O gracious God, how far have we Made prostitute and profligate the Muse, For tongues of angels, and for hymns of love !-- . ? What can we say t' excuse our second fall? It is not without regret that I have here omitted his famous Alexander's Feast, and substituted for it his other less-known Ode on St. Cecilia's Day. The latter contains however some very majestic lines, and is in many respects better suited for the following pages. The impulse begun by Dryden was continued by Pope, who Made poetry a mere mechanic art, And every scribbler had his tune by heart. As Milton reflects the grandeur of Puritanism in the glorious days of Cromwell, as Dryden in his many instances of false taste represents the decadent reign of Charles II., so Pope, in his smooth, artificial mannerism, is the representative of the eighteenth century. In that age critics could quote with extravagant admiration a description of Night in which the mountains are said to nod their drowsy heads, and the flowers to sweat under the night-dews. The poet of such an age, if he reflected the characteristics of his own time, could hardly be expected to excel except in philosophical poetry like The Essay on Man, or in such scathing satire as the lines to Addison, or such glittering mock-heroics as The Rape of the Lock. In Pope's time all affectation of "the great" in poetry was over; for imagination there was mere fancy; for courageous labor and solid study there were florid diction and jeux d'esprits; for the "leisurely ideal building up of a continuous action," there were frivolities of which the author was half ashamed, and which were only meant at the best to amuse the leisure of idle fine gentlemen. So far from being born in a golden clime, With golden stars above, Dowered with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn, The love of love, 66 the poet was a man about town.' The lofty ideal of a poet's work had fallen into utter degradation, and Pope helped its fall. Yet such was his natural genius, so correct his style, so powerful his influence, that the sixty years of vacant and regular inanity which followed are mainly due to him. Accordingly, the next of our epoch-making poets is William Cowper, the shy, religious hypochondriac, who spent his life in remote country villages with old ladies and evangelical clergymen, and who never gave a line to the world till he was fifty years of age. His main contribution to English literature consists in the fact that by his pure simple naturalness and heartiness he was the first to break loose from those chains and swaddling-bands in which Pope had bound the English Muse, and which had produced their worst degeneracy in the vaporous follies of a multitude of writers who are now forgotten. He had indeed been preceded in this work by James Thompson, and to a certain extent by other poets, but none of these were his equals in originality and power. Joined with him in spirit were Crabbe, the homely poet of village life, Bishop Percy, the collector of the Reliques, and Robert Burns, the glorious Ayrshire ploughman. What they did was to turn the age from the straight-dug ditches of affected mannerism to the pure and sunny fountains of nature, simplicity, and truth. Pope, with his "mechanic art" would have despised the unvarnished truth of Crabbe's simple narratives; he would have regarded as half barbarous the heart-stirring, passionate strains of Burns; he would have scorned the notion of a lovely and serious poem written to an old lady's knitting-needles; and would probably have condemned as unclassical and irregular those true and tender lines, perhaps the most pathetic poem in our language, which the recluse of Olney wrote on the receipt of his mother's picture. Cowper is less read than he deserves to be; but he has this glory, that he has ever been the favorite poet of deeply religious minds; and his history is peculiarly touching, as that of one who, himself plunged in despair and madness, has brought hope and consolation to a thousand other souls. O poets, from a maniac's tongue was poured the deathless singing; He shall be strong to sanctify the poet's high vocation; Named softly as the household name of one whom God hath taken ! Cowper died in 1800. Our own century has produced no individual names so great as those of Shakespeare or Milton; but it is, perhaps, richer than any which have preceded it in poetic wealth and splendor. Poetry is no longer confined to a single current; but, dividing itself into a hundred channels, refreshes every region of human intelligence and human emotion, and like the river of bliss through the midst of heaven— Rolls o'er Elysian flowers her amber stream. A new spirit seems once more to have swept over the heart of humanity. The literature of the last century has been enriched by the works of Scott, Byron, Keats, Shelley, Moore, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Campbell, Hood, and a host of minor poets. Out of all these poets I select the one who most marks an epoch-William Wordsworth. The days are not very far past when flippant critics thought that they were crushing Wordsworth (they might, says Southey, have talked as well of crushSkiddaw) by quoting the two lines: A drowsy, frowsy poem, called the Excursion, which was Byron's way of characterizing that famous poem which Coleridge, with enthusiasm, called ness. An Orphic song, indeed, A song divine of high and passionate thoughts, To their own music chanted. Byron was long regarded as the supreme poet of his day, and he was indeed the founder, or, at any rate, the chief representative of a school. No one would question his genius or his greatBut from his school emanated such poems as Byron's Heaven and Earth, Moore's Loves of the Angels, Shelley's Cenci, and Leigh Hunt's Rimini; from the school of Wordsworth such poems as made men more full of admiration, hope, and love. Byron wrote much that no person of delicate feeling could read without indignation; Wordsworth made his laurel greener by uttering nothing base. The tendency of much of Byron's verse was to make men moodier, more immoral, more egotistical, more selfish; the tendency of all that Wordsworth wrote was "to lend ardor to virtue and confidence to truth." And therefore much of Byron's poetry and nearly all his favorite characters-his Corsairs, and Laras, and Giaours, and Selims, and Don Juans, and Manfreds are on their way to the limbo of oblivion; while Wordsworth has inaugurated a new epoch, and remains the greatest poet of the epoch he began. The difference between the two, as poets, may be seen in the contrast between the two as The one traversed all Europe in search of pleasure, and too often his pathos is but the regret and his wisdom the languor and satiety, of the jaded voluptuary": the other lived in a rustic cottage among the hills, and wrote with the light of heaven upon him in the bosom of a pure domestic life. One special occasion he notes, when returning home in the early morning, his whole spirit was stirred within him, as men. magnificent The morning rose in memorable pomp ; and there came over him one of those crises, so marked in the history of great minds, which color the whole after-course of existence. "To the brim," he, says My heart was full; made no vows, but vows Were then made for me; bond unknown to me A dedicated spirit: on I walked In thankful blessedness which yet survives. And to this consecration-" the silent influences of the morning poured upon his head by the Invisible Hand"—he remained faithful as few priests have ever been to their calling, a priest of nature, a priest of God. I have for many reasons excluded from the following pages the works of authors yet living. No selection of English poetry can ever be entirely satisfactory to all readers: some will wonder why one poem, which is dear to them, has been omitted, while another poem, which they fail to value, has found a place. Diversities of taste are—perhaps happily-infinite; and unless a book be made much longer than this, much must of necessity be left out which ranks among the highest efforts of poetic genius. Many poets whose names are not represented in the following pages—such as Hawes, Sackville, Gascoigne, Daniel, Donne, Carew, Giles and Phineas Fletcher, Wither, Browne, Davenant, Philips, Parnell, Prior, Gay, Swift, Dyer, Shenstone, Young, Akenside, T. Warton, Mason, Crabbe, and others of more recent date—would furnish passages not unworthy of selection. But it is obvious that this book would have grown to an unwieldy size if many choice poems and fragments of poems had not been deliberately excluded. I can only repeat that the pretensions of this selection are very modest and humble. If, however it prove to be acceptable, if it fulfil the hopes with which it has been thrown together, it may be followed in due time by a selection from the writings of those poets, both English and American, who to our great happiness are still living among, us and "whose thoughts enrich the blood of the world. The general plan of the work has been to arrange together the chief poets of each century, and to add selections from the Minor Poets. The term Minor Poets is not always intended as |