516 
and reverence they regard them, being 
themselves the greatest. Because they 
possessed genius in the highest degree, 
they loved it and reverenced it wherever 
it was to be found. 
Asuvépoy aure yevos, Merv sepoTepoy, peromiodey 
Apyupsoy Toincay ohvaTrice Owpar” ExovTEs 
Xpucew ete Duny evccdsynsov, BTE vonrcde 
Hesiod. 
When the race of little men had suc- 
ceeded, they were for improving every 
thing. Dryden, who is at the head of 
our second rate writers, the king of this 
silver age, was perpetually exemplifying 
the Procrustean tyranny of cutting down 
taller men than himself to his own mea- 
sure; he could perceive that Chaucer was 
a poet, but his old gold seemed to him 
to want scouring, and he thought it was 
reserved for him to make it shine.— 
Shakespere too had written admirable 
dramas; but Dryden could improve the 
Tempest, by creating a sister Sycorax 
for Caliban, inventing a man who had 
never seen woman, to match the maid 
who had never seen man, and seasoning 
the whole with his cantharides powder. 
So also he acknowledged the merit of 
Milton, but believed that the Paradise 
Lost might be improved upon the same 
receipt of cantharides and rime. In 
this same spirit, Timon of Athens was 
polluted by Shadwell, whose bust should 
be expelled from Westminster Abbey, as 
Marat has been from the Pantheon; and 
Nahum Tate, who had laid his irreverent 
hands upon King David, committed high 
treason against King Lear. With the 
same arrogance of imagined superiorit ’, 
Pope reversified Chaucer, and translated 
‘Homer; adapting them to his own stand- 
atd of poetry, with as little mercy as a 
modern barber would show to the grey 
hairs and beards of the old worthies 
themselves, were they living, and sub- 
mitted to his improvements. 
_ This French school was of no long 
‘continuance; a system so favourable to 
‘mediocrity still has, and long will have 
its underling abettors ; but from the days 
“of Pope to the present period, they who 
have obtained any thing that can be called 
“fame, have formed themselves upon dif- 
ferent models. Young, extravagant as 
he is, so often “ tottering on the edge of 
nonsense,”’ and so often on the wrong 
side the line, is still a powerful and ori- 
ginal writer; he resembles one of the sa- 
vage, or rather frantic trees of Salvator 
Rosa, knobbed, and knottedy and writh- 
ed, yet manifesting strength in all its 
POETRY. 
wreathings and distortions. Something 
of his popularity, Thomson owes to his 
miserable tales of Damon and Musidora, 
and Palemon and Lavinia; stul‘orum nu- 
merus est infinitus, and these stories have 
therefore found infinite a¢mirers; but 
the better part of his Seasons, and still 
more his Castle of Indolence, have entit- 
led him to a high and permanent rank 
among the poets of England. It was 
from Greece that Akenside derived his 
high and ennobling sentiments, and that 
passionate admiration of whatever is 
great and noble, which will for ever make 
him the favourite of all young men, from 
whom any thing great and noble is to 
be expected. Gilbert West also formed 
himself upon the Greeks; few poets, with 
so little celebrity, have produced such 
effect ; for his reputation is not equal to 
his merit, but he gave the impulse and 
tone to Mason, and Gray, and Warton. 
Meantime the works of our own an- 
tients had been long neglected. It had 
been ignorantly asserted and ignorantly 
admitted, that Waller was the first of cur 
poets who versified well, and Pope the 
first who wrote correctly. This article 
of taste was strengthened by Pope’s ridi- 
cule of black letter learning; he hated 
Theobald, because he was mortified that 
a dull man had excelled him in perform- 
ing a dull man’s work; and, as he had 
betore done in the case of Bentley, he 
laboured to depreciate acquirements in 
‘which he knew himself to be deficient. 
This ridicule was aided and aped by Mal- 
let, a needy Scotchman, who was at all 
times ready to earn his dirty bread by 
dirty work; who cringed to Pope while 
he was living, and calumniated him after 
his death. 
The growing fame of Shakespere led 
gradually toa manlier taste ; asthe mode 
of criticism which Theobald had disco- 
‘vered was pursued, it was found that the 
writers who were consulted for the sake 
of elucidating Shakespere, were in many 
instances themselves valuable. The bu- 
siness of annotating has at length indeed 
been carried to excess, so much so as to 
be disgraceful to the national literature. 
Commentators swarm upon Shakespere, 
like flesh-flies over a dead lion. ‘This 
accidental good however has arisen, that 
many authors who would else have pe- 
rished irretrievably in the course of ano- 
ther century, or perhaps another gere- 
ration, are now secured; they are sought 
after because they are rare, and will be 
preserved because they are costly. 
