, "to most readers when in the literature of the eighteenth century the mind finds its best repose;" and it is surely well to turn aside occasionally from the absorbing interest and often irritating suggestiveness of modern literature to a period that can be surveyed with the complacency and calmness with which we look upon the portrait of a venerable ancestor. Defects there may be in the picture, but they are viewed without annoyance; and we find no inclination to quarrel with the critic who may point out a mole upon the cheek or a cast in the eye.

The Queen Anne essayists and poets, with one or two doubtful exceptions, do not impress us with a sense of greatness. They are pigmies by the side of the Elizabethan heroes; they are inferior in the highest literary qualities to several illustrious men who have lived and died in our own century. The names of Tickell, Prior, Gay, Thomson, and Steele may readily be matched by some popular modern authors; and even the noble trio Addison, Swift, and

Pope, each of whom in his own department we are accustomed to regard as unrivalled, cannot be justly compared, for breadth of intellect and splendour of imagination, with the poets and men of letters who flourished in the sixteenth century.

A great man, however, is not necessarily the most pleasant of companions. Milton is a sublime poet, but we are not quite sure that a week spent in his company would have been remembered with unalloyed pleasure. Coleridge, it is just possible, might have wearied us with his unceasing talk; and Wordsworth, though a good man and a noble poet, did not, we must believe, always act the part of a host with entire satisfaction to his guests. It is not given to every distinguished man to make himself, like Sir Walter Scott, as much beloved as he is admired; and it is not every writer, however admirable and accomplished, who can make his readers his friends, and bring them, as it were, into cousinly relationship with himself. This is what Addison and Steele have done, and this is why we feel so much at home in their company. Goodness, Milton tells us, is awful; but Addison's goodness has in it a grace and sweetness, a gentleness and almost womanliness of tone which forbids the sense of awe.

Steele, who, to quote Johnson's felicitous phrase,

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