hurt to be among it? Something of a by a perception of the amiable? That riotous spirit to be sure is there, some tumultuous harmony of singers that are worldly-mindedness in some of the faces, a roaring out the words, "The world shall Doddingtonian smoothness which does not bow to the Assyrian throne," from the opera promise any superfluous degree of sincerity of Judith, in the third plate of the series in the fine gentleman who has been the called the Four Groups of Heads; which the occasion of calling so much good company quick eye of Hogarth must have struck off together; but is not the general cast of in the very infancy of the rage for sacred expression in the faces of the good sort? do oratorios in this country, while "Music yet they not seem cut out of the good old rock, was young;" when we have done smiling at substantial English honesty? would one fear the deafening distortions, which these treachery among characters of their expres- tearers of devotion to rags and tatters, these sion? or shall we call their honest mirth and takers of heaven by storm, in their boisterous seldom-returning relaxation by the hard mimicry of the occupation of angels, are names of vice and profligacy? That poor making, what unkindly impression is left country fellow, that is grasping his staff behind, or what more of harsh or con(which, from that difficulty of feeling them- temptuous feeling, than when we quietly selves at home which poor men experience leave Uncle Toby and Mr. Shandy riding at a feast, he has never parted with since he their hobby-horses about the room? The came into the room) and is enjoying with a conceited, long-backed Sign-painter, that relish that seems to fit all the capacities of with all the self-applause of a Raphael or his soul the slender joke, which that facetious Correggio (the twist of body which his conceit wag his neighbour is practising upon the has thrown him into has something of the gouty gentleman, whose eyes the effort to Correggiesque in it) is contemplating the picsuppress pain has made as round as rings-ture of a bottle, which he is drawing from an does it shock the "dignity of human nature" actual bottle that hangs beside him, in the to look at that man, and to sympathise with print of Beer Street, while we smile at the him in the seldom-heard joke which has enormity of the self-delusion, can we help unbent his care-worn, hard-working visage, loving the good-humour and self-complacency and drawn iron smiles from it? or with that of the fellow? would we willingly wake him full-hearted cobbler, who is honouring with from his dream? the grasp of an honest fist the unused palm of that annoyed patrician, whom the licence of the time has seated next him?

I can

I say not that all the ridiculous subjects of Hogarth have, necessarily, something in them to make us like them; some are see nothing "dangerous" in the indifferent to us, some in their natures contemplation of such scenes as this, or the repulsive, and only made interesting by the Enraged Musician, or the Southwark Fair, or wonderful skill and truth to nature in the twenty other pleasant prints which come painter; but I contend that there is in most crowding in upon my recollection, in which of them that sprinkling of the better nature, the restless activities, the diversified bents which, like holy water, chases away and and humours, the blameless peculiarities of disperses the contagion of the bad. They men, as they deserve to be called, rather have this in them, besides, that they bring than their "vices and follies," are held up in us acquainted with the every-day human a laughable point of view. All laughter is face, -they give us skill to detect those not of a dangerous or soul-hardening ten-gradations of sense and virtue (which escape dency. There is the petrifying sneer of a the careless or fastidious observer) in the demon which excludes and kills Love, and countenances of the world about us; and there is the cordial laughter of a man which implies and cherishes it. What heart was ever made the worse by joining in a hearty laugh at the simplicities of Sir Hugh Evans or Parson Adams, where a sense of the ridiculous mutually kindles and is kindled

prevent that disgust at common life, that tædium quotidianarum formarum, which an unrestricted passion for ideal forms and beauties is in danger of producing. In this, as in many other things, they are analogous to the best novels of Smollett or Fielding.

ON THE POETICAL WORKS OF GEORGE WITHER.

THE poems of G. Wither are distinguished be convicted of a libel when he named no by a hearty homeliness of manner, and a names but Hate and Envy, and Lust, and plain moral speaking. He seems to have Avarice, is like one of the indictments in the passed his life in one continued act of an Pilgrim's Progress, where Faithful is innocent self-pleasing. That which he calls arraigned for having "railed on our noble his Motto is a continued self-eulogy of two Prince Beelzebub, and spoken contemptibly thousand lines, yet we read it to the end of his honourable friends, the Lord Old Man, without any feeling of distaste, almost the Lord Carnal Delight, and the Lord without a consciousness that we have been Luxurious." What unlucky jealousy could listening all the while to a man praising have tempted the great men of those days to himself. There are none of the cold particles appropriate such innocent abstractions to in it, the hardness and self-ends, which themselves? render vanity and egotism hateful. He seems to be praising another person, under the mask of self; or rather, we feel that it was indifferent to him where he found the virtue which he celebrates; whether another's bosom or his own were its chosen receptacle. His poems are full, and this in particular is one downright confession, of a generous selfseeking. But by self he sometimes means a great deal, his friends, his principles, his country, the human race.

