We come now to the most ungracious part of our undertaking; that of considering the literary character of the deceased. This is rendered the more delicate, from the excessive eulogiums passed on him, in the enthusiasm of friendship, by his biographers, and which make us despair of yielding any praise that can approach to their ideas of his deserts.

We are told that Dryden was Mr. P.'s favourite author, and in some measure his prototype; but he appears to have admired, rather than to have studied him. Like all those writers who take up some particular author as a model, a degree of bigotry has entered into his devotion, which made him blind to the faults of his original; or, rather, these faults became beauties in his eyes. Such, for instance, is that propensity to far-sought allusions, and forced conceits. Had he studied Dryden in connexion with the literature of his day, contrasting him with the poets who preceded him, and those who were his cotemporaries-Mr. P. would have discovered that these were faults which Dryden reprobated himself. They were the lingering traces of a taste which he was himself endeavouring to abolish. Dryden was a great reformer of English poetry; not merely by improving the versification, and taming the rude roughness of the language into smoothness and harmony; but by abolishing from it those metaphysical subtleties, those strange analogies and extravagant combinations, which had been the pride and study of the old school. Thus struggling to cure others and himself of these excesses, it is not surprising that some of them still lurked about his writings; it is rather a matter of surprise, that the number should be so inconsiderable.

These, however, seem to have caught the ardent and illregulated imagination of Mr. Paine, and to have given a tincture to the whole current of his writings. We find him continually aiming at fine thoughts, fine figures, and epigrammatic point. The censure that Johnson passes on his great prototype, may be applied with tenfold justice to him: "His delight was in wild and daring sallies of sentiment-in the irregular and eccentric violence of wit. He delighted to tread upon the brink of meaning, where light and darkness begin to

mingle; to approach the precipice of absurdity, and hover over the abyss of unideal vacancy." His verses are often so dizened out with embroidery, that the subject matter is lost in the ornament-the idea is confused by the illustration; or rather, instead of one plain, distinct idea being presented to the mind, we are bewildered with a score of similitudes-such, for instance, is the case with the following passage, taken at random, and which is intended to be descriptive of misers:

"In life's dark cell, pale burns their glimmering soul:
A rush-light warms the winter of the pole.

To chill and cheerless solitude confined,
No spring of virtue thaws the ice of mind.

They creep in blood, as frosty streamlets flow,
And freeze with life, as dormice sleep in snow.

Like snails they bear their dungeons on their backs,
And shut out light-to save a window tax !"

His figures and illustrations are often striking and beautiful, but too often far-fetched and extravagant. He had always plenty at command, and, indeed, every thought that he conceived drew after it a cluster of similies. Among these he either had not the talent to discriminate, or the self-denial to discard. Every thing that entered his mind was transferred to his page, trope followed trope, illustration was heaped on illustration, ornament outvied ornament, until what at first promised to be fine, ended in being tawdry.

Of his didactic poems one of the most prominent is the "Ruling Passion." It contains many passages of striking merit, but is loaded with epithet, and distorted by constant straining after epigram and eccentricity. The author seems never content unless he be sparkling; the reader is continually perplexed to know what he means, and sometimes disappointed, when he does find out, to discover that he means so little. It is one of the properties of poetic genius to give consequence to trifles. By a kind of magic power, it swells things up beyond their natural dimensions, and decks them out with a splendour of dress and colouring that completely hides their real insignificance. Pigmy thoughts that crept in prose, start up into gigantic size in poetry; and strutting in lofty

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epithets, inflated with hyperbole, and glittering with fine figures, are apt to take the imagination by surprise, and dazzle the judgment: The steady eye of scrutiny, however, soon penetrates the glare; and when the thought has shrunk back to its real dimensions, what appeared to be oracular, turns out to be a truism.

As an instance of this we will quote the following passage:

"Heroes and bards, who nobler flights have won

Than Cæsar's eagles, or the Mantuan swan,
From eldest era share the common doom;
The sun of glory shines but on the tomb.
Firm as the Mede, the stern decree subdues
The brightest pageant of the proudest muse.
Man's noblest powers could ne'er the law revoke,
Though Handel harmonized what Chatham spoke;
Though tuneful Morton's magic genius graced
The Hyblean melody of Merry's taste!

