THE

HE reign of George II. was not prolific of original genius. There was no rich patronage from the crown or from ministers of state to encourage or reward authors. The magnificence of Dorset and Halifax found no imitators. Sir Robert Walpole, the great minister of the period, is said to have spent in ten years-from 1731 to 1742-above £50,000 on public writers; but his liberality was extended only to obscure and unscrupulous partisans, the supporters of his government, whose names would have passed into oblivion but for the satire of Pope. And Pope himself, by his ridicule of poor authors and their Grub-street productions, helped to accelerate that downfall of the literary character which he charged upon the throne and the ministry. The tone of public morality also was low; and authors had to contend with the neglect and difficulties incident to a transition period between the loss of patronage and the growth of a reading public numerous and enlightened enough to appreciate and support sound literature. These disadvantages, however, were only partial. The novels of Richardson, Fielding, and Smollett render the reign of the second George the brightest epoch in English fiction. Hume and Robertson had also commenced as historians. In theology and mental philosophy, the names of Bishop Butler and Jonathan Edwards stand out prominently. Literary periodicals abounded, and monthly magazines were then first established.

alone, of all the eminent authors of this period, seems to have directly copied the style of Pope and Dryden. It is true that few or none of the poets we have named had much immediate influence on literature: Gray was ridiculed, and Collins was neglected, because both public taste and criticism had been vitiated and reduced to a low ebb. The spirit of true poetry, however, was not dead; the seed was sown, and in the next generation Cowper and Burns completed what Thomson had begun. The conventional style was destined to fall, leaving only that taste for correct language and polished versification which was established by the example of Pope, and found to be quite compatible with the utmost freedom and originality of conception and expression.

In poetry, the name of Pope continued to be the greatest. His Moral Essays and Imitations of Horace the happiest of his works-were produced in this period. The most distinguished of his contemporaries, however, adopted styles of their own, or at least departed widely from that of their illustrious master. Thomson-who survived Pope only four years-made no attempt to enter the school of polished satire and pungent wit. His enthusiastic descriptions of nature, and his warm poetical feeling, seemed to revive the spirit of the elder muse, and to assert the dignity of genuine inspiration. Young in his best performances-his startling denunciations of death and judgment, his solemn appeals, his piety, and his epigram-was equally an original. Gray and Collins aimed at the dazzling imagery and magnificence of lyrical poetry-the direct antipodes of Pope. Akenside descanted on the operations of the mind, and the associated charms of taste and genius, in a strain of melodious and original blank verse. And the best of the secondary poets, as Shenstone, Dyer, and Mason, had each a distinct and independent poetical character. Johnson

In the early part of the reign of George III. Johnson was still the great literary dictator, and he had yet to produce his best work, the Lives of the Poets. The exquisite poetry of Goldsmith, and the writings of Burke-that 'resplendent, far-sighted rhetorician-are perhaps the most precious products of the period. In fiction, Sterne was triumphantly successful, and he found many imitators, the best of whom was Henry Mackenzie. Several female writers-as Miss Burney, Mrs Inchbald, Charlotte Smith, and Mrs Radcliffealso enjoyed great popularity, though they are now comparatively little read. The more solid departments of literature were well supported. Hume and Robertson completed their historical works, and a fitting rival or associate appeared in Gibbon, the great historian of the Roman Empire. In theological literature we have the names of Paley, and Campbell, and Blair-the latter highly popular, if not profound. In metaphysics or mental philosophy, the writings of Reid formed a sort of epoch; and Smith's Wealth of Nations first explained to the world, fully and systematically, the principles upon which the wealth and prosperity of states must ever rest.

One remarkable peculiarity of the period is, that it comprises the two most memorable of literary frauds or forgeries-those of Macpherson and Chatterton. Macpherson had some foundation for his Ossianic poems, though assuredly he discovered no epic in the Hebrides; and Chatterton, while yet a boy, possessed the genius of a true poet, combined with the taste and acquirements of the antiquary. It is some apology for these literary felonies or misdemeanours, that the oldest of the culprits was barely of age when he entered on his perilous and discreditable enterprise, and was encouraged and cheered on his course by popular applause. And as for the

younger, his premature and tragic death—one of the saddest pages in literary history-must ever disarm criticism.

