Εικόνες σελίδας
PDF
Ηλεκτρ. έκδοση

Did some more sober critic come abroad;
If wrong, I smiled; if right, I kissed the rod.
Pains, reading, study, are their just pretence,
And all they want is spirit, taste, and sense.
Commas and points they set exactly right,
And 'twere a sin to rob them of their mite.
Yet ne'er one sprig of laurels graced these ribalds,
From slashing Bentley down to piddling Tibbalds;
Each wight, who reads not, and but scans and spells,
Each word-catcher, that lives on syllables,
Even such small critics some regard may claim,
Preserved in Milton's or in Shakspeare's name.
Pretty! in amber to observe the forms

Of hairs, or straws, or dirt, or grubs, or worms!
The things we know are neither rich nor rare,
But wonder how the devil they got there.

Were others angry? I excused them too;
Well might they rage, I gave them but their due.
A man's true merit 'tis not hard to find;
But each man's secret standard in his mind,
That casting-weight pride adds to emptiness,
This, who can gratify? for who can guess?
The bard whom pilfered pastorals renown,
Who turns a Persian tale for half-a-crown,
Just writes to make his barrenness appear,

And strains from hard-bound brains eight lines a-year;
He who, still wanting, though he lives on theft,
Steals much, spends little, yet has nothing left:
And he, who now to sense, now nonsense leaning,
Means not, but blunders round about a meaning;
And he, whose fustian's so sublimely bad,
It is not poetry, but prose run mad:
All these my modest satire bade translate,
And owned that nine such poets made a Tate.
How did they fume, and stamp, and roar, and chafe!
And swear, not Addison himself was safe.

Peace to all such! but were there one whose fires
True genius kindles, and fair fame inspires;
Blest with each talent and each art to please,
And born to write, converse, and live with case:
Should such a man, too fond to rule alone,
Bear, like the Turk, no brother near the throne,
View him with scornful, yet with jealous eyes,
And hate for arts that caused himself to rise;
Damn with faint praise, assent with civil leer,
And, without sneering, teach the rest to sneer;
Willing to wound, and yet afraid to strike,
Just hint a fault, and hesitate dislike;
Alike reserved to blame, or to commend,
A timorous foe, and a suspicious friend;
Dreading even fools, by flatterers besieged,
And so obliging, that he ne'er obliged;
Like Cato, give his little senate laws,
And sit attentive to his own applause;
While wits and Templars every sentence raise,
And wonder with a foolish face of praise.
Who but must laugh, if such a man there be?
Who would not weep, if Atticus were he ?*

[blocks in formation]

Who can your merit selfishly approve,
And show the sense of it without the love;
Who has the vanity to call you friend,
Yet wants the honour, injured, to defend ;
Who tells whate'er you think, whate'er you say,
And, if he lie not, must at least betray: *
Who reads, but with a lust to misapply,
Makes satire a lampoon, and fiction lie;
A lash like mine no honest man shall dread,
But all such babbling blockheads in his stead.

Let Sporus tremble*-A. What? that thing of silk,
Sporus, that mere white curd of asses' milk?
Satire or sense, alas! can Sporus feel?
Who breaks a butterfly upon a wheel?
P. Yet let me flap this bug with gilded wings,
This painted child of dirt, that stinks and stings;
Whose buzz the witty and the fair annoys,
Yet wit ne'er tastes, and beauty ne'er enjoys:
So well-bred spaniels civilly delight

In mumbling of the game they dare not bite.
Eternal smiles his emptiness betray,

As shallow streams run dimpling all the way;
Whether in florid impotence he speaks,

