the charms of novelty and of contrast, and it will not be difficult to understand how it came to supplant that which had been established of old in the country, and that so suddenly, that the same generation among whom Milton had been formed to the severe sanctity of wisdom and the noble independence of genius, lavished its loudest applauses on the obscenity and servility of such writers as Rochester and Wycherly. This change, however, like all sudden changes, was too fierce and violent to be long maintained at the same pitch, and when the wits and profligates of King Charles had sufficiently insulted the seriousness and virtue of their predecessors, there would probably have been a revulsion towards the accustomed taste of the nation, had not the party of the innovators been reinforced by champions of more temperance and judgment. The result seemed at one time suspended on the will of Dryden, in whose individual person the genius of the English and of the French school of literature may be said to have maintained a protracted struggle. But the evil principle prevailed! Carried by the original bent of his genius, and his familiarity with our older models, to the cultivation of our native style, to which he might have imparted more steadiness and correctness, for in force and in sweetness it was already matchless, he was unluckily seduced by the attractions of fashion, and the dazzling of the clear wit and rhetoric in | which it delighted, to lend his powerful wit to the new corruptions and refinements and, in fact, to prostitute his great gifts to the purposes of party rage or licentious ribaldry. The sobriety of the succeeding reigns allayed this fever of profanity, but no genius arose sufficiently powerful to break the spell that still withheld us from the use of our own peculiar gifts and faculties. On the contrary, it was the unfortunate ambition of the next generation of authors to improve and perfect the new style rather than to return to the old one; and it cannot be denied that they did improve it. They corrected its gross indecency, increased its precision and correctness, made its pleasantry and sarcasm more polished and elegant, and spread through the whole of its irony, its narration, and its reflection a tone of clear and condensed good sense, which recommended itself to all who had and all who had not any relish for higher beauties. This is the praise of Queen Anne's wits, and to this praise they are justly entitled. This was left for them to do, and they did it well. They were invited to it by the circumstances of their situation, and do not seem to have been possessed of any such bold or vigorous spirit as either to neglect | or to outgo the invitation. Coming into life immediately after the consummation of a bloodless revolution, effected much more by the cool sense than the angry passion of the nation, they seem to have felt that they were born in an age of reason rather than of feeling or fancy; and that men's minds, though considerably divided and unsettled upon many points, were in a much better temper to relish judicious argument and cutting satire than the glow of enthusiastic passion or the richness of a luxuriant imagination. To those accordingly they made no pretensions; but, writing with infinite good sense, and great grace and vivacity, and, above all, writing for the first time in a tone that was peculiar to the upper ranks of society, and upon subjects that were almost exclusively interesting to them, they naturally figured, at least while the manner was new, as the most accomplished, fashionable, and perfect writers which the world had ever seen; and made the wild, luxuriant, and humble sweetness of our earlier authors appear rude and untutored in the comparison. Men grew ashamed of admiring and afraid of imitating writers of so little skill and smartness; and the opinion became general, not only that their faults were intolerable, but that even their beauties were puerile and barbarous, and unworthy the serious regard of a polite and distinguishing age. These, and similar considerations, will go far to account for the celebrity which those authors acquired in their day; but it is not quite so easy to explain how they should have so long retained their ascendant. One cause, undoubtedly, was the real excellence of their productions, in the style which they had adopted. It was hopeless to think of surpassing them in that style; and, recommended as it was by the felicity of their execution, it required some courage to depart from it, and to recur to another, which seemed to have been so lately abandoned for its sake. The age which succeeded, too, was not the age of courage or adventure. There never was, on the whole, a quieter time than the reigns of the two first Georges, and the greater part of that which ensued. There were two little provincial rebellions indeed, and a fair proportion of foreign war; but there was nothing to stir the minds of the people at large, to rouse their passions or excite their imaginations, nothing like the agitations of the Reformation in the sixteenth century, or of the civil wars in the seventeenth. They went on, accordingly, minding their old business, and reading their old books, with great patience and stupidity. And