BRITISH POETS OF THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. INCLUDING THE SELECT WORKS OF CRABBE, WILSON, COLERIDGE, WORDSWORTH, ROGERS, CAMPBELL, BEING A SUPPLEMENTARY VOLUME ΤΟ THE POETICAL WORKS OF BYRON, SCOTT AND MOORE. B.D FRANCFORT O. M. PRINTED BY AND FOR H. L. BRENNER 1828. PREFACE. DURING the first twenty five years of the nineteenth century the poetical soil of Great-Britain has proved more intensively fertile than in the whole space of time elapsed since the days of Spenser and Shakspeare. The great dramatists of the Elizabethan age are still unrivalled, and the giant genius of Milton stands alone, illustrating the dark period of puritanical fanaticism-but the writers who adorned the beginning of the eighteenth century, decidedly surpassed by those of our own time, have no chance of ever regaining the supremacy they had usurped, but in which they have been supplanted. There is nothing very stupendous in this triumph of the cotemporary poets, for the writers that flourished under Queen Anne had not much more than their judgment and industry to stand on, and were rather remarkable for the fewness of their faults, than the greatness of their beauties. Their inspiration is but a sprightly sort of good sense and they have scarcely any invention but what is subservient to the purposes of derision and satire. Slight gleams of pleasantry and sparkles of wit glitter through their productions; but no glow of feeling-no blaze of imaginationno flashes of genius ever irradiate their substance. In the age subsequent to Dryden and Pope there was a still more remarkable dearth of original talent, a very long interruption of native genius. The dramatic art was dead, and poetry seemed verging to a similar extinction. The few sparks that appeared, however, showed that the old fire was burnt out, and that the altar must hereafter be heaped with fuel of another quality. The transition was marked by the noble genius of Cowper, who, with a style of complete originality, for the first time made it apparent to readers of every description, that Pope and Addison were no longer to be the exclusive models of English poetry. This brings us down to the times that are still near us. A splendid progeny of distinguished literary characters arose, and in the midst of a great political commotion the sacred flame of poesy diffused its beneficent warmth. Three great stars eclipsed the remnant of the new constellation. Byron, Scott and Moore inscribed their names in the rolls of immortality. But many other poets, scarce inferior to these happy three, are not so much known, particularly on the continent, as they well deserve. It was |