Brooke, daughter of Henry Brooke, the author of The Fool of Quality, published in 1790 her Reliques of Irish Poetry translated into English Verse, which is chiefly deserving of notice as having called some attention to a neglected and interesting department of ancient national literature. Hannah More had produced her first work, The Search after Happiness, a Pastoral Drama, in 1773, her two ballads, or Poetical Tales, as she called them, of Sir Eldred of the Bower and the Bleeding Rock, the following year, and several more poems, as well as sundry tragedies and other dramatic pieces, in the course of the next ten years; and she maintained her reputation as a correct, sensible, and highly moral writer of verse by her Florio and The Bas Bleu, published in 1786, and her poem entitled Slavery, which appeared, in a quarto volume, two years later. Joanna Baillie, who survived till 1851, assumed at once her much more eminent place as a poetess, by the first volume of her Plays illustrative of the Passions, which was given to the world in 1798. The late William Sotheby, besides a volume of poems published in 1794, added to our literature in 1798 his elegant version of Wieland's Oberon, the work by which his name is perhaps most likely to be preserved, although he continued to write verse down almost to his death in 1833. But perhaps the two most important poetical publications which have not been noticed, at least in their effects if not in themselves, were the Fourteen Sonnets by the Rev. Lisle Bowles, who died only in 1850, printed at Bath in 1780; and the Tales of Wonder, by Matthew Gregory Lewis (already of literary notoriety as the author of the novel of The Monk, published in 1795), which came out, in two volumes, in 1801. Mr. Bowles, whose later works amply sustained his reputation as a true poet, has the glory of having by his first verses given an impulse and an inspiration to the genius of Coleridge, who in his Biographia Literaria has related how the spirit of poetry that was in him was awakened into activity by these sonnets. Lewis, again, and his Tales of Wonder, gave in like manner example and excitement to Scott, who had indeed already published his first rhymes, partly translated, partly original, in 1796, and also his prose version of Goethe's Goetz of Berlichingen, in 1799, but had not yet given any promise of what he was destined to become. Coleridge published his forgotten drama of The Fall of Robespierre in 1794, and a volume of Poems in 1796; Wordsworth, his Epistle in verse entitled, An Evening Walk, and also his Descriptive Sketches during a Tour in the Alps, in 1793, and the first edition of his Lyrical Ballads in 1798; Southey, is Joan of Arc in 1796 and a volume of Poems in 1797; but these writers all nevertheless belong properly to the present century, in which their principal works were produced, as well as Scott and Crabbe, and Thomas Moore, whose first publication, his Odes of Anacreon, appeared in 1800; Thomas Campbell, whose Pleasures of Hope first appeared in 1799; Walter Savage Landor, still living, whose first published poetry dates so far back as 1795; and Samuel Rogers, whose first poetry came out in 1786, and his Pleasures of Memory in 1792. BURNS. In October or November of the same year, 1786, in which Rogers, who all but saw 1856, first made his name known to English readers by An Ode to Superstition, with other Poems, printed at London, in the fashionable quarto size of the day, the press of the obscure country town of Kilmarnock, in Scotland, gave to the world, in an octavo volume, the first edition of the Poems, chiefly in the Scottish Dialect, of Robert Burns. A second edition was printed at Edinburgh early in the following year. Burns, born on the 25th of January, 1759, had composed most of the pieces contained in this publication in the two years preceding its appearance: his life-an April day of sunshine and storm-closed on the 21st of July, 1796; and in his last nine or ten years he may have about doubled the original quantity of his printed poetry. He was not quite thirty-seven and a half years old when he died-about a year and three months older than Byron. Burns is the greatest peasant-poet that has ever appeared; but his poetry is so remarkable in itself that the circumstances in which it was produced hardly add anything to our admiration. It is a poetry of very limited compass-not ascending towards any "highest heaven of invention," nor even having much variety of modulation, but yet in its few notes as true and melodious a voice of passion as was ever heard. It is all light and fire. Considering how little the dialect in which he wrote had been trained to the purposes of literature, what Burns has done with it is