thoroughly gained the ear of the multitude. For a hundred years' Pomfret's poems were always on sale at the stalls of itinerant vendors and at country booksellers', printed upon coarse paper and in sheepskin binding, in company with "Robinson Crusoe," the "Pilgrim's Progress," Defoe's "Religious Courtship," Young's "Night Thoughts," and Hervey's Meditations." During the whole of the eighteenth century no other volume of poems was so often reprinted or held in such popular estimation. It was even printed in America in the middle of that century, when so few books had been printed there, that two pages might comprise the catalogue.' ' The writer of the above words, unable to give any satisfactory explanation of this popularity, thinks it must be attributed merely to a kind of prescription, which by some chance had established itself among the trade. Southey is no less perplexed. He heads his extracts from Pomfret with the few words: Spoken of as the most popular of poets. Why?'2 And Dr. Johnson, while specially recommending him to his publishers for a place in his 'Lives of the Poets,'3 seems to have thought that his popularity was that which alone entitled him. to the honour. He pleases many; and he who pleases many must have some kind of merit.' 4 There must be some reason for so marked an exception-in regard at least of the bookstalls-to the old and well-proved dictum : Mediocribus esse poetis Non homines, non dî, non concessere columnæ. Probably the long immunity from fate which Pomfret's poetical reputation gained was chiefly owing to the pleasure which average human nature always feels in finding its own ideas those at all events which are most creditable or respectable-smoothly clothed in language above, but not too much above, its own level. Pomfret appears to have had more than usual success in satisfying this natural desire. He had not a tenth part of the power which Pope possessed, of aptly expressing in terse, harmonious, and well-chosen words obvious ideas. But he anticipated Pope by many years—a great advantage to him, as it was to other of the mediocrists. 1 Q. Rev. 35, 189. 2 Southey's Later English Poets, i. 96. Dr. Johnson's Lives of the Poets, iii. 247. Besides that, there was a great amiability in Pomfret which was wanting in Pope; and with the class of readers among whom his writings were chiefly circulated, brilliancy rather impedes than promotes success. Much in the same way as among his secular poems The Choice' touched with a light and easy hand those objects of ambition which come most home to the heart of an ordinary Englishman in relation to earthly comfortableness, so in handling sacred topics Pomfret keeps well within the range of such religious and moral ideas as the bulk of well-meaning people can easily aspire to. His verses on religious subjects stand on an altogether different footing from that of popular hymns, and appeal to a different set of emotions. The poem upon the Divine Attributes is a metrical rendering-its didactic character distinguished under a 'Pindaric' form of just those reasonings which might pass in more rudimentary shape through the mind of any tolerably intelligent person. Thoughts which all men are more or less alive to, of human life and of infinity, are suggested, without being entered into too deeply or with too refined argument for a moderate and uncultivated intellect. It is a poem which, no doubt, many a simple reader has perused on a Sunday evening without any real intellectual labour, but yet with a feeling that his reason has been mildly stimulated, and the foundations of his religion strengthened. Much the same may be said of that entitled 'Reason,' written in the first year of the century. His other religious poems probably owed their popularity to another cause. His 'Prospect of Death,' his General Conflagration,' and his 'Last Epiphany,' are all wanting in the grave solemnity and subdued earnestness of tone which best befits such subjects. But their very faults probably made these poems more attractive to those who chiefly read them. The 'Prospect of Death' enters into details which are only painful or repulsive to cultivated tastes, but which in the opinion of many gave new force to the description and additional pathos. Sir Richard Blackmore was the favourite butt for the satire of the wits and poets of his day. He was a very worthy man, most anxious to promote the interests of religion and 1 Almost every writer in verse for three parts of the last century essayed Pindaric odes. virtue. But he was afflicted with the cacocthes scribendi, and was unhappily possessed with the idea that his lucubrations would be more effective and popular if they took a metrical form. All the spare moments of the estimable knight, as he drove from one patient to another, appear to have been dedicated to the composition of verses either for his next epic in ten books, or for his version of the Psalms, or for his forthcoming volume of didactic poetry upon sacred and philosophical subjects. Effusions written, as Dryden said, 'to the rumbling of his chariot wheels,' and bearing for the most part scanty marks of revision, were very frequently a legitimate mark for the ridicule with which Dryden, Wycherley, Philips, Gay, Swift, Pope, and a host of others, overwhelmed each new production as it appeared from the press. Yet Blackmore had many admirers, and among them were some whose opinions are always worthy of respect. Addison, at the conclusion of one of his papers on Milton, called special attention to the poem on Creation.' 