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fit recipients of his instructions. His prose is better than his verse. The prefaces are indeed the best part of these volumes; they contain a great deal of plain good sense, ex*pressed in a neat though somewhat prolix style*.

Of Blackmore's genius we need say little, for it is difficult to define a negation. He has some talent for the enunciation of sentiment; his descriptions, where he does not aim at being great, are sometimes tolerably good. He pours forth his rhymed prose with inexhaustible fluency; and fertility, even where the fruit is worthless, is more satisfactory than barrenness. His style bears a considerable resemblance to that of Hoole's Ariosto; and, in the more elaborate parts, it is sufficiently embellished with conventional phrases to entitle it to the name of poetry, according to the critical dogmas of a former age. These works are full of political discussion ("we thought his politics extremely sound") and of religious sentiment. Blackmore, though a bad poet, was a man of practical good sense, a good citizen, and a zealous Christian.

We have not found much in these poems calculated to gratify the reader. Here and there, however, we met with a piece of sentiment or description better wrought than usual; sometimes, by mere accident, he stumbles on a happy image or a picturesque expression; and there are also some amusing

* We quote one observation for its singularity, and the remarkable manner in which it is confirmed from another quarter. It relates to the descent of Eneas into hell.

"Now it is most certain that nothing shocks human nature with more violence than the real or the imagined sight of an apparition or the ghost of a deceased person, and therefore no man whilst alive can passionately desire to receive such guests or be received by them: nor can he possibly enjoy their conversation with delight and pleasure. On the contrary, such company would rather strike him with horror and amazement, make him sweat and shudder, and perhaps bereave him of his senses. And though Æneas, when he asks the Sibyl to assist and conduct him in his descent to hell, tells her that his father Anchises ordered him to request this favour of her, yet this saving will not do; for it is unnatural and therefore incredible that any parent in his wits should desire his son to come down alive to the infernal regions, and pass through so many scenes of terror and amazement merely to make him an unnecessary visit. No parent ever did or could require of his son to make him such an extravagant and monstrous compliment; and none but a madman can possibly comply with such a request, which offers the utmost violence to human nature and her strongest inclinations.”

Compare with this Homer's account of the manner in which Ulysses received a similar communication:

So 1. 566.

Ως ἔφαι· αὐτὰρ ἔμοιγε καλεκλάσθη φίλον ἦτορ

Κλαῖον δ ̓ ἐν λεχέεσσι καθήμενος, οὐδέ τι θυμὸς

Ἤθελ ̓ ἔτι ζώειν και ὁρᾶν φάος ηελίοιο. Op. Κ. 496.

This is one of the many instances in which Virgil has erred by copying an incident from Homer, without retaining the accompanying circumstances which render it natural.

specimens of the bathos, which have escaped the researches of the great writer on that subject. We proceed to lay before our readers the humble product of our search.

Prince Arthur, in the poem which bears his name, is described as voyaging homeward from Neustria, to take the command of his country's forces against the Saxons, Satan descries him from afar, and hastens full of wrath to the palace of Thor, the storm-dæmon. The rapidity of his flight is illustrated by a simile:

As when the sun pours from his orb of light
A glorious deluge on the face of night,
His golden rays shot from the rosy east
Reach in a moment the remotest west,

And smiling on the mountains' heads are seen,
Th' immense expansion past that lies between.
The cave of Thor is thus described:

In close apartments round his desert court
Fierce prisoners are confin'd of different sort;
Here boundless stores and treasures infinite
Of vapours, steams, and exhalations

Here new fledg'd winds, young yelping monsters try
Their wings, and sporting round their prisons fly:
Here whistling east-winds prove their shriller notes,
And the hoarse south-winds strain their hollow throats:

Capricious whirlwinds, of more force than sound,

In everlasting eddies turning round.

&c.

Uriel is sent down to calm the tempest, which he does in a manner certainly poetical :

He strait alights on lofty Gobeum's head,

Which wonder'd at the heaven about it shed
From the bright cherubim, who touch'd his lyre,
Fam'd for its sweetness in the heavenly quire.
Th' enchanted winds straightway their fury laid.

&c.

Arthur finds refuge and hospitality at the court of Hoel, king of Armorica, who had been previously converted by a vision to the Christian faith, and at whose request he relates the story of the creation of the world, the fall and redemption of man, and the final judgment. This recital occupies the second and third books. It is for the most part adumbrated from Milton, "whom," says Sir Richard (preface to King Arthur), "I look on as a very extraordinary genius*." One happy line occurs in the description of man's primeval innocence :

No guilt, no frown from heaven disturbs his soul,
Calm as deep rivers in still evenings roll.

*This was in 1697.

And again, in the account of the prodigies which attended the crucifixion:

Thin, pallid ghosts come sweeping o'er the grass,

And howling wolves glare on them as they pass.

The picture of Hell in the third book is most monotonously dismal. The following simile might have been written by Cowley after a hearty dinner:

As a tall oak, that young and verdant stood
Above the grove, itself a nobler wood;

His wide-extended limbs the forest drown'd,
Shading its trees, as much as they the ground;
Young, murmuring tempests in his boughs are bred,
And gathering clouds frown round his lofty head. .

