THE AUTHOR OF " DARTMOOR.'' 57 



have exceeded Moore in licentiousness, Byron in hardi- 

 hood, Rogers in elegance, Campbell in highly finished 

 beauty, or North in blackguardism : but the author of 

 " Dartmoor " had too true a conception of the relation 

 in which man ought to stand towards man — he had a 

 spirit too noble and exalted ever to demean itself by 

 adminis'tering to sensuality — by clothing in attractive 

 colours the madness of revelry — by investing vice with 

 factitious allurements — or by masking blasphemy be- 

 hind specious sophistry; and on the other hand he had 

 neither the learning nor the leisure of a Milton, nor the 

 knowledge of mankind of a Shakespeare to enable him 

 to take a very high stand — and assert his claim to a 

 position — near the throne of Poetry : he was the simple 

 — yet impassioned, the chaste — yet glowing worshipper 

 of Nature, and one who in the moments of calm and 

 serious contemplation could enjoy the greatest gratifi- 

 cation which can fall to the lot of any writer for the 

 public — in knowing that he had never published for a 

 bad purpose — that he had never given a line to the 

 world which he would wish to be expunged. 



The subjects which Carrington selected for his 

 poems afforded " ample room and verge enough" for 

 the exercise and display of deep and refined pathos, 

 as well as varied and striking pov/er : if he had not the 

 elements of the vast, the sublime or the voluptuous — 

 he was not without the materials of the pleasing, the 

 beautiful, the grand and the wild — if he were unable to 

 depict a scene of earth impregnated with the glowing 

 warmth of heaven, like Claude, or a view of terrific 

 sublimity,^ like Martin, he had nevertheless the means 

 of laying before us a landscape such as Wilson would 

 have lingered over with enthusiasm or Johns would de- 

 light to render imperishable ; or a prospect fit, in its 

 black and savage wildness, for the pencil of Salvator 

 llosa. Tentatus. 



\"* This paper, which embraces a critical notice of the whole of 

 Carrington's works, being too long to admit of insertion at present, 

 shall be continued and concluded in our next three numbers. Ed. 



* Instance "Sadak." 

 VOL. IT.— 1833. H 