And, as the prompter breathes, the puppet squeaks;
Or at the ear of Eve, familiar toad,
Half froth, half venom, spits himself abroad,
In puns, or politics, or tales, or lies,
Or spite, or smut, or rhymes, or blasphemies;
His wit all seesaw, between that and this,
Now high, now low, now master up, now miss,
And he himself one vile antithesis.
Amphibious thing! that acting either part,
The trifling head, or the corrupted heart,
Fop at the toilet, flatterer at the board,
Now trips a lady, and now struts a lord.
Eve's tempter thus the Rabbins have expressed:
A cherub's face, a reptile all the rest,
Beauty that shocks you, parts that none will trust,
Wit that can creep, and pride that licks the dust.
Not fortune's worshipper, nor fashion's fool;
Not lucre's madman, nor ambition's tool;
Not proud nor servile: be one poet's praise,
That, if he pleased, he pleased by manly ways;
That flattery even to kings he held a shame,
And thought a lie in verse or prose the same;
That not in fancy's maze he wandered long,
But stooped to truth, and moralised his song;
That not for fame, but virtue's better end,
He stood the furious foe, the timid friend,
The damning critic, half-approving wit,
The coxcomb hit, or fearing to be hit;
Laughed at the loss of friends he never had,
The dull, the proud, the wicked, and the mad;
The distant threats of vengeance on his head;
The blow, unfelt, the tear he never shed;
The tale revived, the lie so oft o'erthrown,
The imputed trash, and dulness not his own;
The morals blackened when the writings 'scape,
The libelled person, and the pictured shape;
Abuse on all he loved, or loved him, spread,
A friend in exile, or a father dead;
The whisper, that to greatness still too near,
Perhaps yet vibrates on his sovereign's ear.
Welcome to thee, fair Virtue, all the past;
For thee, fair Virtue! welcome even the last!

The Man of Ross.+

[From the Moral Essays. Epistle III.] But all our praises why should lords engross? Rise, honest Muse! and sing the Man of Ross: * Lord Hervey.

The Man of Ross was Mr John Kyrle, who died in 1724, aged 90, and was interred in the church of Ross, in Herefordshire. Mr Kyrle was enabled to effect many of his benevolent purposes by the assistance of liberal subscriptions. Pope had been in Ross, on his way from Lord Bathurst's to Lord Oxford.

Pleased Vaga echoes through her winding bounds,
And rapid Severn hoarse applause resounds.
Who hung with woods yon mountain's sultry brow?
From the dry rock who bade the waters flow?
Not to the skies in useless columns tost,
Or in proud falls magnificently lost;

But clear and artless, pouring through the plain,
Health to the sick, and solace to the swain.
Whose causeway parts the vale with shady rows?
Whose seats the weary traveller repose?
Who taught the heaven-directed spire to rise?
'The Man of Ross,' each lisping babe replies.
Behold the market-place with poor o'erspread!
The Man of Ross divides the weekly bread:
He feeds yon almshouse, neat, but void of state,
Where age and want sit smiling at the gate:
Him portioned maids, apprenticed orphans blessed,
The young who labour, and the old who rest.
Is any sick? the Man of Ross relieves,
Prescribes, attends, and med'cine makes and gives.
Is there a variance? enter but his door,
Baulked are the courts, and contest is no more:
Despairing quacks with curses fled the place,
And vile attorneys, now a useless race.

B. Thrice happy man, enabled to pursue
What all so wish, but want the power to do!
O say, what sums that generous hand supply?
What mines to swell that boundless charity?

P. Of debts and taxes, wife and children clear,
This man possessed five hundred pounds a-year.
Blush, grandeur, blush! proud courts, withdraw your
blaze;

Ye little stars! hide your diminished rays.

B. And what! no monument, inscription, stone?
His race, his form, his name almost unknown?

P. Who builds a church to God, and not to fame,
Will never mark the marble with his name:
Go, search it there, where to be born and die,
Of rich and poor makes all the history;
Enough, that virtue filled the space between;
Proved by the ends of being to have been.
When Hopkins dies, a thousand lights attend
The wretch, who living saved a candle's end;
Shouldering God's altar a vile image stands,
Belies his features, nay, extends his hands;
That live-long wig, which Gorgon's self might own,
Eternal buckle takes in Parian stone.
Behold what blessings wealth to life can lend!
And see what comfort it affords our end!

