island. Here arts, manners, and literature have made great progress since the glorious era of the REVOLUTION; when our civil and religious rights were fully established, and our constitution more equally balanced. This fortunate event, which diverted the mind from trifling objects, introduced a passion for political reasoning. And the austere character of William, with the exemplary deportment of Mary, gave a check to the licentious manners of the court, which had grievously offended the virtuous part of the nation, during the two preceding reigns. Under the reign of William, Locke wrote his Essay on Government, and Swift his Tale of a Tub. These are two of the most excellent prose compositions in our language, whether we consider the style or matter; the former an example of close, manly reasoning, carrying conviction to the heart; the latter, of the irresistible force of ridicule, when supported by wit, humour, and satire. But as William, though a powerful prince, and the prime mover of the political machine of Europe, was regarded in England, by one-half of the nation, as only the head of a faction, many of the nobility and gentry kept at a distance from court; so that the advance of taste and politeness was very inconsiderable, till the reign of queen Anne. Then the splendour of heroic actions called off, for a time, the attention of all parties from political disputes, to contemplate the glory of their country. Then appeared a crowd of great men, whose characters are well known, and whose names are familiar to every ear. Then were displayed the strong talents and elegant accomplishments of a Marlborough, a Godolphin, a Somers, a Harley, and a St. John. Then subsisted in full force that natural connexion between the learned and the great, by which the latter never fail to be gainers. Swift, Addison, Congreve, Rowe, Steele, Vanbrugh, Prior, Pope, and other men of genius in that age, not only enjoyed the friendship and familiarity of the principal persons in power, but most of them in early life obtained places in some of the less burdensome departments of government, which put it in their power to pass the rest of their days in ease and independence.(1) Thus raised to respect, above the necessity of writing for bread, and enabled to follow their particular vein, several of those men of genius united their talents, in furnishing the public with a daily paper, under the name of the SPECTATOR; which, by combating, with reason and raillery, the faults in composition, and the improprieties in behaviour, as well as the reigning vices and follies, had a wonderful effect upon the taste and manners of the nation. It contributed greatly to polish and improve both. Such a monitor was indeed much wanted. The comedies of Vanbrugh, so justly admired for their genuine humour and ease of dialogue, are shockingly licentious; and the principal characters in the greater part of Congreve's pieces, where wit sparkles with unborrowed brilliancy, are so libertine or prostitute, as to put virtue and decency utterly out of countenance. Even the last pieces of Dryden, then considered as models of elegance, are by no means sufficiently delicate in sentiment. Like all the authors formed under the reign of Charles II., he represents love as an appetite rather than a passion. His celebrated tale of Sigismonda and Guiscardo, the most pathetic of all his FABLES, is not free from this fault. "Thy little care to mend my widow'd nights," says Sigismonda to her father, "Has forc'd me to recourse of marriage rites, To fill an empty side, and follow known delights. (1) The man who, rolling in riches, could make the following unfeeling remark, deserves no mercy from the candidates for literary merit, none from the prosecutors of the elegant arts-from the poet or the painter, whatever admiration he may profess for their labours: "Want of protection is the apology for want of genius. A poet or a painter may want an equipage or a villa, by wanting protection; they can always afford to buy ink and paper, colours and pencils." (Anecdotes of Painting in England, vol. i. Pref. p. vii.) But who is to afford them a subsistence, till they can finish any ingenious work 1-And what is subsistence, without encouragement? without the animating hopes of fame? which in most minds require the fostering hand of patronage or protection. Hence the more just and generous sentiment of Gray, in speaking of obscure and neglected bards: "Chill penury repress'd their noble rage, Nor need'st thou by thy daughter to be told, Though now thy sprightly blood with age be cold- That when thou hadst the power, thou hadst the will; Canst tell with what a tide our strong desires Come rushing on in youth, and what their rage requires." This may all be very natural in the abstract. Women of certain complexions, the slaves of animal appetite, may be under the tyranny of such desires; but they are surely not common to the sex: and we sympathize a little with those ravenous and inordinate passions, as we do with an immoderate call for food. In the mouth of so accomplished a princess as Sigismonda, such gross sentiments can only excite disgust. They are alike unsuitable to her character, her condition, and her enthusiastic passion.(1) Dryden knew nothing of the female heart, and little of the heart of man. Having no sensibility himself, he wanted that sympathetic chord, which alone could conduct him to the bosoms of others, and enable him to raise correspondent emotions.