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Mr. URBAN,

June 8.

ticularly in the old Hall; and some

THE Parish of Ashington, in the parts of the original building have

County of Somerset, is situated at nearly equal distances (about four miles) from the Towns of Yeovil and Ilchester, in a finely-wooded and fertile country, rising gently from the River Yeo, which bounds it on the East and North; and, looking over a rich and extensive vale, at unequal distances is terminated by a bold and beautiful range of hills from the South-east to the North-west.

The Manor was one of the many which William the Conqueror bestowed upon Roger de Curcelle; it is written in Domesday Essentone, and in modern records Aslington, Ashenden, and Ashington. Soon af. terwards the Estate was in the possession of the family of Fitzwilliam; for Robert of that name died seised of it 32 Benry II.; from which family, in the reign of King John, it passed by inheritance to that of de Furnellis, or Furneaux; and from the latter to the St. Barbes about the year 1400. The last possessor of that name, Sir John St. Barbe, bart. who died in 1723, bequeathed it to Humphrey Sydenham, esq. of Combe, in this County, and it is now the property of Lewis Dymoke Grosvenor Tregonwell, esq. of Cranborne Lodge, in Dorsetshire, by his marriage with Catherine, daughter and sole heiress of the late St. Barbe Sydenham, esq. of Priory, Devon, and Combe, Somerset, by whom he had issue, St. Barbe Tregonwell, born Aug. 6, 1782; helen Ellery, born Dec. 1, 1783, married to Capt. John Duff Markland, R.N. March 18, 1814; Catherine, born June 11, 1786, died Jan. 1788.

The Manor House, situate near the Church, is an antient stone edifice, erected by the St. Barbes, apparently in the sixteenth century; their armorial crest, a Wyvern, remains on one of the shields over the porch, and also upon the buttress at the Western end, as shewn in the plate; but the House having been long appropriated to the use of the tenant renting the estate, various internal alterations have been made in it, par

Charles St. Barbe, esq. of Lymington, in Hampshire, is the representative of the family, being the tenth in fireal descent from Richard St. Barbe, the first possessor of Ashington; a record of which is to be found at the College of Arms. GENT. MAG. July, 1820.

been taken down: the annexed view (see Plate II.) shews the principal or South front, as it appeared in 1817. Yours, &c. C. S. B.

(To be continued.)

POEMS OF LUCRETIUS, POPE, &c. WITH CRITICAL REMARKS.

Mr. URBAN,

July 15. IN a former Essay the attention was directed to the subjects of Epic Poems. It may now not be uninteresting perhaps to advance a few speculations upon the subjects of performances of a nature somewhat different in their Literary pretensions, ranking, in many respects, equally high in the view of Criticism, as works of genius, but possessing characteristics which, in their form and aspect, are referable to another species of writing.

In the extended and variegated fields of poetry, the diversity of genius and of taste, which is always more or less conspicuous, has frequently been the subject of conjec tures on the nature and causes of this variety of talents, of tastes, and of dispositions. It is evident that in almost every civilized age, poetical endowment and capacity has shone forth in a thousand forms, all connected, in some shape or other, with the power of administering pleasure to the hu man mind, and all, sooner or later, finding their proportion of readers, who can enjoy and appreciate the varying features and dispositions which give birth to those respectively peculiar productions which designate the eras of poetry.

Strength of mind, vigour, and comprehensiveness of thought, have, we find, been occasionally made the powerful instruments of pleasure, and have been known to create astonishment in the breast of every reader, by the singular boldness and grandeur in which their scenes of imagination have been conceived. It has, however, been far more common to witness these endowments or emanations of mind assuming a milder form, exhibiting the pungency and brilliancy of wit, and clothed in all the graces and decorations of style and expression.

As, therefore, the award of Criticism has assigned to the latter an inferior

rank

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rank in the lacubrations of genius, so experience has proved that periods of associated intellectual life, and brightening in every liberal accomplishment, seem almost spontaneously to generate the one, whereas the former, proudly pre-eminent in the range and flow of its conceptions, marshalled in the dignity of Epic numbers, and inspiring the mind with sentiments of a more than usually sublime tone and character, press upon our notice only at comparatively long intervals from each other,―are, in point of number, the scant productions of Nature, as though she designed that mankind,. from their infrequency, should pay their peculiar homage at their actual appearance.

