THE LITERATURE OF THE AGE out to all to think and speak the truth. OF ELIZABETH. some pretence to relapse into indolence the spell of misbegotten fear, and gave the and thoughtfulness again. For this watchword; but England joined the shout, reason he refuses to kill the king when and echoed it back, with her island voice, he is at his prayers; and, by a refinement from her thousand cliffs and craggy shores, in malice, which is in truth only an in a longer and a louder strain. With excuse for his own want of resolution, that cry, the genius of Great Britain rose, defers his revenge to a more fatal oppor- and threw down the gauntlet to the natunity.-Ibid. tions. There was a mighty fermentation; the waters were out; public opinion was in a state of projection. Liberty was held Men's brains were busy; their spirits stirring; their hearts full; and their hands not idle. Their eyes were opened to expect the greatest things, and their ears burned with curiosity and zeal to know the truth, that the truth might make them free. The death-blow, which had been struck at scarlet vice and bloated hypocrisy, loosened their tongues, and made the talismans and love-tokens of Popish superstition, with which she had beguiled her followers and committed abominations with the people, fall harmless from their necks. THE age of Elizabeth was distinguished beyond, perhaps, any other in our history, by a number of great men, famous in different ways, and whose names have come down to us with unblemished honours,statesmen, warriors, divines, scholars, poets, and philosophers: Raleigh, Drake, Coke, Hooker, and higher and more sounding still, and still more frequent in our mouths, Shakspeare, Spenser, Sydney, Bacon, Jonson, Beaumont and Fletchermen whom fame has eternised in her long and lasting scroll, and who, by their words and acts, were benefactors of their country and ornaments of human nature. Their attainments of different kinds bore the same general stamp, and it was sterling: what they did had the mark of their age and country upon it. Perhaps the genius of Great Britain (if I may so speak without offence or flattery) never shone out fuller or brighter, or looked more like itself, than at this period. The first cause I shall mention, as contributing to this general effect, was the Reformation, which had just then taken place. This event gave a mighty impulse and increased activity to thought and inquiry, and agitated the inert mass of accumulated prejudices throughout Europe. The effect of the concussion was general; but the shock was greatest in this country. It toppled down the full-grown intolerable abuses of centuries at a blow; heaved the ground from under the feet of bigoted faith and slavish obedience; and the roar and dashing of opinions, loosened from their accustomed hold, might be heard like the noise of an angry sea, and has never yet subsided. Germany first broke The translation of the Bible was the chief engine in the great work. It threw open, by a secret spring, the rich treasures of religion and morality, which had been there locked up as in a shrine. It revealed the visions of the prophets, and conveyed the lessons of inspired teachers to the meanest of the people. It gave them a common interest in a common cause. Their hearts burnt within them as they read. It gave a mind to the people, by giving them common subjects of thought and feeling. It cemented their union of character and sentiment; it created endless diversity and collision of opinion. They found objects to employ their faculties, and a motive in the magnitude of the consequences attached to them, to exert the utmost eagerness in the pursuit of truth, and the most daring intrepidity in maintaining it. Religious controversy sharpens the understanding by the subtlety and remoteness of the topics it discusses, and embraces the will by their infinite importance. There have been persons who, being sceptics as to the divine mission of Christ, have taken an unaccountable prejudice to his doctrines, and have been disposed to deny the merit of his character; but this was not the feeling of the great men in the age of Elizabeth (whatever might be their belief), one of whom says of him, with a boldness equal to its piety : "The best of men That e'er wore earth about him, was a sufferer; A soft, meek, patient, humble, tranquil spirit; The first true gentleman that ever breathed." This was old honest Decker, and the lines ought to embalm his memory to every one who has a sense either of religion, or philosophy, or humanity, or true genius. Nor can I help thinking, that we may discern the traces of the influence exerted by religious faith in the spirit of the poetry of the age of Elizabeth, in the means of exciting terror and pity, in the delineations of the passions of grief, remorse, love, sympathy, the sense of shame, in the fond desires, the longings after immortality, in the heaven of hope and the abyss of despair it lays open to us. The