him that the five thousand pounds were | by her lover's family, who all united in waiting his acceptance." pitying her for her past trials, and admi"She acted nobly and honourably," ring the uncomplaining meekness with said Ellerby, and his silent friend in the corner gave an inarticulate murmur of assent, the first sign he had shown of understanding the conversation.

"The father of Lucas," continued Mrs. Bernard, "was now eager to apologise to Mr. Preston for his unjust suspicions, and preparations for the marriage were speedily resumed. The sweet Mary, whose health and spirits had been gradually failing for some months, seemed now almost magically restored to both, by the happy alteration in her affairs; and the kindness and affection with which she was treated

which she had borne them, had the effect of thoroughly completing her cure. The elder Mr. Lucas was so struck by the conduct of Caroline, that he requested an introduction to her, and became, as he jestingly told all his friends, in great danger of fancying that he had at length discovered a faultless woman. Caroline would have given a very different account of herself; but I merely mention this trifling circumstance, because it led to a highly important result."

(To be continued.)

THE METROPOLITAN.

NO. LXXIII.

FOR MAY, 1837.

LECTURE ON THE BRITISH POETS. | as to warrant expectation, that he will ulDELIVERED AT THE ROYAL INSTITU. timately secure a place for himself among

TION, APRIL 11, 1837.

BY JAMES MONTGOMERY, ESQ.

"THE age of chivalry is gone; that of economists and calculators has succeeded." This indignant lamentation of Edmund Burke over the fall of monarchy, with all its gorgeous and antiquated appendages, in France-may, with the variation of a single word, be taken up, at this day, by the lovers of literature, who have melancholy cause to exclaim-"The age of poetry is gone; that of economists and calculators has succeeded."

the more illustrious of his aged contemporaries, or the departed luminaries of the generation before him. There may be no defect of original power in the youth of our day-there is, in fact, an exuberance of such power developed in a thousand other ways-but there is no prevailing influence abroad to awaken it, or if awakened,to foster and uphold it. As soon might tropical flowers and fruits be expected to blossom and ripen in our cold northern latitude, as the flowers and fruits of poesy to expand, and be brought to perfection, in the present ungenial temperature of public taste-favourable only, but favourable beyond precedent in the history of human learning, to scientific and practical pursuits.

The announcement of no new publication excites less attention than that of a forthcoming poem; in which, indeed, almost the only person interested is the author himself; and almost the only person For thirty years, from 1795, while the who feels either surprise or regret at its French revolution was advancing towards utter failure, is the same individual. Nor its perihelion, with accelerated speed, does this apply solely to young, inexperi- brightening more portentously, and enced, and unknown adventurers, who, at stretching its fiery train more awfully all times, find it difficult to obtain a hear- over the earth, at every stage of its proing-but, among the few surviving vete- gress-when, literally, like a comet in the rans of the late brief but splendid era of dark ages, it was shaking "war, famine, their art, there seems to be not one, who and pestilence from its horrid hair," and has the courage to hazard the renown he" still with fear of change perplexing mohas already acquired, by producing some narchs"-till 1825, when the tremendous transcendent work to crown his former visitation had wholly passed away from triumphs. In every case, it may be said the political system-from 1795 to 1825, all without hazard, of every living and established reputation, that its destiny, whether of remembrance or oblivion, is decided; and that, beyond the mark which it has attained, no higher celebrity can be achieved by its possessor. While, on the other hand, numberless and meritorious in their degree are the rising candidates for poetic honours-falling in most instances as they rise-it would be hard to name one, who has given promise so clear

the passions and energies of the human mind in our happily-insulated country, which knew war only by its indirect influences and remote issues-not in the carnage of battle-fields and the devastations of marching armies-all those passions and energies being kept in continual excitement by the downfal of thrones, the destruction of commonwealths, and the experimental substitution of new forms of government in lands conquered by new

VOL. III.