Wither seems to have contemplated to a degree of idolatry his own possible virtue. He is for ever anticipating persecution and martyrdom; fingering, as it were, the flames, to try how he can bear them. Perhaps his premature defiance sometimes made him obnoxious to censures which he would otherwise have slipped by.

The homely versification of these Satires is not likely to attract in the present day. It is certainly not such as we should expect Whoever expects to find in the satirical from a poet "soaring in the high region pieces of this writer any of those peculiarities of his fancies, with his garland and his which pleased him in the satires of Dryden singing robes about him;"* nor is it such or Pope, will be grievously disappointed. as he has shown in his Philarete, and in some Here are no high-finished characters, no nice parts of his Shepherds Hunting. He seems traits of individual nature, few or no to have adopted this dress with voluntary personalities. The game run down is coarse humility, as fittest for a moral teacher, as general vice, or folly as it appears in classes. our divines choose sober grey or black; but A liar, a drunkard, a coxcomb, is stript and in their humility consists their sweetness. whipt; no Shaftesbury, no Villiers, or The deepest tone of moral feeling in them Wharton, is curiously anatomised, and read (though all throughout is weighty, earnest, upon. But to a well-natured mind there is and passionate) is in those pathetic injunc a charm of moral sensibility running through tions against shedding of blood in quarrels, them, which amply compensates the want of in the chapter entitled Revenge. The story those luxuries. Wither seems everywhere of his own forbearance, which follows, is bursting with a love of goodness, and a highly interesting. While the Christian hatred of all low and base actions. At this sings his own victory over Anger, the Man day it is hard to discover what parts of the of Courage cannot help peeping out to let poem here particularly alluded to, Abuses you know, that it was some higher principle Stript and Whipt, could have occasioned the than fear which counselled this forbearance. imprisonment of the author. Was Vice in Whether encaged, or roaming at liberty, High Places more suspicious than now? Wither never seems to have abated a jot of had she more power; or more leisure to that free spirit which sets its mark upon his listen after ill reports? That a man should

* Milton.

writings, as much as a predominant feature | whose singing furnishes pretence for an occaof independence impresses every page of our sional change of metre: though the sevenlate glorious Burns; but the elder poet syllable line, in which the main part of it is wraps his proof-armour closer about him, written, is that in which Wither has shown the other wears his too much outwards; he himself so great a master, that I do not is thinking too much of annoying the foe to know that I am always thankful to him for be quite easy within; the spiritual defences the exchange. of Wither are a perpetual source of inward Wither has chosen to bestow upon the sunshine, the magnanimity of the modern is lady whom he commends the name of Arete, not without its alloy of soreness, and a sense or Virtue; and, assuming to himself the of injustice, which seems perpetually to gall character of Philarete, or Lover of Virtue, and irritate. Wither was better skilled in there is a sort of propriety in that heaped the "sweet uses of adversity;" he knew measure of perfections which he attributes how to extract the "precious jewel" from to this partly real, partly allegorical personthe head of the "toad," without drawing any age. Drayton before him had shadowed his of the "ugly venom" along with it. The mistress under the name of Idea, or Perfect prison notes of Wither are finer than the Pattern, and some of the old Italian lovewood notes of most of his poetical brethren. strains are couched in such religious terms The description in the Fourth Eclogue of his as to make it doubtful whether it be a misShepherds Hunting (which was composed tress, or Divine Grace, which the poet is during his imprisonment in the Marshalsea) addressing. of the power of the Muse to extract pleasure from common objects, has been oftener quoted, and is more known, than any part of his writings. Indeed, the whole Eclogue is in a strain so much above not only what himself, but almost what any other poet has written, that he himself could not help noticing it; he remarks that his spirits had been raised higher than they were wont, "through the love of poesy." The praises of Poetry have been often sung in ancient and in modern times; strange powers have been ascribed to it of influence over animate and inanimate auditors; its force over fascinated crowds has been acknowledged; but, before Wither, no one ever celebrated its power at home, the wealth and the strength which this divine gift confers upon its possessor. Fame, and that too after death, was all which hitherto the poets had promised themselves from their art. It seems to have been left to Wither to discover that poetry was a present possession, as well as a rich reversion, and that the Muse had promise of both lives, of this, and of that which was to

come.

The Mistress of Philarete is in substance a panegyric protracted through several thousand lines in the mouth of a single speaker, but diversified, so as to produce an almost dramatic effect, by the artful introduction of some ladies, who are rather auditors than interlocutors in the scene; and of a boy,

In this poem (full of beauties) there are two passages of pre-eminent merit. The first is where the lover, after a flight of rapturous commendation, expresses his wonder why all men that are about his mistress, even to her very servants, do not view her with the same eyes that he does.

