artificer at the forge would learn the tidings with satisfaction, 'Relax his ponderous strength, and lean to hear." Something too much of this. But I have felt it incumbent on me to place on record my honest conviction of the impolicy of the tax itself, and of the still greater enormity of the evil which it goes to support. To return to my own history, in this "hospital," which was the first alma mater of my juvenile days, I graduated in all the science of the young gypsies who swarmed around me. My health, which was naturally robust, bore up against the fearful odds of mortality by which I was beset; and although I should have ultimately no doubt perished with the crowd of infant sufferers that shared my evil destiny, still, like that favoured Grecian who won the good graces of Polyphemus in his anthropophagous cavern, a signal privilege would perhaps have been granted me: "Prout would have been the last to be devoured." But a ray of light broke into my prison-house. The idea of escape, a bold thought! took possession of my soul. But how to accomplish so daring an enterprise; how elude the vigilance of the fat door-keeper and the keen eye of the chaplain? Right well did they know the muster-roll of their stock of urchins, and often verified the same. Bisque die numerant ambo pecus; alter The Lament of Danaë, by Simonides, Οτε λαρνακι εν δαιδαλια ανεμος Όσον εχω ποιον συ δ' αωτεις γαλαθηνῳ τ' Ματαιοβουλια δε τις φανείη, μοι. Heaven, however, soon granted what the porter denied. The milkman from Watergrasshill who brought the supplies every morn and eve prided himself particularly on the size and beauty of his churn, a capacious wooden recipient which my young eye admired with more than superficial curiosity. Having accidentally got on the waggon and explored the capacious hollow of the machine, a bright angel whispered in mine ear to secrete myself in the cavity. I did so; and shortly after the gates of the hospital were flung wide for my egress, and I found myself jogging onward on the high road to light and freedom! Judge of my sensations! Milton may talk of one who, long in populous city pent, makes a visit to Highgate, and snuffing the rural breeze, blesses the country air; but my rapture was of a nature that beggars description. To be sure, it was one of the most boisterous days of storm and tempest that ever vexed the heavens; but secure in the churn I chuckled with joy, and towards evening fell fast asleep. In my subsequent life I have often dwelt with pleasure on that joyous escape; and when in my course of studies I met with the fol lowing beautiful elegy of Simonides, I could not help applying it to myself, and translated it accordingly. There have been versions by Denman, the Queen's solicitor; by Elton, by W. Hay, and Bishop Jortin; but I prefer my own, as more literal, and more conformable to genuine Greek simplicity. The Lament of Stella by Father Prout. While round the churn, 'mid sleet and rain, It blew a perfect hurricane, Wrapt in slight garment to protect her, cruel Have been the fates to thee, my jewel! *WE never employed him.-REGINA. POETRY -THE OLD POETS. BY SIR EGERTON BRYDGES (PER LEGEM TERRÆ) LORD CHANDOS OF Sudeley. WE unfortunately have not minute memoirs of the early life of many of our great poets; if we had, we should find that, from their first infancy, they exhibited to nice observers all the symptoms of their future genius, such as Beattie ascribes to young Edwin, in the finest stanza of his Minstrel,— a stanza which, alone, if he had written nothing else, puts Beattie high among poets. It seems to me impossible that one should make a poet, unless his sensitiveness was extreme. Strong impressions cannot be made upon the fancy without awakening the emotions of the bosom; and till strong impressions are made on the fancy the imagination has nothing to work with. The faculty of imagination is to newcombine and invent from ingredients principally received from without; and perhaps to add to them certain intuitive ideas, whence results a visionary fiction. Now no one is master of himself who is under the ascendancy of these powers; and least of all in childhood, before the judgment has ripened. In true genius this imaginative faculty works voluntarily, and is always at voluntary work. All forced imagination is imperfect, and never meets the ready sympathy of others, which can only be wakened by natural associations. On the bosoms of the majority are the same figures inscribed; they only want bringing out. Common minds think mistily and confusedly, and want a lamp, or guide. But then they who think strongly and clearly will think in vain, unless they habituate themselves to embody their thoughts in language. They may amuse themselves; but their reveries die as fast as they rise. Language, however, comes slower than thought. We long are visited by bright visions before we are able to express them. One's whole childhood may be passed in a poetical temperament before one is able to write verses. It is true that we like to persuade ourselves that we are born for particular tasks, which few besides ourselves could perform; and our vanity or our hopes may lead us into delusion. Every one who makes these pretensions