AND GREAT INTEREST OF ITS HISTORY.

11

character must have been impressed by every change in the moral and political condition of society, and must even retain the lighter traces of their successive follies, amusements, and pursuits; while, in the course of ages, the very multiplication and increasing business of the people have forced it through a progress not wholly dissimilar to that which the same causes have produced on the agriculture and landscape of the country; where at first we had rude and dreary wastes, thinly sprinkled with sunny spots of simple cultivation then vast forests and chases, stretching far around feudal castles and pinnacled abbeys - then woodland hamlets, and goodly mansions, and gorgeous gardens, and parks rich with waste fertility, and lax habitations and, finally, crowded cities, and road-side villas, and brick-walled gardens, and turnip fields, and canals, and artificial ruins, and ornamented farms, and cottages trellised over with exotic plants!

--

But, to escape from those metaphors and enigmas to the business before us, we must remark, that in order to give any tolerable idea of the poetry which was thus to be represented, it was necessary that the specimens to be exhibited should be of some compass and extent. We have heard their length complained of- but we think with very little justice. Considering the extent of the works from which they are taken, they are almost all but inconsiderable fragments; and where the original was an Epic of Tragic character, greater abridgment would have been mere mutilation, and would have given only such a specimen of the whole, as a brick might do of a building. From the earlier and less familiar authors, we rather think the citations are too short; and, even from those that are more generally known, we do not well see how they could have been shorter, with any safety to the professed object, and only use, of the publication. That object, we conceive, was to give specimens of English poetry, from its earliest to its latest periods; and it would be a strange rule to have followed, in making such a selection, to leave out the best and most popular. The work certainly neither is,

12 CAMPBELL- -HIS SPECIMENS NOT WELL DISTRIBUTED.

nor professes to be, a collection from obscure and forgotten authors- but specimens of all who have merit enough to deserve our remembrance; - and if some few have such redundant merit of good fortune, as to be in the hands and the minds of all the world, it was necessary, even then, to give some extracts from them, that the series might be complete, and that there might be room for comparison with others, and for tracing the progress of the art in the strains of its best models and their various imitators.

In one instance, and one only, Mr. C. has declined doing this duty; and left the place of one great luminary to be filled up by recollections that he must have presumed would be universal. He has given but two pages to SHAKESPEARE and not a line from any of his plays! Perhaps he has done rightly. A knowledge of Shakespeare may be safely presumed, we believe, in every reader; and, if he had begun to cite his Beauties, there is no saying where he would have ended. A little book, calling itself Beauties of Shakespeare, was published some years ago, and shown, as we have heard, to Mr. Sheridan. He turned over the leaves for some time with apparent satisfaction, and then said, "This is very well; but where are the other seven volumes?" There is no other author, however, whose fame is such as to justify a similar ellipsis, or whose works can be thus elegantly understood, in a collection of good poetry. Mr. C., has complied perhaps too far with the popular prejudice, in confining his citations from Milton to the Comus and the smaller pieces, and leaving the Paradise Lost to the memory of his readers. But though we do not think the extracts by any means too long on the whole, we are certainly of opinion that some are too long and others too short; and that many, especially in the latter case, are not very well selected. There is far too little of Marlowe for instance, and too much of Shirley, and even of Massinger. We should have liked more of Warner, Fairfax, Phineas Fletcher, and Henry More-all poets of no scanty dimensions- and could have spared several pages of Butler, Mason, Whitehead,

SAD MORTALITY OF THE IMMORTALS.

13

Roberts, Meston, and Amhurst Selden. We do not think the specimens from Burns very well selected; nor those from Prior nor can we see any good reason for quoting the whole Castle of Indolence, and nothing else, for Thomson- and the whole Rape of the Lock, and nothing else, for Pope.

Next to the impression of the vast fertility, compass, and beauty of our English poetry, the reflection that recurs most frequently and forcibly to us, in accompanying Mr. C. through his wide survey, is that of the perishable nature of poetical fame, and the speedy oblivion that has overtaken so many of the promised heirs of immortality! Of near two hundred and fifty authors, whose works are cited in these volumes, by far the greater part of whom were celebrated in their generation, there are not thirty who now enjoy anything that can be called popularity-whose works are to be found in the hands of ordinary readers in the shops of ordinary booksellers—or in the press for republication. About fifty more may be tolerably familiar to men of taste or literature: -the rest slumber on the shelves of collectors, and are partially known to a few antiquaries and scholars. Now, the fame of a Poet, is popular, or nothing. He does not address himself, like the man of science, to the learned, or those who desire to learn, but to all mankind; and his purpose being to delight and be praised, necessarily extends to all who can receive pleasure, or join in applause. It is strange, then, and somewhat humiliating, to see how great a proportion of those who had once fought their way successfully to distinction, and surmounted the rivalry of contemporary envy, have again sunk into neglect. We have great deference for public opinion; and readily admit, that nothing but what is good can be permanently popular. But though its vivat be generally oracular, its pereat appears to us to be often sufficiently capricious; and while we would foster all that it bids to live, we would willingly revive much that it leaves to die. The very multiplication of works of amusement, necessarily withdraws many from notice that deserve to be kept in remembrance;

14

CAMPBELL- MAY RESCUE NAMES FROM OBLIVION.

for we should soon find it labour, and not amusement, if we were obliged to make use of them all, or even to take all upon trial. As the materials of enjoyment and instruction accumulate around us, more and more, we fear, must thus be daily rejected, and left to waste: For while our tasks lengthen, our lives remain as short as ever; and the calls on our time multiply, while our time itself is flying swiftly away. This superfluity and abundance of our treasures, therefore, necessarily renders much of them worthless; and the veriest accidents may, in such a case, determine what part shall be preserved, and what thrown away and neglected. When an army is decimated, the very bravest may fall; and many poets, worthy of eternal remembrance, have probably been forgotten, merely because there was not room in our memories for all.

By such a work as the present, however, this injustice of fortune may be partly redressed—some small fragments of an immortal strain may still be rescued from oblivion — and a wreck of a name preserved, which time appeared to have swallowed up for ever. There is something pious we think, and endearing, in the office of thus 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 hearts of a forgetful generation. The body of their poetry, probably, can never be revived; but some sparks of its spirit may yet be preserved, in a narrower and feebler flame.

When we look back upon 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

GUESSES AT THE REMNANTS TO BE SAVED. 15

increasing. The last ten years have produced, we think, an annual supply of about ten thousand lines of good staple poetry-poetry from the very first hands that we can boast of that runs quickly to three or four large editions and is as likely to be permanent as present success can make it. 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 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 Scott and Byron 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 our great grandchildren? The thought, we own, is a little appaling; - and we confess we see nothing better to imagine than that they may find a comfortable place in some new collection of specimens-the centenary of the present publication. There-if the future editor have any thing like the indulgence and veneration for antiquity of his predecessor- 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, -while some good-natured critic shall sit in our mouldering chair, and more than half prefer them to those by whom they have been superseded!-It is an hyperbole of good nature, however, we fear, to ascribe to them even those dimensions at the end of a century. After a lapse of 250 years, we are afraid to think of the space they may have shrunk into. We have no Shakespeare, alas! to shed a never-setting light on his contemporaries! -and if we continue to write and rhyme at the present rate for 200 years longer, there must be some new art of short-hand reading invented or all reading will be given up in despair. We need not distress ourselves, however, with these afflictions of our posterity;--and it is quite time that the reader should know a little of the work before us.