'The work,' he said, 'was undertaken with so good an intention, and is executed with so great a mastery, that it deserves to be looked upon as one of the most useful and noble productions in our English verse.' Dr. Johnson said of this same poem, that if he had written nothing else it would have transmitted him to posterity among the first favourites of the English Muse.' 2 Locke praised him; and Dr. Watts thought that the success achieved by him had triumphantly confuted all theories of the impracticability of a worthy treatment in English poetry of Christian subjects.3 Molineux, a friend of Locke, even went so far as to declare that 'all our English poets except Milton, have been ballad-makers in comparison with him.' It may be added that his first epic, that of 'Prince Arthur,' was decidedly popular, passing in two years through three editions. No doubt the comparative popularity which Blackmore attained is one among many signs of the decadence of poetical taste which had set in soon after the middle of the seventeenth century. His style is almost always heavy and careless. Sometimes he becomes insufferably tedious and Johnson's Lives of the Poets, ii. 257. Hearne's Reliquiæ, iii. 163. 1 Spectator, No. 339. * J. Watts's Pref. to Hore Lyrica. 2 prosaic to an extent which more than justified the keenest banter of his opponents. Nevertheless the wits did not do him justice. They had no wish to be fair to him. He had inveighed with all his might, not only against the immoralities of the stage, but against the general profanity and levity on serious or sacred subjects which so frequently disgraced the literature of his time. And consequently he made many enemies among a race of men than whom none were more skilled in barbing and polishing the epigrams which sufficed for years to come to preserve his name to ridicule. Meanwhile, his works were not unvalued by a different class of readers. The poems which proceeded from his pen supplied, with all their faults, a deficiency which could not be satisfied by the sharp-witted writers who held them up to scorn. From its earliest infancy poetry has ever been the favourite channel through which the diviner faculty in man endeavours to find utterance. All the best poetry in the world, and that which has most touched the hearts of men, has been either suffused with a certain mystical and spiritual element, or at all events has appealed to the deeper strings of our moral nature. It is untrue to the best sources of its inspiration if it is content for long together merely to sport, as it were, upon the surface of things; still more so if it becomes flippant, unspiritual, immoral. During the period that followed upon the Restoration this had been notoriously the prevailing character of English verse. And therefore among the more sober-minded of the educated community there were numbers who were heartily ready to greet, with an applause much more than proportionate to its intrinsic worth, a more What gleam of poetic feeling could be anticipated in a writer who could drone as follows? (The passage comes from his Paraphrase of Job, chap. xiii.) 'Since you are pleased oft to enumerate God's wise and mighty works in this debate, I do not your prolix discourses want, To prove those truths divine, I freely grant.' Sir R. Blackmore's Paraphrases, &c., ed. 1716, p. 56. Some, however, of his paraphrases, as that of the 103rd Psalm, are by no means wanting in spirit. healthy strain. They had begun to awaken to the surpassing merits of the 'Paradise Lost;' and though the interval which separated a Milton from a Sir Richard Blackmore was wide beyond all comparison, they were all the better able to appreciate a more serious and reflective style of verse than they had of late been used to. They could welcome a very pedestrian muse in whom they discerned sincerity and graver thought, in preference to one clad in the conventional garments and flaunting colours which had been fashionable. This may serve partly to explain the toleration that was extended to Blackmore's dulness. His writings were also in harmony with the general tone of thought which was being gradually formed in reference to the graver subjects of human contemplation. Poetry far superior to his in spiritual power and in imaginative ability, would have fallen flat upon the ears of a prosaic generation which preferred to discuss its relations to the infinite from an altogether argumentative and common sense' point of view. Moreover, it was an age very devoid of poetical originality. Some affected to follow the French style; some made Pindar their model; some, Virgil and the Epic poets; others imitated Horace. As for Blackmore, he set himself in his 'Creation,' to emulate Lucretius in the character of a Chris tian philosopher. He wished, he said, to make argument agreeable, and to adorn it with the harmony of numbers; 2 but where his object was mainly to instruct and reason, the ornaments of poetic eloquence were not to be expected. Few names connected with the poetical literature of England in the eighteenth century are more familiar than that of Parnell. His story of 'The Hermit' is as well known as anything in the English language. Nor is its popularity in any way undeserved. Hume, in his 'Essay on Simplicity and Refinement,' said in reference to this poem that it is sufficient to run over Cowley once, but Parnell, after the fifteenth reading, is as fresh as at the first.' His poetry in general has always given pleasure by the melody of its diction, and its polished but unaffected gracefulness. Parnell Preface to his poem on Creation. 2 Id. * Quoted in Mitford's Life and Works of Parnell, p. 54. Campbell was a great admirer of Parnell. He praised the correct and · |