In the worst inn's worst room, with mat half-hung,
The floors of plaster, and the walls of dung,
On once a flock-bed, but repaired with straw,
With tape-tied curtains, never meant to draw,
The George and Garter dangling from that bed
Where tawdry yellow strove with dirty red,
Great Villiers lies-alas! how changed from him,
That life of pleasure, and that soul of whim!
Gallant and gay, in Cliefden's proud alcove,
The bower of wanton Shrewsbury and love;
Or just as gay, at council, in a ring

Of mimic statesmen, and their merry king.
No wit to flatter, left of all his store!
No fool to laugh at, which he valued more.
There, victor of his health, of fortune, friends,
And fame, this lord of useless thousands ends.

The Dying Christian to his Soul.
Vital spark of heavenly flame,
Quit, oh quit this mortal frame:
Trembling, hoping, lingering, flying-
Oh the pain, the bliss of dying!
Cease, fond Nature, cease thy strife,
And let me languish into life!

Hark! they whisper; angels say,
Sister spirit, come away!

What is this absorbs me quite?

Steals my senses, shuts my sight,
Drowns my spirits, draws my breath?
Tell me, my soul, can this be death?
The world recedes; it disappears!
Heaven opens on my eyes! my ears
With sounds seraphic ring:
Lend, lend your wings! I mount! I fly!
O Grave! where is thy victory?

O Death! where is thy sting?

We may quote, as a specimen of the melodious versification of Pope's Homer, the well-known moonlight scene, which has been both extravagantly praised and censured. Wordsworth and Southey unite in considering the lines and imagery as false and contradictory. It will be found in this case, as in many passages of Dryden, that, though natural objects be incorrectly described, the beauty of the language and versification elevates the whole into poetry of a high imaginative order. Pope followed the old version of Chapman, which we also subjoin::

The troops exulting sat in order round,

And beaming fires illumined all the ground,
As when the moon, refulgent lamp of night!
O'er heaven's clear azure spreads her sacred light;
When not a breath disturbs the deep serene,
And not a cloud o'ercasts the solemn scene;
Around her throne the vivid planets roll,
And stars unnumbered gild the glowing pole;
O'er the dark trees a yellower verdure shed,
And tip with silver every mountain's head;
Then shine the vales, the rocks in prospect rise,
A flood of glory bursts from all the skies:
The conscious swains, rejoicing in the sight,
Eye the blue vault, and bliss the useful light.
So many flames before proud Ilion blaze,
And lighten glimmering Xanthus with their rays;
The long reflections of the distant fires
Gleam on the walls and tremble on the spires.
A thousand piles the dusky horrors gild,
And shoot a shady lustre o'er the field.
Full fifty guards each flaming pile attend,
Whose unbered arms, by fits, thick flashes send;
Loud neigh the coursers o'er their heaps of corn,
And ardent warriors wait the rising morn.
Chapman's version is as follows:-

This speech all Trojans did applaud, who from their
traces loosed

Their sweating horse, which severally with headstalls they reposed,

And fastened by their chariots; when others brought

from town

Fat sheep and oxen instantly; bread, wine, and hewed down

Huge store of wood; the winds transferred into the friendly sky

Their supper's savour; to the which they sat delightfully,

And spent all night in open field; fires round about them shined,

As when about the silver moon, when air is free from wind,

And stars shine clear, to whose sweet beams, high prospects, and the brows

Of all steep hills and pinnacles, thrust up themselves
for shows;

And even the lowly valleys gay to glitter in their sight,
When the unmeasured firmament bursts to disclose

her light,

And all the signs in heaven are seen, that glad the
shepherd's heart;

Lo, many fires disclosed their beams, made by the
Trojan part

Before the face of Ilion, and her bright turrets showed. A thousand courts of guard kept fires, and every guard allowed

Fifty stout men, by whom their horse eat oats, and hard-white corn,

And all did wilfully expect the silver-throned morn.
Cowper's translation is brief, but vivid and distinct :-
As when around the clear bright moon, the stars
Shine in full splendour, and the winds are hushed,
The groves, the mountain-tops, the headland heights
Stand all apparent, not a vapour streaks
The boundless blue, but ether opened wide
All glitters, and the shepherd's heart is cheered.

