apprentice. But he has "every respect for the genius, and for everything that belongs to the memory, of Dryden;" and thus magniloquently eulogizes this most splendid achievement: The fact is, Dryden's version of the Knight's Tale,' would be most appropriately read by the towering shade of one of Virgil's heroes, walking up and down a battlement, and waving a long, gleaming spear, to the roll and sweep of his sonorous numbers."

MAC-FLECNOE AND THE DUNCIAD.

[Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, 1845.]

THE field which we have invaded is one obviously of a vast comprehension. Taking it up, as we have rightly done, from Dryden, more than a century and a half of our literature lies immediately and necessarily within it. For the fountain of criticism once opened and flowing, the criticism of a country continually reflects its literature, as a river the banks which yield it a channel, and through which it winds.

But the image falls short of the thing signified; for criticism is retrospective without limit, as well as cotemporaneous. Heaven only knows whether it may not be endowed with a gift of prophecy; and for its horizon-is this narrower than the world? We have undertaken a field which seems limited, only because it stretches beyond sight. Let us hope, however, that we shall find some art of striking our own road through it, without being obliged to study, both in the reflection and in the original, all the books of all nations and ages, criticising as we go along, both originals and criticisms. Every subject, said Burke-we remember his remark, though not the very words-branches out into infinitude. The point of view draws a horizon-the goal determines a track. "The British Critics" themselves are a host,

"Innumerable as the stars of night,

Or stars of morning; dewdrops which the sun
Impearls on every leaf and every flower."

But discreet, conscientious Oblivion has infolded under his loving pinions nine hundred and ninety-nine in every thousand; while we think of concerning ourselves with those only whose names occupy some notable niche, pedestal, or other position, in the august house of the great goddess Fame. We desire to show the spirit and power of British criticism, to display the characteristic working of the British intellect

in this department of intellectual activity. Therefore, among known names, we shall dwell the most upon those writers whose works the mind of the nation has the most frankly, cordially, and unreservedly taken to itself, recognizing them, as it were, for its own productions-those writers whose reputation the country has the most distinctly identified with her own renown.

We have taken hold upon two such names, Dryden and Pope. And tens of thousands have experienced with us the pleasures that arise from a renewed or new intimacy with powerful spirits. The acquaintance is not speedily exhausted. It grows and unfolds itself. When you think to have done with them, and lift up your bonnet with a courteous gesture of leave-taking, your host draws your arm within his, and leads you out into his garden, and threading some labyrinthine involution of paths, conducts you to some hidden parterre of his choicest flowers, or to the aerial watch-tower of his most magnificent prospect.

The omnipotent setter of limits, Death, freezes the tuneful tongue, unnerves the critical hand, from which the terrible pen drops into dust. Shakspeare has written his last playDryden his last tale. You may dream-if you like-of what projected and unwritten-what unprojected but possible comedies, histories, tragedies, went into the tomb in the church of Stratford upon Avon! In the meanwhile you will find that what is written is not so soon read. Read for the first time it soon is not for the last. For what is "to read?" "Legere" is "to gather." Shakspeare is not soon gathered-nor is Dryden.

Walk through a splendid region. Do you think that you have seen it? You have begun seeing it. Live in it fifty years, and by degrees you may have come to know something worth telling of Windermere! Our vocation now, gentles all, is not simply the knowing-it is the showing too; and here, too, the same remark holds good. For we think ten times and more, that now surely we have shown poet or critic. But not so. Some other attitude, some other phasis presents itself; and all at once you feel that, without it, your exposition of the power, or your picture of the man, is incomplete.

You have seen how the critics lead us a dance. Dryden and Pope criticise Shakspeare. We have been obliged to criticise Shakspeare, and this criticism of him. Dryden measures himself with Juvenal, Lucretius, and Virgil.