makes them suo periculo. The love of detraction, which is almost a universal VOL. X. NO. LV. passion in mankind, will take advantage of the least degree of claim beyond the claimant's positive merits, and pursue him with merciless severity; nay, will do it in defiance of merits. It must therefore be something more courageous than the love of fame that prompts to undertake this task. Men are more conscious of their own defects than of their own powers; and it is late in life before a sensitive person begins to attain firm nerves on the subject. When at length he has battled it with the world through a long life, and grown a little confident by comparison and by a perpetual erection of a discriminative judgment, he takes a position which calmly defies attack, and braves the censurer to do his worst. I am far from denying that detraction may succeed for a time, and that almost any man may be falsely cried down. Still there are exceptions to this: the Edinburgh Review could never succeed in crying down Wordsworth. It is certain that truth and real genius will at last survive all attacks. Of what we write in the heat of composition we cannot make a fair judgment till that heat subsides. I look back with anxiety, after a long interval, to what I have written; if I am then satisfied with it I depend on my own judgment. Force and clearness appear to me the excellencies of style: I am so far from thinking the ornate style a proof of genius, that I think it the contrary. The style of Cowley and Dryden is strikingly the reverse of ornate. I deny that Burke's style is ornate, though it occasionally bursts into magnificent imagery. We ought only to take up the pen to describe our own actual feelings and mental sights, and never set down to a compulsory imagination. The artificial critic says, "lay your plan; arrange every thing; write and re-write; prune, polish, add, illustrate, concatenate, compress, read over and over again; lock up in your scrutoire; and then, after nine years, venture to publish"!!! O, what a piece of cold manufacture must this be! Did Shakespeare write so? Did Scott write so? Never was any thing really eloquent that was studied. Good poetry is po D sitively and literally inspiration; and he who is insensible to it does not deserve the name of an intellectual being: the longer I live the more I love it; but the more I hate artificial and mediocre poetry. This last is worse than the dullest prose. A sanguine temper, high expectations, and an impatient desire of romantic pleasures, display themselves from early childhood, and give the character of a flighty rather than solid understanding; while the cool phlegm of others gives them the credit of what is called good common sense. There is an agitation of spirits, a want of self-possession, which is very disadvantageous in the estimate it possesses. It requires some penetration to see through these shadows the sound wisdom that may lie at the bottom. The supposed common sense, on the other side, is very often nothing more than stupidity, which, venturing nothing and seeing nothing, jogs on in the beaten path. There are those who have no love for or enjoyment in company,who are too shy, too morbid, and too soon mortified, and too little fitted to make a figure in it, and yet who have a most inordinate desire of notice when forced into society, and who are conscious that their want of calmness shews them to great disadvantage. They who talk by rote talk easily; but he who draws from within requires self-possession to avoid embarrassment and confusion. A talent of clear and quick apprehensiveness is very different from genius. They whose minds are blank oppose no ideas of their own to cloud the impression from without. The notice of such things cannot be uninstructive, that sensitive young people may not be too much discouraged. Pertness and forwardness are strong presumptions of inferior abilities. I can recollect no instance of great genius that did not commence with extreme timidity. It is nonsense to suppose a mind impressible by some things, and not by others; the capacity of impressions must be general. But how can he who is not impressible have poetical genius? It may be asked, how far are virtue and genius connected? Not necessarily, because there may be an imagination of wicked things; but I think that the chances are greatly in favour of the alliance; because, whatever is sublime, and whatever is tender, is gene rally virtuous; and surely thought commonly leads to action, though sometimes they are at variance. Unless we discuss the progress of the mind, we can never clearly understand its character. Its original powers cannot change their nature, but they may be modified by accident and discipline. And though an author's mature compositions must be tried by their intrinsic merits, yet it is impossible to separate them entirely from the opinion of his native mental force. It has been said that men of genius have arisen who have shewn no early prognostics of their intellectual gifts. I cannot believe this; it does not seem to me possible: the prognostics may not have been observed by common eyes; but even this appears not very probable. Susceptibility, pointed though perhaps