36

modes of warfare, of which the progres- we speak, who so lately made the region sive details made the daily newspapers to ring with their harmony-each singing rival those pages of history which record- his own song apart, yet all blending in one ed the battles of Marathon and Cannæ- "concert of sweet voices uttering joy,”— the public mind, under such extraordinary of these we are compelled to say, that excitement, in our sequestered and sea- they are all now moulting or dead. The girded isle, was prepared to be wrought age of poetry is gone; that of economists upon, to any degree of intensity, by that and calculators has succeeded. art which, above all others, brings home "The age of poetry indeed is gone;" to men's business and bosoms, the achieve-but we have one consolation which Edments of heroes, and the sacrifices of pa- mund Burke could not feel when he uttertriots and which, consequently, renders ed his desponding lamentation. "The people of all classes more exquisitely age of chivalry is gone," and it can never alive to the fascinations of poetry in every return, because chivalry itself was but the other other way, by which the charms of fashion of a barbarous age, necessarily verse can awaken delight, admiration, lost, like the morning mists through and love of whatever is great, beautiful, which objects are magnified and obscurand pure in nature, sentiment, and imagin-ed, in the radiance of advancing day, reation.

vealing all things in the beauty and truth of their own forms and proportions. Poetry is not a fashion; it is not the creature of conventional circumstances. Poetry had its birth when "the morning stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy." From heaven it came down to paradise, and taught Adam and Eve to chaunt

Almighty! thlne this universal frame,
Thus wondrous fair---Thyself, how wondrous
then !'"

It is not then matter of wonder-it would have been more marvellous had it been otherwise-that the genius of Poetry, after the slumber of half a century from the death of Pope-during which she had occasionally walked and talked in her sleep, from the effect of a golden dream, or even awoke for a brief, lucid interval, at the voice of a Churchill or a Cowper, and sang, but soon sank down in lethar-"Their orisons each morning duly, paid gy again; it is not matter of wonder, then, In various style, for neither various style, that the genius of poesy, in our island, at Nor holy raptures wanted they, to praise that proud period, started up, as at the Their Maker, in fit strains, pronounced or sung, sound of the harp of Apollo, and the Flow'd from their lips in prose or numerous verse; Unmeditated; such prompt eloquence voices of the nine Muses, in her ears, ex- More tunable than needed lute or harp claiming, Awake, arise! or be for ever To give it sweetness; and they thus began fallen!" She did start up; she was re- These are are thy glorious works, Parent of vivified, and, in new modes of diction, on good: themes unattempted by our forefathers, with more originality of handling and invention than had ever been exemplified in a civilized country before, she created, as it were, by the inspiration which had requickened herself, both readers and auditors. There never was a time, in the life of our country, when poetry was so universally relished and enjoyed, as were the productions, at once fashionable and popular, of the Muse, during the thirty years alluded to. For though the reigns of Queen Elizabeth, the two Charleses, and Queen Anne, were distinguished as highly-poetical eras, and gave birth to the most perfect, and probably the most enduring, poems in our language-the contemporary readers of those three periods put together, did not in number or intelligence equal those of the generation which welcomed with transport (after having waited with impatience,) volume after volume, recommended by the names of Southey and Wordsworth, Coleridge, Campbell and Moore, Sir Walter Scott and Lord Byron; while minstrels of every degree from these masters of the lyre down to Robert Bloomfield and John Clare, gathered groups of listening admirers around them at the first note of a fresh lay which they sounded. But, like the songsters of last spring, when autumn comes over the woods, the bards of whom

So Milton taught, and so will I believe, of poetry in paradise; nor, when, by “man's disobedience," paradise was lost, did she forsake the exile, but accompanying his steps in the wilderness, she solaced him there in his reminiscences and regrets, and rejoiced with him in the anticipations of the fulfilment of that promise which had been delivered by Jehovah himself, in poetic figure, when, sentencing the serpent which had beguiled Eve by his subtilty, he said, "I will put enmity between thee and the woman; her seed shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." This is a perfect specimen of that style of poetic prophecy, which is at once literal and typical; the hostile relationships between man and the serpent being precisely described by their reciprocal modes of annoyance; while the deliverance of the former, and the humiliation of the latter, by a suffering yet triumphant Redeemer, are as clearly predicted.