certainly there never was so remarkable a dearth of original talentso long an interregnum of native genius as during about sixty years in the middle of the last century. The dramatic art was dead fifty years before; and poetry seemed verging to a similar extinction. The few sparks that appeared too, showed that the old fire was burnt out, and that the altar must hereafter be heaped with fuel of another quality. Gray, with the talents rather of a critic than a poet, with learning, fastidiousness, and scrupulous delicacy of taste, instead of fire, tenderness, or invention, began and ended a small school, which we could scarcely have wished to become permanent, admirable in many respects as some of its productions are, being far too elaborate and artificial either for grace or for fluency, and fitter to excite the admiration of scholars than the delight of ordinary men. However, he had the merit of not being in any degree French, and of restoring to our poetry the dignity of seriousness, and the tone at least of force and energy. The Wartons, both as critics and as poets, were of considerable service in discrediting the high pretensions of the former race, and in bringing back to public notice the great stores and treasures of poetry which lay hid in the records of our older literature. Akenside attempted a sort of classical and philosophical rapture, which no language could easily have rendered popular, but which had merits of no vulgar order for those who could study it. Goldsmith wrote with perfect elegance and beauty, in a style of mellow tenderness and elaborate simplicity. He had the harmony of Pope without his quaintness, and his selectness of diction without his coldness and eternal vivacity. And last of all came Cowper, with a style of complete originality; and, for the last time, made it apparent to readers of all descriptions that Pope and Addison were no longer to be the models of English poetry. In philosophy and prose writing in general the case was nearly parallel. The name of Hume is by far the most considerable which occurs in the period to which we have alluded. But though his thinking was English, his style is entirely French; and, being naturally of a cold fancy, there is nothing of that eloquence or richness about him which characterizes the writings of Taylor, and Hooker, and Bacon; and continues, with less weight of matter, to please in those of Cowley and Clarendon. Warburton had great powers, and wrote with more force and freedom than the wits to whom he succeeded; but his faculties were perverted by a paltry love of paradox, and rendered useless to mankind by an unlucky choice of subjects, and the arrogance and dogmatism of his temper. Adam Smith was nearly the first who made deeper reasonings and more exact knowledge popular among us; and Junius and Johnson the first who again familiarized us with more glowing and sonorous diction, and made us feel the tameness and poorness of the serious style of Addison and Swift. This brings us down almost to the present times, in which the revolution in our literature has been accelerated and confirmed by the concurrence of many causes. The agitations of the French Revolution, and the discursions as well as the hopes and terrors to which it gave occasion,-the genius of Edmund Burke, and some others of his land of genius,-the impression of the new literature of Germany, evidently the original of our late school of poetry, and of many innovations in our drama,-the rise or revival of a more evangelical spirit in the body of the people, and the vast extension of our political and commercial relations, which have not only familiarized all ranks of people with distant countries and great undertakings, but have brought knowledge and enterprise home, not merely to the imagination, but to the actual experience of almost every individual,-all these, and several other circumstances, have so far improved or excited the character of our nation, as to have created an effectual demand for more profound speculation and more serious emotion than was dealt in by the writers of the former century, and which, if it has not yet produced a corresponding supply in all branches, has at least had the effect of decrying the commodities that were previously in vogue, as unsuited to the altered condition of the times. SHAKSPEARE. Many persons are very sensible of the effect of fine poetry upon their feelings who do not well know how to refer those feelings to their causes; and it is always a delightful thing to be made to see clearly the sources from which our delight has proceeded, and to trace the mingled stream that has flowed upon our hearts to the remoter fountains from which it has been gathered; and when this is done with warmth as well as precision, and embodied in an eloquent description of the beauty which is explained, it forms one of the most attractive, and not the least instructive, of literary exercises. In all works of merit, however, and especially in all works of original genius, there are a thousand retiring and less obtrusive graces, which escape hasty and superficial observers, and only give out their beauties to fond and patient contemplation; a thousand slight and harmonizing touches, the merit and the effect of which are equally