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English Poetry.

Considered as a nation, we are yet but imperfectly recovered from that strange and ungrateful forgetfulness of our older poets, which began with the restoration, and continued almost unbroken till after the middle of the last century. Nor can the works which have chiefly tended to dispel it among the instructed orders, be ranked in a very high class.

Percy's Relics of Ancient Poetry produced, we believe, the first revulsion; and this was followed up by Warton's History of Poetry. Johnson's Lives of the Poets did something; but the great effect has been produced by the modern commentators on Shakspeare. These various works recommended the older writers, and reinstated them in some of their honours; still the works themselves were not placed before the eyes of ordinary readers. This was done in part, perhaps overdone, by the entire republication of some of our older dramatists, and with better effect by Mr. Ellis's specimens. If the former, however, was rather too copi

ous a supply for the returning appetite of the public, the latter was too scanty, and both were confined to too narrow a portion of time to enable the reader to enjoy the variety, and to draw the comparisons, by which he might be most pleased and instructed.

There is no reader, we will venture to say, who will rise from the perusal, even of the partial and scanty fragments contained in Campbell's Specimens of the British Poets, without a deep sense of the matchless richness, variety, and originality of English poetry while the juxta position and arrangement of the pieces not only give room for endless comparisons and contrasts, but displays, as it were, in miniature, the whole of its wonderful progress; and sets before us, as in a great gallery of pictures, the whole course and history of the art, from its first rude and infant beginnings, to its maturity, and, perhaps, its decline. While it has all the grandeur and instruction that belongs to such a gallery, it is free from the perplexity and distraction that is usually complained of in such exhibitions, as each piece is necessarily considered separately, and in succession, and the mind cannot wander like the eye, through the splendid labyrinth in which it is enchanted. Nothing can be more delightful than thus, at our ease, to trace through all its periods, vicissitudes, and aspects, the progress of this highest and most intellectual of all the arts; coloured as it is in every age by the manners of the times which produce it, and embodying, besides

these flights of fancy, and touches of pathos, that constitute its more immediate essence, much of the wisdom, and much of the morality that was then current among the people; and thus presenting us. not merely with almost all that genius has ever created for delight, but with a brief chronicle and abstract of all that was once interesting to the generations which have gone by.

There is something pious and endearing in the office of gathering up the ashes of renown that has passed away; or rather of calling back the departed life for a transitory glow, and enabling those great spirits which seemed to be laid for ever, still to draw a tear of pity, or a throb of admiration, from the heart of a forgetful generation; the body of their poetry can never be revived, but some of its spirit may yet be preserved in a narrower and feebler frame.

When we look back on the havoc which two hundred years have thus made in the ranks of our immortals, and above all, when we refer their rapid disappearance to the quick succession of new competitors, and the accumulation of more good works than there is time to peruse, we cannot help being dismayed at the prospect which lies before the writers of the present day.

There never was an age so prolific of popular poetry as that in which we now live; and, as wealth, population, and education extend, the produce is likely to go on increasing.

The last ten years have produced an annual sup

ply of about ten thousand lines of good staple poetry; poetry from the very first hands that we can boast of.

Now, if this goes on for a hundred years longer, what a task will await the poetical readers of 1919. Our living poets will then be nearly as old as Pope and Swift are at present; but there will still stand between them and that generation nearly ten times as much fresh and fashionable poetry as is now interposed between us and those writers; and if Byron, Scott, and Campbell, have already cast Pope and Swift a good deal into the shade, in what form and dimensions are they themselves likely to be presented to the eyes of their great grandchildren? The thought, we own, is a little appalling; and we confess we see nothing better than to imagine that they may find a place in some new collection of specimens There, if the future editor have any thing like the indulgence and veneration for antiquity of his predecessors, there shall posterity still hang with rapture on the half of Campbell, and the fourth part of Byron, and the sixth of Scott, and the scattered tythes of Crabbe, and the three per cent. of Southey. We have no Shakspeare, alas! to shed a never setting light on his contemporaries; and if we continue to write and rhyme at the present rate for two hundred years longer, there must be some new art of short-hand reading invented, or all reading will be given up in despair.

The fashion of the present day is to solicit public esteem, not only for the best, but for the humblest writers of the age of Elizabeth. Hence, it has led

Born. Died.

1553 1599

1551

1558 1600

1534

1604

1574

1656

1558

1609

Editions.

EDMUND SPENSER. Edited by Todd.
JOHN LYLY. Wrote Euphues, and nine Plays.
ALEXANDER HUME.

THOMAS NASH. List of works in Beloe's Anecdotes.
EDWARD VERE, Earl of Oxford.

THOMAS STORER. Wrote in England's Helicon.

JOSEPH HALL, Bishop Hall. Satires, frequently reprinted.

WILLIAM WARNER. Albion's England.

1561 1612 SIR JOHN HARRINGTON. Specimens in Nugæ Antiq.

NICHOLAS BRETON. List Censura Lit. Biog. Poet,

DR. THOMAS LODGE. Wrote Plays, and translated

Josephus.

BEAUMONT AND

1562

1619

FLETCHER.

1593

Dramatic.

Poem on Immortality of the Soul.

1631

THOMAS GOFFE. Wrote Tragedy of Amurath.

SIR JOHN BEAUMONT. Brother to the celebrated Dra

matic Poet.

MICHAEL DRAYTON.
EDWARD FAIRFAX.

Wrote Polyolbion, first 1613.

Best translator of Tasso. In

scribed to Queen Eliz.

SAMUEL ROWLANDS. Pamphleteer in the reign of Eliza

beth and James the First.

JOHN DONNE, D. D.

THOMAS PICKE. Collection of Songs, 1631.

1632 GEORGE HERBERT, called Holy George Herbert.

Temple.

1634 JOHN MARSTON. Dramatist.