When men began to multiply upon the earth---while Jabal was teaching his children to spread their tents and watch their flocks on the plains of Chaldea, and while Tubal Cain was learning the craft by which he became the instructor of every

ment had been allayed; though while the war-fit continued, every year had the pressure been aggravated, without the power to sustain it having been sensibly diminished. To realise wealth beyond the

artificer in brass and iron-poetry inspir- | tinguished the belligerent period. A naed Jubal and made him "the father of all tional debt of a thousand millions was to such as handle the harp and the organ." be redeemed by a trade with the whole Nor ever thenceforward deserted she the world; for with the profits of nothing less posterity of Adam, in their wanderings than such a trade could the burthen of over the whole earth, through six thou-taxes be borne, when the hostile excitesand years. From that hour she hath had her dwelling in man's mind-her delight in his heart-and she is as truly there, when latent like heat, or invisible like light, waiting to be struck out and revealed, as when she is most felt through her inspira-dreams of alchemists, improvements in tions and most manifested by her products. An age of poetry, therefore, may pass, and a long prosaic interlude may succeed, but the divinest of human arts will spring up again, not from death, but suspended animation, and diffuse its benign influence over all in man that is noble, generous, lovely, pure, and of good report.

chanic, the projects of whose head already threaten to supersede the labours of his hands, by means which his forefathers, through a hundred generations past, would have deemed less practicable than to raise spirits by magical incantations.

our staple manufactures, and facilities of intercourse, unimagined by Merlin himself, or by the bards who were the inventors of his fabulous inventions, became requisite, and they were accomplished. Accomplished do I say? Nay, verily they were commenced only-yet were they carried on with such a rapid degree of efficiency, that it is not within the scope of To return from this retrospective di- the most second-sighted among us to foregression to the recent period when poetry cast what may yet be achieved by the flourished beyond precedent in this coun-wonder-working powers of man the metry. The transition from war to peace, in 1815, was like returning from romance to reality-from a state of passionate and visionary existence to every day life and common-place cares. In the course of ten years from the battle of Waterloo, such a change had been wrought in the The violent passions of hatred, ambiminds of our countrymen, that all who tion, and revenge, with their nobler counhad been engaged in politics, commerce, terparts, the love of country, of kindred, or literature, were gradually diverted into and of justice, which, under the everentirely different modes of following their changing fortunes of universal warfare labours or their speculations. New exi- throughout Christendom, had agitated all gences to be met employed the statesman's bosoms, and, by long continuance, besolicitude-new markets were opened to come national feelings, being no longer the merchant's enterprise-and new sub- stimulated to activity, subsided by dejects of practical utility, commensurate grees, and gave way to the gentler, simwith the rapid diffusion of business-know-pler, healthier, and holier exercises of the ledge among the people, exercised the tal-mind and the heart. Our Christian and ents of those who had to furnish the pub- benevolent institutions, planted in war, lic with reading suited to the altered cir- and slowly but irrepressibly struggling cumstances of society. It was then and through the weeds and underwood of adthus that the "Age of Poetry" passed un- verse circumstances, to bear their heads observedly away, and that of "economists above-ground and look up to heaven, now and calculators" as quietly succeeded. rapidly rose in strength and luxuriance, The one went and the other came-if not striking their roots daily deeper in the "in the course of nature," yet, in what soil, and expanding their branches withmost nearly resembles it-"in the course out obstruction on the right hand and on of things," as they almost necessarily fell the left. For no sooner was the strife out, when the feelings, occupations, and ended, than British charity, unconfined to interests, of survivors, were as different the afflicted home, sallied forth, in the spifrom what they had so long been, as bury-rit of Him who went about doing good, to ing the slain on the battle-field and cultivating its soil for the production of food, are different from marching to the combat with banners and trumpets, and joining issue in hot blood, for life or for death, on the spot, and within the hour. However favourable peace may be to the growth and prosperity of the fine arts, under ordinary circumstances, such a peace as followed the French Revolution could not but be far otherwise than propitious to the finest of these. And so it occurred. There soon ceased to be that strong and universal sympathy with the themes and the sentiments of poetry which had dis