irregular observations, sagacity, fire, moodiness, abstraction, visionariness, unexpected combinations, a constant disregard of the beaten path,—all betray it. We must adjudge a man's place in the intellectual ranks in right of intellect alone; his claims in other respects must be rigidly thrown out of the consideration. Mental power can never be a question of doubt and uncertainty; when it is doubtful, it can never have risen above mediocrity; when decided it has marked features, and a sort of attractive strength, that makes an impression at once. No writings are more instructive than those which shew the development of the mind. Sometimes we are wise and strong-headed in the closet, when we are weak in the bustle of the world. It ought to be a desire and a rule with us, from which we ought never to depart, to write with a conscientious honesty,-that is, to express no thoughts of which we are not convinced, and no sentiments which we do not feel. What we write ought therefore to be a genuine picture of our mind and heart. We should write because our mind is full, and we should never seek a subject to write upon. I would not have any one attempt the higher orders of literary composition on whom nature has not bestowed not only eminent talents but considerable genius. It is idle to enter into definitions of genius; every one can feel its effects if he cannot describe its constituents. I cannot believe that it can exist without a high degree of sensitiveness,― though this is only one ingredient out of many. To discuss these points is one of the uses of essay writing. Any charlatanism, misrepresentation, or vanity, is a moral crime. Disguise cannot avail; but an author ought not to shrink from telling the truth, even at the hazard of being charged with presumption and self-sufficiency. It is to get at the truth that a reader ought to take up books; and they will be instructive in proportion as the writer is sincere and frank. It may be a question how far the character of a poet's early connexions operates on his mind: it certainly cannot change the turn of his genius; for that depends on positive inherent qualities, upon the degree in which one mental power predominates over the others. But it may affect the less positive colour of his thoughts and sentiments; it may give a bent to his affections and his taste; it may in some degree operate on his choice of topics and favourite images. But the imaginative faculty operates in the same way, whatever be its subjects and affections; and therefore he to whom nature has given the most will shew it the most, independent of adventitious circumstances. It is a curiosity incident to humanity to desire to know the frank opinions and feelings of others. We have many feelings which, though not immoral, we think weaknesses in ourselves; and it is a great consolation to us when we find that others experience the same. When one has attained to any eminence we suppose him to have risen above these sympathies; we are delighted when we discover that we are still upon an equality with him. He who is open always wins our hearts; he who betrays no sensations, but goes on in a sort of insulting mask of superiority, is always hated. Therefore sorrow, which softens and humbles people, is always ingratiating. A boaster is odious to every one. Whoever carries his chin up in the air is marked out for vindictive retribution. It is not in our nature to bear this sort of insulting ascendancy. Pitt had it; Canning had it; and they neither of them were personally popular. Fox was the reverse, and whoever came near him loved him. There is a great difference between openness and garrulity; the latter excites contempt, because nobody gives credit to it, and because it almost always deals in trifles. He who talks without thinking is of course a parrot. A great number of the autobiographies hitherto published are far from being as frank and sincere as they ought. Some are reserved; some are vain and ostentatious; some are full of simulation and dissimulation; yet even all these are more or less amusing and instructive. There is too much of ceremonial and finessing in Gibbon; too much of the wit in Colley Cibber; too much of self-sufficiency in Bishop Watson; too much of the affectation of a vain, peevish coxcomb in Richard Cumberland. But we learn from these memoirs many things we could not otherwise have known, and which it is amusing, if not instructive, to know; especially from Gibbon and Bishop Watson. They none of them, however, entirely pour out their hearts to us. I would have noble bursts of sentiment, passion, and conviction. But perhaps none of these authors could rise to this, let them be as open as they would. All men of the world affect the nil admirari! Men in society cast off all their own discriminative features, and appear to be smoothed down to an equality. But men, as Edward Philips, in his preface to the Theatrum Poetarum, said, are almost as different from one another as man is from brutes. That is a noble preface, which shews the hand of Milton in many parts. We can only know those who will confess the secret movements of their minds and their bosoms. How can any but an autobiographer perform this task? There