"Sometime I do admire
All men burn not with desire:
Nay, I muse her servants are not
Pleading love; but O! they dare not.
And I therefore wonder, why
They do not grow sick and die.
Sure they would do so, but that,
By the ordinance of fate,
There is some concealed thing,
So each gazer limiting,

He can see no more of merit,
Than beseems his worth and spirit.
For in her a grace there shines,
That o'er-daring thoughts confines,
Making worthless men despair
To be loved of one so fair.
Yea, the destinies agree,

Some good judgments blind should be,
And not gain the power of knowing
Those rare beauties in her growing.
Reason doth as much imply:
For, if every judging eye,
Which beholdeth her, should there
Find what excellences are,
All, o'ercome by those perfections,
Would be captive to affections.
So, in happiness unblest,

She for lovers should not rest."

The other is, where he has been comparing her beauties to gold, and stars, and the most excellent things in nature; and, fearing to

be accused of hyperbole, the common charge | Pamby, in ridicule of Ambrose Philips, who against poets, vindicates himself by boldly has used it in some instances, as in the lines taking upon him, that these comparisons are no hyperboles; but that the best things in nature do, in a lover's eye, fall short of those excellences which he adores in her.

"What pearls, what rubies can
Seem so lovely fair to man,

As her lips whom he doth love,
When in sweet discourse they move,
Or her lovelier teeth, the while
She doth bless him with a smile?
Stars indeed fair creatures be;
Yet amongst us where is he
Joys not more the whilst he lies
Sunning in his mistress' eyes,
Than in all the glimmering light
Of a starry winter's night?
Note the beauty of an eye-
And if ought you praise it by
Leave such passion in your mind,
Lot my reason's eye be blind.
Mark if ever red or white
Any where gave such delight,
As when they have taken place
In a worthy woman's face.

on Cuzzoni, to my feeling at least, very deliciously; but Wither, whose darling measure it seems to have been, may show, that in skilful hands it is capable of expressing the subtilest movements of passion. So true it is, which Drayton seems to have felt, that it is the poet who modifies the metre, not the metre the poet; in his own words, that

"It's possible to climb;

To kindle, or to stake;

Altho' in Skelton's rhime."

A long line is a line we are long repeating. In the
Shepherd's Hunting, take the following-

"If thy verse doth bravely tower,
As she makes wing, she gets power;
Yet the higher she doth soar.
She's affronted still the more,
"Till she to the high'st hath past,

Then she rests with fame at last."

What longer measure can go beyond the majesty of this! what Alexandrine is half so long in pronouncing or expressing labour slowly but strongly surmounting difficulty with the life with which it is done in the second of these lines? or what metre could go beyond these from Philarete

LETTERS,

UNDER ASSUMED SIGNATURES, PUBLISHED IN "THE REFLECTOR."

THE LONDONER.

TO THE EDITOR OF "THE REFLECTOR."

tolerable well ever after the poets, when they declaim in such passionate terms in favour of a country life.

For my own part, now the fit is past, I have no hesitation in declaring, that a mob of happy faces crowding up at the pit door of Drury-lane Theatre, just at the hour of six, gives me ten thousand sincerer pleasures, than I could ever receive from all the flocks of silly sheep that ever whitened the plains of Arcadia or Epsom Downs.

MR. REFLECTOR, -I was born under the | enough with rural objects to understand shadows of St. Dunstan's steeple, just where the conflux of the eastern and western inhabitants of this two-fold city meet and jostle in friendly opposition at Temple-bar. The same day which gave me to the world, saw London happy in the celebration of her great annual feast. This I cannot help looking upon as a lively omen of the future great good-will which I was destined to bear toward the city, resembling in kind that solicitude which every Chief Magistrate is supposed to feel for whatever concerns her interests and well-being. Indeed I consider myself in some sort a speculative Lord Mayor of London for though circumstances unhappily preclude me from the hope of ever arriving at the dignity of a gold chain and Spital Sermon, yet this much will I say of myself in truth, that Whittington with his Cat (just emblem of vigilance and a furred gown) never went beyond me in affection which I bear to the citizens.

I was born, as you have heard, in a crowd. This has begot in me an entire affection for that way of life, amounting to an almost insurmountable aversion from solitude and rural scenes. This aversion was never interrupted or suspended, except for a few years in the younger part of my life, during a period in which I had set my affections upon a charming young woman. Every man, while the passion is upon him, is for a time at least addicted to groves and meadows and purling streams. During this short period of my existence, I contracted just familiarity

This passion for crowds is nowhere feasted so full as in London. The man must have a rare recipe for melancholy who can be dull in Fleet-street. I am naturally inclined to hypochondria, but in London it vanishes like all other ills. Often, when I have felt a weariness or distaste at home, have I rushed out into her crowded Strand, and fed my humour, till tears have wetted my cheek for unutterable sympathies with the multitudinous moving pictures, which she never fails to present at all hours, like the scenes of a shifting pantomime.

The very deformities of London, which give distaste to others, from habit do not displease me. The endless succession of shops where Fancy miscalled Folly is supplied with perpetual gauds and toys, excite in me no puritanical aversion. I gladly behold every appetite supplied with its proper food. The obliging customer, and the obliged tradesman - things which live by bowing, and things which exist but for homage - do not affect me with disgust; from habit I