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I have only met, in my researches into these matters, with one poem, which, if it had been produced as ancient, could not have been detected on internal evidence. It is the "War Song upon the victory at Brunnanburg, translated from the An

invectives with which impostors of this nature have been assailed. In fact, the case of each is special, and ought to be separately considered, according to its own circumstances. If a young, perhaps a female author, chooses to circulate a beautiful poem, we will suppose that of Hardy-glo-Saxon into Anglo-Norman,” by the Right Honknute, under the disguise of antiquity, the public is surely more enriched by the contribution than njured by the deception. It is hardly possible, indeed, without a power of poetical genius, and acquaintance with ancient language and manners possessed by very few, to succeed in deceiving those who have made this branch of literature their study. The very desire to unite modern refinement with the verve of the ancient minstrels, will itself betray the masquerade. A minute acquaintance with ancient customs, and with ancient history, is also demanded, to sustain a part which, as it must rest on deception, cannot be altogether an honorable one.

orable John Hookham Frere. See Ellis's Specimens of Ancient English Poetry, vol. i. p. 32. The accomplished Editor tells us, that this very singular poem was intended as an imitation of the style and language of the fourteenth century, and was written during the controversy occasioned by the poems attributed to Rowley. Mr. Ellis adds, "the reader will probably hear with some surprise, that this singular instance of critical ingenuity was the composition of an Eton schoolboy."

The author may be permitted to speak as an artist on this occasion (disowning, at the same time, all purpose of imposition), as having written, at the request of the late Mr. Ritson, one or two things of this kind; among others, a continuation of the romance of Thomas of Ercildoune, the only one which chances to be preserved. And he thinks himself entitled to state, that a modem

tion of an architect of the present day, who, if acquainted with his profession, finds no difficulty in copying the external forms of a Gothic castle o abbey; but when it is completed, can hardly, by any artificial tints or cement, supply the spots, weath

time alone had invested the venerable fabric which he desires to imitate.

Two of the most distinguished authors of this class have, in this manner, been detected; being deficient in the knowledge requisite to support their genius in the disguise they meditated. Hardyknute, for instance, already mentioned, is irrec-poet engaged in such a task, is much in the situaoncilable with all chronology, and a chief with a Norwegian name is strangely introduced as the first of the nobles brought to resist a Norse invasion, at the battle of Largs: the "needlework so rare," introduced by the fair authoress, must have been certainly long posterior to the reign of Alex-er-stains, and hues of different kinds, with which ander III. In Chatterton's ballad of "Sir Charles Baudwin," we find an anxious attempt to represent the composition as ancient, and some entries in the public accounts of Bristol were appealed to in corroboration. But neither was this ingenious but most unhappy young man, with all his powers of poetry, and with the antiquarian knowledge, which he had collected with indiscriminating but astonishing research, able to impose on that part of the public qualified to judge of the compositions, which it had occurred to him to pass off as those of a monk of the 14th century. It was in vain that he in each word doubled the consonants, like the sentinels of an endangered army. The art used to disguise and misspell the words only overdid what was intended, and afforded sure evilence that the poems published as antiques had oeen, in fact, tampered with by a modern artist, as the newly forged medals of modern days stand convicted of imposture from the very touches of the file, by which there is an attempt to imitate the cracks and fissures produced by the hammer upon the original.2

"Hardyknute was the first poem that I ever learnt-the ast that I shall forget."-MS. note of Sir Walter Scott on a eaf of Allan Ramsay's Tea-Table Miscellany.

Leaving this branch of the subject, in which the difficulty of passing off what is mode.1. for wast is ancient cannot be matter of regret, wo Lay bestow with advantage some brief er Lidetation of the fair trade of manufacturing n cdern antiques, not for the purpose of passing than as contraband goods on the skilful antiquar, but in order to obtain the credit due to auth & as successful mitators of the ancient simplici, while their system admits of a considerable intasion of modern refinement. Two classes of in tation may be referred to as belonging to the species of composition. When they approach each other, there may be some difficulty in gning to individual poems their peculiar chacter, but in general the difference is distinctly marked. The distinction lies be twixt the authors of ballads or legendary poems, who have attempted to imitate the language, the manners, and the sentiments of the ancient poems which were their prototypes; and those, on the contrary, who, without endeavoring to do so, have

2 See Appendix, Note A.

3 See Sir Tristrem, Scott's Poetical Works, vol. v: editio 1833.

struck out a particular path for themselves, which cannot, with strict propriety, be termed either ancient or moderu.

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composition, of which we find not a trace in the rudeness of the ancient ditty. I can bear witnes to the older verses having been current while I was a child, but I never knew a line of the inspired edition of the Ayrshire bard until the appearance of Johnson's Museum.