imperceptible to vulgar eyes; and a thousand indications of the continual presence of that poetical spirit which can only be recognized by those who are in some measure under its influence, and have prepared themselves to receive it by worshipping meekly at the shrines which it inhabits. of ornament or ingenuity. Everything in him is in unmeasured abundance and unequalled perfection; but everything so balanced and kept in subordination as not to jostle or disturb or take the place of another. The most exquisite poetical conceptions, images, and descriptions are given with such brevity, and introduced with such skill, as merely to adorn without loading the sense they accompany. Although his sails are purple, and perfumed, and his prow of beaten gold, they waft him on his voyage, not less, but more, rapidly and directly than if they had been composed of baser materials. All his excellences, like those of Nature herself, are thrown out together; and instead of interfering with, support and recommend each other. His flowers are not tied up in garlands, nor his fruits crushed into baskets, but spring living from the soil, in all the dew and freshness of youth; while the graceful foliage in which they lurk, and the ample branches, the rough and vigorous stem, and the wide-spreading roots on which they depend, are present along with them, and share, in their places, the equal care of their Creator. Review of Hazlitt's Characters of Shakespeare's Plays. In the exposition of these there is room enough for originality, and more room than Mr. Hazlitt has yet filled. In many points, however, he has acquitted himself excellently: particularly in the development of the principal characters with which Shakspeare has peopled the fancies of all English readers, but principally, we think, in the delicate sensibility with which he has traced, and the natural eloquence with which he has pointed out, that familiarity with beautiful forms and images,-that eternal recurrence to what is sweet or majestic in the simple aspect of nature, that indestructible love of flowers and odours, and dews and clear waters, and soft airs and sounds, and bright skies, and woodland solitudes, and moonlight bowers, which are the material elements of poetry, and that fine sense of their undefinable relation to mental emotion, which is its essence and vivifying soul,—and which, in the midst of Shakspeare's most busy and atrocious scenes, falls like gleams of sunshine on rocks and ruins,-contrasting with all that is rugged and repulsive, and reminding us of the existence of purer and brighter elements, which he alone has poured out ROBERT SOUTHEY, LL.D., from the richness of his own mind, without effort or restraint, and contrived to inter- born at Bristol, England, 1774, studied at mingle with the play of all the passions, and Balliol College, Oxford, 1793-1794; resided the vulgar course of this world's affairs, at Lisbon part of 1796. in the summer of without deserting for an instant the proper which he returned to Bristol; removed to business of the scene, or appearing to pause London, February, 1797, entered himself a or digress from love of ornament or need of student of Gray's Inn, and commenced the repose; he alone, who, when the subject re- study of the law, which he soon relinquires it, is always keen, and worldly, and quished; again visited Lisbon, and after his practical, and who yet, without changing his return became, in 1801, private secretary to hand, or stopping his course, scatters around Mr. Corry, Chancellor of the Exchequer for him as he goes all sounds and shapes of Ireland, which post he resigned in a little sweetness, and conjures up landscapes of over six months, and resolved to devote immortal fragrance and freshness, and peo- himself to literature, to which he had alples them with spirits of glorious aspect and ready made some published contributions; attractive grace, and is a thousand times in 1804 established himself at Greta Hall, more full of imagery and splendour than Keswick, Cumberland, and there spent the those who, for the sake of such qualities, remaining forty years of a most industrious have shrunk back from the delineation of life; lost his first wife (Edith Fricker), who character or passion, and declined the dis-had previously suffered for about three years cussion of human duties and cares. More full of wisdom, and ridicule, and sagacity than all the moralists and satirists in existence, he is more wild, airy, and inventive, and more pathetic and fantastic, than all the poets of all regions and ages of the world; and has all those elements so happily mixed up in him, and bears his high faculties so temperately, that the most severe reader cannot complain of him for want of strength or of reason, nor the most sensitive for defect under derangement, Nov. 16, 1837; married Miss Caroline Anne Bowles, June 5, 1839; shortly afterwards sank into a state of mental imbecility, from which he never fully recovered, and died, in his 69th year, March 21, 1843. In his youth he was a short time "a liberal," both in politics and religion: his later opinions respecting Church and State were of a very different cast. Among his many publications were the following: Joan of Arc, an Epic Poem, Bristol, 