Poetry. 233 



all, if we except Spencer, Shakspeare, and Mil- 

 ton, representing love rather as an appetite than 

 a chaste and dignified passion. Accordingly they 

 were accustomed to put language into the mouths 

 of the most virtuous and delicate females, utterly 

 inconsistent with our ideas of decorum. It has 

 been said that Prior's Henry and Emma is the 

 first poem in the English language, keeping in 

 view the exception before stated, in which love is 

 treated with the decency and delicacy to which it 

 is entitled. 



Among many of the later poets we find a chaste- 

 ness in the exhibition of characters and manners, 

 a purity of morals, and a delicacy of sentiment, 

 which transcend all former example, The greater 

 part of the moral pieces of Pope may be safely 

 applauded in this view, as more worthy of imi- 

 tation than those of most of his predecessors. 

 Young has enlisted the sublimity of imagination, 

 and the music of numbers, on the side of virtue and 

 piety, with the most happy success. The muse of 

 Thomson, while pouring forth the most splendid 

 beauties, dictated 



" Nothing which, dying, he could wish to blot." 



For the same kind of excellence Goldsmith and 

 Johnson deserve the highest praise. In this re- 

 spect, also,CowPER is inferior to none. His various 

 performances display beauty of description and 

 vigour of language, blended with dignity of virtue 

 and piety, to a degree which places his character, 

 both as a man and a Christian, in a most honoura- 

 ble point of light. In short, to discard coarse inde- 

 licacy from the pictures of poetry; to recal genius 

 from the paths of vice and folly, and enlist her in the 

 service or chaste enthusiasm, and divine morality, 

 are among the shining honours of the last age. 

 And, perhaps, on no ground does its poetic chV 



VOL, II. zK 



