of their contemporaries. The very existence of a poet, previous to the invention of printing, depended upon his present popularity; and how often has it impaired his future fame? Hardly ever. History informs us, that the best have come down to us. The reason is evident; the most popular found the greatest number of transcribers for their MSS., and that the taste of their contemporaries was corrupt can hardly be avouched by the moderns, the mightiest of whom have but rarely approached them. Dante, Petrarch, Ariosto, and Tasso, were all the darlings of the contemporary reader. Dante's poem was celebrated long before his death; and, not long after it, States negotiated for his ashes, and disputed for the sites of the composition of the Divina Commedia. Petrarch was crowned in the Capitol. Ariosto was permitted to pass free by the public robber who had read the Orlando Furioso. I would not recommend Mr. ** to try the same experiment with his smugglers. Tasso, notwithstanding the criticisms of the Cruscanti, would have been crowned in the Capitol, but for his death.

"It is easy to prove the immediate popularity of the chief poets of the only modern nation in Europe that has a poetical language, the Italian. In our own, Shakspeare, Spenser, Jonson, Waller, Dryden, Congreve, Pope, Young, Shenstone, Thomson, Johnson, Goldsmith, Gray, were all as popular in their lives as since. Gray's Elegy pleased instantly, and eternally. His Odes did not, nor yet do they please like his Elegy. Milton's politics kept him down; but the Epigram of Dryden, and the very sale of his work, in proportion to the less reading time of its publication, prove him to have been honoured by his contemporaries. I will venture to assert, that the sale of the Paradise Lost was greater in the first four years after its publication than that of the Excursion' in the same number, with the difference of nearly a century and a half between them of time, and of thousands in point of general readers." pp. 253, 254.

"Pope himself sleeps well-nothing can touch him farther;' but those who love the honour of their country, the perfection of her literature, the glory of her language, are not to be expected to permit an atom of his dust to be stirred in his tomb, or a leaf to be stripped from the laurel which grows over it.

"To me it appears of no very great consequence whether Martha Blount was or was not Pope's mistress, though I could have wished him a better. She appears to have been a cold-hearted, interested, ignorant, disagreeable woman, upon whom the tenderness of Pope's heart in the desolation of his latter days was cast away, not knowing whither to turn, as he drew towards his premature old age, childless and lonely,—like the needle which, approaching within a certain distance of the pole, becomes helpless and useless, and, ceasing to tremble, rusts. She seems to have been so totally unworthy of tenderness, that it is an additional proof of the kindness of Pope's heart, to have been able to love such a being. But we must love something. I agree with Mr. B. that she could at no time have regarded Pope personally with attachment,' because she was incapable of attachment; but I

deny that Pope could not be regarded with personal attachment by a worthier woman. It is not probable, indeed, that a woman would have fallen in love with him as he walked along the Mall, or in a box at the opera, nor from a balcony, nor in a ball-room; but in society he seems to have been as amiable, as unassuming, and, with the greatest disadvantages of figure, his head and face were remarkably handsome, especially his eyes. He was adored by his friends-friends of the most opposite dispositions, ages and talents-by the old and wayward Wycherley, by the cynical Swift, the rough Atterbury, the gentle Spence, the stern attorney-bishop Warburton, the virtuous Berkeley, and the cankered Bolingbroke.' Bolingbroke wept over him like a child; and Spence's description of his last moments, is at least as edifying as the more ostentatious account of the deathbed of Addison. The soldier Peterborough and the poet Gay, the witty Congreve and the laughing Rowe, the eccentric Cromwell and the steady Bathurst, were all his intimates. The man who could conciliate so many men of the most opposite description, not one of whom but was a remarkable or a celebrated character, might well have pretended to all the attachment which a reasonable man would desire of an amiable woman.

woman.