POETS.

MATTHEW GREEN.

MATTHEW GREEN (1696-1737) was author of a poem, The Spleen, which received the praises of Pope and Gray. His parents were dissenters, but the poet, it is said, afterwards left their communion, disgusted with their austerity. He obtained an appointment as clerk in the Custom-house. His disposition was cheerful; but this did not save him from occasional attacks of low spirits, or spleen, as the favourite phrase was in his time. Having tried all imaginable remedies for his malady, he conceived himself at length able to treat it in a philosophical spirit, and therefore wrote his poem, which adverts to all its forms, and their appropriate remedies, in a style of comic verse resembling Hudibras, but allowed to be eminently original. Green terminated a quiet inoffensive life of celibacy in 1737, at the age of forty-one.

The Spleen was first published by Glover, the author of Leonidas, himself a poet of some pretension in his day. Gray thought that 'even the wood-notes of Green often break out into strains of real poetry and music.' As The Spleen is almost unknown to modern readers, we present a few of its best passages. The first that follows contains one line marked by italic, which is certainly one of the happiest and wisest things ever said by a British author. It seems, however, to be imitated from Shakspeare

Man but a rush against Othello's breast,
And he retires.

Cures for Melancholy.

To cure the mind's wrong bias, spleen,
Some recommend the bowling-green;
Some hilly walks; all exercise;
Fling but a stone, the giant dies;

Laugh and be well. Monkeys have been
Extreme good doctors for the spleen ;
And kitten, if the humour hit,
Has harlequined away the fit.

Since mirth is good in this behalf,
At some particulars let us laugh...
If spleen-fogs rise at break of day,
I clear my evening with a play,
Or to some concert take my way.
The company, the shine of lights,
The scenes of humour, music's flights,
Adjust and set the soul to rights.

In rainy days keep double guard,
Or spleen will surely be too hard;
Which, like those fish by sailors met,
Fly highest while their wings are wet.
In such dull weather, so unfit
To enterprise a work of wit;
When clouds one yard of azure sky,
That's fit for simile, deny,

I dress my face with studious looks,
And shorten tedious hours with books.
But if dull fogs invade the head,

That memory minds not what is read,

I sit in window dry as ark,

And on the drowning world remark:
Or to some coffee-house I stray
For news, the manna of a day,

And from the hipped discourses gather,
That politics go by the weather.

Sometimes I dress, with women sit, And chat away the gloomy fit; Quit the stiff garb of serious sense, And wear a gay impertinence, Nor think nor speak with any pains, But lay on Fancy's neck the reins.

I never game, and rarely bet,
Am loath to lend or run in debt.
No Compter-writs me agitate;
Who moralising pass the gate,
And there mine eyes on spendthrifts turn,
Who vainly o'er their bondage mourn.
Wisdom, before beneath their care,
Pays her upbraiding visits there,
And forces Folly through the grate
Her panegyric to repeat.

This view, profusely when inclined,
Enters a caveat in the mind:
Experience, joined with common sense,
To mortals is a providence.
Reforming schemes are none of mine;
To mend the world's a vast design:
Like theirs, who tug in little boat
To pull to them the ship afloat,
While to defeat their laboured end,
At once both wind and stream contend:
Success herein is seldom seen,
And zeal, when baffled, turns to spleen.
Happy the man, who, innocent,
Grieves not at ills he can't prevent;
His skiff does with the current glide,
Not puffing pulled against the tide.
He, paddling by the scuffling crowd,
Sees unconcerned life's wager rowed,
And when he can't prevent foul play,
Enjoys the folly of the fray.
Yet philosophic love of ease
I suffer not to prove disease,
But rise up in the virtuous cause
Of a free press and equal laws.

Contentment-A Wish.

