LITERARY censors have long taken a distempered pleasure in trying to terrify our intellectual youth from the pursuit of poetry. Not the most hapless children of the wretched, say they

"Not beggar's brat, on bulk begot,
Nor offspring of a pedlar Scot,
Nor boys brought up to cleaning shoes,
The spawn of bridewell, or the stews,-
Are so disqualified by fate,

To rise in church, or law, or state,
As he, whom Phoebus, in his ire,
Hath blasted with poetic fire."

And, among the multitude of examples for ever in their mouths, of penury pursuing the footsteps, and disappointment corroding the minds of men of poetic genius, there is no name oftener dragged up, with all its dreadful accompaniments of want, drunkenness, and self-torture, than that of Robert Burns.

Swift, whose bitter words we have quoted, had really no belief in what he wrote, beyond that sort of scornful credit which a witty man will give to the grotesque creations of his own humour. He knew, as well as any man, the privileges and rewards of the poet; but there are

conventional

subjects of affected bitterness among the satirists, just as there are of affected admiration among the panegyrists; and the lot of the poet has been a theme for forced pity ever since the appetite for scurrility raised satire to a permanent place in literature. Swift's lines, of course, have no reference to Burns, who, probably, was not born at the time of their composition; but they carry on their front the mark of that contempt and hatred for Scotland and the Scottish people, which, just before the generation of Burns, flowed in a torrent of obloquy from so many of the ablest pens of the age-and out of which, under God, it was Robert Burns' sincere and generous eloquence, speaking in melodious strains of love, and hope, and courage, that first raised his drooping country, and in the proud position which she has ever since maintained, still crowns her with the

freshest, and perhaps the most enduring, of all the intellectual wreaths yet won for her by her children.

Men, much too readily, adopt as maxims the sententious epigrams of wit; and where "Scot," for a whole century, had been made the rhyme and catch-word of every thing that was tersely sarcastic, pungent, and ridiculous, as well as of much that was admirably provocative of contempt and dislike it speaks more wonderfully than perhaps any other instance of the power of song, since fabulous times, that, mainly through the instrumentality of that literary genius evoked by Burns, a single half-century should have seen such feelings totally dispelled, and their places occupied by a sincere esteem and generous admiration. We who, in Ireland, occasionally smart under the petulance of our small metropolitan wits, so powerless in comparison with the satirists of the reigns of Anne and the First and Second Georges, ought to draw a lesson of patience and courageous hope from the example. Our Poet has not yet arisen. Many eyes, and many eager, affectionate hearts were once turned to Moore, in the hope that, at last, the hour had come, and the man; but taste sickened, and freedom dropt a tear, when we saw the ingenuous muse of the Melodies apprentice himself to the vile arts of a lying and spiteful theology. The noble utterance was stopped, and the national hope crushed back to its sources. But let us sing "Craigstown's growing," and cherish our hope in the language of our encouragers :—

soul, in allaying the splenetic heats of faction, and even in composing the bitter objurgations of theology. Where almost an angel from heaven would be disregarded in the obloquy and clamour of party or sectarian warfare, if a true poet arise, and speak according to his mission, he will undoubtedly be heard-even, as in old times, the bard could put an end to the battles of the Gauls, by shaking his chain of silence between the hosts. That such a man will some day arise among us, as Burns, sixty years since, arose among the Scotch-or as Beranger, in our own generation, has arisen among the Parisians-it is as reasonable, as it is consolatory and cheering, to expect; for, perhaps, no where in the world have so great a multitude of men, at any one time, been set thinking and striving to express great thoughts, as among ourselves, during the very year in which we write; and of the various manifestations of poetic genius with which the past exciting period has been rife, those to which alone the public admiration has fully responded, have been such as expressed generous and noble sentiments; while any pieces affecting the satirical and denunciatory vein so much in vogue a century ago, have met with no commendation beyond the suspicious applauses of the devotees. In London, on the contrary, a frivolous and illconditioned sort of badinage has sprung into popularity, hardly energetic enough to be deemed satire, yet, too petulant to pass for raillery-a sure sign of decaying taste, and of an unhealthy morality.

The Scotch, for much of the severity which they experienced at the hands of the wits of Queen Anne's and the two succeeding reigns, had mainly to thank the offensive extravagancies of their clergy. The "Tale of a Tub" was written, as much for the ridicule of Jack, as for the censure of Peter; and had it not been for the arrogant pretensions of the Presbyterians in the latter parliaments of Anne, we, probably, would never have heard of the loaf forced down Martin's throat, in lieu of a shoulder of mutton-or of the supernumerary tags to my Lord Peter's small-clothes. In

the history of John Bull, the same feeling breaks out in the derogatory character of Peg, and in Jack's antics,

insanity, and suicide-while throughout his verse satires, Swift never misses an opportunity of avenging his polemical quarrel on the beggarliness, the dirtiness, and the selfishness of the Scotch people.