"Pope, in fact, wherever he got it, appears to have understood the sex well. Bolingbroke, a judge of the subject,' says Warton, thought his Epistle on the Characters of Women' his masterpiece.' And even with respect to the grosser passion, which takes occasionally the name of 'romantic,' accordingly as the degree of sentiment elevates it above the definition of love by Buffon, it may be remarked that it does not always depend upon personal appearance, even in a Madame Cottin was a plain woman, and might have been virtuous, it may be presumed, without much interruption. Virtuous she was, and the consequences of this inveterate virtue were, that two different admirers (one an elderly gentleman) killed themselves in despair (see Lady Morgan's' France'). I would not, however, recommend this rigour to plain women in general, in the hope of securing the glory of two suicides apiece. I believe that there are few men who, in the course of their observations on life, may not have perceived that it is not the greatest female beauty who forms the longest and the strongest passions. "But apropos of Pope,-Voltaire tells us that the Mareschal Luxembourg (who had precisely Pope's figure) was not only somewhat too amatory for a great man, but fortunate in his attachments. La Valière, the passion of Louis XIV., had an unsightly defect. The Princess of Eboli, the mistress of Philip the Second of Spain, and Maugiron, the minion of Henry the Third of France, had each of them lost an eye; and the famous Latin epigram was written upon them, which has, I believe, been either translated or imitated by Goldsmith:

'Lumine Acon dextro, capta est Leonilla sinistro,

Et potis est forma vincere uterque Deos;

Blande puer, lumen quod habes concede sorori,
Sic tu cæcus Amor, sic erit illa Venus.'

6

"Wilkes, with his ugliness, used to say that he was but a quarter. of an hour behind the handsomest man in England;' and this vaunt of his is said not to have been disproved by circumstances. Swift, when

neither young, nor handsome, nor rich, nor even amiable, inspired the two most extraordinary passions upon record, Vanessa's and Stella's.

'Vanessa, aged scarce a score.

Sighs for a gown of forty-four.'

"He requited them bitterly; for he seems to have broken the heart of the one, and worn out that of the other; and he had his reward, for he died a solitary idiot in the hands of servants.

"For my own part, I am of the opinion of Pausanias, that success in love depends upon Fortune. They particularly renounce Celestial Venus, into whose temple, &c. &c. &c. I remember, too, to have seen a building in Ægina in which there is a statue of Fortune, holding a horn of Amalthea; and near her there is a winged Love. The meaning of this is, that the success of men in love-affairs depends more on the assistance of Fortune than the charms of beauty. I am persuaded, too, with Pindar, (to whose opinion I submit in other particulars,) that Fortune is one of the Fates, and that in a certain respect she is more powerful than her sisters.'-See Pausanias, Achaics, book vii. chap. 26, page 246, Taylor's Translation.'

"Grimm has a remark of the same kind on the different destinies of the younger Crebillon and Rousseau. The former writes a licentious novel, and a young English girl of some fortune and family (a Miss Strafford) runs away and crosses the sea to marry him; while Rousseau, the most tender and passionate of lovers, is obliged to espouse his chambermaid. If I recollect rightly, this remark was also repeated in the Edinburgh Review of Grimm's Correspondence, seven or eight years ago.

"In regard to the strange mixture of indecent, and sometimes profane levity, which his conduct and language often exhibited,' and which so much shocks Mr. Bowles, I object to the indefinite word ' often;' and in extenuation of the occasional occurrence of such language it is to be recollected, that it was less the tone of Pope, than the tone of the time. With the exception of the correspondence of Pope and his friends, not many private letters of the period have come down to us; but those, such as they are-a few scattered scraps from Farquhar and others--are more indecent and coarse than any thing in Pope's letters. The Comedies of Congreve, Vanbrugh, Farquhar, Cibber, &c., which naturally attempted to represent the manners and conversation of private life, are decisive upon this point; as are also some of Steele's papers, and even Addison's. We all know what the conversation of Sir R. Walpole, for seventeen years the prime minister of the country, was at his own table, and his excuse for his licentious language, viz. that every body understood that, but few could talk rationally upon less common topics.' The refinement of latter days, which is perhaps the consequence of vice, which wishes to mask and soften itself, as much as of virtuous civilization—had not yet made sufficient progress. Even Johnson in his 'London,' has two or three passages which cannot be read aloud, and Addison's Drummer' some indelicate allusions." pp. 321-323.

There are two short paragraphs in this volume, that let us fully into Lord Byron's theory of the sublime and beautiful in composition.

"I thought Anastasius excellent: did I not say so? Matthews's Diary most excellent; it, and Forsyth, and parts of Hobhouse, are all we have of truth or sense upon Italy. The letter to Julia very good indeed. I do not despise ; but if she knit blue-stockings instead of wearing them, it would be better. You are taken in by that false, stilted, trashy style, which is a mixture of all the styles of the day, which are all bombastic (I don't except my own-no one has done more through negligence to corrupt the language ;) but it is neither English nor poetry. Time will show." p. 240.