But though the Epic, which, with the Critics, is always allowed, in point of rank, and perhaps justly, to take precedence of all other descriptions of poetry, and, when possessing the high and adequate stamp of genius, is certainly noble in its structure, and engenders the finest passions which are implanted and folded up in our nature, there is another class which perhaps has not, in its literary pretensions, been sufficiently defined and appropriated. This may be termed the Philosophical, and if the Epopee, in order to be generally and permanently admired, should exhibit, through its various parts, great sen. timents, unbounded imagination, clothed in sonorous diction, and measured by an uninterrupted dignity of numbers as essential requisites, the Philosophical, in an equally high degree, involves a requisition of great and uncommon poetical powers in their authors, in order to add dignity, animation, and interest, to discussions which we are at first sight ready to conclude are utterly opposed to any thing which can please in such a shape, and to sustain its high cha racter in poetry, while it inculcates the principles of philosophy. Their characteristics are, however, totally different in species. The basis of the first is Imagination and Invention, which dresses out the facts, or the supposed facts, upon which the fable is constructed, in all the fascination of elevated manners, diction, and sentiment, and imparts to it the fervid glow of feeling or of description which distends the reader with sublime emotions, or recreates him with

scenes of pathos and tenderness. The last have comparatively little to do with Imagination, but are treatises or dissertations of a poetical kind, equally capable, perhaps, of receiving the polish of taste, the decorations of thought and of language, and the corrections of judgment, but occasionally soaring to speculations, and widening to a comprehensive range of thought and of ideas which may be said to be seldom, if ever attained, even in the regions of Epic or Tragic poetry. The former, by the distinctions which obtain in literature and the rules by which genius is bounded and regulated, exhibit all the machinery of great personages who have their various parts allotted them," their exits and their entrances," incidents, passions, sentiment, and characteristic manners,— the latter cannot, from their nature, possess any thing of all this, but delivers abstract moral, or metaphysi cal arguments in a pure and elevated form of debate; it seems, so to speak,

to be exalted above the reach of fiction, to look down upon all meaner things, as at a distance,—to preserve a calm and equable dignity of discussion, which fills and exalts the mind, not by the arts of fiction, but by the powers and the force of reason addressed to the understanding.

It has been but comparatively rare that subjects of this nature have found a place among the ornamental and well-wrought discussions of the poet. It has, on the other hand, been thought, and with some appearance of reason, by the Critics, that abstract disquisitions on the various departments of human science neither belong to metrical composition, or are capable by any stretch or ingenuity of resource, of being made generally pleasing to the great miscellaneous class of readers. It is thought that when the poet, whose proper sphere seems to lie in the passions, the foibles, or the sentiments which diversify and distinguish human life,—in agreeable fictions of fancy, or welldelineated images of things,-enters the rigid precincts of abstract discussion, he steps beyond the boundaries which nature prescribes to his art. That he attempts to blend things which are naturally opposed, and if they have no intrinsic repugnancy to each other, yet demand a quite dif

ferent

ferent exertion of the mental or perceptive powers, to transplant the Muses, with all their glowing and redundant fires, into regions too cold to cherish and support, or to suffer them to expand in native vigour and beauty. That this theory does not exactly square with experience, will, however, sometimes appear, and the lucubrator of ordinary research will be sensible that specimens eminently successful have not been wanting, either among the antients or the moderns, which prove that the impassioned strains of the poet are not absolutely incompatible with subjects which have purely a relation to the. truths of science; that the graces, and even the imaginative excursions of this noble art, may occasionally illus trate the force of metaphysical argument with striking effect.

The De Rerum Natura of Lucretius, the Essay on Man of our Pope, and the De Immortalitate Animi of Hawkins Browne, although poems possessing their respective, perhaps dissimilar, characteristics, may be styled among the most eminent in this species of composition; as the poem on Astronomy of Manilius in the antient world, and the Night Thoughts, and Pleasures of Imagination (which last, although written under different auspices, and with different designs, yet comes under the general class of Philosophical,) do not so strictly and absolutely come under this description. An intelligent and judicious Critic on the first principles of genius, and the various shades by which it is diversified, whilst analytically defining its laws and its indications,-pronounces that species which animates the effusions of the poet, and raises his ideas to enthusiasm, to consist in brightness or exuberance of fancy. He has, on the other hand, denominated that species by which the discoveries in philosophy are effected, by which right illations are discerned and abstract truths developed, penetration of intellect. They each, according to him, imply a great extent and compass of imagination, or great vigour of the associating principles, but they imply different sorts of compass and vigour. Penetration implies such a force of imagination as leads to the comprehension and explication of a subject. Brightness of

fancy fits a man for adorning his subject. A penetrating mind emits the rays by which truth is discovered,— a bright fancy supplies the colours by which beauty is produced.

