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marriage she published Miscellaneous Poems, and soon after Hymns in Prose for Children. Mr. Barbauld became minister of a church at Newington in 1802, which brought Mrs. Barbauld into greater connection with the literary circles of the day. She wrote various other poems, containing here and there some true touches of poetic genius. Her style is simple and graceful, adorned by much exquisite fancy and imagery. Her most valued contributions have been her sacred pieces. That on The Death of the Righteous is one of the gems of English sacred poetry.

ROBERT DODSLEY (1709–1764) deserves mention as the great publisher and patron of literature of his age. He proposed the Annual Register, made a Collection of Poems by several Hands, 1758, and was himself the author of several poetical and dramatic pieces. His shop was in Pall Mall, and he commenced his business by the assistance of Pope, who lent him 100Z.

He

WILLIAM HAYLEY (1745-1820), at one time a popular poet, the friend and biographer of Cowper, was educated at Trinity Hall, Cambridge. wrote Triumphs of Temper, Triumphs of Music, poctical epistles, odes, essays, &c. His works in 1785 occupied six volumes.

ARTHUR MURPHY (1730-1805), a native of Elphin, in the county of Roscommon, Ireland, received his education at St. Omer's, gave up the trade into which he had entered for literature, published The Gray's Inn Journal from 1752 to 1754; went on the stage, wrote dramas, and took part in the great contest of parties; at last became a barrister, and died a commissioner of bankruptcy. He published twentythree plays, of which the Grecian Daughter was the most popular. His translation of Tacitus had great repute in its day.

JOANNA BAILLIE (1762–1851), born at Bothwell, near Glasgow, the daughter of a Presbyterian clergyman, lived the greater part of her life at Hampstead. She wrote various plays, of which her tragedy of De Montfort is perhaps the finest.

JOHN HOME (1724-1808), author of the well-known tragedy of Douglas, which appeared in 1756, and was acted with great applause; but it is now almost forgotten, with the exception of the oft-repeated scene commencing with "My name is Norval." He was a minister of the Scotch Church; but his having written a tragedy gave such grave offence to the elders of the Kirk, that he was obliged to resign his parish of Athelstaneford. He retired to England, and received a pension through the influence of the Earl of Bute. Sir Walter Scott, in his Diary (April 25, 1827), thus speaks of Home's works: "They are, after all, poorer than I thought them. Good blank verse, and stately sentiment, but something lukewarmish, excepting Douglas, which is certainly a masterpiece. Even that does not stand the closet. The merits are for the stage; and it is certainly one of the best acting plays going."

tions, &c. He wroto The Farmer's Letters, which were published in Ireland at the time of the rebellion of 1745. He wrote the well-known novel, The Fool of Quality.

RICHARD GLOVER (1712-1785), a London merchant, and Member of Parliament for Weymouth, better known for his noble independence and worth in private and public life than for his literary efforts. He published at an early age (1737) an epic poem on the subject of the Persian wars, called Leonidas, which was much praised in its day, but is now deservedly forgotten. He wrote a second epic poem, or kind of continuation of the former, entitled Athenais, which appeared after his death (1787).

WILLIAM MASON (1725-1797), was a native of Yorkshire, received his education at Cambridge, entered the Church, became rector of Aston, in Yorkshire, and held the office of canon and precentor in the cathedral of York. His chief works were the dramas of Elfrida, 1752, and Caractacus, 1759; Odes on Independence, Memory, &c.; The English Garden, 1772-1782, a poem in blank verse; and a satire of much liveliness and force, An Heroic Epistle to Sir William Chambers, Knight, 1773. Mason's style is wanting in simplicity. His dramas are on the model of the classic writers, the language is ornate and somewhat stilted, and at the present day his works are scarcely known. Mason was the intimate friend of Gray, superintended the publication of the poet's works, and wrote his Life. He died at Aston, April 5, 1797.

AARON HILL (1684-1749), best known through the conflict with Pope, on which he ventured after being satirized in the Dunciad. Seventeen plays are attributed to him, besides some other writings now altogether forgotten. The style is correct but cold, fashioned on the model of the French writers.

