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ted by the return of day and night; and they continue lifeless and indifferent amid the revolutions of the seasons. Southey in the opinion of many produced a fine poem in the Joan of Arc, and by general suffrage discovered talents, which prognosticated a national epic. But all have been disappoint, ed. His" Madoc" has beautiful scenes, but is deficient as a whole. It wants the unity of the critics, and the daring thoughts of the anticritics. Both parties have therefore been careless of pleasing him; and the English reader, not having found in his poem the Golconda mine of gems and gold, now reverts to the harmonious versification of Pope, or the natural landscapes of Cowper. I know not why Southey failed. He certainly has powers of no common kind. He was not indeed so carefully nursed by the muses and graces on the hills or in the vallies, as Thompson; and fancy did not blow on him so strong a breath, as on Burns; yet he has scenes, and little delicate phrases, and nice peculiarities, and sometimes strong bursts of passion, which exhibit something more, than the quotidianarum harum formarum.

So much for Southey. Coleridge is the boast of many a vulgar mind; but, if the commons honor him, the lords reject, the prince disclaims him. Bloomfield too pretends to something more, than shoemaking. I care little for his pretensions to a myrtle wreathe, as I know, that the muses are tired of his lays. Whom these ladies love, I cannot tell, but I feel certain, that they never paced the streets of London in Bloomfield shoes, and with Bloomfield for a beau; for they are nymphs of the valley and mountain, and they love to linger along the solitary woodwalks of Cowper, and traverse the heath and the hill, where Burns picked his wild scented daisy, and spent with the cotter his Saturday night.

Wordsworth too has written ballads; some are good; but most are bad. They are distinguished by an affectation of simplicity, and a reality of silliness. He had seen the mighty effects, produced by the natural description of Cowper and Burns, and endeavored to transfuse into sentiment, what they had discovered in real existence, or had easily drawn by

natural consequence from the objects, which they had surveyed. It is well known, that he did not succeed. Readers were at first astonished by such gossipping and children's prattle; they could not believe, that the writer wished to carry them back to the simpering nursery, or introduce them to the soft easy chair of a sentimental, foolish girl. But they soon discovered, that the tendency of the ballads was to corrupt the heart by unnatural simplicity, and weaken the head by false representations of poetical beauty. These po ems are now thrown by; they are sometimes talked of, and seldom read. The meteorous exhalation, which originated in a pestilential atmosphere, passed rapidly over the disk of the moon, and left the bright queen of the sky to pursue the quiet career of her splendor.

Hurdis, Hoole, Hole, Jephson, and others of inferior name are dead; but Sotheby, Boyd, Rogers, and Scott, are alive. Sotheby has built a fairy palace in England, for he has translated the Oberon of Wieland, and he has introduced Roman agriculture among the English cultivators, for they read and admire his version of the Georgics. These two works alone will give him immortality. His "battle of the Nile" and his "siege of the Cuzco," a tragedy, are known to me only by name, or report; but that report is favorable. From the translations we have a right to expect, that the Æneid will finally be so translated, that the advocates of Dryden and Pitt will give up their respective favorites, and bow to Sotheby, as to the

god of their idolatry." All nations have a right in Homer and Virgil, as all nations feel honored in the Apollo and the Venus; but, as only the Greek can preserve the inimitable excellencies of Homer, and as the graces of Virgil are durably consecrated only in Latin, so the Grecian statues can exist to perfection only in the marble, from which they were chiselled; and therefore every language should be dignified with translations of the poets as perfect, as possible; as every national repository of the fine arts should be furnished with the noblest copies of the wonderful statues. It is reserved. for Sotheby to introduce Virgil to general admiration. The

former translations of the Georgics have been now superseded, and the Æneid will ere long be so honored, that Dryden's will not be read, except by the historian of literature, and Pitt's will be known only by the researches of the critic. The temple of English poetry is dignified by her own hierophants, who are full of sacred inspiration; but, if it was formerly a proud subject of national glory to know, that the ancient high priest of poetry, the venerable Homer, was elevated in the sanctua ry of that temple by one of the officiating ministers, is it not now a noble cause of pleasant anticipation to believe, that Virgil, in the robes of majesty, piety, goodness, and reverence, who is now only waiting at the portal, will ere long be conducted by a youthful priest to the sacred recesses of the building, and will there be favored by the congratulations of holy poets, and by the homage of an admiring nation?

