:

than 21 can make any adequate pretensions to the dignified name of POET and of these last, the pretensions of some are but slight Among these was CHARLES CHURCHILL : and I confess it is with reluctance that I admit a Satirist among Poets, in right of this class of productions. His best eulogy has been pronounced by one, of whose own temper and disposition the extraordinary mildness adds great force to such unexpected praise.

Cowper, in his Table-Talk has the following lines:

<< Contemporaries all surpass'd, see one;

«

Short his career indeed but ably run;
Churchill, himself unconscious of his powers,
In penury consumed his idle hours;
And, like a scatter'd seed at random sown,
Was left to spring by vigour of his own.
Lifted at length, by dignity of thought,
And dint of genius, to an affluent lot,
He laid his head in Luxury's soft lap,
And took, too often, there his easy nap.
If brighter beams than all he threw not forth,
'Twas negligence in him, not want of worth.
Surly, and slovenly, and bold, and coarse
Too proud for art, and trusting in mere force
Spendthrift alike of money and of wit,
Always at speed, and never drawing bit,
He struck the lyre in such a careless mood,
And so disdain'd the rules he understood,
The laurel seem'd to wait on his command:
He snatch'd it rudely from the Muses' hand ».

;

I believe that Cowper was personally acquainted with Churchill (1). At least he was familiar with Robert Lloyd,

(1) Churchill died 1764, xt. 33.

Churchill's most intimate friend. When we consider Cowper's morbidly timid, and gentle character, this seems very strange.

There may be genius in the force and distinctness with which characters are conceived and delineated but if it be bitter and revolting, it does not often find sympathy among the nobler classes of imagination, who delight in the grandeur of virtue, rather than of wickedness.

But whatever may have been the moral character of Churchill, and however ill-directed the virulence of his Satires, he possessed a very uncommon vigour of mind; a fervor, that cannot be denied to have been genius.

It was far ortherwise with many, whose names have found their way into these rolls of Helicon. Here we see MM. Oldmion, Weekes, Bramston, L. Welsted, Amhurst Selden, Colley Cibber, R. Dodsley, E. Ward, B. Booth, John Brown; MM. Whyte, and Dwight, Henry Carey with his Sally in our Alley, and G. A. Stevens with his Lecture on Heads.

But there are better names than these, which we could almost spare. There are authors, who often approach to the very verge of good poetry; and then grasping out their arms, embrace a vapour, and false inspiration. Of this character I deem Thomas Penrose (1): nor can I hesitate to pronounce the same condemnation on John Langhorne (2).

Yet it is singular that LANGHORNE has produced a passage of singular beauty and force, to which few in the whole body of English Poetry can be compared.

It is from his Poem of The Country Justice, where the benevolent author pleads to the Magistrate for candour and mercy towards those, whom pressing want and the powerful call of famine lead into crime.

(1) Ob. 1779, œt. 36.

(2) Ob. 1779, æt. 44.

« For him, who, lost to every hope of life,
Has long with fortune held unequal strife,
Known to no human love, no human care,
The friendless, homeless object of despair:
For the poor vagrant feel, while he complains,
Nor from sad freedom send to sadder chains.
Alike, if folly or misfortune brought

Those last of woes his evil days have wrought;
Relieve with social mercy, and with me,
Folly's misfortune in the first degree.
Perhaps on some inhospitable shore

The houseless wretch a widow'd parent bore;
Who then, no more by golden prospects led,
Of the poor Indian begg'd a leafy bed.
Cold on Canadian hills, or Minden's plain,
Perhaps that parent mourn'd her soldier slain;
Bent o'er her babe, her eye dissolved in dew,
The big drops mingling with the milk he drew,
Gave the sad presage of his future years,

The child of Misery, baptized in tears! »

I cannot account for the momentary inspiration, by which one, who is in general an affected, frothy, and sickly writer, could produce such lines (1).

[1] If Campbell is sometimes not very nice as to those, whom he admits, he sometimes overlooks with not a little injustice. He has given no place to D. Sneyd Davies, a genuine poet and amiable man, for whom see Nichosl's Literary Anecdotes; nor to M.rs Elizabeth Carter; whose merit cannot be questioned; nor to the tender and elegant Charlotte Smith; nor to Anna Seward; Robert Jephson; James Hurdis; Russell; Thomas Warwick; Jenner; Walters; D." Delap; James Scott; D. Ogilvie; Soame Jenyns; O. Cambridge; W. B. Stevens; R. Hole; etc., etc.

XXVII.

SHENSTONE (1).

Every thing has two views; a right and a wrong side: what Johnson says of Shenstone may be appropriate; but it regards always the ill-temper'd side. The Biographer's memoir of this poet is a specimen of the degrading manner, which he assumed in his latter writings. He was of the same College with Shenstone, and scarcely more than four years his senior in age: perhaps he had left Oxford, before the other's arrival.

It is true that there is a feeble and unmanly tenuity in most of Shenstone's pieces, which fails to make a due impression on the fancy, or to exercise the understanding. « Had his mind been better stored with knowlege,» says Johnson, « whether he could have been great, I know not; he could certainly have been agreeable ». This is one of those sentences of caustic and half-colloquial contempt towards his cotemporaries, in which the Critic delights to deal. But is it not somewhat beyond the line of due severity to imply that the author of the Elegy on Jessy; of the Pastoral Ballad; and of the School-mistress, had not even reached the point of being agreeable? » Yet he praises the Ode on Rural Elegance for its meaning and poetical spirit, a praise which it scarcely deserves ); and cites two passages from the Ballad, « to which » he says, « if any mind denies its sympathy, it has no acquaintance with

(1) Wm Shenstone died reb. 11. 1762, aged 48.

love or nature ». And recommends the School-mistress for a sort of merit, which seems to me of a very paltry kind.

I do not think that Campbell is more happy or more just in his encomiums than in his censures of this poet. He observes that « his genius is not forcible, but it settles in · mediocrity without meanness » and that « some of the Stanzas of his Ode to Rural Elegance seem to recall to us the countryloving spirit of Cowley subdued in wit, but harmonized in expression ». Now Campbell well knows the condemnation which mediocrity in poetry universally incurs and as to the similarity of the Ode to the spirit and sentiments of Cowley, few things on the same subject can be more unlike. The dissimilarity is a strong illustration of what Johnson with his piercing sagacity remarks of Shenstone's taste applied to rural ornament : « The pleasure of Shenstone was all in his eye; he valued what he valued merely for its looks ». Almost all the sentiments of the Ode thus compared to Cowley are in conformity to this. The sources of Cowley's delight in a country-life are much deeper and more varied: nor are the sentiments, which are conveyed, merely subdued in wit; they are copiously and even effeminately dilated in expression; and so far from being improved in harmony, that a varied and vigorous harmony is (with very few exceptions), the characteristic of that portion of Cowley's poetry.

It is upon the Elegy on Jessy that Shenstone must depend for the perpetuity of his fame. It is a model of elegance, purity, and harmony of sentiment, imagery, and language. But even this wants force it has a feminine sort of gentleness.

He had also a female vanity: he adorned his grounds at the Leasowes, that he might have the praise of others for what he had done; not that he might enjoy them himself.