CHAPTER XIX.

THE DAWN OF ROMANTIC POETRY.

1. Revolution in popular taste. The Minstrel of BEATTIE. The Grace by BLAIR. The Spleen by GREEN. (2. JAMES THOMSON. The Seasons. The Castle of Indolence. Ode to Liberty. Tragedy of Sophonisba. § 3. The Schoolmistress of SHENSTONE. The Odes of COLLINS. The Pleasures of the Imagination by AKENSIDE. § 4. THOMAS GRAY. Ode on Eton College. Elegy written in a Country Churchyard. Pindaric Odes. $5. JOSEPH and THOMAS WARTON. History of English Poetry. §6. WILLIAM COWPER. His life. The Task, Table-Talk, Tirocinium, Translation of Homer. Characteristics of his poetry. §7. Poems of a technical character. The Shipwreck by FALCONER. Loves of the Plants by DARWIN. §8. Literary forgeries. MACPHERSON's Ossian. §9. CHATTERTON'S forgeries. IRELAND's forgeries. $10. GEORGE CRABBE. His life and writings. 11. ROBERT BURNS. His life and writings. $12. JOHN WOLCOT, better known as PETER PINDAR. 13. History of the Comic Drama from the middle of the eighteenth century. GARRICK, FOOTE, CUMBERLAND, the two COLMANS, and SHERIDAN. The Rivals, the School for Scandal, the Critic, and the Rehearsal.

§ 1. THE great revolution in popular taste and sentiment which substituted what is called the romantic type in literature for the cold and clear-cut artificial spirit of that classicism which is exhibited in its highest form in the writings of Pope was, like all powerful and durable movements, whether in politics or in letters, gradual. The mechanical perfection of the poetry of the age of Queen Anne had been imitated with such success that every versifier had caught the trick of melody and the neat antithetical opposition of thought; and indications soon began to be perceptible of a tendency to seek for subjects and forms of expression in a wider, more passionate, and more natural sphere of nature and emotion. In the Minstrel of JAMES BEATTIE (1735-1803), in the striking meditative lines entitled The Grave by ROBERT BLAIR (1699-1746), this tendency is perceptible, and may be in some measure ascribed to the weariness inspired by the eternal repetition of the neat and epigrammatic ingenuity which had gradually become a mere far-off echo of Pope. Under the influence of this weariness, poets began to seek for materials in a more direct and picturesque reproduction of nature, and endeavored to give freshness to their diction by rebaptizing it in the deep and sparkling fountains of our older literature.

The principal agent, however, in this revolution was Bishop Percy, whose publication in 1765 of the Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, of which I shall speak more fully in the next chapter, showed the world what treasures of beauty, pathos, and magnificence lay buried in the old Minstrel ballads of the Middle Ages. In the poets who will form the subject of this chapter, extending from Thomson to Burns, we shall

see how gradual the movement was. I cannot omit all mention of MATTHEW GREEN (1696-1737), whose pleasant and truly original poem The Spleen was written to point out the mode of remedying that insupportable species of moral depression. It is written in easy octosyllabic verse, and contains a multitude of passages where new ideas are expressed in singularly felicitous images. The prevailing tone is cheerful and philosophic, and is highly honorable not only to the talents but to the principles of the author. Green was originally a dissenter, but his work shows no traces of sectarian gloom and narrow-minded. ness. He is said to have been himself a sufferer from the malady he describes, which was long satirically supposed to be peculiarly common in England: and, like Burton, he wrote on melancholy to divert his mind from its sufferings.

§ 2. JAMES THOMSON (1700-1748) is the poet who connects the age of Pope with that of Crabbe, and it is delightful to think of the sympathy and appreciation shown to his gorgeous and picturesque genius by the former of these great writers, who hailed his appearance with warm admiration. Thomson was born in a rural and retired corner of Scotland, in 1700, and after receiving his education at Edinburgh, came to London, as Smollett had done before him, "smit with the love of sacred song," and eager to try his fortune in a literary career. He carried with him the unfinished sketch of his poem of Winter, which he showed to his countryman Mallet, then enjoying some authority as a critic, and was advised by him to complete and publish it. Thomson at first adopted the profession of private tutor, and was intrusted with the care of the son of Lord Binning, after which he entered the family of the Chancellor Talbot, and travelled with the son of that dignitary in Italy. The poem of Winter appeared in 1726, and was received with great favor, obtaining the warm suffrages of Pope, then supreme in the literary world, and who not only gave advice to the young aspirant, but even corrected and retouched several passages in his works. Summer was given to the world in the succeeding year, and Thomson then without delay issued proposals for the completion of the whole cycle of poems, Spring and Autumn being still wanting to fill up the round of the Seasons. The patronage of Talbot, by conferring on Thomson a place in the Chancellor's gift, assisted the poet in attaining independence; but losing this post on the death of the minister, its loss was afterwards supplied first with one, and afterwards with another sinecure post which soon placed the poet out of the reach of difficulty. Though somewhat sensual and extraordinarily indolent and self-indulgent, Thomson was not devoid of the prudence so general among his countrymen. He purchased a snug cottage near Richmond, and lived in modest luxury and literary ease. He was of an extremely kind and generous disposition, and his devotion to his relations is an amiable trait in his character: he was also generally loved, and does not appear to have had a single enemy or ill-wisher. His death was premature; for, catching cold in a boating-party on the Thames, he died of a fever in the forty-eighth year of his age. During the years of his happy