So also the opiate administered by Thor to the winds in Book V.:

Then down their howling throats black sops he threw
Of poppies and cold nightshade made, that grew
On the dark banks, where Lethe's lazy deep
Does its black stores and drowsy treasure keep,

Rolls its slow flood, and rocks the nodding waves asleep.

In the same book the shade of king Uther appearing to his son, describes the character and achievements of the future monarchs of Britain, as they pass in review before him. Virgil's panegyric of Marcellus is here adapted to Mary, the consort of William III.

In Book VI, we have a catalogue of forces, remarkable chiefly for the display of topographical knowledge. Under the names of the commanders, the leading characters of Blackmore's own time are, as usual, shadowed out. That of Sakil (Sackville earl of Dorset) introduces a stroke at the author's old enemy and assailant, Dryden. The name of Laurus was probably adopted as a set-off against the punning appellation of Maurus, by which Dryden had designated Blackmore.

To form great men his palace was the school ;
His life good breeding's and good nature's rule. »

He their Mecenas, cheers the British bards,
Learns them to sing, and then their songs rewards.
So heaven to make men good, does grace bestow,
And then rewards them for their being so.

To him the needy men of wit resort,

And find a friend in an unletter'd court.

Laurus amidst the meagre crowd appear'd

This, like many other usages which are now vulgarisms, appears to have

been formerly the common language,

An old, revolted, unbelieving bard,

Who throng'd, and shov'd, and prest, and would be heard.
Distinguish'd by his loud and craving tone,

So well to all the Muses' patrons known,
He did the voice of modest poets drown.
Sakil's high roof, the Muses' palace, rung
With endless cries, and endless songs he sung.
To bless good Sakil, Laurus would be first,
But Sakil's prince and Sakil's God he curs'd.
Sakil without distinction threw his bread,

Despis'd the flatterer, but the poet fed.

In Book VII. there is a description of a battle in the air, which is not ill executed. In the same book there is a description of Goliath, which for bombast may be fairly matched against that in the Davideis. We can only afford room for a slight sample:

High in the clouds his brazen helm did show,
Like some vast temple's gilded cupolo.
His mighty legs, that brazen boots embraced,
Tall pillars seem'd, with Corinth metal cased.

The remainder of the poem is a tiresome medley of swords, trumpets, cries, wounds, blood, bones, and confusion.

"King Arthur" is the double of Prince Arthur," and as like its predecessor as one cipher to another; differing only in one respect, that its subject is more immediately connected with religion, the great end and object of our worthy author's labours. Its subject is the overthrow of the tyrant and persecutor Clotaire (Louis XIV.) the elevation of the brave and pious Clovis to the throne, and the establishment of Christianity in France by the victorious arms of Arthur. The poem bears throughout a reference to the events of the time, and is full of invectives against jacobites, nonjurors, inquisitors, and such like monsters.

There is a happy couplet in the report of the Pandemonian debates in Book II.;

Th' assembly made a murmuring hollow sound,
Like that of torrents rolling under ground.

King Arthur's constancy is described:

His sick'ning orb would oft disturb the sight
With faded glory, and expiring light:

But would as often with a sudden blaze
Break out, and shine with more illustrious rays:
Oft thrust from heaven it left its starry sphere,
Sunk down, and hung below in cloudy air ;
But the divine intelligence within

Rais'd it as oft to its bright seat again.

The description of Arthur's crossing a river, in the sight of a hostile army, has not, we believe, found a place in the Essay on the Bathos.

Had those who liv'd in ancient times descried

This warrior rising from the foaming tide,

They would have thought that Mars himself had come,

As well as Venus, from the water's womb.

In Book VI. we have an abstract of Satan's extramundane voyage in Milton *, which is not ill done; we quote part of it for the sake of the last line, which is really beautiful. How it came to be written by Blackmore we do not pretend to divine:

From afar

I did with wondrous joy descry at last

Some streaks of light, which darted on the waste;
Pale beams that on the face of chaos lay,
The glimm'ring fragments of the ruin'd day.
Mounting this way, I reach'd the lightsome sky,
And saw the beauteous world before me lie.
The fresh creation look'd all charming mild,
And all the flow'ry face of nature smiled.
To one come newly from the caves beneath,
Thro' smoke and flame, what an ambrosial breath,

What odours, such as heavenly zephyrs blow,

From the sweet mouth of th' infant world did flow!

An image in the Prisoner of Chillon is here anticipated:

So thick the shade, so black the stagnant air,
That no reviving sunbeams entered there;
Nothing but here and there a struggling ray,
Which lost itself in wandering from the day.

In Book VIII., Clovis, being taken prisoner by Clotaire, is condemned to a death of torture, on his resolutely refusing

* Those who are curious in such matters will find much amusement in comparing the abridgments of Milton in Dryden's State of Innocence with the original. Many of the passages are beautiful, and would be delightful, if they did not perpetually remind us of beauties of a very different kind; a collision always injurious, even where the original is not of a higher order of excellence, as in the present case it is.

VOL. II. PART I.

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