THOMAS TICKELL.

The friendship of Addison has shed a reflected light on some of his contemporaries, and it elevated them, in their own day, to considerable importance. Amongst these was THOMAS TICKELL (1686–1740), born at Bridekirk, near Carlisle, and educated at

Oxford. He was a writer in the Spectator and Guardian, and when Addison went to Ireland as secretary to Lord Sunderland, Tickell accompanied him, and was employed in public business. He published

a translation of the first book of the Iliad at the same

time with Pope. Addison and the Whigs pronounced it to be the best, while the Tories ranged under the banner of Pope. The circumstance led to a breach of the friendship betwixt Addison and Pope, which was never healed. Addison continued his patronage of Tickell, made him his under secretary of state, and left him the charge of publishing his works. Tickell had elegance and tenderness as a poet, but was deficient in variety and force. His ballad of 'Colin and Lucy' is worth all his other works. It has the simplicity and pathos of the elder lyrics, without their too frequent coarseness and abrupt transitions. His Elegy on the Death of Addison' is considered by Johnson one of the most elegant and sublime funeral poems in the language. The author's own friend, Steele, considered it only 'prose in rhyme! The following extract contains the best verses in the elegy:

Oft let me range the gloomy aisles alone,
Sad luxury! to vulgar minds unknown,
Along the walls where speaking marbles show
What worthies form the hallowed mould below;
Proud names! who once the reins of empire held,
In arms who triumphed, or in arts excelled;
Chiefs graced with scars, and prodigal of blood,
Stern patriots, who for sacred freedom stood;
Just men by whom impartial laws were given,
And saints who taught and led the way to heaven.
Ne'er to these chambers where the mighty rest,
Since their foundation came a nobler guest;
Nor e'er was to the bowers of bliss conveyed
A fairer spirit, or more welcome shade.

In what new region to the just assigned,

What new employments please the unbodied mind?
A winged virtue through the ethereal sky,
From world to world unwearied does he fly;
Or curious trace the long laborious maze

Of Heaven's decrees, where wondering angels gaze?
Does he delight to hear bold seraphs tell
How Michael battled, and the dragon fell;
Or, mixed with milder cherubim, to glow
In hymns of love not ill essayed below?
Or dost thou warn poor mortals left behind?
A task well suited to thy gentle mind.
Oh! if sometimes thy spotless form descend,
To me thy aid, thou guardian genius! lend.

When rage misguides me, or when fear alarms,
When pain distresses, or when pleasure charms,
In silent whisp'rings purer thoughts impart,
And turn from ill a frail and feeble heart;
Lead through the paths thy virtue trod before,
Till bliss shall join, nor death can part no more.
That awful form which, so the Heavens decree,
Must still be loved, and still deplored by me,
In nightly visions seldom fails to rise,
Or roused by Fancy, meets my waking eyes.
If business calls, or crowded courts invite,
The unblemished statesman seems to strike my sight;
If in the stage I seek to soothe my care,

I meet his soul, which breathes in Cato there;
If pensive to the rural shades I rove,
His step o'ertakes me in the lonely grove;
"Twas there of just and good he reasoned strong,
Cleared some great truth, or raised some serious song;
There patient showed us the wise course to steer,
There taught us how to live, and (oh! too high
A candid censor, and a friend severe;
The price for knowledge) taught us how to die.

Thou hill! whose brow the antique structures grace,
Why, once so loved, whene'er thy bower appears,
Reared by bold chiefs of Warwick's noble race;
O'er my dim eyeballs glance the sudden tears!
How sweet were once thy prospects fresh and fair,
Thy sloping walks, and unpolluted air!
Thy noontide shadow, and thy evening breeze!
How sweet the glooms beneath thy aged trees,
His image thy forsaken bowers restore,
Thy walks and airy prospects charm no more;
No more the summer in thy glooms allayed,
Thy evening breezes, and thy noonday shade.

Colin and Lucy.-A Ballad.

Of Leinster, famed for maidens fair,
Bright Lucy was the grace,
Nor e'er did Liffy's limpid stream
Reflect so sweet a face;

Till luckless love and pining care
Impaired her rosy hue,

Her coral lips and damask cheeks,
And eyes of glossy blue.