retirement he had not only revised and corrected innumerable passages of his Seasons, but had time to compose his delightful half-serious, half-playful poem of the Castle of Indolence, the most enchanting of the many imitations of the style and manner of Spenser, and a work which, at the same time, possesses the finest qualities of Thomson's own natural genius. He was also the author of a somewhat declamatory and ambitious poem on the tempting but impracticable subject of Liberty, and of a few tragedies, some of which, as Sophonisba, were acted with temporary success. The Seasons, consisting of the four detached poems, Spring, Summer, Autumn, and Winter, must be considered as the corner-stone of Thomson's literary fame. It is a poem, in plan and treatment, entirely original, and gives a general, and at the same time a minute description of all the phenomena of Nature during an English year. Perhaps the very uncertainty of our climate, by giving greater variety to our scenery and greater vicissitudes to our weather than can be seen in more apparently favored countries, as Italy or Greece, was favorable to Thomson's undertaking, which could hardly have prospered in the hands of a poet who might have been born in more genial climes. It is certain that he has watched every fleeting smile or frown on the ever-changing face of Nature with a loving and an observant eye: there is hardly a phase of external appearance, hardly an incident in the great drama of the seasons, which he has not depicted with consummate success. He is especially happy in sketching the manners of birds and domestic animals; and every line of his poem breathes an ardent benevolence and a deep sense of the majesty and goodness of God. The metre is blank-verse, which, though seldom showing anything of the Miltonic swell or tenderness, is rich and harmonious. Thomson's chief defect is a kind of pompous struggle after fine language, which sometimes degenerates into ludicrous vulgarity. In order to relieve the monotony of a poem entirely devoted to description, he has occasionally introduced episodes or incidental pictures more or less naturally suggested by the subject. Thus, in his Winter he gives the famous description of the shepherd losing his way and perishing in the snow, in Summer the story of Musidora bathing, in Autumn the narrative of Lavinia, which is borrowed, and spoiled in the borrowing, from the exquisite pastoral story of Ruth and Boaz. In such of these episodes as involve the passion of love, it must be confessed that Thomson's mode of delineating that feeling is far more ardent than ideal. In point of literary finish the Castle of Indolence is superior to the Seasons. The idea and treatment of this poem are Spenserian; and the versification, borrowed from the anguid and dreamy melody of the Fairie Queene, corresponds admirably with the rich and luxurious imagery in which Thomson revelled. The allegory of the enchanted "Land of Drowsihead," in which the unhappy victims of Indolence find themselves hopeless captives, and their delivery from durance by the Knight Industry, whose pedigree and training are given in an exact imitation of Spenser's manner, are relieved with Occasional touches of a sly and pleasant humor, as in those passages

where Thomson has drawn portraits of himself and of his friend. Hardly has Spenser himself surpassed the rich and dreamy loveliness or the voluptuous melody of the description of the enchanted Castle and its gardens of delight, and the strains of the Æolian harp, then a recent invention, are described in stanzas whose music forms a most appropriate echo to its harmonies.

He

§ 3. A passing notice will suffice for WILLIAM SHENSTONE (17141763), whose popularity, once considerable, has now given place to oblivion, but whose pleasing and original poem the Schoolmistress will deserve to retain a place in every collection of English verse. is still more remarkable as having been one of the first to cultivate that picturesque mode of laying out gardens, and developing by wellconcealed art the natural beauties of scenery, which, under the name of the English style, has supplanted the majestic but formal manner of Italy, France, and Holland. In the former Nature is followed and humored, in the latter she is forced. The Schoolmistress is in the Spenserian stanza and antique diction, and with a delightful mixture of quaint playfulness and tender description, paints the dwelling, the character, and the pursuits of an old village dame who keeps a rustic day-school. The Pastoral ballads of Shenstone are melodious, but the thin current of natural feeling which pervades them cannot make the reader forget the improbability of the Arcadian manners, such as never existed in any age or country, or the querulous and childish tone of thought.

The career of WILLIAM COLLINS (1721-1759) was brief and unhappy. He exhibited from very early years the strong poetical powers of a genius which, ripened by practice and experience, would have made him the first lyrical writer of his age; but his ambition was rather feverish than sustained; he led a life of projects and dissipation; and the first shock of literary disappointment drove him to despondency, despondency to indulgence, and indulgence to insanity. This gifted being died at thirty-eight, after suffering the cruelest affliction and humiliation that can oppress humanity. He was educated at Winchester School, and afterwards at Magdalen College, Oxford, and entered upon the career of professional literature, full of golden dreams, and meditating vast projects. His first publication was a series of Eclogues, transferring the usual sentiments of pastoral to the scenery and manners of the East. Oriental, or Persian, incidents were for the first time made the subjects of compositions retaining in their form and general cast of thought and language the worn-out type of pastoral. Thus the lamentation of the shepherd expelled from his native fields is replaced by a camel-driver bewailing the dangers and solitude of his desert journey; and the dialogues so frequent in the bucolics of Virgil or Theocritus are transformed into the amabæan complaints of two Circassian exiles. The national character and sentiments of the East, though every effort is made by the poet to give local coloring and appropriate costume and scenery, are in no sense more true to nature than in the majority of pictures representing the fabulous Arcadia of the