The summer dawn's reflected hue Her chalice rear'd of silver bright; The lark set down her revelry; Silenc'd the warblers of the brake."-pp. 98-100. The following description of the starting of "the fiery cross," bears more marks of labour than most of Mr. Scott's poetry, and borders, perhaps, upon straining and exaggeration; yet it shows great power. Then Rod'rick, with impatient look, From Brian's hand the symbol took: The bubbles, where they launch'd the boat, When it had near'd the mainland hill! And from the silver beach's side Speed. Malise, speed! the dun deer's hide Speed, Malise, speed! such cause of haste The wounded hind thou track'st not now, The following reflections on an ancient field of battle afford one of the most remarkable instances of false taste in all Mr. Scott's writings. Yet the brevity and variety of the images serve well to show, as we have for merly hinted, that even in his errors there are traces of a powerful genius. "a dreary glen, Where scatter'd lay the bones of men, And bleach'd by drifting wind and rain. 46 And he was answer'd from the hill! As if an infant's touch could urge Fitz-James was brave:-Though to his heart Short space he stood-then wav'd his hand. In broom or bracken, heath or wood It seem'd as if their mother Earth On bracken green, and cold grey stone." The following picture is of a very different character; but touched also with the hand of a true poet: "Yet ere his onward way he took. The Stranger cast a ling'ring look, His rev'rend brow was rais'd to heaven, "As wreath of snow on inountain breast, To him thy woes, thy wishes, bring; 666 Malcolm, come forth-And, and at the word Down kneel'd the Græme to Scotland's Lord. . For thee, rash youth, no suppliant sues, From thee may Vengeance claim her dues. Who, nurtur'd underneath our smile, Has paid our care by treach'rous wile, And sought, amid thy faithful clan, A refuge for an outlaw'd man, Dishonouring thus thy loyal name.Fetters and warder for the Græme! His chain of gold the King unstrung, The links o'er Malcolm's neck he flung, Then gently drew the glitt'ring band; And laid the clasp on Ellen's hand!"-p. 288. There are no separate introductions to the cantos of this poem; but each of them be gins with one or two stanzas in the measure of Spenser, usually containing some reflec Though these extracts have already ex- tions connected with the subject about to be tended this article beyond all reasonable entered on; and written, for the most part, bounds, we cannot omit Ellen's introduction with great tenderness and beauty. The fol to the court, and the transformation of Fitz-lowing, we think is among the most striking:James into the King of Scotland. The un-Time rolls his ceaseless course! The race of yore known prince, it will be recollected, himself conducts her into the royal presence: Beside him Ellen sate and smil'd," &c. "With beating heart, and bosom wrung, Within 'twas brilliant all and light, And Snowdoun's Knight is Scotland's King. Who danc'd our infancy upon their knee, Like stranded wrecks-the tide returning hoarse, To sweep them from our sight! Time rolls his ceaseless course! "Yet live there still who can remember well, How, when a mountain chief his bugle blew," &c. pp. 97, 98. There is an invocation to the Harp of the North, prefixed to the poem; and a farewell subjoined to it in the same measure, written and versified, it appears to us, with more than Mr. Scott's usual care. We give two of the three stanzas that compose the last :"Harp of the North, farewell! The hills grow dark, On purple peaks a deeper shade descending; "Hark! as my ling'ring footsteps slow retire, Some Spirit of the Air has wak'd thy string! 'Tis now a Seraph bold, with touch of fire; 'Tis now the brush of Fairy's frolic wing. Receding now, the dying numbers ring These passages, though taken with very I'll have my share, howe'er it be.'"' pp. 250, 251. His Highland freebooters, indeed, do not ase a much nobler style. For example :- It is, because last evening-tide Of that dread kind which must not be The Taghairm call'd; by which, afar, And kept our stoutest kernes in awe, "For life is Hugh of Larbert lame ;”— "'Tis James of Douglas, by Saint Serle; 666 Fleet foot on the correi; 999 &c. may These, however, and several others that might be mentioned, are blemishes which may well be excused' in a poem of more than five thousand lines, produced so soon after another still longer and though they are blemishes which it is proper to notice, because they are evidently of a kind that be corrected, it would be absurd, as well as unfair, to give them any considerable weight in our general estimate of the work, or of the powers of the author. already spoken at sufficient length; and must Of these, we have now take an abrupt leave of Mr. Scott, by expressing our hope, and tolerably confident expectation, of soon meeting with him again. That he may injure his popularity by the mere profusion of his publications, is no doubt possible; though many of the most celebrated poets have been among the most voluminous: but, that the public must gain by this libe. rality, does not seem to admit of any ques tion. If our poetical treasures were increased by the publication of Marmion and the Lady of the Lake, notwithstanding the existence of great faults in both those works, it is evident that we should be still richer if we pos sessed fifty poems of the same merit; and, therefore, it is for our interest, whatever it may be as to his, that their author's muse should continue as prolific as she has hitherto been. If Mr. Scott will only vary his subjects a little more, indeed, we think we might engage to insure his own reputation against any material injury from their rapid parturi tion; and, as we entertain very great doubts whether much greater pains would enable him to write much better poetry, we would rather have two beautiful poems, with the present quantum of faults-than one, with only one-tenth part less alloy. He will always be a poet, we fear, to whom the fastidious will make great objections; but he may easily find, in his popularity, a compensation for their scruples. He has the jury hollow in his favour; and though the court may think that its directions have not been sufficiently |attended to, it will not quarrel with the verdict (April, 1808.) Poems. By the Reverend GEORGE CRABBE. 