Another, more humorous example, was given in part iii., chap. xv. SECTION XII. GEORGE CRAB BE.. 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 happy 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 me? And from within a thrilling voice replies, Thou art in Rome! A thousand busy thoughts Rush on my mind, a thousand images; 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 the city where the Gauls, And love of glory, tower'd above the clouds, Where now she dwells, withdrawn into the wild, Ah, little thought I, when in school I sat, * Nero. That shoots and spreads within those very walls Where his voice falter'd, and a mother wept 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. "Its "The Pleasures of Hope" is a splendid poem. 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 majestic march-now it swells into a holy hymn-and now it 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 imagination have they brightened the roaring ocean." STANZAS ON THE THREATENED INVASION, 1803. And our oath is recorded on high, To prevail in the cause that is dearer than life, Then rise, fellow-freemen, and stretch the right hand, 'Tis the home we hold sacred is laid to our trust— Should a conqueror tread on our forefathers' dust, * * ON REVISITING A SCOTTISH RIVER. With sooty exhalations cover'd o'er; And for the daisied green-sward, down thy stream Unsightly brick-lanes smoke, and clanking engines gleam. Speak not to me of swarms the scene sustains; One heart free tasting Nature's breath and bloom Is worth a thousand slaves to Mammon's gains. But whither goes that wealth, and gladd'ning whom? The hunger and the hope of life to feel, Yon pale Mechanic hending o'er his loom, From morn till midnight task'd to earn its little meal. Till Toil grows cheaper than the trodden weed, To gorge a few with Trade's precarious prize, 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, * * * * * Such and so various 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 |