the intermixture of dross or alloy with its fine goldmuch less disfigured by occasional pedantry and affectation -much more correct and free from flaws and incongruities of all kinds. In whatever regards form, indeed, our more modern poetry is certainly, taken in its general character, the more perfect; and that notwithstanding many passages to be found in the greatest of our elder poets, which in mere writing have perhaps never since been equalled, nor are likely ever to be excelled; and notwithstanding also something of greater boldness with which their position enabled them to handle the language, thereby attaining sometimes a force and expressiveness not so much within the reach of their successors in our own day. The literary cultivation of the language throughout two additional centuries, and the stricter discipline under which it has been reduced, may have brought loss or inconvenience in one direction, as well as gain in another; but the gain certainly preponderates. Even in the matter of versification, the lessons of Milton, of Dryden, and of Pope have no doubt been upon the whole instructive and beneficial; whatever of misdirection any of them may have given for a time to the form of our poetry passed away with his contemporaries and immediate followers, and now little or nothing but the good remains-the example of the superior care and uniform finish, and also something of sweetest and deepest music, as well as much of spirit and brilliancy, that were unknown to our earlier poets. In variety and freedom, as well as in beauty, majesty, and richness of versification, some of our living or recent writers have not been excelled by any of their predecessors; and the versification of the generality of our modern poets is

greatly superior to that of the common run of those of the age of Elizabeth and James.

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One remarkable distinction between the Elizabethan and the recent era is, that of the poetical produce of the latter a much more inconsiderable portion ran into the dramatic form. Coleridge, indeed, translated Wallenstein,' and wrote his tragedies of Zapolya' and ' Remorse' Scott (but not till after all his other works in verse) produced what he called his dramatic sketch of 'Halidon Hill,' and his three-act plays of The Doom of Devorgoil,' and 'The Ayrshire Tragedy,' in all of which attempts he seemed to be deserted both by his power of dialogue and his power of poetry: Byron, towards the close of his career, gave new proof of the wonderful versatility of his genius by his 'Marino Faliero,' his' Two Foscari,' his Sardanapalus,' and his Werner,' besides his' Manfred,' and his mystery of' Cain,' in another style and Shelley, in 1819, gave to the world perhaps the greatest of modern English tragedies in his' Cenci.' This, we believe, was nearly the sum total of the dramatic poetry produced by the more eminent poetical writers of the first quarter of the present century. The imitation of the old Elizabethan drama, of which we have since had so much, only began to become a rage after the day which these great names had illustrated began to decline. Joanna Baillie, indeed, still living, the honoured survivor of so many of her contemporaries and of her successors, had published the first volume of her Plays on the Passions' so long ago as in 1798; the second followed in 1802; and Lamb's tragedy of 'John Woodvil❜—which the Edinburgh Reviewers profanely said might be fairly considered as supplying

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PROSE LITERATURE.

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the first of those lost links which connect the improvements of Eschylus with the commencement of the art'— appeared the same year; but it attracted little notice at the time, though both by this production, and much more by his Specimens of English Dramatic Poets,' first published in 1808, Lamb had a principal share in reviving the general study and love of our early drama. Something, probably, was also done to spread the fashion of that sort of reading by the fictitious quotations from old plays which headed the chapters of several of the Waverley novels. But, perhaps, if we except Miss Baillie's plays, which came rather too early, the first dramatic work studiously composed in imitation of the language of the Elizabethan drama which, meeting the rising taste, excited general attention, was Mr. Milman's tragedy of Fazio,' which appeared in 1815, and was followed by his Anne Boleyn,' and several others in the same style.

PROSE LITERATURE.

Of the prose literature of this recent era we have room for only the briefest notice. Among its most distinguished ornaments were some of the chief poetical writers of the time. Southey and Scott were two of the most voluminous prose writers of their day, or of any day; Coleridge also wrote much more prose than verse; both Campbell and Moore are considerable authors in prose; there are several prose pieces among the published works of Byron, of Shelley, and of Wordsworth; both Leigh Hunt and Wilson have perhaps acquired more of their fame, and have given more wide-spread delight, as prose

writers than as poets; Charles Lamb's prose writings, his golden Essays of Elia,' and various critical disquisitions and short notices, abounding in original views and the deepest truth and beauty, have made his verse be nearly forgotten. This may be in part the cause of the more poetical complexion which our prose writing has generally assumed within the last thirty or forty years. Among the other most brilliant or otherwise conspicuous prose writers of the period we have been reviewing may be mentioned, in general literature, Sidney Smith, Hazlitt, Jeffrey, Playfair, Stewart, Alison, Thomas Brown; in political disquisition, Erskine, Cobbett, Brougham, Mackintosh, Bentham; in theological eloquence, Horsley, Wilberforce, Foster, Hall, Chalmers; in fictitious narrative, Miss Edgeworth, Mrs. Opie, Miss Owenson (Lady Morgan), Mrs. Brunton, Miss Austen, Madame d'Arblay, Godwin, Maturin; in history, Fox, Mitford, Lingard, Mill, Hallam, Turner. The most remarkable prose works that were produced were Scott's novels, the first of which, Waverley,' appeared in 1814. A powerful influence upon literature was also exerted from the first by the Edinburgh Review,' begun in 1802; the Quarterly Review,' begun in 1809; and Blackwood's Magazine,' established in 1817.

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PROGRESS OF SCIENCE.

Only a few of the most memorable facts connected with the progress of scientific discovery in England, during this period, can be very briefly noted. In astronomy Herschel continued to pursue his observations, mmenced a short time before 1781, in which year he

discovered the planet Uranus; in 1802, appeared in the Philosophical Transactions his catalogue of 500 new nebulæ and nebulous stars; in 1803 his announcement of the motions of double stars around each other; and a long succession of other important papers, illustrative of the construction of the heavens, followed down to within a few years of his death, at the age of eighty-four, in 1822. In chemistry, Davy, who had published his aecount of the effects produced by the respiration of nitrous oxide (the laughing gas) in 1800, in 1807 extracted metallic bases from the fixed alkalis, in 1808 demonstrated the similar decomposibility of the alkaline earths, in 1811 detected the true nature of chloride (oxymuriatic acid), and in 1815 invented his safety lamp; in 1804 Leslie published his Experimental Enquiry into the Nature and Properties of Heat;' in 1808 the Atomic Theory was announced by Dalton; and in 1814 its development and illustration were completed by Wollaston, to whom both chemical science and optics are also indebted for various other valuable services.

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