are many internal movements which no one can know but himself till he tells them. Then where is the proof of the sincerity? The internal evidence of what is communicated! The most singular work of this class is Rousseau's Confessions. It must contain many falsehoods; but they were falsehoods in which the author believed. His imagination had dominion over him. It is difficult to form a just opinion of this eloquent but immoral work. If we do not allow a tincture of insanity it is inexcusable. No memoir shews so strongly how mysteriously we are made. Notwithstanding what appears to be damning facts, I cannot bring myself to be convinced that Rousseau was a bad man. But the secrets he has disclosed, true or false, are most wonderful. Let us unveil the beauties of Truth where we can, and behold ourselves reflected as from a mirror! Whatever is embodied in language stands for the examination of future minds! otherwise it passes in vain; for it vanishes like the track of a boat upon the sea. What we think one moment we may never think again. The memory of a creator is as fugitive as his power is rapid. There is nothing which I despise more than those petty ambitions in life and in literature which may be called hobby-horses. I would have every thing founded in truth and a sound philosophy. I would only love poetry so far as it is the dictator of higher wisdom than any other class of human composition. Elevated thoughts and sublime imagery necessarily exalt the head and the bosom; but I am stern enough to wish to cast away all the little flowers of poetry. I protest against a laboured style, and against every sort of forced fiction which does not exemplify truth. In legislation, I would steadily pursue the good of all, and remove every abuse that has grown with time; but be slow to change what usage has reconciled us to; and cautious in trying experiments upon speculative points. But obstinate prejudices I would resist, and extirpate with contempt. Many laws that grew out of the feudal system are no longer applicable to the times. They who travel only on particular subjects get heated by them, and see things in exaggerated colours. We can only trust that general talent and genius which pierces into every thing. This is a sort of intuitive sagacity, which does not work out things by a slow gradation of steps. In general, memoirs and biographies have hitherto been mere registers of facts and anecdotes than of opinions; but few literary men have led eventful lives; and where they have been eventful, many of the events are not worth telling. Anecdotes are amusing, but often doubtful; truth is sacrificed to a point, and characters are misrepresented for a bon mot. This is often exemplified in Walpole's Royal and Noble Authors, where characters are never comprehensively portrayed as a whole, but are exhibited by detached parts and single features. Are we to view Goldsmith only as jealous of the agility of the figures at a puppet-show? or Lord Clarendon as twisting about the kneeribands of Charles I.? or Gray descending a rope-ladder in his shirt at a false cry of fire? or George Lord Lyttelton, in a fit of absence, striking some ambassador with his cane, waved in a reverie? or Cowper losing nights of rest at the terror of a journey from Olney to Eartham? or Pope at the secret glass of brandy? or Johnson leaping over a stick at Brighton? or Beattie at the feet of the Duchess of Gordon? or Tom Warton peeping from the window of the secret club at the sound of a drum? or Dr. Young on his Rosinante, accompanying Mrs. Montagu in a morning ride from Tunbridge Wells? or Soame Jenyns with his great wen under his little wig? or Peter Pindar getting a bloody nose from William Gifford? There are readers who delight in such stories more than in all the finest traits of character, and even think that they learn more from them. Who does not fall into absurdities sometimes, or something that may be turned into absurdities? What shall we say to him who prefers the Dutch school of painting to the Italian? who likes Teniers better than Salvator Rosa ? who likes a cabaret of drinking and dancing boors better than the witch of Endor? When our spirits are sometimes deeply oppressed, we are driven to the drudgery of compilation; we have not then elasticity of brain and heart enough for original composition, which requires a free current of blood, and a bright flame, not a cloudy, heavy, smouldering fire! There are those who pride themselves on their judgment and their scorn for literature, cross their breasts, and bless themselves that they have not applied themselves to so profitless, barren, and thankless a labour. They are sure that the flighty vapoury humours of literary men lead to nothing; that, for their part, they like good practical common sense; that what is called fancy, or imagination, is a mischievous will-o'-wisp, that leads to nothing but snares and pits; that bookworms are but grown fools; and that there is much more wisdom in doing like other people,- conforming to the world in all things, thinking and talking in a common way; and, instead of idle wanderings after ideal pleasures, contenting ourselves with matters of fact, and not expecting to make or find |