Boyd has translated the Divina Commedia of Dante with considerable success, and is now employed on another Italian work. The character of the founder of Italian literature is drawn with admirable force and truth by the author of the Pursuits of Literature; "in their primal poet there is an o"riginality and hardihood of antiquity; the soul of Dante 66 was dark and sullen; it was proud and full of his wrongs. "Frons læta parum et dejecto lumina vultu. He passed "through imaginary realms without the sun to the confines "of light and hope. The day shone full upon him, and the "beams were from on high. His draught of men and their "passions is eternal. His language was, like himself, deep, ' " and full of matter; its strength and harmony may be best "expressed by his Tuscan brother."

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The versification of Boyd is sometimes dull, but generally the reader is conducted by a full flowing stream. Dante is remarkable for precision. Boyd is sometimes obscure, not because he does not understand, but because his phraseology is either old, or affected. Yet the entrance into hell in the third canto is well executed; the original is tremendous be

yond all imagination, and Boyd has preserved much of the horror. Dante was a powerful magician in the beginning of the fourteenth century. He came forth in the darkness of the world to spread mysterious illumination. He had descended into the regions of the damned. Their tortures and torments had worked in him no pity, for his soul delighted in wrath. Purgatory opened her secrets and councils at the command of his infernal genius, and the charms of Paradise were displayed to the view of the lover of darkness. To translate such a poet required no common powers. Boyd has done his duty, but others may yet gain the acclamation of complete success. Italian literature is nearly naturalized into the English language. Hoole has well translated Tasso, Ariosto, and Metastasio; and Dante is added to the brotherhood. Petrarch yet wants an English dress. If Lord Strangford would undertake a version of Petrarch, it would meet with welcome, provided he would retain all his English graces, and be more faithful to the sonnetteer of Vaucluse, than he has been to the poet of the Tagus.

Such is a general view of some of the English poets of the present day. Rogers, the author of " the pleasures of mem"ory" and "an epistle from the country to a friend," deserves to be mentioned with honor. It would also be a pleasing task to give an account of that alteration in the taste of the English nation for poetry, which has taken place within a few years. Some pleasant dissertations might be written on the great admiration for the poets of minstrelsy and the romancers, which was begun by Dr. Percy in his " reliques " of English poetry," and has been increased by Ritson, by Ellis, and by Scott. Much curious fact might be disclosed, and much pleasant speculation indulged. The causes of the change in taste should be investigated, and the probable effect might be prognosticated. But authors in America have little time to write, and readers have little time to bestow on books of utility, and less on mere disquisitions of elegant litIf opportunity however should be afforded me, and my friends should be willing, I may hereafter devote some Vol. II. No. 4. Z z

erature.

time to a general survey of the prevailing taste in English poetry, which so remarkably differs from the taste, that reigned about 1750, and still more from that of 1700-1720, and which has curiously approximated to the time of the Il Penseroso and the Midsummer Night's Dream. The subject involves some of the most interesting questions of literary discussion, and opens a wide field of most singular conjecture. To be executed properly this disquisition, with all the bearings and dependencies of the relative literature, would demand the taste of Burke, the philosophy of Johnson, and the investigation of Warton. In England this pleasant and interesting theme has not occupied any regular attention. Hints have sometimes been thrown out by critics, and allusions to the subject are sometimes found in the couplets of poets. But no regular composition has yet appeared, which considers the present state of English taste in poetry, as a matter of philosophical inquiry. Yet the literati in Great Britain have means of knowledge, which are not accessible to researchers in America; and they are also well able to discover from personal remarks the actual nature of the reigning taste; whereas here the facts must be assumed, or taken from books, which are often fallacious from a variety of causes. The effects, which Cowper and Burns produced, begin to be accurately ascertained; but time is yet to be given to perceive the consequences of Scottish Border Minstrelsy, and the analogous poetry of Scott. These cannot be well known, till after the expiration of a few years; and all, that can be done by a general inquirer previously to the developement of any final results, is to state the real causes, to explain the effects, produced, and to anticipate further deductions.

VISCONTI.

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