22 CAMPBELL HIS CRITIQUE ON POPE. We have already said, that we think Shirley overpraised-but he is praised with great eloquence. There is but little said of Dryden in the Essay-but it is said with force and with judgment. In speaking of Pope and his contemporaries, Mr. C. touches on debatable ground: And we shall close our quotations from this part of his work, with the passage in which he announces his own indulgent, and, perhaps, latitudinarian opinions. "There are exclusionists in taste, who think that they cannot speak with sufficient disparagement of the English poets of the first part of the eighteenth century; and they are armed with a noble provocative to English contempt, when they have it to say that those poets belong to a French school. Indeed Dryden himself is generally included in that school; though more genuine English is to be found in no man's pages. But in poetry 'there are many mansions.' I am free to confess, that I can pass from the elder writers, and still find a charm in the correct and equable sweetness of Parnell. Conscious that his diction has not the freedom and volubility of the better strains of the elder time, I cannot but remark his exemption from the quaintness and false metaphor which so often disfigure the style of the preceding age; ner deny my respect to the select choice of his expression, the clearness and keeping of his imagery, and the pensive dignity of his moral feeling. Pope gave our heroic couplet its strictest melody and tersest expression. D'un mot mis en sa place il enseigne le pouvoir. If his contemporaries forgot other poets in admiring him, let him not be robbed of his just fame on pretence that a part of it was superfluous. The public ear was long fatigued with repetitions of his manner; but if we place ourselves in the situation of those to whom his brilliancy, succinctness, and animation were wholly new, we cannot wonder at their being captivated to the fondest admiration. In order to do justice to Pope, we should forget his imitators, if that were possible; but it is easier to remember than to forget by an effort to acquire associations than to shake them off. Every one may recollect how often the most beautiful air has palled upon his ear, and grown insipid, from being played or sung by vulgar musicians. the same thing with regard to Pope's versification. That his peculiar rhythm and manner are the very best in the whole range of our poetry need not be asserted. He has a gracefully peculiar manner, though it is not calculated to be an universal one; and where, indeed, shall we find the style of poetry that could be pronounced an exclusive model for every composer? His pauses have little variety, and his phrases are too much weighed in the balance of antithesis. But let us HIS ACCOUNT OF HALL. 23 look to the spirit that points his antithesis, and to the rapid precision of his thoughts, and we shall forgive him for being too antithetic and sententious. - p. 259–262. And to this is subjoined a long argument, to show that Mr. Bowles is mistaken in supposing that a poet should always draw his images from the works of nature, and not from those of art. We have no room at present for any discussion of the question; but we do not think it is quite fairly stated in the passage to which we have referred; and confess that we are rather inclined, on the whole, to adhere to the creed of Mr. Bowles. Of the Specimens, which compose the body of the work, we cannot pretend to give any account. They are themselves but tiny and slender fragments of the works from which they are taken; and to abridge them further would be to reduce them to mere dust and rubbish. Besides, we are not called upon to review the poets of England for the last four hundred years!-- but only their present editor and critic. In the little we have yet to say, therefore, we shall treat only of the merits of Mr. Campbell. His account of Hall and Chamberlayn is what struck us most in his first volumes-probably because neither of the writers whom he so judiciously praises were formerly familiar to us. Hall, who was the founder of our satirical poetry, wrote his satires about the year 1597, when only twenty-three years old; and whether we consider the age of the man or of the world, they appear to us equally wonderful. In this extraordinary work, "He discovered," says Mr. C., "not only the early vigour of his own genius, but the power and pliability of his native tongue: for in the point and volubility and vigour of Hall's numbers, we might frequently imagine ourselves perusing Dryden. This may be exemplified in the harmony and picturesqueness of the following description of a magnificent rural mansion, which the traveller approaches in the hopes of reaching the seat of ancient hospitality, but finds it deserted. by its selfish owner, Beat the broad gates, a goodly hollow sound, 24 CAMPBELL ACCOUNT OF BEN JONSON. The marble pavement hid with desert weed, Look to the tow'red chimnies, which should be Through which it breatheth to the open air, Lo, there th' unthankful swallow takes her rest, "His satires are neither cramped by personal hostility, nor spun out to vague declamations on vice; but give us the form and pressure of the times, exhibited in the faults of coeval literature, and in the foppery or sordid traits of prevailing manners. The age was undoubtedly fertile in eccentricity."-vol. ii. p. 257, 258. What he says of Chamberlayn, and the extracts he has made from his Pharonnida, have made us quite impatient for an opportunity of perusing the whole poem. The poetical merits of Ben Jonson are chiefly discussed in the Essay; and the Notice is principally biographical. It is very pleasingly written, though with an affectionate leaning towards his hero. The following short passage affords a fair specimen of the good sense and good temper of all Mr. Campbell's apologies. "The poet's journey to Scotland (1617) awakens many pleasing recollections, when we conceive him anticipating his welcome among a people who might be proud of a share in his ancestry, and setting out, with manly strength, on a journey of 400 miles, on foot. We are assured, by one who saw him in Scotland, that he was treated with respect and affection among the nobility and gentry; nor was the romantic scenery of the country lost upon his fancy. From the poem which he meditated on Loch-Lomond, it is seen that he looked on it with a poet's eye. But, unhappily, the meagre anecdotes of Drummond have made this event of his life too prominent, by the overimportance which has been attached to them. Drummond, a smooth and sober gentleman, seems to have disliked Jonson's indulgence in that conviviality which Ben had shared with his Fletcher and Shakspeare at the Mermaid. In consequence of those anecdotes, Jonson's memory has been damned for brutality, and Drummond's for perfidy. Jonson drank freely at Hawthornden, and talked big-things neither incredible nor unpardonable. Drummond's perfidy amounted to writ ing a letter, beginning. Sir, with one very kind sentence in it, to the man whom he had described unfavourably in a private memorandum, which he never meant for publication. As to Drummond's decoying Jonson under his roof with any premeditated design on his reputation, no one can seriously believe it."