8vo. pp. 260. Lon lon, 1807.* WE receive the proofs of Mr. Crabbe's usurp the attention which he was sure of poetical existence, which are contained in commanding, and allowed himself to be this volume, with the same sort of feeling nearly forgotten by a public, which reckons that would be excited by tidings of an ancient upon being reminded of all the claims which friend, whom we no longer expected to hear the living have on its favour. His former of in this world. We rejoice in his resurrec-publications, though of distinguished merit, tion, both for his sake and for our own: But were perhaps too small in volume to remain we feel also a certain movement of self-con-long the objects of general attention, and demnation, for having been remiss in our in- seem, by some accident, to have been jostled quiries after him, and somewhat too negligent aside in the crowd of more clamorous comof the honours which ought, at any rate, to petitors. have been paid to his memory. Yet, though the name of Crabbe has not It is now, we are afraid, upwards of twenty hitherto been very common in the mouths of years since we were first struck with the vigour poetical critics, we believe there are few our, originality, and truth of description of "The Village" and since, we regretted that an author, who could write so well, should have written so little. From that time to the present, we have heard little of Mr. Crabbe; and fear that he has been in a great measure lost sight of by the public, as well as by us. With a singular, and scarcely pardonable indifference to fame, he has remained, during this long interval, in patient or indolent repose; and, without making a single movement to maintain or advance the reputation he had acquired, has permitted others to I have given a larger space to Crabbe in this republication than to any of his contemporary poets; not merely because I think more highly of him than of most of them, but also because I fancy that he has had less justice done him. The nature of his subjects was not such as to attract either imitators or admirers, from among the ambitious or fanciful lovers of poetry; or, consequently, to set him at the head of a School, or let him surround himself with the zealots of a Sect: And it must also be admitted, that his claims to distinction depend fully as much on his great powers of observation, his skill in touching the deeper sympathies of our nature, and his power of inculcating, by their means, the most impressive lessons of humanity, as on any fine play of fancy, or grace and beauty in his delineations. I have great faith, however, in the in trinsic worth and ultimate success of those more substantial attributes; and have, accordingly, the strongest impression that the citations I have here given from Crabbe will strike more, and sink deeper to the minds of readers to whom they are new (or by whom they may have been partially forgot ten), than any I have been able to present from other writers. It probably is idle enough (as well as a little presumptuous) to suppose that a publication like this will afford many opportunities of testing the truth of this prediction. But, as the experiment is to be made, there can be no harm in mentioning this as one of its objects. It is but candid, however, after all, to add, that my concern for Mr. Crabbe's reputation would scarcely have led me to devote near one hundred pages to the estimate of his poetical merits, had I not set some value on the speculations as to the elements of poetical excellence in general, and its moral bearings and affinities--for the introduction of which this estimate seemed to present an occasien, or apologv. real lovers of poetry to whom some of his century. His characteristic, certainly, is force, and trth of description, joined for the most part to great selection and condensation of expres sion;-that kind of strength and originality which we meet with in Cowper, and that sort of diction and versification which we admire in "The Deserted Village" of Goldsmith, or "The Vanity of Human Wishes" of Johnson. If he can be said to have imitated the manner of any author, it is Goldsmith, indeed, who has been the object of his imitation; and yet his general train of thinking, and his views of society, are so extremely opposite, that, when "The Village" was first published, it was commonly considered as an antidote or an answer to the more captivating representations of "The Deserted Village." Compared with this celebrated author be will be found we think, to have more vigour and less delicacy; and while he must be admitted to be inferior in the fine finish and uniform beauty of his composition, we cannot help considering him as superior, both in the variety and the truth of his pictures. Instead of that uniform tint of pensive tenderness which overspreads the whole poetry