literature of this age, then, I would say, was strongly influenced (among other causes), first by the spirit of Christianity, and secondly by the spirit of Protestantism. What also gave an unusual impetus to the mind of men at this period was the discovery of the New World, and the reading of voyages and travels. Green islands and golden sands seemed to arise, as by enchantment, out of the bosom of the watery waste, and invite the cupidity, or wing the imagination of the dreaming speculator. Fairy land was realised in new and unknown worlds. "Fortunate fields, and groves, and flowery vales, thrice-happy isles, were found floating, "like those Hesperian gardens famed of old," beyond Atlantic seas, as dropt from the zenith. The people, the soil, the clime, everything gave unlimited scope to the curiosity of the traveller and reader. Other manners might be said to enlarge the bounds of knowledge, and new mines of wealth were tumbled at our feet. It is from a voyage to the Straits of Magellan that Shakspeare has taken the hint of Prospero's Enchanted Island, and of the savage Caliban with his god Setebos. Spenser seems to have had the same feeling in his mind in the production of his Faëry Queen.—Ibid. [FRANCIS LORD JEFFREY. 1773-1850.] THE GENIUS OF SHAKSPEARE. In MANY persons are very sensible of the effect of fine poetry upon their feelings, who do not well know how to refer these feelings to their causes; and it is always a delightful thing to be made to see clearly the sources from which our delight has proceeded, and to trace the mingled stream that has flowed upon our hearts to the remoter fountains from which it has been gathered; and when this is done with warmth as well as precision, and embodied in an eloquent description of the beauty which is explained, it forms one of the most attractive, and not the least instructive, of literary exercises. all works of merit, however, and especially in all works of original genius, there are a thousand retiring and less obtrusive graces, which escape hasty and superficial observers, and only give out their beauties to fond and patient contemplation; a thousand slight and harmonising touches, the merit and the effect of which are equally imperceptible to vulgar eyes; and a thousand indications of the continual presence of that poetical spirit which can only be recognised by those who are in some measure under its influence, and have prepared themselves to receive it, by worshipping meekly at the shrines which it inhabits. In the exposition of these there is room enough for originality, and more room than Mr. Hazlitt has yet filled. In many points, however, he has acquitted himself excellently; particularly in the development of the principal characters with which Shakspeare has peopled the fancies of all English readers-but principally, we think, in the delicate sensibility with which he has traced, and the natural eloquence with which he has pointed out, that familiarity with beautiful forms and images-that eternal recurrence to what is sweet or majestic in the simple aspects of nature that indestructible love of or disturb or take the place of another. flowers and odours, and dews and clear The most exquisite poetical conceptions, waters-and soft airs and sounds, and images, and descriptions, are given with bright skies, and woodland solitudes, and such brevity, and introduced with such moonlight bowers, which are the mate- skill, as merely to adorn without loading rial elements of poetry- and that fine the sense they accompany. Although sense of their undefinable relation to his sails are purple, and perfumed, and mental emotion, which is its essence and his prow of beaten gold, they waft him vivifying soul-and which, in the midst on his voyage, not less, but more rapidly of Shakspeare's most busy and atrocious and directly, than if they had been comscenes, falls like gleams of sunshine on posed of baser materials. All his excelrocks and ruins - contrasting with all Îences, like those of Nature herself, are that is rugged and repulsive, and remind- thrown out together; and, instead of ing us of the existence of purer and interfering with, support and recommend brighter elements - which he alone has each other. His flowers are not tied up poured out from the richness of his own in garlands, nor his fruits crushed into mind without effort or restraint, and baskets, but spring living from the soil, contrived to intermingle with the play of in all the dew and freshness of youth; all the passions, and the vulgar course while the graceful foliage in which they of this world's affairs, without deserting lurk, and the ample branches, the rough for an instant the proper business of the and vigorous stem, and the wide-spreadscene, or appearing to pause or digressing roots on which they depend, are from love of ornament or need of re- present along with them, and share, in pose; he alone who, when the subject their places, the equal care of their requires it, is