Forced by soft violence of prayer,

The blithesome goddess soothes my care;
I feel the deity inspire,

And thus she models my desire:

Two hundred pounds half-yearly paid,
Annuity securely made,

A farm some twenty miles from town,
Small, tight, salubrious, and my own;
Two maids that never saw the town,
A serving-man not quite a clown,
A boy to help to tread the mow,

And drive, while t' other holds the plough;
A chief, of temper formed to please,
Fit to converse and keep the keys;
And better to preserve the peace,
Commissioned by the name of niece;
With understandings of a size,
To think their master very wise.
May Heaven-it's all I wish for-send
One genial room to treat a friend,
Where decent cupboard, little plate,
Display benevolence, not state.
And may my humble dwelling stand
Upon some chosen spot of land:

A pond before full to the brim,

Where cows may cool, and geese may swim; Behind, a green, like velvet neat,

Soft to the eye, and to the feet;

Where odorous plants in evening fair
Breathe all around ambrosial air;
From Eurus, foe to kitchen ground,
Fenced by a slope with bushes crowned,
Fit dwelling for the feathered throng,
Who pay their quit-rents with a song;
With opening views of hill and dale,
Which sense and fancy do regale,

Where the half cirque, which vision bounds,
Like amphitheatre surrounds:

And woods impervious to the breeze,
Thick phalanx of embodied trees;

From hills through plains in dusk array,
Extended far, repel the day;

Here stillness, height, and solemn shade,
Invite, and contemplation aid:
Here nymphs from hollow oaks relate
The dark decrees and will of fate;

And dreams, beneath the spreading beech,
Inspire, and docile fancy teach;
While soft as breezy breath of wind,
Impulses rustle through the mind:
Here Dryads, scorning Phoebus' ray,
While Pan melodious pipes away,
In measured motions frisk about,
Till old Silenus puts them out.
There see the clover, pea, and bean,
Vie in variety of green;

Fresh pastures speckled o'er with sheep,

Brown fields their fallow Sabbaths keep,
Plump Ceres golden tresses wear,
And poppy top-knots deck her hair,

And silver streams through meadows stray,
And Naiads on the margin play,

And lesser nymphs on side of hills,
From plaything urns pour down the rills.

Thus sheltered free from care and strife,

May I enjoy a calm through life;

See faction safe in low degree,

As men at land see storms at sea,

And laugh at miserable elves,

Not kind, so much as to themselves,
Cursed with such souls of base alloy,
As can possess, but not enjoy ;
Debarred the pleasure to impart
By avarice, sphincter of the heart;
Who wealth, hard-earned by guilty cares,
Bequeath untouched to thankless heirs ;
May I, with look ungloomed by guile,
And wearing virtue's livery-smile,
Prone the distressed to relieve,
And little trespasses forgive;
With income not in Fortune's power,
And skill to make a busy hour;
With trips to town, life to amuse,
To purchase books, and hear the news,
To see old friends, brush off the clown,
And quicken taste at coming down,
Unhurt by sickness' blasting rage,
And slowly mellowing in age,
When fate extends its gathering gripe,
Fall off like fruit grown fully ripe,
Quit a worn being without pain,
Perhaps to blossom soon again.

ISAAC HAWKINS BROWNE.

A series of six imitations of living authors was published in 1736 by ISAAC HAWKINS BROWNE (1706-1760), which obtained great popularity, and are still unsurpassed. The nearest approach to them are the serious parodies in the Rejected Addresses. Browne was an amiable, accomplished man. He sat in parliament for some time as member for Wenlock in Shropshire. He wrote a Latin poem, De Animi Immortalitate, in the

style of Lucretius, and an English poem on the subject of Design and Beauty. His imitations, however, are his happiest work. The subject of the whole is A Pipe of Tobacco, and the first of the series is A New Year's Ode, an imitation of Colley Cibber, beginning thus:

Recitativo.

Old battle-array, big with horror, is fled,
And olive-robed Peace again lifts up her head;
Sing, ye Muses, tobacco, the blessing of peace;
Was ever a nation so blessed as this?

Air.