(2) Prior's Henry and Emma is the first poem of any length in our language, in which love is treated with becoming delicacy; if we except those of the epic and dramatic kind, by Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton. I cannot forbear quoting the following lines, though perhaps inferior in poetical merit, as a contrast to the sentiments of Sigismonda. Emma speaks : "When from the cave thou risest with the day, That she, of all mankind, could love but him alone." To Prior we are also indebted for the art of telling a gay story with ease, grace, and levity. He is the first English poet who has united elegance and correctness. His Alma is a delightful performance of the burlesque kind; and his Solomon, though somewhat tedious for want of incident, has great and various merit. It is a school of wisdom, and a banquet of intellectual pleasure. Our polite literature, in all its branches, now tended fast towards perfection. Steele freed English comedy from the licentiousness of former writers. If he has not all the wit of Congreve, or the humour of Vanbrugh, he is more chaste and natural than either. He knew life well, and has given us in his comedies, as well as in his numerous papers in the Tattler and Spectator, many just and lively pictures of the manners of that age of half-refinement. Rowe, in like manner, purified our tragic poetry, by excluding from his (1) The extravagant praise lately paid to this tale by a popular critic, has led me to be thus particular, in order to prevent an indiscriminate admiration, raised by the magic of verse, and supported by such high authority, from corrupting the taste and the morals of youth. (2) A stronger proof of this assertion cannot possibly be given than in the sorrow of Sigismonda over the heart of her beloved husband; which, instead of drawing tears of compassion down the most obdurate cheek, as might have been expected, must fill every reader of taste and sentiment with contempt. The heart was in a cup. "Though once I meant to meet My fate with face unmov'd, and eyes unwet; Yet since I have thee here in narrow room, My tears shall set thee first afloat within thy tomb!" best pieces all grossly-sensual descriptions, as well as impious and indelicate expressions. Though intimately acquainted with the best models, both ancient and modern, he may be deemed an original writer. His plots and his sentiments are chiefly his own. If he paints the passions with less force and truth than Shakspeare or Otway, he is free from the barbarism of the one, and the licentiousness of the other: and his tragedies abound with so many noble and generous sentiments, introduced without any flagrant violation of the propriety of character or the verisimilitude of nature, that they continue to give pleasure, after half a century, equally in the closet and on the stage. This favourable reception proceeds partly from what has been considered as his greatest fault: he is never sublime in the highest degree, or pathetic in the extreme, but always tender, interesting, and elevating. Terror and pity, the two throbbing pulses of tragedy, are not carried, in his compositions, to a painful excess. His language is rich, and his versification is easy and flowing; but it wants vigour. Like most of our dramatic writers, he frequently violates not only the critical, but the rational unities of time and place, and to the great injury of the general effect of every piece in which such liberty is taken. I have already had occasion to explain myself on this subject in speaking of the plays of Shakspeare.(1) Addison's Cato has more vigour of versification than the tragedies of Rowe, but less ease. It is, however, a noble effort of cultivated genius; and notwithstanding its supposed want of pathos, because it provokes no womanish tears, it is perhaps our best modern tragedy. Addison has also written verses on various subjects, both in English and Latin, and is always polished and correct, though not enthusiastically poetical. But whatever merit he may have as a poet, he is great as a prose writer. Swift had given perspicuity and conciseness to the clouded redundancy of Clarendon, and compactness to the loose, though harmonious periods of Temple; but it was left to Addison to furnish elegance and grace, and to enchant us with all the magic of humour, and all the attractive charms, of natural and moral beauty. He wrote the most admired papers in the Spectator, Tattler, Guardian, and other publications of the same kind. In those papers he has discussed an infinite variety of subjects, both comic and serious, and has treated each so happily, it might be thought he had studied that alone. Our language is more indebted to him not only for words and phrases, but for images, than to any other writer in prose. If his style has any fault, it is want of force. This defect in our prose composition was supplied by lord Bolingbroke; who, in his Dissertation on Parties, in his Letter to Sir William Wyndham, and in his Idea of a Patriot King, has united strength with elegance, and energy and elevation with grace. It is not possible to carry farther the beauty and force of our multifarious tongue, without endangering the one or the other. The earl of Chesterfield is perhaps more elegantly correct, and gracefully easy, but he wants the sinews of his master; and if Johnson, on some subjects, appears to have more force than Bolingbroke, he is generally destitute of ease. His periods are too artificially arranged, and his words too remote from common use. He writes like a scholar, not like a gentleman; like a man who had mingled little with the world, or never complied with its forms. What Bolingbroke performed in prose, his friend Pope accomplished even more fully in verse. Having early discovered the bent of his genius, he diligently studied the poets who had written before him in his native tongue, but more especially those who had made use of rhyme; not, as has been invidiously