always keen, and worldly, Creator. -Edinburgh Review. and practical, and who yet, without changing his hand, or stopping his course, scatters around him as he goes all sounds and shapes of sweetness, and conjures up landscapes of immortal fragrance and freshness, and peoples them with spirits MEN of truly great powers of mind of glorious aspect and attractive grace, have generally been cheerful, social, and and is a thousand times more full of indulgent; while a tendency to sentiimagery and splendour than those who, mental whining or fierce intolerance for the sake of such qualities, have shrunk may be ranked among the surest sympback from the delineation of character toms of little souls and inferior intellects. or passion, and declined the discussion In the whole list of our English poets, of human duties and cares. More full of we can only remember Shenstone and wisdom, and ridicule, and sagacity, than Savage-two certainly of the lowestall the moralists and satirists in existence, who were querulous and discontented. he is more wild, airy, and inventive, and Cowley, indeed, used to call himself more pathetic and fantastic, than all the melancholy; but he was not in earnest, poets of all regions and ages of the world; and at any rate was full of conceits and and has all those elements so happily affectations, and has nothing to make us mixed up in him, and bears his high proud of him. Shakspeare, the greatest faculties so temperately, that the most of them all, was evidently of a free and severe reader cannot complain of him for joyous temperament; and so was Chaucer, want of strength or of reason, nor the their common master. The same dispomost sensitive for defect of ornament or sition appears to have predominated in ingenuity. Everything in him is in un- Fletcher, Jonson, and their great conmeasured abundance and unqualified temporaries. The genius of Milton perfection; but everything so balanced partook something of the austerity of the and kept in subordination as not to jostle | party to which he belonged, and of the THE CHEERFULNESS OF GENIUS. controversies in which he was involved; but even when fallen on evil days and evil tongues, his spirit seems to have retained its serenity as well as its dignity; and in his private life, as well as in his poetry, the majesty of a high character is tempered with great sweetness, genial indulgences, and practical wisdom. In the succeeding age our poets were but too gay; and though we forbear to speak of living authors, we know enough of them to say with confidence, that to be miserable or to be hated is not now, any more than heretofore, the common lot of those who excel.-Ibid. PERMANENT FAME, THE LOT OF BUT FEW POETS. NEXT to the impression of the vast fertility, compass, and beauty of our English poetry, the reflection that recurs most frequently and forcibly to us in accompanying Mr. Campbell through his wide survey, is the perishable nature of poetical fame, and the speedy oblivion that has overtaken so many of the promised heirs of immortality. Of near two hundred and fifty authors, whose works are cited in these volumes, by far the greater part of whom were celebrated in their generation, there are not thirty who now enjoy anything that can be called popularity-whose works are to be found in the hands of ordinary readers, in the shops of ordinary booksellers, or in the press for republication. About fifty more may be tolerably familiar to men of taste or literature: the rest slumber on the shelves of collectors, and are partially known to a few antiquaries and scholars. Now, the fame of a poet is popular, or nothing. He does not address himself, like the man of science, to the learned, or those who desire to learn, but to all mankind; and his purpose being to delight and to be praised, necessarily extends to all who can receive pleasure, or join in applause. It is strange, and somewhat humiliating, to see how great a proportion of those who had once fought their way successfully to distinc tion, and surmounted the rivalry of contemporary envy, have again sunk into neglect. We have great deference for public opinion; and readily admit that nothing but what is good can be permanently popular. But though its vivat be generally oracular, its pereat appears to us to be often sufficiently capricious; and while we would foster all that it bids to live, we would willingly revive much that it leaves to die. The very multiplication of works of amusement necessarily withdraws many from notice that deserve to be kept in remembrance; for we should soon find it labour, and not amusement, if we were obliged to make use of them all, or even to take all upon trial. As the materials of enjoyment and instruction accumulate around us, more and more must thus be daily rejected and left to waste for while our tasks lengthen, our lives remain as short as ever; and the calls on our time multiply, while our time itself is flying swiftly away. This superfluity and