WM. WHITEHEAD (1715-1788), poet laureate on the death of Cibber, after Gray had refused the office. He wrote seven dramas, of which the most important are the Roman Father, 1750, and Creusa, 1754.

DR. JAMES GRAINGER (1721-1767) was born at Dunse, county Berwick, was a surgeon in the army, and afterwards went to the West Indies. He wrote the Sugar Cane, which has been severely dealt with by the critics. He calls the negroes "swains."

Among the translators of this age are to be mentioned

GILBERT WEST (1705-1756), who translated Pindar, 1749, and wrote some original works. He was a friend and connection of Pitt and Lyttelton, and was appointed by Townshend one of the Clerks of the Privy Council. He is now best known by his Observations on the Resurrection (1730). Lord Lyttelton addressed to him his "Dissertation on the Conversion of St. Paul." (See p. 347, A.)

ELIZABETH CARTER (1717-1806), who published a translation of Epictetus in 1758, besides various original poems, was most highly esteemed by Johnson, and her Ode to Wisdom is given by Richard

HENRY BROOKE (1706-1783), the son of a clergy-son in his second novel, Clarissa Harlowe. man in Ireland, and educated at Trinity College, Cambridge, came to London, and was one of the poets patronized by Frederick Prince of Wales. His tragedy of Gustavus Vasa was supposed to have been directed against the prime minister Sir Robert Walpole, and the representation of it was forbidden by the Lord Chamberlain. He was also author of the Earl of Essex, and other plays, poems, transla- | Scotch dialect.

The principal Scottish poet of this period isROBERT FERGUSSON (1750-1774), who was born in Edinburgh, educated at St. Andrew's, and died at an early age, having ruined his health by dissipation. His style and manner exercised no small influence upon Burns, whose "poetical progenitor" he has been called. His successful pieces are in the

CHAPTER XX.

WALTER SCOTT.

§ 1. Romantic school. Influence of BISHOP PERCY's Reliques of Ancient Poetry. § 2. WALTER SCOTT. His life and writings. § 3. His poems. § 4. Lay of the Last Minstrel, Marmion, and the Lady of the Lake. § 5. Rokeby, Lord of the Isles, and minor poems. §6. Classification of the Waverley Novels. §7. Characteristics of the Novels. Waverley. Guy Mannering. The Antiquary. Rob Roy. 8. Tales of My Landlord: :- The Black Dwarf. Old Mortality. The Heart of Mid-Lothian. The Bride of Lammermoor. The Legend of Montrose. §9. Ivanhoe. The Monastery and The Abbot. Kenilworth. The Pirate. § 10. Nigel. Peveril of the Peak. Quentin Durward. St. Ronan's Well. Redgauntlet. § 11. Tales of the Crusaders :- The Betrothed and The Talisman. Woodstock. § 12. Chronicles of the Canongate:· The Highland Widow, The Two Drovers, The Surgeon's Daughter, and The Fair Maid of Perth. Anne of Geierstein. Count Robert of Paris, and Castle Dangerous.

§ 1. THE great revolution in taste, substituting romantic for classical sentiment and subjects, which culminated in the poems and novels of Walter Scott, is traceable to the labors of BISHOP PERCY (1728-1811). The friend of Johnson, and one of the most accomplished members of that circle in which Johnson was supreme, Percy was strongly impressed with the vast stores of the beautiful, though rude, poetry which lay buried in obscure collections of ballads and legendary compositions, and he devoted himself to the task of explaining and popularizing the then neglected beauties of these old rhapsodists with the ardor of an antiquary and with the taste of a true poet. His publication in 1765, under the title of Reliques of Ancient English Poetry, of a collection of such ballads, many of which had been preserved only in manuscript, while others, having originally been printed in the rudest manner on flying sheets for circulation among the lower orders of the people, had owed their preservation only to the care of collectors, must be considered as a critical epoch in the history of our literature. Many authors before him, as for example Addison and Sir Philip Sidney, had expressed the admiration which a cultivated taste must ever feel for the rough but inimitable graces of our old ballad-poets; but Percy was the first who undertook an examination, at once systematic and popular, of those neglected treasures. His Essay on the Ancient Minstrels, prefixed to the pieces he selected, exhibits considerable research, and is written in a pleasing and attractive manner; and the extracts are made with great taste, and with a particular view of exciting the public sympathy in favor of a class of compositions, the merits of which were then new and unfamiliar to the general reader. It is true that he did not always adhere with scrupulous fidelity to the ancient texts, and where the poems were in a fragmentary and imperfect condition he did

