£56 
among would-be-critics, and superficial 
talkets, as that ‘*-we have no Homers, 
Virgils, and Miltons, now-a-days.” And 
again, say they, ** Modern books are 
such trash, that genius seems to be ba~- 
nished from the country. Where are_ 
the Shakespeares, Drydens, and Popes, 
of former times ?” | 
Such are the eonceits of unthinking 
flippancy, The blockheads who make 
such observations, forget that) every age 
had thousands of blockheads like them- 
selves; who are totally forgotten, while 
such geniuses as Homer and Shake- 
-Speare alone are remembered, Their 
knowledge of Chronology is akin to 
that of-Logic.. In requiring Homers, 
Virgils, and Miltons, in their own age, 
they forget that Homer lived 900 years 
distant from Virgil, and 2600 years dis- 
tant from Milton; and they reproach 
their own age, because it does not com- 
bine the phenomena of - 2600° years! 
They forget, also, that neither Shake- 
speare, Dryden, nor Pope, were con- 
temporary, and that no single generation 
could claim them as itsown. ‘The men- 
tal optics of these critical wise-acres, are 
like those of persons who have recently 
been couched ; they look along the line 
of past time as these do along a straight 
road, and fancy that'all objects in the 
same point of sight touch each other. 
As the accumulated treasures of remote 
ages may by them be now assembled 
an the same library, it never occurred to 
them, that few of the authors were con- 
temporary, and that it would be worse 
than childish, to expect, in a single age, 
that union of genius which Nature and 
eircumstances favourable to genius have 
scattered over thirty centuries. 
Perhaps no age of the world abounded 
“mthore in genius than the present. But, in 
thaking an estimate, it is necessary to re- 
collect, that few great geniusds have 
been duly appreciated: in their own age, 
and that envy and selfishness prevail as 
fhuch in these as in former times. Cri- 
ticism also is more malevolent, more 
unprincipled, and more operative, among 
the ignorant and unthinking, than it ever 
was. It blights and blasts every attempt 
at originality, and reduces every literary 
exertion to the level of the capacity of. 
hired anonymous writers. Again, there 
is a fashion in patronage, and every age 
rides its hobby-horse. Poetry and the 
‘Belles Lettres distinguished the age of 
Charles and Anne,’ owing to the taste 
of certain eminent persons about the 
court, Mathematics and Philesophy fol- 
Defence of Modern Literature. 
[Nov f, 
lowed the age of Newton and Locke; and 
the reign of George the Third, which 
ought to be recorded as barren of ‘all li- 
terary patronage, and which, by doing 
nothing for genius, has left it to the coim- 
mercial pursuit of the useful arts, has been 
distinguished for its discoveries in che- 
mistry, mechanics, agriculture, and na- 
vigation. ‘The names of Cooke, Young, 
Jenner, Priestley, Davy, Herschel, Four- 
croy, and Bolton, would have been 
placed among the gods of Homer, and 
they characterize the present age full as 
much as the names of Dryden, Addison, 
and Pope, distinguished the commence- 
ment of the past century. 
tend, however, that, in spite of the total 
want of patronage among the great, and 
the commercial spirit of the times, our 
own age, within a given time, has been as 
much distinguished by the Belles Lettres 
as any former period. In Poetry we\ 
have had for contemporaries—Wolcot, a 
giant in his art, still living and neglected ; 
Cowper, Burns, Scott, Hayley, Der- 
mody, and Campbell. In History, we 
have had Gibbon, Hume, Roscoe, and 
Belsham. Jn Eloquence, Burke, Sheridan, 
Pitt, and Fox. Inthe Drama, Sheridan, 
Cumberland, Murphy, and Colman. In 
Criticism, Blair, Johnson, Parr, and 
Wakefield. In Painting, Reynolds, West, 
> 
Northcote, Barry, Opie,and Wilkie. And 
in Music, Shield, Storace, and Webbe. : 
A galaxy, inferior in merit and distinction 
to no set of contemporaries in any coun- 
try, in any age of the world. 
The other observation, relative to 
books, is equally absurd with that about 
men. The trash of every age is lost or for- 
gotten, and the accumulation of the good 
T might con- 
F tes 
books, which form our libraries, con+ 
sists of the classics of different ages and 
countries. Perhaps, in* the last 200 
years, no single year produced above one 
book worthy of preservation; admit but 
the same of any current year; and the age- 
is relieved from the stigma of degradation, 
~ [lately heard a superannuated Judge, 
In trying a cause between a bookseller and 
@ printer, exclaim, with great conceit, 
“That modern literature deserved no 
protection in‘ his court !” I-was almost 
tempted to violate the rules of decorum, 
and retort upon him, “ That modern 
Judges were like miedern literature, and 
that they were not all Cokes, or Hales, or 
Lord Mansfields.” The analogy is exact ; 
ninety-nine out of a hundred Judges 
are sensual, unmeaning, or uhimportant, 
characters ; and just so it is, and always _ 
has been, with authors, and the sooner 
aha. the 