When summer suns grow red with heat,
Tobacco tempers Phoebus' ire;
When wintry storms around us beat,
Tobacco cheers with gentle fire.
Yellow autumn, youthful spring,
In thy praises jointly sing.

Recitativo.

Like Neptune, Cæsar guards Virginian fleets,
Fraught with tobacco's balmy sweets;
Old Ocean trembles at Britannia's power,
And Boreas is afraid to roar.

Cibber's laureate effusions are here very happily travestied. Ambrose Philips's namby-pamby is also well hit off:

Little tube of mighty power,
Charmer of an idle hour,
Object of my warm desire,
Lip of wax and eye of fire;
And thy snowy taper waist
With my finger gently braced,
And thy pretty swelling crest,
With my little stopper pressed,
And the sweetest bliss of blisses
Breathing from thy balmy kisses.

Thomson is the subject of the third imitation :

O thou, matured by glad Hesperian suns,

Tobacco, fountain pure of limpid truth,

That looks the very soul; whence pouring thought,
Swarms all the mind; absorpt is yellow care,
And at each puff imagination burns;
Flash on thy bard, and with exalting fires
Touch the mysterious lip that chants thy praise,
In strains to mortal sons of earth unknown.
Behold an engine, wrought from tawny mines
Of ductile clay, with plastic virtue formed,
And glazed magnific o'er, I grasp, I fill.
From Pætotheke with pungent powers perfumed
Itself one tortoise, all, where shines imbibed
Each parent ray; then rudely rammed illume,
With the red touch of zeal-enkindling sheet,
Marked with Gibsonian lore; forth issue clouds,
Thought-thrilling, thirst-inciting clouds around,
And many-mining fires: I all the while,
Lolling at ease, inhale the breezy balm.
But chief, when Bacchus wont with thee to join
In genial strife and orthodoxal ale,
Stream life and joy into the Muse's bowl.
Oh, be thou still my great inspirer, thou
My Muse: oh, fan me with thy zephyrs boon,
While I, in clouded tabernacle shrined,

Burst forth all oracle and mystic song.

This appears to be one of the happiest of the imitations; but as the effect of Thomson's turgid

offended with Browne, and indited some angry lines in reply. The fourth imitation is in the style of Young's Satires, which are less strongly marked by any mannerism than his Night Thoughts, not then written. Pope is thus imitated:

Blest leaf! whose aromatic gales dispense
To templars, modesty, to parsons, sense :
So raptured priests, at famed Dodona's shrine,
Drank inspiration from the steam divine.
Poison that cures, a vapour that affords
Content more solid than the smile of lords:
Rest to the weary, to the hungry, food,
The last kind refuge of the wise and good.
Inspired by thee, dull cits adjust the scale
Of Europe's peace, when other statesmen fail.
By thee protected, and thy sister beer,
Poets rejoice, nor think the bailiff near.
Nor less the critic owns thy genial aid,
While supperless he plies the piddling trade.
What though to love and soft delights a foe,
By ladies hated, hated by the beau,
Yet social freedom long to courts unknown,
Fair health, fair truth, and virtue are thy own.
Come to thy poet, come with healing wings,
And let me taste thee unexcised by kings.

Swift concludes the series, but though Browne caught the manner of the dean, he also imitated his grossness.

SIR CHARLES HANBURY WILLIAMS.

As a satirical poet, courtier, and diplomatist, Sir Charles Hanbury Williams (1709-1759) enjoyed great popularity during the latter part of the reign of George II. Lord Hervey, Lord Chesterfield, Pulteney, and others, threw off political squibs and light satires; but Williams eclipsed them all in liveliness and pungency. He was introduced into public life by Sir Robert Walpole, whom he warmly supported. He had come, on the death of his father, Mr Hanbury, into parliament in 1733, having taken the name of Williams for a large estate in Monmouthshire, left to him by a godfather who was no relation. After his celebrated political poetry in ridicule of Walpole's antagonists, having unluckily lampooned Isabella, Duchess of Manchester, with her second husband, Mr Hussey, an Irish gentleman, and his countrymen, he retreated, with too little spirit, from the storm that threatened him into Wales, whence he was afterwards glad to accept missions to the courts of Dresden, Berlin, and Russia.'* One verse of this truculent satire may be quoted:

But careful Heaven reserved her Grace
For one of the Milesian race

On stronger parts depending;
Nature, indeed, denies them sense,
But gives them legs and impudence,
That beats all understanding.