"Time, the stern censor, talisman of fame, With rigid justice portions praise and shame : And, while his laurels, reared where genius grew, 'Mid wide oblivion's lava bloom anew;

Oft will his chymic fire, in distant age

Elicit spots, unseen on ancient page.

So the famed sage, who plunged in Etna's flame,

'Mid pagan deities enshrined his name;

'Till from the iliac mountain's crater thrown,

The Martyr's sandal cost the God his crown." P. 187.

Here the simple thought conveyed in this gorgeous page, as far as we can rake it out from among the splendid rubbish, is this, that fame is tested by time; a truth, than which scarcely any is more familiar, and which the author, from the resemblance of the fourth line, and the tenor of those which preceded it, had evidently seen much more touchingly expressed in the elegy of Gray.

The characters in this poem, which are intended to exemplify a ruling passion, are trite and commonplaced. The pedant, the deluded female, the fop, the old maid, the miser, are

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all hackneyed subjects of satire, and are treated in a hackneyed manner. If these old dishes are to be served up again, we might at least expect that the sauces would be It is evident Mr. Paine drew his characters from books rather than from real life. His fop flourishes the cane and snuff-box as in the days of Sir Fopling Flutter. His old maid is sprigged and behooped, and hides behind her fan according to immemorial usage; and in his other characters we trace the same family likeness that marks the descendants of the heroes and heroines of ancient British poetry.

The following description of the Savoyard is sprightly and picturesque, though, unfortunately for the author, it reminds us of the Swiss peasant of Goldsmith, and forces upon us the contrast between that sparkling poetry which dazzles the fancy, and those simple, homefelt strains, which sink to the heart, and are treasured up there.

"To fame unknown, to happier fortune born,
The blithe Savoyard hails the peep of morn;
And while the fluid gold his eye surveys,
The hoary glaciers fling their diamond blaze;
Geneva's broad lake rushes from its shores,
Arve gently murmurs, and the rough Rhone roars.
'Mid the cleft Alps, his cabin peers from high,
Hangs o'er the clouds, and perches on the sky.
O'er fields of ice, across the headlong flood,
From cliff to cliff he bounds in fearless mood.
While, far beneath, a night of tempest lies,
Deep thunder mutters, harmless lightning flies;
While, far above, from battlements of snow
Loud torrents tumble on the world below;
On rustic reed he wakes a merrier tune,
Than the lark warbles on the Ides of June.'
Far off let glory's clarion shrilly swell;
He loves the music of his pipe as well.
Let shouting millions crown the hero's head,
And pride her tessellated pavement tread,
More happy far, this denizen of air
Enjoys what nature condescends to spare;
His days are jocund, undisturbed his nights,

His spouse contents him and his mule delights." P. 184.

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The conclusion of this very descriptive passage partakes lamentably of the bathos. We cannot but smile at the last line, where he has paid the conjugal feelings of his hero but a sorry compliment, making him more delighted with his mule than with the wife of his bosom.

The "Invention of Letters" is another poem, where the author seems to have exerted the full scope of his talents. It shows that adroitness in the tricks of composition, that love for meretricious ornament, and at the same time that amazing store of imagery and illustration, which characterize this writer. We see in it many fine flights of thought, and brave sallies of the imagination, but at the same time a superabundance of the luscious faults of poetry; and we rise from it with augmented regret, that so rich and prolific a genius had not been governed by a purer taste. The following eulogium of Faustus is a fair specimen of the author's beauties and defects.

"Egyptian shrubs, in hands of cook or priest,

A king could mummy, or enrich a feast;
Faustus, great shade! a nobler leaf imparts,
Embalms all ages, and preserves all arts.

The ancient scribe, employed by bards divine,
With faltering finger traced the lingering line.
So few the scrivener's dull profession chose,
With tedious toil each tardy transcript rose;
And scarce the Iliad, penned from oral rhyme,
Grew with the bark that bore its page sublime.
But when the press, with fertile womb supplies
The useful sheet, on thousand wings it flies;
Bound to no climate, to no age confined,
The pinioned volume spreads to all mankind.
No sacred power the Cadmean art could claim,
O'er time to triumph, and defy the flame :
In one sad day a Goth could ravage more
Than ages wrote, or ages could restore.

The Roman helmet, or the Grecian lyre,
A realm might conquer, or a realm inspire;
Then sink, oblivious, in the mouldering dust,

With those who blessed them, and with those who curst.