of Goldsmith, we find in Mr. Crabbe many gleams of gaiety and humour. Though his habitual views of life are more gloomy than those of his rival, his poetical temperament seems far more cheerful; and when the occasions of sorrow and rebuke are gone by, he can collect himself for sarcastic pleasantry, or unbend in innocent playfulness. His diction, though generally pure and powerful, is sometimes harsh, and sometimes quaint; and he has occasionally admitted a couplet or two in a state so unfinished, as to give a character of inelegance to the passages in which they occur. With a taste less disciplined and less fastidious than that of Goldsmith, he has, in our apprehension, a keener eye for observation, and a readier hand for the delineation of what he has observed. There is less poetical keeping in his whole performance; but the groups of which it consists are conceived, we think, with equal genius, and drawn with greater spirit as well as far greater fidelity. It is not quite fair, perhaps, thus to draw a detailed parallel between a living poet, and one whose reputation has been sealed by death, and by the immutable sentence of a surviving generation. Yet there are so few of his contemporaries to whom Mr. Crabbe bears any resemblance, that we can scarcely explain our opinion of his merit, without comparing him to some of his predecessors. There is one set of writers, indeed, from whose works those of Mr. Crabbe might receive all that elucidation which results from contrast, and from an entire opposition in all points of taste and opinion. We allude now to the Wordsworths, and the Southeys, and Coleridges, and all that ambitious fraternity, that, with good intentions and extraordinary talents, are labouring to bring back our poetry to the fantastical oddity and puling childishness of Withers, Quarles, or Marvel. These gentlemen write a great deal about rustic life, as well as Mr. Crabbe; and they even agree with him in dwelling much on its discomforts; but nothing can be more opposite than the views they take of the subject, or the manner in which they execute their representations of them. Mr. Crabbe exhibits the common people of England pretty much as they are, and as they must appear to every one who will take the trouble of examining into their condition; at the same time that he renders his sketches in a very high degree interesting and beautiful -by selecting what is most fit for description by grouping them into such forms as must catch the attention or awake the memory and by scattering over the whole such traits of moral sensibility, of sarcasm, and of deep reflection, as every one must feel to be natural, and own to be powerful. The gentle-I men of the new school, on the other hand, scarcely ever condescend to take their sub jects from any description of persons at a. known to the common inhabitants of the world; but invent for themselves certain whimsical and unheard-of beings, to whom they impute some fantastical combination of feelings, and then labour to excite our sym. pathy for them, either by placing them in incredible situations, or by some strained and exaggerated moralisation of a vague and tragical description. Mr. Crabbe, in short, shows us something which we have all seen, or may see, in real life; and draws from it such feelings and such reflections as every human being must acknowledge that it is calculated to excite. He delights us by the truth, and vivid and picturesque beauty of his representations, and by the force and pathos of the sensations with which we feel that they are connected. Mr. Wordsworth and his associates, on the other hand, introduce us to beings whose existence was not previously suspected by the acutest observers of nature; and excite an interest for them-where they do excite any interest-more by an eloquent and refined analysis of their own capricious feelings, than by any obvious or intelligible ground of sympathy in their situation. Those who are acquainted with the Lyrical Ballads, or the more recent publications of Mr. Wordsworth, will scarcely deny the justice of this representation; but in order to vindicate it to such as do not enjoy that advantage, we must beg leave to make a few hasty references to the former, and by far the least exceptionable of those productions. A village schoolmaster, for instance, is a pretty common poetical character. Goldsmith has drawn him inimitably; so has Shenstone, with the slight change of sex; and Mr. Crabbe, in two passages, has followed their footsteps. Now, Mr. Wordsworth has a village schoolmaster also-a personage who makes no small figure in three or four of his poems. But by what traits is this worthy old gentleman de lineated by the new poet? No pedantry-no innocent vanity of learning-no mixture of indulgence with the pride of power, and of poverty with the consciousness of rare ac quirements. Every feature which belongs to the situation, or marks the character in com mon apprehension, is scornfully discarded by Mr. Wordsworth; who represents his grey haired rustic pedagogue as a sort of half crazy, sentimental person, overrun with fine feel ings, constitutional merriment, and a most humorous melancholy. Here are the two stanzas in which this consistent and intelligible character is pourtrayed. The diction is at least as new as the conception. "The sighs which Matthew heav'd were sighs Of one tir'd out with fun and madness; The tears which came to Matthew's eyes Were tears of light-the oil of gladness. "Yet sometimes, when the secret cup Of still and serious thought went round He felt with spirit so profound. |