1796, 4to; Letters Written during a Short Residence in Spain and Portugal, etc., Bristol, 1797, 8vo; Thalaba the Destroyer, Lond., 1801, 2 vols. crown 8vo; Amadis of Gaul, from the Spanish Version of G. de Montalvo, Lond., 1803, 4 vols. 12mo; Madoc, a Poem, Lond., 1805, 4to; Specimens of the Later English Poets, with Preliminary Notices, Lond., 1807, 3 vols. crown 8vo; Palmerin of England, from the Portuguese, Lond., 1807, 4 vols. 12mo; Letters from England, by Don Manuel Alvarez Espriella, Lond., 1807, 4 vols. 12mo; Chronicle of the Cid Rodrigo Diaz de Bivar, the Campeador, from the Spanish, Lond., 1808, 4to, Lowell, Mass., 1846, royal 8vo; The History of Brazil, Lond., 1810-17-19, 3 vols. 4to; Omniana: seu Horæ Otiosiores, Lond., 1812, 2 vols. 12mo; The Life of Nelson, Lond., 1813, 2 vols. fp. 8vo, large paper, post 8vo; Roderick, the Last of the Goths, Lond., 1814, 4to; The Life of John Wesley, and the Rise and Progress of Methodism, Lond., 1820, 2 vols. 8vo; A Vision of Judgment, Lond., 1821, 4to; History of the Peninsular War, Lond., 1823-27-32, 3 vols. 4to; The Book of the Church, Lond., 1824, 2 vols. 8vo; Sir Thomas More; or, Colloquies on the Progress and Prospects of Society, Lond., 1829, 2 vols. 8vo; Naval History of England, Lond. (Lardner's Cab. Cyc., 123-27), 5 vols. 12mo (part of vol. v. by Robert Bell). He also edited Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, Lond., 1830, 8vo, large paper, royal 8vo; Select Works of British Poets, Lond., 1831, med. 8vo; Cowper's Works, Lond., 1833-37, 15 vols. fp. 8vo; Watts's Lyric Poems, Lond., 1834, 12mo. See The Poetical Works of Robert Southey, collected by Himself. Lond., 1837-38, 10 vols. fp. 8vo; Southey's Common-Place Book, Edited by his Son-in-law, John Wood Warter, B.D., Lond., 1849-51, 4 vols. sq. crown Svo; The Life and Correspondence of Robert Southey, Edited by his Son, the Rev. Charles Cuthbert Southey, Lond., 1849-50, 6 vols. 8vo. "Mr. Southey's prose style can scarcely be too much praised. It is plain, clear, pointed, familiar, perfectly modern in its texture, but with a grave and sparkling admixture of archaisms in its ornaments and occasional phraseology. He is the best and most natural prose writer of any poet of the day we mean that he is far better than Lord Byron, Mr. Wordsworth, or Mr. Coleridge, for instance."-WILLIAM HAZLITT: Spirit of the Age (Mr. Southey). See also his Table-Talk, Essay XXIV. On the Prose Style of Poets. "His prose is perfect. Of his poetry there are various opinions: there is, perhaps, too much for the present generation: posterity will probably select. He has passages equal to any thing. At present he has a party, but no public,-except for his prose writings. The Life of Nelson is beautiful."-LORD BYRON: Journal, Nov. 22, 1813: Moore's Byron, vol. i. | | "The Life of Nelson is beautiful!" exclaims Lord Byron. Can this term be properly applied to the shocking narrations of human slaughter which compose "The Life of Nelson"? Whilst our Christian youth peruse for their classical studies the obscenities of the Greek and Roman poets, and for their hours of recreation the warlike exploits of Alexander, Cæsar, Frederick, Napoleon, Hastings, Clive, Wellington, and Nelson, can we expect them to exemplify in their lives those principles of purity and peace which were inculcated by the Great Teacher?-(S. A. A.) THE BATTLE OF THE NILE. The French fleet arrived at Alexandria on the 1st of July, and Brueys, not being able to enter the port, which time and neglect had ruined, moored the ships in Aboukir Bay, in a strong and compact line of battle; the headmost vessel, according to his own account, being as close as possible to a shoal on the north-west, and the rest of the fleet forming a kind of curve along the line of deep water, so as not to be turned by any means in the south-west. The advantage of numbers, both in ships, guns, and men, was in favour of the French. They had thirteen ships of the line and four frigates, carrying 1196 guns and 11,230 men. The English had the same number of ships of the line, and one fifty-gun ship, carrying 1012 guns and 8068 men. The English ships were all seventy-fours; the French had three eighty-gun ships, and one three-decker of one hundred and twenty. During the whole pursuit it had been Nelson's practice, whenever circumstances would permit, to have his captains on board the Vanguard, and explain to them his own ideas of the different and best modes of attack, and such plans as he proposed to execute on falling in with the enemy, whatever their situation might be. There is no possible position, it is said, which he did not His officers were take into consideration. thus fully acquainted with his principles of tactics; and such was his confidence in their abilities, that the only thing determined upon, in case they should find the French at anchor, was for the ships to form as most convenient for their mutual support, and to anchor by the stern. "First gain your victory," he said, "and then make the best use of it you can." The moment he perceived the position of the French, that intuitive genius with which Nelson was endowed displayed itself: and it instantly struck him that where there was room for an enemy's ship to swing there was room for one