MILTON -HIS SUPERNATURAL CHARACTERS.

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What an awful effect has the dim and undefined conception of the conflict, which we gather from the retrospects in the first book! There the veil of mystery is left undrawn between us and a subject which the powers of description were inadequate to exhibit. The ministers of divine vengeance and pursuit had been recalled-the thunders had ceased

To bellow through the vast and boundless deep,'

(in that line what an image of sound and space is conveyed!)-and our terrific conception of the past is deepened by its indistinctness. In optics there are some phenomena which are beautifully deceptive at a certain distance, but which loose their illusive charm on the slightest approach to them that changes the light and position in which they are viewed. Something like this takes place in the phenomena of fancy. The array of the fallen angels in hell -the unfurling of the standard of Satan-and the march of his troops

In perfect phalanx, to the Dorian mood

Of Hlutes and soft recorders,—

all this human pomp and circumstance of war is magic and overwhelming illusion. The imagination is taken by surprise. But the noblest efforts of language are tried with very unequal effect, to interest us in the immediate and close view of the battle itself in the sixth book; and the martial demons, who charmed us in the shades of hell, lose some portion of their sublimity, when their artillery is discharged in the daylight of heaven.

"If we call diction the garb of thought, Milton, in his style, may be said to wear the costume of sovereignty. The idioms even of foreign languages contributed to adorn it. He was the most learned

of poets; yet his learning interferes not with his substantial English purity. His simplicity is unimpaired by glowing ornament, like the bush in the sacred flame, which burnt but was not consumed.'

“In delineating the blessed spirits, Milton has exhausted all the conceivable variety that could be given to pictures of unshaded sanctity; but it is chiefly in those of the fallen angels that his excellence is conspicuous above every thing ancient or modern. Tasso had, indeed, portrayed an infernal council, and had given the hint to our poet of ascribing the origin of pagan worship to those reprobate spirits. But how poor and squalid in comparison of the Miltonic Pandæmonium are the Scyllas, the Cyclopses, and the Chimeras of the Infernal Council of the Jerusalem! Tasso's conclave of fiends is a den of ugly incongruous monsters. The powers of Milton's hell are godlike shapes and forms. Their appearance dwarfs every other poetical conception, when we turn our dilated eyes from contemplating them. It is not their external attributes alone which expand the imagination, but their souls, which are as colossal as their stature their thoughts that wander through eternity-the pride that burns amidst the ruins of their divine natures, and their genius, that feels with the ardour, and debates with the eloquence of heaven."— p. 242-247.

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CAMPBELL- -HIS CRITIQUE ON POPE.

We have already said, that we think Shirley overpraised- -but he is praised with great eloquence. There is but little said of Dryden in the Essay-but it is said with force and with judgment. In speaking of Pope and his contemporaries, Mr. C. touches on debatable ground: And we shall close our quotations from this part of his work, with the passage in which he announces his own indulgent, and, perhaps, latitudinarian opinions.

"There are exclusionists in taste, who think that they cannot speak with sufficient disparagement of the English poets of the first part of the eighteenth century; and they are armed with a noble provocative to English contempt, when they have it to say that those poets belong to a French school. Indeed Dryden himself is generally included in that school; though more genuine English is to be found in no man's pages. But in poetry there are many mansions.' I am free to confess, that I can pass from the elder writers, and still find a charm in the correct and equable sweetness of Parnell. Conscious that his diction has not the freedom and volubility of the better strains of the elder time, I cannot but remark his exemption from the quaintness and false metaphor which so often disfigure the style of the preceding age; ner deny my respect to the select choice of his expression, the clearness and keeping of his imagery, and the pensive dignity of his moral feeling.

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Pope gave our heroic couplet its strictest melody and tersest expression.

D'un mot mis en sa place il enseigne le pouvoir.

If his contemporaries forgot other poets in admiring him, let him not be robbed of his just fame on pretence that a part of it was superfluous. The public ear was long fatigued with repetitions of his manner; but if we place ourselves in the situation of those to whom his brilliancy, succinctness, and animation were wholly new, we cannot wonder at their being captivated to the fondest admiration. In order to do justice to Pope, we should forget his imitators, if that were possible; but it is easier to remember than to forget by an effort -to acquire associations than to shake them off. Every one may recollect how often the most beautiful air has palled upon his ear, and grown insipid, from being played or sung by vulgar musicians. It is the same thing with regard to Pope's versification. That his peculiar rhythm and manner are the very best in the whole range of our poetry need not be asserted. He has a gracefully peculiar manner, though it is not calculated to be an universal one; and where, indeed, shall we find the style of poetry that could be pronounced an exclusive model for every composer? His pauses have little variety, and his phrases are too much weighed in the balance of antithesis. But let us

HIS ACCOUNT OF HALL.

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look to the spirit that points his antithesis, and to the rapid precision of his thoughts, and we shall forgive him for being too antithetic and sententious. - p. 259–262.

And to this is subjoined a long argument, to show that Mr. Bowles is mistaken in supposing that a poet should always draw his images from the works of nature, and not from those of art. We have no room at present for any discussion of the question; but we do not think it is quite fairly stated in the passage to which we have referred; and confess that we are rather inclined, on the whole, to adhere to the creed of Mr. Bowles.