Pulteney, in 1742, succeeded in procuring the defeat and resignation of his rival Sir Robert Walpole, and was himself elevated to the peerage under the title of Earl of Bath. From this period he sank from popular favour into great contempt, and some of the bitterest of Williams's verses were

• Croker: Lord Hervey's Memoirs.

When you touch on his lordship's high birth,

Speak Latin as if you were tipsy ;
Say we are all but the sons of the earth,
Et genus non fecimus ipsi.

Proclaim him as rich as a Jew,

Yet attempt not to reckon his bounties;
You may say he is married, 'tis true,
Yet speak not a word of the countess.
Leave a blank here and there in each page,
To enrol the fair deeds of his youth;
When you mention the acts of his age,

Leave a blank for his honour and truth.

Say he made a great monarch change hands;
He spake-and the minister fell;
Say he made a great statesman of Sands—
Oh, that he had taught him to spell.

In another attack on the same parties, we have this pointed verse:

How Sands, in sense and person queer,
Jumped from a patriot to a peer

No mortal yet knows why;

How Pulteney trucked the fairest fame
For a Right Honourable name

To call his vixen by.

Such pasquinades, it must be confessed, are as personal and virulent as any of the subsequent political poetry of the Rolliad or Anti-Facobin men of Williams's character-painting. It is part Review. The following is a more careful speciof a sketch of General Churchill-a man not unlike Thackeray's Major Pendennis:

None led through youth a gayer life than he,
Cheerful in converse, smart in repartee.
But with old age its vices came along,
And in narration he's extremely long,
Exact in circumstance, and nice in dates,
On every subject he his tale relates.

If you name one of Marlbro's ten campaigns,
He tells you its whole history for your pains,
And Blenheim's field becomes by his reciting
As long in telling as he was in fighting;
His old desire to please is well expressed,
His hat's well cocked, his periwig's well dressed;
He rolls his stockings still, white gloves he wears,
And in the boxes with the beaux appears;
His eyes through wrinkled corners cast their rays,
Still he bows graceful, still soft things he says:
And, still remembering that he once was young,
He strains his crippled knees and struts along.
The room he entered smiling, which bespoke
Some worn-out compliment or threadbare joke;
For, not perceiving loss of parts, he yet
Grasps at the shade of his departed wit.

In 1822, the fugitive poetry of Williams was collected and published in three volumes; but the work is carelessly edited, and many gross pieces not written by the satirical poet were admitted.

JOHN DYER.

JOHN DYER was a native of Wales, being born at Aberglasslyn, Carmarthenshire, in 1698 or 1699. His father was a solicitor, and intended his son for the same profession. The latter,

however, had a taste for the fine arts, and rambled over his native country, filling his mind with a love of nature, and his portfolio with sketches of her most beautiful and striking objects. The sister art of poetry also claimed his regard, and during his excursions he wrote Grongar Hill (1726), the production on which his fame rests, and where it rests securely. Dyer next made a tour to Italy, to study painting. He does not seem to have excelled as an artist, though he was an able sketcher. On his return in 1740, he published anonymously another poem, The Ruins of Rome, in blank verse. One short passage, often quoted, is conceived, as Johnson remarks, with the mind of a poet :'

The pilgrim oft

At dead of night, 'mid his orison, hears,
Aghast, the voice of time, disparting towers,
Tumbling all precipitate down dashed,

Rattling around, loud thundering to the moon.

Seeing, probably, that he had little chance of succeeding as an artist, Dyer entered the church, and obtained successively the livings of Calthrop in Leicestershire, of Coningsby in Huntingdonshire, and of Belchford and Kirkby in Lincolnshire. He published in 1757 his longest poetical work, The Fleece, devoted to

The care of sheep, the labours of the loom.