miraculous. Nothing in Horace, in the way of curious felicity of phrase, excels what we find in the compositions of this Ayrshire ploughman. The words are almost always so apt and full of life, at once so natural and expressive, and so graceful and musical in their animated simplicity, that, were the matter ever so trivial, they would of themselves turn it into poetry. And the same native artistic feeling manifests itself in everything else. One characteristic that belongs to whatever Burns has written is that, of its kind or in its own way, it is a perfect production. It is perfect in the same sense in which every production of nature is perfect, the humblest weed as well as the proudest flower; and in which, indeed, every true thing whatever is perfect, viewed in reference to its species and purpose. His poetry is, throughout, real emotion melodiously uttered. As such, it is as genuine poetry as was ever written or sung. Not, however, although its chief and best inspiration is passion rather than imagination, that any poetry ever was farther from being a mere Æolian warble addressing itself principally to the nerves. Burns's head was as strong as his heart; his natural sagacity, logical faculty, and judgment were of the first order; no man, of poetical or prosaic temperament, ever had a more substantial intellectual character. And the character of his poetry is like that of the mind and the nature out of which it sprung-instinct with passion, but not less so with power of thought-full of light, as we have said, as well as of fire. More of matter and meaning, in short, in any sense in which the terms may be understood, will be found in no verses than there is in his. Hence the popularity of the poetry of Burns with all classes of his countrymen-a popularity more universal, probably, than any other writer ever gained, at least so immediately; for his name, we apprehend, had become a household word among all classes in every part of Scotland even in his own lifetime. Certainly at the present day, that would be a rare Lowland Scotchman, or Scotchwoman either, who should be found never to have heard of the name and fame of Robert Burns, or even to be altogether ignorant of his works. It has happened, however, from this cause, that he is not perhaps, in general, estimated by the best of his productions. Nobody, of course, capable of appreciating any of the characteristic qualities of Burns's poetry will ever think of quoting even the best of the few verses he has written in English, as evidence of his poetic genius. In these he is Samson shorn of his hair, and become as any other man. But even such poems as his Cotter's Saturday Night, and his tale of Tam o' Shanter, convey no adequate conception of what is brightest and highest in his poetry. The former is a true and touching description in a quiet and subdued manner, suitable to the subject, but not adapted to bring out much of his illuminating fancy and fusing power of passion: the other is a rapid, animated, and most effective piece of narrative, with some vigorous comedy, and also some scene-painting in a broad, dashing style, but exhibiting hardly more of the peculiar humour of Burns than of his pathos. Of a far rarer merit, much richer in true poetic light and colour, and of a much more original and distinctive inspiration, are many of his poems which are much less frequently referred to, at least out of his own country. Take, for instance, that entitled To a Mouse, on turning her up in her Nest with the Plough, November, 1785 : Wee,' sleekit, cow'rin,3 timorous beastie,* O what a panic 's in thy breastie !* Thou saw the fields laid bare an' waste, An' cozie here, beneath the blast, Thou thought to dwell; Till crash the cruel coulter passed That wee bit heap o' leaves an' stibble 7 To thole" the winter's sleety dribble; But, Mousie,13 thou art no thy lane 14 An' leave us nought but grief and pain, Still thou art blest compared wi' me! On prospects drear; An' forward, though I canna 18 see, 17 A simple and common incident poetically conceived has never been rendered into expression more natural, delicately graceful, and true. Of course, however, our glossarial interpretations can convey but a very insufficient notion of the aptness of the poet's language to those to whom the Scottish dialect is not familiar. Such a phrase as "bickering brattle," for instance, is ' Triple diminutive of house-untranslatable into English. 2 Its weak walls the winds are strewing. 3 Nothing now to build a new one. 6 Snug. 4 Moss. 7 Very small quantity of leaves and stubble. 9 Thou is (art). 12 Hoar-frost cold. 15 Go oft awry. VOL. II. 10 Without house or hold. 13 Diminutive of "mouse." 16 Ab. 5 Biting. 8 Many. 11 Endure. 17 Eye. 14 Not alone. |