-vol. iii. p. 150, 151. NOTICE OF COTTON AND LILLO. 25 The notice of Cotton may be quoted, as a perfect model for such slight memorials of writers of the middle order. There is a careless and happy humour in this poet's Voyage to Ireland, which seems to anticipate the manner of Anstey, in the Bath Guide. The tasteless indelicacy of his parody of the Eneid has found but too many admirers. His imitations of Lucian betray the grossest misconception of humorous effect, when he attempts to burlesque that which is ludicrous already. He was acquainted with French and Italian; and among several works from the former language, translated the Horace of Corneille, and Montaigne's Essays. "The father of Cotton is described by Lord Clarendon as an accomplished and honourable man, who was driven by domestic afflictions to habits which rendered his age less reverenced than his youth, and made his best friends wish that he had not lived so long. From him our poet inherited an incumbered estate, with a disposition to extravagance little calculated to improve it. After having studied at Cambridge, and returned from his travels abroad, he married the daughter of Sir Thomas Owthorp, in Nottinghamshire. He went to Ireland as a captain in the army; but of his military progress nothing is recorded. Having embraced the soldier's life merely as a shift in distress, he was not likely to pursue it with much ambition. It was probably in Ireland that he met with his second wife, Mary, CountessDowager of Ardglass, the widow of Lord Cornwall. She had a jointure of 1500l. a year, secured from his imprudent management. He died insolvent at Westminster. One of his favourite recreations was angling; and his house which was situated on the Dove, a fine trout stream which divides the counties of Derby and Stafford, was the frequent resort of his friend Isaac Walton. There he built a fishing house, Piscatoribus sacrum,' with the initials of honest Isaac's name and his own united in ciphers over the door. The walls were painted with fishing-scenes, and the portraits of Cotton and Walton were upon the beaufet."-p. 293, 294. There is a very beautiful and affectionate account of Parnell. But there is more power of writing, and more depth and delicacy of feeling, in the following masterly account and estimate of Lillo. "George Lillo was the son of a Dutch jeweller, who married an Englishwoman and settled in London. Our poet was born near Moorfields, was bred to his father's business, and followed it for many years. The story of his dying in distress was a fiction of Hammond, the poet; for he bequeathed a considerable property to his nephew, whom he made his heir. It has been said, that his bequest was in consequence of his finding the young man disposed to lend him a sum of money at a time when he thought proper to feign pecuniary distress, in order that he might discover the sincerity of those calling themselves his friends. Thomas Davies, his biographer and editor, professes to have got this anecdote from a surviving partner of Lillo. It 26 CAMPBELL HAZARDS OF DOMESTIC TRAGEDY. bears, however, an intrinsic air of improbability. It is not usual for sensible tradesmen to affect being on the verge of bankruptcy; and Lillo's character was that of an uncommonly sensible man. Fielding, his intimate friend, ascribes to him a manly simplicity of mind, that is extremely unlike such a stratagem. "Lillo is the tragic poet of middling and familiar life. Instead of heroes from romance and history, he gives the merchant and his apprentice; and the Macbeth of his Fatal Curiosity' is a private gentleman, who has been reduced by his poverty to dispose of his copy of Seneca for a morsel of bread. The mind will be apt, after reading his works, to suggest to itself the question, how far the graver drama would gain or lose by a more general adoption of this plebeian principle. The cares, it may be said, that are most familiar to our existence, and the distresses of those nearest to ourselves in situation, ought to lay the strongest hold upon our sympathies; and the general mass of society ought to furnish a more express image of man than any detached or elevated portion of the species. But, notwithstanding the power of Lillo's works, we entirely miss in them that romantic attraction which invites to repeated perusal of them. They give us life in a close and dreadful semblance of reality, but not arrayed in the magic illusion of poetry. His strength lies in conception of situations, not in beauty of dialogue, or in the eloquence of the passions. Yet the effect of his plain and homely subjects was so strikingly superior to that of the vapid and heroic productions of the day, as to induce some of his contemporary admirers to pronounce, that he had reached the acme of dramatic excellence, and struck into the best and most genuine path of tragedy, George Barnwell, it was observed, drew more tears than the rants of Alexander. This might be true; but it did not bring the comparison of humble and heroic subjects to a fair test; for the tragedy of Alexander is bad, not from its subject, but from the incapacity of the poet who composed it. It does not prove that heroes, drawn from history or romance, are not at least as susceptible of high and poetical effect, as a wicked apprentice, or a distressed gentleman pawning his movables. It is a different question whether Lillo has given to his subjects from private life, the degree of beauty of which they are susceptible. He is a master of terrific, but not of tender impressions. We feel a harshness and gloom in his genius, even while we are compelled to admire its force and originality. "The peculiar choice of his subjects was, at all events, happy and commendable, as far as it regarded himself; for his talents never succeeded so well when he ventured out of them. But it is another question, whether the familiar cast of those subjects was fitted to constitute a more genuine, or only a subordinate walk in tragedy. Undoubtedly the genuine delineation of the human heart will please us, from whatever station or circumstances of life it is derived: and, in the simple pathos of tragedy, probably very little difference will be felt from the choice of characters being pitched above or below the line of mediocrity in station. But something more than pathos is required in tragedy; and the very pain that attends our sympathy, would seem to |