Of the Specimens, which compose the body of the work, we cannot pretend to give any account. They are themselves but tiny and slender fragments of the works from which they are taken; and to abridge them further would be to reduce them to mere dust and rubbish. Besides, we are not called upon to review the poets of England for the last four hundred years!-but only their present editor and critic. In the little we have yet to say, therefore, we shall treat only of the merits of Mr. Campbell. His account of Hall and Chamberlayn is what struck us most in his first volumes-probably because neither of the writers whom he so judiciously praises were formerly familiar to us. Hall, who was the founder of our satirical poetry, wrote his satires about the year 1597, when only twenty-three years old; and whether we consider the age of the man or of the world, they appear to us equally wonderful. In this extraordinary work,

"He discovered," says Mr. C., "not only the early vigour of his own genius, but the power and pliability of his native tongue: for in the point and volubility and vigour of Hall's numbers, we might frequently imagine ourselves perusing Dryden. This may be exemplified in the harmony and picturesqueness of the following description of a magnificent rural mansion, which the traveller approaches in the hopes of reaching the seat of ancient hospitality, but finds it deserted by its selfish owner,

Beat the broad gates, a goodly hollow sound,
With double echoes, doth again rebound;
But not a dog doth bark to welcome thee,
Nor churlish porter canst thou chafing see.
All dumb and silent, like the dead of night,
Or dwelling of some sleepy Sybarite;

The marble pavement hid with desert weed,
With house-leek, thistle, dock, and hemlock seed,

Look to the tow'red chimnies, which should be
The wind-pipes of good hospitality,

Through which it breatheth to the open air,
Betokening life and liberal welfare,

Lo, there th' unthankful swallow takes her rest,
And fills the tunnel with her circled nest.

"His satires are neither cramped by personal hostility, nor spun out to vague declamations on vice; but give us the form and pressure of the times, exhibited in the faults of coeval literature, and in the foppery or sordid traits of prevailing manners. The age was undoubtedly fertile in eccentricity."-vol. ii. p. 257, 258.

What he says of Chamberlayn, and the extracts he has made from his Pharonnida, have made us quite impatient for an opportunity of perusing the whole poem.

The poetical merits of Ben Jonson are chiefly discussed in the Essay; and the Notice is principally biographical. It is very pleasingly written, though with an affectionate leaning towards his hero. The following short passage affords a fair specimen of the good sense and good temper of all Mr. Campbell's apologies.

"The poet's journey to Scotland (1617) awakens many pleasing recollections, when we conceive him anticipating his welcome among a people who might be proud of a share in his ancestry, and setting out, with manly strength, on a journey of 400 miles, on foot. We are assured, by one who saw him in Scotland, that he was treated with respect and affection among the nobility and gentry; nor was the romantic scenery of the country lost upon his fancy. From the poem which he meditated on Loch-Lomond, it is seen that he looked on it with a poet's eye. But, unhappily, the meagre anecdotes of Drummond have made this event of his life too prominent, by the overimportance which has been attached to them. Drummond, a smooth and sober gentleman, seems to have disliked Jonson's indulgence in that conviviality which Ben had shared with his Fletcher and Shakspeare at the Mermaid. In consequence of those anecdotes, Jonson's memory has been damned for brutality, and Drummond's for perfidy. Jonson drank freely at Hawthornden, and talked big-things neither incredible nor unpardonable. Drummond's perfidy amounted to writ ing a letter, beginning, Sir, with one very kind sentence in it, to the man whom he had described unfavourably in a private memorandum, which he never meant for publication. As to Drummond's decoying Jonson under his roof with any premeditated design on his reputation, no one can seriously believe it."-vol. iii. p. 150, 151.

NOTICE OF COTTON AND LILLO.

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The notice of Cotton may be quoted, as a perfect model for such slight memorials of writers of the middle order.

“There is a careless and happy humour in this poet's Voyage to Ireland, which seems to anticipate the manner of Anstey, in the Bath Guide. The tasteless indelicacy of his parody of the Eneid has found but too many admirers. His imitations of Lucian betray the grossest misconception of humorous effect, when he attempts to burlesque that which is ludicrous already. He was acquainted with French and Italian; and among several works from the former language, translated the Horace of Corneille, and Montaigne's Essays.

"The father of Cotton is described by Lord Clarendon as an accomplished and honourable man, who was driven by domestic afflictions to habits which rendered his age less reverenced than his youth, and made his best friends wish that he had not lived so long. From him our poet inherited an incumbered estate, with a disposition to extravagance little calculated to improve it. After having studied at Cambridge, and returned from his travels abroad, he married the daughter of Sir Thomas Owthorp, in Nottinghamshire. He went to Ireland as a captain in the army; but of his military progress nothing is recorded. Having embraced the soldier's life merely as a shift in distress, he was not likely to pursue it with much ambition. It was probably in Ireland that he met with his second wife, Mary, CountessDowager of Ardglass, the widow of Lord Cornwall. She had a jointure of 1500l. a year, secured from his imprudent management. He died insolvent at Westminster. One of his favourite recreations was angling; and his house which was situated on the Dove, a fine trout stream which divides the counties of Derby and Stafford, was the frequent resort of his friend Isaac Walton. There he built a fishing house, Piscatoribus sacrum,' with the initials of honest Isaac's name and his own united in ciphers over the door. The walls were painted with fishing-scenes, and the portraits of Cotton and Walton were upon the beaufet."-p. 293, 294.

There is a very beautiful and affectionate account of Parnell. But there is more power of writing, and more depth and delicacy of feeling, in the following masterly account and estimate of Lillo.

George Lillo was the son of a Dutch jeweller, who married an Englishwoman and settled in London. Our poet was born near Moorfields, was bred to his father's business, and followed it for many years. The story of his dying in distress was a fiction of Hammond, the poet; for he bequeathed a considerable property to his nephew, whom he made his heir. It has been said, that his bequest was in consequence of his finding the young man disposed to lend him a sum of money at a time when he thought proper to feign pecuniary distress, in order that he might discover the sincerity of those calling themselves his friends. Thomas Davies, his biographer and editor, professes to have got this anecdote from a surviving partner of Lillo. It