of ours to anchor. The plan which he intended to pursue, therefore, was to keep entirely on the outer side of the French line, and station his ships, as far as he was able, one on the outer bow and another on the outer quarter of each of the enemy's. Captain Berry, when he comprehended the scope of the design, exclaimed with transport, "If we succeed, what will the world say ?" "There is no if in the case," replied the admiral: "that we shall succeed is certain, who may live to tell the story is a very different question." As the squadron advanced, they were assailed by a shower of shot and shell from the batteries on the island, and the enemy opened a steady fire from the starboard side of their whole line, within half-gunshot distance, full into the bows of our van ships. It was received in silence; the men on board every ship were employed aloft in furling sails, and below in tending the braces, and making ready for anchoring::-a miserable sight for the French, who, with all their skill and all their courage, and all their advantages of number and situation, were upon that element on which, when the hour of trial comes, a Frenchman has no hope. Admiral Brueys was a brave and able man; yet the indelible character of his country broke out in one of his letters, wherein he delivered it as his private opinion that the English had missed him, because, not being superior in force, they did not think it prudent to try their strength with him. The moment was now come in which he was to be undeceived. A French brig was instructed to decoy the English, by manoeuvring so as to tempt them towards a shoal lying off the island of Beguieres; but Nelson either knew the danger, or suspected some deceit, and the lure was unsuccessful. Captain Foley led the way in the Goliath, outsailing the Zealous, which for some minutes disputed this post of honour with him. He had long conceived that, if the enemy were moored in line of battle in with the land, the best plan of attack would be to lead between them and the shore, because the French guns on that side were not likely to be manned, nor even ready for action. Intending, therefore, to fix himself on the inner bow of the Guerrier, he kept as near the edge of the bank as the depth of water would admit; but his anchor hung, and having opened his fire, he drifted to the second ship, the Conquérant, before it was cleared, then anchored by the stern, inside of her, and in ten minutes shot away her masts. Hood, in the Zealous, perceiving this, took the station which the Goliath intended to have occupied, and totally disabled the Guerrier in twelve minutes. The third ship which doubled the enemy's van was the Orion, Sir J. Saumarez; she passed to windward of the Zealous, and opened her larboard guns as long as they bore on the Guerrier; then, passing inside the Goliath, sunk a frigate which annoyed her, hauled towards the French line, and, anchoring inside between the fifth and sixth ships from the Guerrier, took her station on the larboard bow of the Franklin and the quarter of the Peuple Souverain. The Theseus, Captain Miller, followed, brought down the Guerrier's remaining main and mizzen masts, then an chored inside the Spartiate the third in the French line. While these advanced ships doubled the French line, the Vanguard was the first that anchored on the outer side of the enemy, within half-pistol shot of their third ship, the Spartiate. Nelson had six colours flying in different parts of the rigging lest they should be shot away,-that they should be struck, no British admiral considers as a possibility. He veered half a cable, and instantly opened a tremendous fire, under cover of which the other four ships of his division, the Minotaur, Bellerophon, Defence, and Majestic, sailed on ahead of the admiral. In a few minutes every man stationed at the first six guns in the fore part of the Vanguard's deck was killed or wounded, these guns were three times cleared. Captain Louis, in the Minotaur, anchored next ahead, and took off the fire of the Aquilon, the fourth in the enemy's line. The Bellerophon, Captain Darby, passed ahead, and dropped her stern anchor on the starboard bow of the Orient, seventh in the line, Bruey's own ship, of one hundred and twenty guns, whose difference in force was in proportion of more than seven to three, and whose weight of ball, from the lower deck alone, exceeded that from the whole broadside of the Bellerophon. Captain Peyton, in the Defence, took his station ahead of the Minotaur and engaged the Franklin, the sixth in the line; by which judicious movement the British line remained unbroken. The Majestic, Captain Westcott, got entangled with the main rigging of one of the French ships astern of the Orient, and suffered dreadfully from that three-decker's fire; but she swung clear, and closely engaging the Hereux, the ninth ship in the starboard bow, received also the fire of the Tonnant, which was the eighth in the line. The other four ships of the British squadron, having been detached previous to the discovery of the French, were at a considerable distance when the action began. It commenced at half-after six, about seven the night closed, and there was no other light than that from the fire of the contending fleets. |