"I perceive that in Germany, as well as in Italy, there is a great struggle about what they call 'classical' and 'romantic'-terms which were not subjects of classification in England, at least when I left it four or five years ago. Some of the English scribblers, it is true, abused Pope and Swift, but the reason was that they themselves did not know how to write either prose or verse; but nobody thought them worth making a sect of. Perhaps there may be something of the kind sprung up lately, but I have not heard much about it, and it would be such bad taste that I shall be very sorry to believe it.”

p. 248.

It is plain from these passages that he had formed his taste, or nature had formed it for him, upon the models of Attic, not of Asiatic eloquence of classical, not of romantic poetry. His observations upon the styles of the day (his own included) is perfectly just. They are all bombastic-even Wordsworth's, who loves such infantine simplicity-for even his simplicity is often affected, and always visibly elaborate-as different, as it is possible to imagine any thing, from the naked, unsophisticated nature of the best Greek writers.* As to Lord Byron himself, he has pleaded guilty, in anticipation, to a charge which may undoubtedly be alleged against him with perfect justice. He has done more than any body else to make a vicious style, popular. The two last Cantos of Childe Harold have, we believe, generally been considered as his master-pieces. They have been abundantly extolled, and Mr. Moore mentions that one distinguished writer; especially, and he an enemy of Byron, at least, an active adversary of his principles, has pronounced the fourth Canto the most sublime production of human genius. Without subscribing to this extravagant encomium, we flatter ourselves that we feel all the grandeur and pathos of that powerful production. Yet we undertake to say it would be difficult to point out any work of genius of the present age, which is more

* Voltaire's prose style is more Attic than that of any writer, we remember, within the last century-except, perhaps, Goldsmith.

obnoxious to the sweeping censure pronounced by the author upon himself and all his contemporaries. In a former article, we adduced several instances to exemplify this criticism, but we then remarked, that it was not a frigid conceit, or an extravagant hyperbole, here and there, which we have to find fault with, so much as the general tone of emphasis and exaggeration—a too visible effort apparent throughout the whole work, to be very original and striking, or very powerful, grand and impressive. This straining after effect-which produces what is well described in French as the style gigantesque-seems to us more or less visible in every part of the poems alluded to, and, no doubt, greatly impairs their general effect, not to mention the positive faults which it engenders.* Let us cite an example. The description of the Belvidere Apollo, contains some of the finest lines in the poem. The whole picture is a magnificent one and worthy of the subject. It is the idea of the statuary bodied forth in poetical language, or rather a competition between the single visible form and the whole power of words, which shall convey the most perfect image of beauty to the mind-such a contest as Roscius and Cicero are said to have instituted, to try the relative compass of gesture, (or more strictly, mute acting) and oratorical diction. Yet successful as the poet must be admitted to have been in this lofty enterprize, his verse has faults in it from which the statue is free. This comparison is the more important, because as Schlegel says, after Winkelmann, they who wish to conceive a just idea of the standard of excellence which Greek genius proposed to itself, must study the antique in sculpture. The remark is perfectly sound, and we can only say, that Sophocles always occurs to us when we think of the Apollo and vice versa. And so we conceive, that no modern artist (including the poets) has ever approached so nearly to the severe graces, and the simple grandeur of the antique, as Raphael. But to proceed with the matter in hand. The description is contained in two stanzas

* Lord Byron speaks in one of his letters, of the Childe Harold as his favourite work. We cite the passage more willingly, because it throws still further light upon the manner in which he identifies himself with his work-the egoisme, in short, which is their pervading principle and spirit. "I rejoice to hear of your forthcoming in February, though I tremble for the magnificence which you attribute to the new Childe Harold. I am glad you like it: it is a fine indistinct piece of poetical desolation, and my favourite. I was half mad during the time of its composition, between metaphysics, mountains, lakes, love unextinguishable, thoughts unutterable, and the night-mare of my own delinquencies. Ishould, many a good day, have blown my brains out, but for the recollection that it would have given pleasure to my mother-in-law; and even then, if I could have been certain to haunt her, and ding the shattered scalp of my sinciput and occiput in her frightful face."

p. 51.

↑ With deference to Winkelmann, be it said.