not hesitate, any more than Scott after him in the Border Minstrelsy, to fill up the rents of time with matter of his own invention. This, however, at a period when his chief object was to excite among general readers an interest in these fine old monuments of mediæval genius, was no unpardonable offence, and gave him the opportunity of exhibiting his own poetical powers, which were far from contemptible, and his skill in imitating, with more or less success, the language and manner of the ancient Border poets. Percy found, in collecting these old compositions, that the majority of those most curious from their antiquity and most interesting from their merit were distinctly traceable, both as regards their subjects and the dialect in which they were written, to the North Countree, that is, to the frontier region between England and Scotland, which, during the long wars that had raged almost without intermission between the Borderers on both sides of the Debatable Land, had necessarily been the scene of the most frequent and striking incidents of predatory warfare, such as those recorded in the noble ballads of Chevy Chase and the Battle of Otterburn. The language in the Northern marches of England and in the Scottish frontier region bordering upon them, was one and the same dialect; something between the Lowland Scotch and the speech of Cumberland or Westmoreland; and it is curious to find the ballad-singer modifying the incidents of his legend so as to suit the prejudices and flatter the national pride of his listeners according as they were inhabitants of the Northern or Southern district. In various independent copies or versions of the same legend, we find the victory given to the one side or to the other, and the English or Scottish hero alternately playing the nobler and more romantic part. Besides a very large number of these purely heroic ballads, Percy gave specimens of an immense series of songs and lyr ics extending down to a comparatively late period of English history, embracing even the Civil War and the Restoration; but the chief interest of his collection, and the chief service he rendered to literature by his publication, is concentrated on the earlier portion. It is impossible to exaggerate the influence exerted by Percy's Reliques: this book has been devoured with the most intense interest by generation after generation of English poets, and has undoubtedly contributed to give a first direction to the youthful genius of many of our most illustrious writers. The boyish enthusiasm of Walter Scott was stirred, "as with the sound of a trumpet," by the vivid recitals of the old Border rhapsodists; and but for Percy it is possible that we should have had neither the Lady of the Lake nor Waverley. Nor was it upon the genius of Scott alone that is impressed the stamp of this ballad imitation: Wordsworth, Coleridge, even Tennyson himself have been deeply modified, in the form and coloring of their productions, by the same cause; and perhaps the influence of the Reliques, whether direct or indirect, near or remote, will be perceptible to distant ages in English poetry and fiction.

§ 2. Literary history presents few examples of a career so splendid as that of WALTER Scott (1771-1832). A genius at once so vigorous