Oh! have you seen a lily pale

When beating rains descend? So drooped the slow-consuming maid, Her life now near its end.

By Lucy warned, of flattering swains
Take heed, ye easy fair!
Of vengeance due to broken vows,
Ye perjured swains! beware.

Three times all in the dead of night
A bell was heard to ring,
And shrieking, at her window thrice
The raven flapped his wing.

Too well the love-lorn maiden knew
The solemn boding sound,
And thus in dying words bespoke
The virgins weeping round:

"I hear a voice you cannot hear,
Which says I must not stay;
I see a hand you cannot see,
Which beckons me away.

By a false heart and broken vows
In early youth I die.

Was I to blame because his bride
Was thrice as rich as I?

Ah, Colin! give not her thy vows,
Vows due to me alone;

Nor thou, fond maid! receive his kiss,
Nor think him all thy own.

To-morrow in the church to wed,

Impatient both prepare;

But know, fond maid! and know, false man!
That Lucy will be there.

Then bear my corse, my comrades! bear,
This bridegroom blithe to meet;
He in his wedding trim so gay,
I in my winding sheet.'

She spoke; she died. Her corpse was borne
The bridegroom blithe to meet;
He in his wedding trim so gay,
She in her winding sheet.

Then what were perjured Colin's thoughts?
How were these nuptials kept?
The bridesmen flocked round Lucy dead,
And all the village wept.

Confusion, shame, remorse, despair,
At once his bosom swell;

The damps of death bedewed his brow;
He shook, he groaned, he fell.

From the vain bride, ah! bride no more!
The varying crimson fled,

When stretched before her rival's corpse
She saw her husband dead.

Then to his Lucy's new made grave
Conveyed by trembling swains,
One mould with her, beneath one sod,
For ever he remains.

Oft at this grave the constant hind
And plighted maid are seen;
With garlands gray and true-love knots
They deck the sacred green.

But, swain forsworn! whoe'er thou art,
This hallowed spot forbear;
Remember Colin's dreadful fate,
And fear to meet him there.

SIR SAMUEL GARTH.

Speak, goddess! since 'tis thou that best can'st tell,
How ancient leagues to modern discord fell;
And why physicians were so cautious grown
Of others' lives, and lavish of their own;
How by a journey to the Elysian plain,
Peace triumphed, and old time returned again.
Not far from that most celebrated place,1
Where angry justice shows her awful face;
Where little villains must submit to fate,
That great ones may enjoy the world in state;
There stands a dome,2 majestic to the sight,
And sumptuous arches bear its oval height;
A golden globe, placed high with artful skill,
Seems, to the distant sight, a gilded pill;
This pile was, by the pious patron's aim,
Raised for a use as noble as its frame;
Nor did the learned society decline
The propagation of that great design;
In all her mazes, Nature's face they viewed,
And, as she disappeared, their search pursued.
Wrapt in the shade of night the goddess lies,
Yet to the learned unveils her dark disguise,
But shuns the gross access of vulgar eyes.

Now she unfolds the faint and dawning strife
Of infant atoms kindling into life;
How ductile matter new meanders takes,
And slender trains of twisting fibres makes;
And how the viscous seeks a closer tone,
By just degrees to harden into bone;
While the more loose flow from the vital urn,
And in full tides of purple streams return;
How lambent flames from life's bright lamps

arise,

And dart in emanations through the eyes;
How from each sluice a gentle torrent pours,
To slake a feverish heat with ambient showers;
Whence their mechanic powers the spirits claim;
How great their force, how delicate their frame;
How the same nerves are fashioned to sustain
The greatest pleasure and the greatest pain;
Why bilious juice a golden light puts on,
And floods of chyle in silver currents run;
How the dim speck of entity began

To extend its recent form, and stretch to man;
Why envy oft transforms with wan disguise,
And why gay Mirth sits smiling in the eyes;
Whence Milo's vigour at the Olympic's shown,
Whence tropes to Finch, or impudence to Sloane;
How matter, by the varied shape of pores
Or idiots frames, or solemn senators.

