is very well; but where are the other seven volumes?' There is no other author, however, whose fane 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, 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 any thing 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, 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 ora

cular, 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; 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 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 been forgotten, merely because there was not room iu 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 frame.

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 lyes 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 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 their 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 Specimensthe 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 these dimensions of 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 be fore us.

The Essay on English Poetry is very cleverly, and, in many places, very finely written-but it is not equal, and it is not complete. There is a good deal of the poet's waywardness even in Mr C.'s prose. His historical Muse is as disdainful of drudgery and plain work as any of her more tuneful sisters;-and so we have things begun and abandoned-passages of great cloquence and beauty followed up by others not a little careless and disorderly-a large outline rather meagerly filled up, but with some morsels of exquisite finishing scattered irregularly up and down its expanse-little fragments of detail and controversy-and abrupt and impatient conclusions. Altogether, however, the work is very spirited; and abounds with the indications of a powerful and fine understanding, and of a delicate and original taste. We cannot now afford to give any ab

stract of the information it contains-but shall make a few extracts, to show the tone and manner of the composition.

After some very acute remarks on Mr Ellis's opinions as to the origin of our present English, he gives a rapid and animated sketch of the antient Romances-one part of which he sums up as follows.

The reign of French metrical romance may be chiefly assigned to the latter part of the twelfth, and the whole of the thirteenth century; that of English metrical romance, to the latter part of the thirteenth, and the whole of the fourteenth century. Those ages of chivalrous song were, in the mean time, fraught with events which, while they undermined the feudal system, gradually prepared the way for the decline of chivalry itself. Literature and science were commencing; and even in the improvement of the mechanical skill employed to heighten chivalrous or superstitious magnificence, the seeds of arts, industry, and plebeian independence were unconsciously sown. One invention, that of gun-powder, is eminently marked out, as the cause of the extinction of Chivalry; but even if that invention had not taken place, it may well be conjectured that the contrivance of other means of missile destruction in war, and the improvement of tactics, would have narrowed that scope for the prominence of individual prowess, which was necessary for the chivalrous character, and that the progress of civilization must have ultimately levelled its romantic consequence. But to anticipate the remote effects of such causes, if scarcely within the ken of philosophy, was still less within the reach of poetry. Chivalry was still in all its glory; and, to the eye of the poet, appeared as likely as ever to be immortal. The progress of civilization even ministered to its external importance. The early arts made chivalrous life, with all its pomp and ceremonies, more august and imposing, and more picturesque as a subject for description. Literature, for a time, contributed to the same effect, by her jejune and fabulous efforts at history, in which the athletic worthies of classical story and of modern romance were gravely connected by an ideal genealogy: And thus the dawn of human improvement smiled on the fabric which it was ultimately to destroyas the morning sun gilds and beautifies those masses of frost-work, which are to melt before its noonday heat.

The elements of romantic fiction have been traced up to various sources; but neither the Scaldic, nor Saracenic, nor Armorican theory of its origin can sufficiently account for all its materials. Many of them are classical, and others derived from the scriptures. The migrations of Science are difficult enough to be traced; but Fiction travels on still lighter wings, and scatters the seeds of her wild flowers imperceptibly over the world, till they surprise us by springing up with similarity in regions the most remotely divided. There was a vague and unselecting love of the marvellous in romance, which sought for adventures, like its knights errant, in every quarter where they could be found; so that it is easier to admit of all the sources which are imputed to that specks of fiction, than to limit our belief to any one of them. 1. 26-30.

The following sketch of Chaucer, and of the long interregnum that succeeded, is likewise given with great grace and spirit.

His first, and long continued predilection, was attracted by the new and allegorical style of romance, which had sprung up, in France, in the thirteenth century, under William de Lorris. We find him, accordingly, during a great part of his poetical career, engaged among the dreams, emblems, flower-worshippings, and amatory parliaments, of that visionary school. This, we may say, was a gymnasium of rather too light and playful excrcise for so strong a genius; and it must be owned, that his allegorical poetry is often puerile and prolix. Yet, even in this walk of fiction, we never entirely lose sight of that peculiar grace, and gaiety, which distinguish the Muse of Chaucer; and no one who remembers his productions of the House of Fame, and the Flower and the Leaf, will regret that he sported, for a season, in the field of allegory. Even his pieces of this description, the most fantastic in design, and tedious in execution, are generally interspersed with fresh and joyous descriptions of external nature. In this new species of romance, we perceive the youthful Muse of the language, in love with mystical meanings and forms of fancy, more remote, if possible, from reality, than those of the chivalrous fable itself; and we could, sometimes, wish her back from her emblematic castles, to the more solid ones of the elder fable; but still she moves in pursuit of those shadows with an impulse of novelty, and an exuberance of spirit, that is not wholly without its attraction and delight. Chaucer was, afterwards, happily drawn to the more natural style of Boccaccio, and from him he derived the hint of a subject, in which, besides his own original portraits of contemporary life, he could introduce stories of every description, from the most heroic to the most familiar.' pp. 71–73.

Warton, with great beauty and justice, compares the appearance of Chaucer in our language, to a premature day in an English spring; after which the gloom of winter returns, and the buds and blossoms, which have been called forth by a transient sunshine, are nipped by frosts and scattered by storms. The causes of the relapse of our poetry, after Chaucer, seem but too apparent in the annals of English history, which, during five reigns of the fifteenth century, continue to display but a tissue of conspiracies, proscriptions, and bloodshed. Inferior even to France in literary progress, England displays in the fifteenth century a still more mortifying contrast with Italy. Italy, too, had her religious schisms and public distractions; but her arts and literature had always a sheltering place. They were even cherished by the rivalship of independent communities, and received encouragement from the opposite sources of commercial and ecclesiastical wealth. But we had no Nicholas the Fifth, nor House of Medicis. In England, the evils of civil war agitated society as one There was no refuge from them-no enclosure to fence in the field of improvement-no mound to stem the torrent of public troubles. Before the death of Henry VI. it is said that one half of the

mass.