The subject was not a happy one. How can a man write poetically, it was remarked by Johnson, of serges and druggets? Yet Dyer did write poetically on his unpromising theme, and Akenside assisted him with some finishing touches. One critic asked Dodsley how old the author of The Fleece was; and learning that he was in advanced life, ‘He will,' said the critic, 'be buried in woollen.' The poet did not long survive the publication, for he died next year, on the 24th of July 1758. The poetical pictures of Dyer are happy miniatures of nature, correctly drawn, beautifully coloured, and grouped with the taste of an artist. Wordsworth has praised him highly for imagination and purity of style. His versification is remarkably musical. His moral reflections arise naturally out of his subject, and are never intrusive. All bear evidence of a kind and gentle heart, and a true poetical fancy.

Grongar Hill.

Silent nymph, with curious eye,
Who, the purple evening, lie
On the mountain's lonely van,
Beyond the noise of busy man ;
Painting fair the form of things,
While the yellow linnet sings;
Or the tuneful nightingale
Charms the forest with her tale;
Come, with all thy various hues,
Come, and aid thy sister muse;
Now, while Phoebus, riding high,
Gives lustre to the land and sky!
Grongar Hill invites my song,

Draw the landscape bright and strong;
Grongar, in whose mossy cells,
Sweetly musing, Quiet dwells;
Grongar, in whose silent shade,
For the modest Muses made;
So oft I have, the evening still,
At the fountain of a rill,

Sat upon a flowery bed,

With my hand beneath my head;

While strayed my eyes o'er Towy's flood,
Over mead, and over wood,

From house to house, from hill to hill,
Till contemplation had her fill.
About his checkered sides I wind,
And leave his brooks and meads behind,
And groves, and grottoes where I lay,
And vistas shooting beams of day:
Wide and wider spreads the vale,
As circles on a smooth canal:
The mountains round, unhappy fate,
Sooner or later, of all height,
Withdraw their summits from the skies,
And lessen as the others rise :
Still the prospect wider spreads,
Adds a thousand woods and meads;
Still it widens, widens still,
And sinks the newly risen hill.

Now I gain the mountain's brow,
What a landscape lies below!
No clouds, no vapours intervene,
But the gay, the open scene,
Does the face of nature shew,
In all the hues of heaven's bow;
And, swelling to embrace the light,
Spreads around beneath the sight.
Old castles on the cliffs arise,
Proudly towering in the skies!
Rushing from the woods, the spires
Seem from hence ascending fires!
Half his beams Apollo sheds
On the yellow mountain heads!
Gilds the fleeces of the flocks,
And glitters on the broken rocks!

Below me trees unnumbered rise,
Beautiful in various dyes :
The gloomy pine, the poplar blue,
The yellow beech, the sable yew,
The slender fir that taper grows,
The sturdy oak with broad-spread boughs.
And beyond the purple grove,
Haunt of Phyllis, queen of love!
Gaudy as the opening dawn,
Lies a long and level lawn,

On which a dark hill, steep and high,
Holds and charms the wandering eye!
Deep are his feet in Towy's flood,
His sides are clothed with waving wood,
And ancient towers crown his brow,
That cast an awful look below;
Whose ragged walls the ivy creeps,
And with her arms from falling keeps:
So both a safety from the wind
On mutual dependence find.
'Tis now the raven's bleak abode ;
'Tis now the apartment of the toad;
And there the fox securely feeds,
And there the poisonous adder breeds,
Concealed in ruins, moss, and weeds;
While, ever and anon, there falls
Huge heaps of hoary mouldered walls.
Yet time has seen, that lifts the low,
And level lays the lofty brow,
Has seen this broken pile complete,
Big with the vanity of state;
But transient is the smile of fate!

A little rule, a little sway,

A sunbeam in a winter's day,

Is all the proud and mighty have
Between the cradle and the grave.
And see the rivers, how they run
Through woods and meads, in shade and

sun,

Sometimes swift, sometimes slow,

Wave succeeding wave, they go