insinuated, that he found his genius too feeble to give vigour to (1) Letter XIX. There it was observed, that the scene may be shifted, or in other words, the place changed, to any distance consistent with probability, and that any portion of time may elapse between the acts, not destructive of the unity of the fable, without impairing the effect of the representation or disturbing the dream of reality; but that no such change can be made in the middle of an act without injury to both, as the chain of emotions must by that means be broken, as well as the connexion of ideas, and the spectator left nearly in the same cool and disengaged state of mind as when he entered the theatre, or when the act began blank verse, but because rhyme was the prevailing mode of versification when he began to turn his mind to poetry. The public had not yet acquired a taste for the majesty of Miltonic numbers, or that varied harmony which they afford to the delicate and classical ear. He seems, therefore, to have confined his attention chiefly to Waller, Denham, and Dryden. I have not hitherto had occasion to mention Denham. He wrote in the reign of Charles II., but was little infected with the bad taste of his age His descriptive poem, entitled Cooper's Hill, is still deservedly admired. It abounds with natural images, happily blended with moral reflections. His style is close, and his versification vigorous. The following lines will exemplify his manner of writing: "My eye, descending from the HILL, surveys Where Thames among the wanton valleys strays: Though with those streams he no resemblance hold, His genuine and less guilty wealth t' explore, Pope was not insensible to the merit of Denham's versification, but he saw the necessity of looking nearer to his own time for a master. And he found such a master as he sought in Dryden; who, to the sweetness of Waller and the strength of Denham, has added a compass of verse, and an energy that is entirely his own. Pope accordingly made the versification of Dryden his model. And if his own compositions have not all the fire of the Alexander's Feast, the easy vigour of the Absalom and Ahithophel, or the animated flow of the fables of his master, the collected force and finer polish of his numbers, a nicer choice of words, and a more delicate and just, though less bold, imagery, entitled him to all the praise that can possibly belong to an emulous imitator not invested with absolute superiority; while new flights of fancy, and new turns of thought and expression, more sensibility of heart, and greater elevation of mind, with a closer attention to natural and moral objects, yield him all the requisites of a rival_more favoured by fortune, and more zealous in the pursuit of fame. The Rape of the Lock, the Eloise to Abelard, the Messiah, and the Essay on Man are not only the finest poems of their kind in ours, but in any modern language. If Pope's versification has any fault, it is that of too much regularity. He generally confines the sense, and consequently the run of metrical harmony to the couplet. This practice enabled him to give great brilliancy to his thoughts and strength to his numbers. It has therefore a good effect in his moral and satirical pieces; though it certainly offends the ear, when often repeated, and becomes altogether cloying in long poems, but especially in those of the narrative or descriptive kind. A fault so obvious, though committed by himself, could not escape the correct taste and keen discernment of Pope. We accordingly find in his translation of Homer (where such monotonous uniformity would have been inexcusable), as well as in his fanciful pieces, a more free and varied versification often attempted with success. Two examples will be sufficient to set this matter in a clear light; to show both his manner of confining his sense to the couplet, and of extending it farther, in compositions of a different species. "Our humbler province is to tend the fair, Not a less pleasing, though less glorious care; To draw fresh colours from the vernal flowers, Rape of the Lock Cant. ii. "Thus breathing death, in terrible array, Still gathering strength, it smokes; and, urg'd amain, Iliad, xiii. Pope, in a word, if we may judge by the unsuccessful attempts of latter writers, has given to our heroic verse in rhyme, all the freedom and variety of which it is capable, without breaking its structure or impairing its vigour. Of the former of these faults examples are numerous among the poetical successors of Pope; but one, from the writings of a man of genius, whence hundreds might be selected, will serve to illustrate the justice of this remark. "And are there Bards, who on creation's file Stand rank'd as men, who breathe in this fair isle So low a spirit, prostrate thus to fall Before these idols, and without a groan Bear wrongs, might call forth murmurs from a stone?" Churchill's Independence. How much inferior to the bold interrogative of the author of the Essay on Man! "Who knows but HE, whose hand the lightning forms, Or turn young Ammon loose to scourge mankind?" The latter fault, however, want of vigour, is more common in this age of refinement. Even such lines as the following, though easy and flowing, contradict the general character of our language and versification, that of comprehending much meaning in few words. "Of that enchanting age her figure seems, And just between the woman and the child." Could any one, on reading these much-admired verses, discern the propriety of Roscommon's famous metaphor in speaking of English poetry? "The weighty Bullion of one STERLING line, Drawn in French wire, would through whole pages shine." They who aspire at a greater compass of harmony, and who are ambitious |