We

somewhat violently perhaps with a gentle violence-construe a translation into a criticism, and prate, too, of those immortals. Glorious John modernizes Father Geoffrey; and to try what capacity of palate you have for the enjoyment of English poetry some four or five centuries old, we spread our board with a feast of veritable Chaucer. Yet not a word, all the while, of the Wife of Bath's Tale of Chivalry and Faëry, which is given with fine spirit by Dryden-nor of the Cock and the Fox, told by the Nun's priest, which is renewed with infinite life and gayety, and sometimes we are half inclined to say, with fidelity in the departure, by the same matchless pen. Good old father Chaucer! Can it be true that century rolling after century thickens the dust upon Adam Scrivener's vellum! Can it be true that proceeding time widens the gulf yawning betwixt thee and ourselves, thy compatriots of another day, thy poetical posterity! The supposition is unnatural-un-English-un-Scottish. Thou hast been the one popular poet of England. Shakspeare alone has unseated thee. Thou hast been taken to the heart of Scottish poets, as though there were not even a dialectical shadow of difference distinguishing thine and their languages. A dim time, an eclipsing of light and warmth fell upon the island, and to read thee was a feat of strange scholarship, a study of the more learned. But happier years shall succeed. As Antæus the giant acquired life and strength by dropping back upon the bosom of his mother earth-she, the universal parent, was, you know, in a more private and domestic meaning, his mother-so, giants of our brood, dropping back upon thy bosom, O Father Chaucer! shall from that infusive touch renew vitality and vigour, and go forth exultingly to scale, not Olympus, but Parnassus. And now, in illustration of the ruling spirit-known and felt in its full power only by ourselves of this series-NORTH'S SPECIMENS OF THE BRITISH CRITICS

we invite unexpectedly-(for who can foresee the ensuing segment of our orbit?)-the people of these realms to admire with us the critical genius of Dryden and of Pope, displayed in their matchless satires-MAC-FLECNOE and the DUNCIAD.

In regard to these poems, shall we seek to conciliate our countrymen by admitting, at the outset, that there is something in both to be confessed and forgiven? That there is something about them that places them upon a peculiar footing-that is not quite right? They must be distinguished from the legitimate poems, in which the poet and the servant

of the Muses merely exercises his ministry. He then furnishes to the needs of humanity, and is the acknowledged benefactor of his kind. But these are wilful productions. They are from the personal self of the poet. They are arbitrary acts of mighty despots. They kill, because they choose and can. And we, alas!-we are bribed by the idolatry of power to justify the excesses of power. Let not our maligners -our foes-hear of it, for it is one of our vulnerable points. Yet as long as men and women are weak and mortal, genius will possess a privilege of committing certain peccadilloes that will be winked at and hushed up. We proclaim poetry for an organ of the highest, profoundest truth. But every now and then, when we are in difficulties, we shroud the poet and ourselves under the undeniable fact, that poetry is fiction; and under that pretext, wildly and wickedly would throw off all responsibility from him and from ourselves, his retainers and abettors; and yet, something, after all, is to be conceded to the mask of the poet. All nations and times have agreed in not judging him by the prosaic laws to which we who write and speak prose are amenable. His is a playful part, and he has a knack of slipping from under the hand of serious judgment. He is a Proteus, and feels himself bound to speak the bare truth only when he is reduced to his proper person, not whilst he is exercising his preternatural powers of illusion. He holds in his grasp the rod of the Enchanter, Pleasure, and with a touch he unnerves the joints that would seize and drag him before the seat of an ordinary police. But we must remember that we are now scrawling unprivileged prose; and beware that we do not, like other officious and uncautious partizans, bring down upon our own defenceless heads the sword which the delinquency of them mightier far has roused from the scabbard.

Let us see, then, how stands the case of such satirists. War enters into the kingdom of the Muses. Rival wits assail one another-Dryden and Shadwell. Nec dis nec viribus æquis. This is a duel-impar congressus Achillei. But when Pope undertakes to hunt down the vermin of literature, this is no distraction of the Parnassian realm by civil war. This is the lawful magistrate going forth, armed perhaps with extraordinary powers, to clear an infested district of vulgar malefactors and notorious bad characters..

Vile publishers, vile critics, vile scribblers of every denomination, in prose and verse-all those who turn the press, that