The elevations of Genius, by which, whilst reading poetry, our suscepti bilities are wont to be irresistibly caught, and hurried forwards, doubtless, eminently associate the powers of invention, memory and imagination, but penetration of intellect, a mental endowment involving other and quite different associations, may not be supposed capable of materially aiding our poetical enjoyments or perceptions of pleasure; indeed it is not saying too much to affirm that, with most critical authorities, this faculty, although essential to discovery, and equally constituting genius and bespeaking invention, is of so cold, naked, and ungenial a complexion, that when conjointly lending its influences in the empire of the Muses, it damps the ardour, and paralyzes those fine and glowing impressions which brightness of fancy was cal culated to create.

In what may properly be denominated Philosophical Poems, however, and especially in the Essay on Man, the De Rerum Naturâ, and the De Immortalitate Animi, the cast or complexion which governs and pervades the whole is strictly, and professedly argumentative, designed to discuss abstract truths in science, and through the medium of fair argu ment, to arrive at certain conclusions, or elicit discoveries before unknown. The flights of imagination, and the creations of fancy, therefore, are evidently foreign to the requisites and general character of this species of composition. Partaking neither of the characteristics of Epic, Tragic, Lyric, Moral, or Descriptive departments in poetry, the delightful machinery which, in the Epic, adds such dignity, splendour, and proportion to its various parts, would be utterly incongruous and out of place, if brought to illustrate the postulates of science, or the recondite truths which it is the province of Philosophy to discuss and clear from that obscurity which, until removed by some luminous arrangement, is apt to shade them.

At the same time it may be perceived that the glow, animation, and ardour which must always more or

less

less distinguish him when employed upon subjects congenial with his temper and capacity, diversify and ele vate the subjects and the speculations of each of the eminent poets whom we have bere quoted, accompanies them often into the recesses of those abstruse questions on which Lucretius especially has adventured his Muse; and proclaims them to have possessed a genius peculiarly adapted to the sphere of poetical lucubration in which they adventured.

In the selection, order, and proper division of their respective poems, each of the eminent writers we have named, have evinced a propriety and felicity of judgment which argue them to have well viewed and digested the various great questions in philosophy which can, in any shape, be brought under buman investigation, Animated by the enthusiasm of poets who have arranged their ideas, imbibed a tone of thinking, and flow of ideas, through a medium which peculiarly attaches to minds of this stamp and texture; they disdained the subordinate details of scientific investigation, and comprehended within their plan quertions of the highest importance,which involve the common curiosity of mankind, and have given rise in the great speculative theatre in which they have been introduced, to the most subtle exercise of thought.

As the weight and momentous nature of the topics which they respectively chose as the vehicle, at once for their display of eloquence, their dignity of sentiment, and their force of argument, is prominently a feature in the meed of their fame as Didactic or Philosophical Poets, the subjects, (not the fable,) upon which they embarked their adventurous Muse, to sing, not in strains of Miltonic pomp and grandeur, the prow ess or individual adventures of great personages, or the scenes of wellwrought fiction, but the high, fixed, and universal laws which rule this world and all created beings, may not improperly be made the source of some further animadversion and illustration. That intense severity of

tainly in each struck out from the kindling sparks of their genius, a ge, nerous flame which sometimes bespeaks enthusiasm and tenderness, mingled and tempered with closeness of argument, and patience of investigation.

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The subject of Lucretius was great, -no less than a general comprehensive enquiry into the whole system, Moral and Physiological, of Nature's laws, which afforded him ample scope and opportunity to relieve the various parts of his poem, and to diversify his thoughts so as preeminently to add interest and beauty to the whole. He may be said to be the first who sung in polished, graceful, and dignified numbers, things intrinsically of this high compass and philosophical importance. Hesiod and Theocritus had before his time unfolded, in glowing language, the charms of rural scenery, and the occupations of a country life. Euripides had written performances, of which it has been said, that every line formed a moral precept,-but their subjects, taken generally, offered nothing analogous to those which awakened and invigorated the genius of the Roman poet. He eminently struck out a channel of poetical speculation exclusively his own, and the originality, greatness, and majestic nature of the topics upon which he expatiates, demands, and has generally obtained, a high tribute of respect from the reader.

That he treated these topics on all occasions with profound and penetrating sagacity will not be asserted,-as when the boldness of his aspirations would fain expatiate upon points in philosophy, round which darkness as yet held her profound empire, he discovers that obscurity of idea, and that imbecility which characterized the philosophers of his own, and all other sects in those infant days of science. Melksham.

(To be continued.)

Mr. URBAN,

N

E. P.

Greenhithe, Feb. 24.

thought, which is generally supposed vol. LXXXIX. p. 313, “Oxo

to characterize the mind that makes discoveries in the abstract regions of science, though they may be judged in unequal ratios, to have guided the thinking of the present writers, cer

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