How body acts upon impassive mind;
Hence 'tis we wait the wondrous cause to find,
How fumes of wine the thinking part can fire,
Past hopes revive, and present joys inspire;
Why our complexions oft our soul declare,
And how the passions in the features are;
How touch and harmony arise between
Corporeal figure, and a form unseen;
How quick their faculties the limbs fulfil,
And act at every summons of the will;
With mighty truths, mysterious to descry,
Which in the womb of distant causes lie.

SIR SAMUEL GARTH, an eminent physician, published in 1696 his poem of The Dispensary, to aid the college of physicians in a war they were then waging with the apothecaries. The latter had ventured to prescribe, as well as compound medicines; and the physicians, to outbid them in popularity, advertised that they would give advice gratis to the poor, and establish a dispensary of their own for the sale of cheap medicines. The college triumphed; but in 1703 the House of Lords decided that apothecaries were entitled to exercise the privilege which Garth and his brother physicians resisted. Garth But now no grand inquiries are descried; was a popular and benevolent man, a firm Whig, Mean faction reigns where knowledge should preside; yet the early encourager of Pope; and when Dryden Feuds are increased, and learning laid aside; died, he pronounced a Latin oration over the poet's Thus synods oft concern for faith conceal, remains. With Addison, he was, politically and And for important nothings show a zeal: personally, on terms of the closest intimacy. Garth The drooping sciences neglected pine, died in 1718. The 'Dispensary' is a mock heroic And Paan's beams with fading lustre shine. poem in six cantos. Some of the leading apothe-No readers here with hectic looks are found, caries of the day are happily ridiculed; but the in- Nor eyes in rheum, through midnight-watching terest of the satire has passed away, and it did not drowned: contain enough of the life of poetry to preserve it. A few lines will give a specimen of the manner and the versification of the poem. It opens in the following strain :

The lonely edifice in sweats complains
That nothing there but sullen silence reigns.

1 Old Bailey.

2 The College of Physicians.

This place, so fit for undisturbed repose,
The god of sloth for his asylum chose;
Upon a couch of down in these abodes,
Supine with folded arms, he thoughtless nods;
Indulging dreams his godhead lull to ease,
With murmurs of soft rills, and whispering trees:
The poppy and each numbing plant dispense
Their drowsy virtue and dull indolence;
No passions interrupt his easy reign,

No problems puzzle his lethargic brain:
But dark oblivion guards his peaceful bed,
And lazy fogs hang lingering o'er his head.

All have sunk into oblivion; but Pope has preserved his memory in various satirical allusions. Addison extended his friendship to the Whig poet, whose private character was exemplary and irreproachable. Dr Johnson included Blackmore in his edition of the poets, but restricted his publication of his works to the poem of Creation,' which, he said, 'wants neither harmony of numbers, accuracy of thought, nor elegance of diction.' Blackmore died in 1729. The design of 'Creation' was to demonstrate the existence of a Divine Eternal Mind. He recites the proofs of a Deity from natural and physical pheno

The following is from a grandiloquent address by mena, and afterwards reviews the systems of the Colocynthus, a keen apothecary:

Could'st thou propose that we, the friends of fates,
Who fill churchyards, and who unpeople states,
Who batlle nature, and dispose of lives,
Whilst Russel, as we please, or starves or thrives,
Should e'er submit to their despotic will,
Who out of consultation scarce can skill?
The towering Alps shall sooner sink to vales,
And leeches, in our glasses, swell to whales;
Or Norwich trade in instruments of steel,
And Birmingham in stuff's and druggets deal!
Alleys at Wapping furnish us new modes,

And Monmouth Street, Versailles, with riding-hoods;
The sick to the Hundreds in pale throngs repair,
And change the Gravel-pits for Kentish air.

Our properties must on our arms depend;
'Tis next to conquer, bravely to defend.
"Tis to the vulgar death too harsh appears;
The ill we feel is only in our fears.