and versatile, a productiveness so magnificent and so sustained, will with difficulty be found, though we ransack the wide realms of ancient and modern letters. He occupies an immense space in the intellectual horizon of the nineteenth century; and it will be no easy task to delineate, at once clearly and rapidly, the features of this colossal figure. He was born in 1771, the son of a respectable Writer to the Signet in Edinburgh, and was connected, both by the father's and mother's side, with several of those ancient historic Border families whose warlike memories his genius was destined to make immortal. His constitution was at first weakly; and an accident he met with in childhood caused a deformity in one of his feet, and rendered it necessary that he should pass some time in country air. For this purpose he was sent to the farm of his grandfather near Kelso, where he was surrounded with legends, ruins, and localities, of which he was to make in his works so admirable a use. Though remarkable neither at the High School nor at the University of Edinburgh, where he finished his education, for anything but good nature and a love for athletic sports, he had always been a devourer of miscellaneous books his taste and inclination naturally leading him to prefer fiction, and chiefly the picturesque fiction, whether couched in prose or verse, of mediæval chivalry. On leaving the University he was destined to the profession of the bar, and he practised during some time as an advocate before the Scottish tribunals: his real vocation was, however, that of letters; and his legal experience did little more for him than furnish him with hints of incidents and traits of human nature which he afterwards worked up with admirable effect in his romances. He was unsuccessful in obtaining the object of his first love; but he soon consoled himself, with that singular good sense which marked nearly all his conduct, and contracted an early and a happy marriage with a young lady of French extraction, named Carpenter. The first literary direction of his mind was towards the poetical and antiquarian curiosities of the Middle Ages; but just at that time there had been awakened among the intellectual circles of Edinburgh a taste for German literature, then only just beginning to become known, and Scott contributed several translations, as that of Goethe's ErlKönig, of the Lenore of Bürger, and afterwards the whole drama of Götz of the Iron Hand. Scott was now residing with his young wife at Lasswade, and his position was probably as happy as can be conceived. He conceived the plan of rescuing from oblivion the large stores of Border ballads which were still current among the descendants of the Liddesdale and Annandale moss-troopers, and travelled into those picturesque regions, where he accumulated not only a vast treasure of unedited legends and fragments of legends, but familiarized himself with the scenery and manners of that country over which he was to cast the magic of his genius. . The result of his researches he published as Minstrelsy of the Scottish Border; and in the skill with which he edited these poems, the immense and picturesque erudition with which he illustrated them, and the admirable manner in which he related striking and interesting facts connected with their elucidation, it was

ence.

easy to see the germ of the great romantic poet, as well as of the antiquarian, then without a rival in historic and legendary lore. The learning and taste of this work gave Scott a high reputation, and in some degree contributed to induce him to abandon the profession of the law for that of literature. He was still further confirmed in his project by receiving the appointment of Sheriff of Selkirkshire, the duties of which left much leisure at his disposal. He afterwards continued his task of editor by publishing the old romance of Sir Tristrem, which he elucidated by a commentary; and also the very curious rhythmical poem of Thomas of Ercyldoune, whose prophecies had been regarded from the thirteenth century downwards with traditional awe and reverHe now changed his residence to the pretty villa of Ashestiel on the Tweed, and in 1805 first burst upon the world in the quality of a great original romantic poet. It is difficult for us in the present day to conceive the rapture of enthusiasm with which the public received the rapid and dazzling succession of Scott's poems. They were poured forth with an unstinted freshness and uninterrupted rapidity from the above year till 1815, when he was as suddenly to burst forth with still greater splendor and still more wonderful fertility in a completely new and different line. Between 1805 and 1814 appeared the Lay of the Last Minstrel, Marmion, the Lady of the Lake, Rokeby, and the Lord of the Isles; not to enumerate a number of less important and less successful works, such as the Vision of Don Roderick, the Bridal of Triermain, Harold the Dauntless, and the Field of Waterloo, the first and last of which were written with the special purpose of celebrating the triumph over Napoleon, and which, as is generally the case with such productions, are unworthy of the author's genius. In about twelve years this kingly poet poured forth five works of considerable length, perfectly original in subject and construction, and which absolutely revolutionized the public taste. Though considerably varied in scenery and dramatis persona, the narrative romantic fictions which so rapidly succeeded each other were found, after some repetitions, to pall to a certain degree upon the public taste; and perhaps the very frenzy of enthusiasm which had welcomed the rich, vivid, and picturesque revival of the ancient chivalric poetry in the Lay, the Lady of the Lake, and Marmion, made the reader more ready to find some falling-off of interest in Rokeby and the Lord of the Isles. It is certain that the popularity of Scott's poetry, though still very great, perceptibly declined with the former of these two works, which is partly to be attributed to the choice of an historical period for the action either less picturesque in itself or less favorable for the display of Scott's peculiar talent, than that remote epoch in which his immense knowledge caused him to be without a rival. Fully aware of the decline of his popularity, and with manly sense and dignified yet modest self-consciousness attributing it to its true cause just specified, and also perhaps in some degree to the startling sunrise of Byron's genius above the horizon, Scott, without a word of querulous complaint, immediately abandoned poetry to launch into a new career—a career in which he could have neither equal nor

second.

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