abundance of our treasures, therefore, necessarily renders much of them worthless; and the veriest accidents may, in such a case, determine what part shall be preserved, and what thrown away and neglected. When an army is decimated, the very bravest may fall; and many poets, worthy of eternal remembrance, have been forgotten, merely because there was not room in our memories for all. By such a work as the Specimens, however, this injustice of fortune may be partly redressed-some small fragments of an immortal strain may still be rescued from oblivion-and a wreck of a name preserved, which time appeared to have swallowed up for ever. There is something pious, we think, and endearing, in the office of thus gathering up the ashes of renown that has passed away; or rather, of calling back the departed life for a transitory glow, and enabling those great spirits which seemed to be laid for ever, still to draw a tear of pity, or a throb of admiration, from the hearts of a forgetful generation. The body of their poetry probably can never be revived; but some sparks of its spirit may yet be preserved, in a narrower and feebler frame. those by whom they have been superseded! It is an hyperbole of goodnature, however, we fear, to ascribe to them even those dimensions at the end of a century. After a lapse of two hundred and fifty years, we are afraid to think of the space they may have shrunk into. We have no Shakspeare, alas! to shed a never-setting light on his contemporaries; and if we continue to write and rhyme at the present rate for two hundred years longer, there must be some new art of short-hand reading invented, or all reading must be given up in despair. -Review of Campbell's Specimens of the British Poets. [S. T. COLERIDGE. 1772-1832.] WHAT TRUE POETRY IS, AND OUGHT TO BE. When we look back upon the havoc which two hundred years have thus made in the ranks of our immortals and, above all, when we refer their rapid disappearance to the quick succession of new competitors, and the accumulation of more good works than there is time to peruse- we cannot help being dismayed at the prospect which lies before the writers of the present day. There never was an age so prolific of popular poetry as that in which we now live; and as wealth, population, and education extend, the produce is likely to go on increasing. The last ten years have produced, we think, an annual supply of about ten thousand lines of good staple poetry poetry from the very first hands that we can boast of-that runs quickly to three or four large editions—and is as likely to be permanent as present success can make it. Now, if this goes on for a hundred years longer, what a task will await the poetical readers of 1919! Our living poets will then be nearly as old as Pope and Swift are at present, but there will stand between them and that generation nearly ten times as much fresh and fashionable poetry as is now interposed between us and those writers; and if Scott, and Byron, and Campbell, have already cast Pope and Swift a good deal into the shade, in what form and dimensions are they themselves likely to be pre-only divided from opposites, but likewise sented to the eyes of their great-grandchildren? The thought, we own, is a little appalling; and, we confess, we see nothing better to imagine than that they may find a comfortable place in some new collection of specimens-the centenary of the present publication. There -if the future editor have anything like the indulgence and veneration for antiquity of his predecessor- there shall posterity still hang with rapture on the half of Campbell, and the fourth part of Byron, and the sixth of Scott, and the scattered tithes of Crabbe, and the three per cent. of Southey: while some goodnatured critic shall sit in our mouldering chair, and more than half prefer them to POETRY is not the proper antithesis to prose, but to science. Poetry is opposed to science, and prose to metre. The proper and immediate object of science is the acquirement or communication of truth; the proper and immediate object of poetry is the communication of immediate pleasure. This definition is useful; but as it would include novels and other works of fiction, which yet we do not call poems, there must be some additional character by which poetry is not distinguished from disparate, though similar modes of composition. Now, how is this to be effected? In animated prose, the beauties of nature, and the passions and accidents of human nature, are often expressed in that natural language which the contemplation of them would suggest to a pure and benevolent mind; yet still neither we nor the writers call such a work a poem, though no work could deserve that name which did not include all this, together with something else. What is this? It is that pleasurable emotion, that peculiar state and degree of excitement, which arises in the poet himself in the act of composition; and in order to understand this, we must |