To die, is landing on some silent shore,
Where billows never break, nor tempests roar:
Ere well we feel the friendly stroke, 'tis o'er.
The wise through thought the insults of death defy;
The fools through blessed insensibility.
"Tis what the guilty fear, the pious crave;
Sought by the wretch, and vanquished by the brave.
It eases lovers, sets the captive free;
And, though a tyrant, offers liberty.

Garth wrote the epilogue to Addison's tragedy of Cato, which ends with the following pleasing lines:Oh, may once more the happy age appear, When words were artless, and the thoughts sincere ; When gold and grandeur were unenvied things, And courts less coveted than groves and springs. Love then shall only mourn when truth complains, And constancy feel transport in his chains; Sighs with success their own soft language tell, And eyes shall utter what the lips conceal: Virtue again to its bright station climb, And beauty fear no enemy but time; The fair shall listen to desert alone, And every Lucia find a Cato's son.

SIR RICHARD BLACKMORE.

SIR RICHARD BLACKMORE was one of the most fortunate physicians, and the most persecuted poets, of this period. He was born of a good family in Wiltshire, and took the degree of M.A. at Oxford in 1676. He was in extensive medical practice, was knighted by King William III., and afterwards made censor of the college of physicians. In 1695, he published Prince Arthur, an epic poem, which he says he wrote amidst the duties of his profession, in coffeehouses, or in passing up and down the streets! Dryden, whom he had attacked for licentiousness, satirised him for writing to the rumbling of his chariot-wheels.' Blackmore continued writing, and published a series of epic poems on King Alfred, Queen Elizabeth, the Redeemer, the Creation, &c.

[ocr errors]

Epicureans and the Fatalists, concluding with a hymn to the Creator of the world. The piety of Blackmore is everywhere apparent in his writings; but the genius of poetry too often evaporates amidst his commonplace illustrations and prosing declamation. One passage of Creation' (addressed to the disciples of Lucretius) will suffice to show the style of Blackmore, in its more select and improved

manner:

You ask us why the soil the thistle breeds;
Why its spontaneous birth are thorns and weeds;
Why for the harvest it the harrow needs?

The Author might a nobler world have made,
In brighter dress the hills and vales arrayed,
And all its face in flowery scenes displayed:
The glebe untilled might plenteous crops have borne,
And brought forth spicy groves instead of thorn:
Rich fruit and flowers, without the gardener's pains,
Might every hill have crowned, have honoured all the
plains:

This Nature might have boasted, had the Mind
Who formed the spacious universé designed
That man, from labour free, as well as grief,
Should pass in lazy luxury his life.
But he his creature gave a fertile soil,
Fertile, but not without the owner's toil,
That some reward his industry should crown,
And that his food in part might be his own.

But while insulting you arraign the land,
Ask why it wants the plough, or labourer's hand;
Kind to the marble rocks, you ne'er complain
That they, without the sculptor's skill and pain,
No perfect statue yield, no basse relieve,
Or finished column for the palace give.
Yet if from hills unlaboured figures came,
Man might have ease enjoyed, though never fame.
You may the world of more defect upbraid,
That other works by Nature are unmade:
That she did never, at her own expense,
A palace rear, and in magnificence
Out-rival art, to grace the stately rooms;
That she no castle builds, no lofty domes.
Had Nature's hand these various works prepared,
What thoughtful care, what labour had been spared!
But then no realm would one great master show,
No Phidias Greece, and Rome no Angelo.
With equal reason, too, you might demand
Why boats and ships require the artist's hand;
Why generous Nature did not these provide,
To pass the standing lake, or flowing tide?

You say the hills, which high in air arise, Harbour in clouds, and mingle with the skies, That earth's dishonour and encumbering load, Of many spacious regions man defraud; For beasts and birds of prey a desolate abode. But can the objector no convenience find In mountains, hills, and rocks, which gird and bind The mighty frame, that else would be disjoined ! Do not those heaps the raging tide restrain, And for the dome afford the marble vein ? Does not the rivers from the mountains flow, And bring down riches to the vale below!

« ΠροηγούμενηΣυνέχεια »