The

the ends of the earth, traversing sea and land for the purpose of finding out objects on which to pour its blessings; ministering everywhere to the personal and social, the temporal and spiritual necessities and comforts of the human race. concerns of these mighty plans of beneficence, from year to year increasing in interest, importance, extent, and obliga tions to maintain them, well and deeply, yea, with eternal attractions, engaged the minds, the affections, and the endeavours of many of the most devout and philanthropic of our countrymen of the middle class, and opened to them

fresh sources, both of employment and are most eagerly sought, and enthusiastienjoyment, beyond what poetry or ro- cally enjoyed, in the earlier stages of somance could afford to the majority of ciety-the patriarchal, the military, and those whom religion had thus inspired the aristocratic; while, in the most refined and exalted far above the level which and artificial, (contrary to what might their faculties would have reached, under have been expected,) the delights of the Mucommon circumstances, in their rank of ses are lightly esteemed and little regarded, life. These, then, having neither the lei- amidst the direct personal part, which sure nor the inclination to engage in the every member of the commonwealth must pursuits, or revel in the luxuries of litera- take in the general business of a free ture-with few exceptions-confined their country, especially one like our own, and choice of books to those which treat of at a time like this, when every man of the subjects immediately concerning the pro- adult generation, if not born has been bred, fession and practice of piety; for, though a politician. On this subject, for obvious it must be acknowledged that sacred song reasons, I forbear to expatiate, though the has been, not unworthily, essayed by intense and absorbing attention to politics some of the greatest of our poets, yet less is one main cause of the declension of pohas been achieved in that line than ought etical enterprise, and the neglect of poetito have been; while, of what has been cal reading among us. This cannot last done, and done well, the bulk of the reli- for ever. gious public is little aware, or nearly regardless.

But science and literature themselves— both of which are at this time working under high pressure-are adverse to poetry; each in its way supplying unparalleled stimulants to exalt and expand the minds, and the imaginations too, of the greatest number of the most intellectual classes. The marvels of romance are daily exceeded, in the proportion as fact frequently transcends fiction in its strange and infinitely diversified developements. Was the lamp of Aladdin, in the Arabian Nights, with all its mysterious virtue, to be compared with the lamp of Sir Humphrey Davy, by which the miner is enabled to pursue his perilous researches in the bow

But I proceed to notice by what means the great body of the reading public has become almost totally indifferent to the attractions of poetry. The actual wealth, which, notwithstanding the expenditure of hundreds of millions for the maintenance of the war, had been accumulating in the country-not from the spoils of nations, as Bonaparte enriched France, but from the command of those "ships, colonies, and commerce," which he coveted more even than the empire of the continent-that wealth enabled our ingenious artisans, indefatigable manufacturers, and enterprising merchants, immediately on the re-els of the earth, and dig out its hidden establishment of peace, to pour out into the lap of all Europe, and transport over all seas, their artificial commodities in exchange for the richest natural products of every clime under heaven. And such was the increasing avidity with which markets for these were sought out, and such the pertinacity of competition between rival speculators, that, in the course of ten years, the forcing system of trade could be upheld no longer; and individual ruin, to an extent never before equalled, and which, at any former time, would have been national ruin, ensued; so that ten years more have been required to recover from its effects, repair its devastations, and restore commerce and manufactures to that high and unparalleled state of healthful action, sound practice, and naturally advancing prosperity, to which we may hope, both at home and abroad, they have arrived at this time.

Now, neither the working hands, the governing heads, nor the inventive minds, of the multitude of our countrymen engaged in manufactures and mercantile concerns-most of them for daily bread, many for honourable competence, and not a few for princely affluence,-these can neither have time, taste, nor inclination, for the excitements or the blandishments of poetry; which, it may be remarked,

treasures in the presence of one of the most tremendous powers of nature, which, like the hundred-sighted dragon of the Hesperides, watching the golden apples, seems placed there to interdict the approach of man. He, nevertheless, by means of no magic circle, but a slight inclosure of wire-gauze, guarding the incendiary light from the attack of the firedamp spirit, labours unharmed, and breathes under an atmosphere of death, which (should the enemy, in some neglected moment, break through the slender fence) would explode, and involve himself and his companions in instantaneous destruction.

Again, what has classic mythology or legendary fable conceived more marvellous to the ignorant beholder, or more admirable to the instructed mind, than the prodigies of mechanical invention held in motion by the power of steam, which man can now compel to do his pleasure both on land and at sea; while by it he exhausts subterranean rivers, traverses metallic roads, and transports innumerable burdens with incredible speed over the surface of the earth, or moves in like manner upon the world of waters, wlthout dependence on wind or tide? Or when, as in the cotton manufacture, he compels its service in the most multiform, powerful, complex,