Johnson, a man of too candid a magnanimity to exaggerate in any thing, did not affect to conceal, speaking of their pretensions to learning, an opinion, perhaps more damaging, in consequence of its measured impartiality, than the severest sarcasms of those who denied the obnoxious race all credit for either civility or knowledge. "Men bred there," says he, speaking of their universities, "cannot be expected to be often decorated with the splendours of ornamental erudition; but they obtain a mediocrity of knowledge, between learning and ignorance, not inadequate to the purposes of common life, which is very widely diffused among them, and which, countenanced in general by a combination so invidious that their friends cannot defend it, and actuated in particulars by a spirit of enterprise so vigorous that their enemies are constrained to praise it, enables them to find, or make their way to employment, riches, and distinction."

Wilkes's hostility to the administration of Lord Bute, not only revived in the pages of the anomalously-named North Briton, the old libels of the time of Elizabeth, but let loose on the devoted countrymen of the Tory premier the whole ferocious energy of Churchill, whose mind had so thoroughly contracted the habits of the bully, that he never assails an enemy of his own with half the fury that possesses him when espousing the personal or political quarrels of his friend. Nothing but the exhaustion of a desolating war could have kept the Scotch quiet, under the sting of Churchill's Prophecy of Famine: nothing but the utmost brutality could have dictated so cruel libel. Yet, the introductory part of it is little worse than some of Swift's satirical pictures of the coarseness and brutishness of his own poor countrymen. May the conclusion yet be as applicable to us, as heaven, changing the words of the mocker into unexpected reality, has actually made it to those whose poverty and feebleness it was designed to aggravate!

And the grape bleed a nectar yet unknown.

For us, the sun shall climb the eastern hill,

For us the rains descend, the dews distil.

When to our wishes nature cannot rise, Art shall be taxed to grant us new supplies.

For us, the oak, shall from his native

steep Descend, and fearless travel through the deep;

The sail of commerce, for our use unfurled,

Shall waft the treasures of each distant world;

For us, sublimer heights shall science reach; For us,

their statesmen toil-their churchmen preach," &c. &c.

now

All these bitter taunts are reality; and of Churchill's libel, the most popular in England of all the pungent effusions of that era, the only portion that remains likely to escape oblivion, are the ironically-meant, though really reasonable, lines of expostulation which the satirist addresses to himself:

"Oft have I heard thee mourn the wretched lot

Of the poor, mean, despised, insulted Scot;

Who, might calm reason credit idle tales By rancour forged, where prejudice prevails,

Or starves at home or practices through fear

Of starving, arts that damn all conscience here.

When scribblers, to the charge by interest led,

The fierce North Briton foaming at their head,

Poured fresh invectives, deaf to candour's call,

And injured by one alien, railed at all; On northern Pisgah, when they take their stand,

To mark the weakness of that Holy Land,

It kindles a good deal of indignation to see respectable satire engaged in the cruelty of running down a race of brave men, who had fought and bled for their opinions. A Russian bard, insulting the misfortunes of the Poles, would not employ his pen to a harsher purpose, than that of Churchill, in exulting over the Scottish people, prostrate after the battle of Culloden. Satire, never amiable, assumes its most repulsive aspect when it assails the weak. However it may serve as a vehicle for shrewd remark, and sometimes for the terse maxims of worldly wisdom, this style of composition is precluded by its very nature from ever rising to a true philosophy; and, perhaps no other department of literature has furnished the material of so much that is unjust and imaginary, in our estimates of the morals of different states of society, as this particular shelf of the professed satirists. After all, it is but a poor ambition, to point only the shafts of censure, laying up an armoury for combative or scornful spirits to draw upon, for the weapons of ridicule, contempt, or denuncia. tion-but furnishing no happy thought for the encouragement of virtue, the consolation of affliction, or the increase or preservation of any genuine or holy joy. The freaks of a splenetic humour, and the wrathful ebullitions of scorn, resentment, and insensate hate, have all, from time to time, clad in the splendours of genius, passed for the just indignation of morality; for private enmity is almost always the motive, public depravity the apology, of these bitter spirits. Armed with whips for the individual backs of Titus and Sempronius, they proclaim a mission to lash the vices of the age—and while indulging the animosities of personal, or national bad blood, challenge the approbation due to a generous zeal for the public morals. We do not include Swift among these hypocritical pretenders to a public censorship. Whe

ther animated by just anger, blind fury, or mere spleen, Swift assailed the objects of his hatred or contempt