Besides Percy, Burns, and others, we must not omit to mention Mr. Finlay, whose beautiful song,

"There came a knight from the field of the slain,"

is so happily descriptive of antique manners; or Mickle, whose accurate and interesting imitations of the ancient ballad we have already mentioned with approbation in the former Essay on Ballad Composition. These, with others of modern date, at the head of whom we must place Thomas Moore, have aimed at striking the ancient harp with the same bold and rough note to which it was awakened by the ancient minstrels. Southey, Wordsworth, and other distinguished names of the

In the actual imitation of the ancient ballad, Dr. Percy, whose researches made him well acquainted with that department of poetry, was peculiarly successful. The Hermit of Warkworth" the “Chalde of Elle," and other minstrel tales of his composition, must always be remempered with fondness by those who have perused them in that period of life when the feelings are strong, and the taste for poetry, especially of this simple nature, is keen and poignant. This learned and amiable prelate was also remarkable for his power of restoring the ancient ballad, by throwing in touches of poetry, so adapted to its tone and tenor, as to assimilate with its original structure, and impress every one who considered the subject as being coeval with the rest of the piece. It must be owned, that such freedoms, when assumed by a professed antiquary, addressing himself to anti-present century, have, in repeated instances, digquaries, and for the sake of illustrating literary antiquities, are subject to great and licentious abuse; and herein the severity of Ritson was to a certain extent justified. But when the license is avowed, and practised without the intention to deceive, it cannot be objected to but by scrupulous pedantry.

nified this branch of literature; but no one more than Coleridge, in the wild and imaginative tale of the "Ancient Mariner," which displays so much beauty with such eccentricity. We should act most unjustly in this department of Scottish ballad poetry, not to mention the names of Leyden, Hogg, and Allan Cunningham. They have all three hon ored their country, by arriving at distinction from a humble origin, and there is none of them under whose hand the ancient Scottish harp has not sounded a bold and distinguished tone. Miss Anne

"Tales of Superstition and Chivalry" appeared about 1802. They were perhaps too mystical and too abrupt; yet if it be the purpose of this kind of ballad poetry powerfully to excite the imagination, without pretending to satisfy it, few persons have succeeded better than this gifted lady, whose volume is peculiarly fit to be read in a lonely house by a decaying lamp.

The poet, perhaps, most capable, by verses, lines, even single words, to relieve and heighten the character of ancient poetry, was the Scottish bard Robert Burns. We are not here speaking of the avowed lyrical poems of his own composi-Bannerman likewise should not be forgotten, whose tion, which he communicated to Mr. George Thomson, but of the manner in which he recomposed and repaired the old songs and fragments for the collection of Johnson' and others, when, if his memory supplied the theme, or general subject of the song such as it existed in Scottish lore, his genius contributed that part which was to give Life and immortality to the whole. If this praise should be thought extravagant, the reader may compare his splendid lyric, "My heart's in the Highlands," with the tame and scarcely half-intelligible remains of that song as preserved by Mr. Peter Buchan. Or, what is perhaps a still more magnificent example of what we mean, "Macpherson's Farewell," with all its spirit and grandeur, as repaired by Burns, may be collated with the original poem called "Macpherson's Lament," or sometimes the "Ruffian's Rant." In Burns's brilliant rifacimento, the same strain of wild ideas is expressed as we find in the original; but with an infusion of the savage and impassioned spirit of Highland chivalry, which gives a splendor to the

1 Johnson's " Musical Museum," in 6 vols., was lately reprinter. a Edinburgh.

!

As we have already hinted, a numerous class of the authors (some of them of the very first class) who condescended to imitate the simplicity of ancient poetry, gave themselves no trouble to ob serve the costume, style, or manner, either of the old minstrel or ballad-singer, but assumed a stru ture of a separate and peculiar kind, which could not be correctly termed either ancient or modern, although made the vehicle of beauties which were common to both. The discrepancy between the mark which they avowed their purpose of shooting at, and that at which they really took aim, is best illustrated by a production of one of the most distinguished of their number. Goldsmith describes the young family of his Vicar of Wakefield, a amusing themselves with conversing about poetry Mr. Burchell observes, that the British poets, who

It may be found in Allan Ramsay's "Tea-table
Miscellany."

We need only stop to mention another very beautiful piece of this fanciful kind, by Dr. Cart wright, called Armin and Elvira, containing some excellent poetry, expressed with unusual felicity. I have a vision of having met this accomplished

imitated the classics, have especially contributed to introduce a false taste, by loading their lines with epithets, so as to present a combination of luxuriant images, without plot or connection,--a string of epithets that improve the sound, without carrying on the sense. But when an example of popular poetry is produced as free from the fault which the critic has just censured, it is the well-gentleman in my very early youth, and am the known and beautiful poem of Edwin and Angelina! which, in felicitous attention to the language, and in fanciful ornament of imagery, is as unlike to a minstrel ballad, as a lady assuming the dress of a Shepherdess for a masquerade, is different from the actual Sisly of Salisbury Plain. Tickell's beautiful ballad is equally formed upon a pastoral, sentimental, and ideal model, not, however, less beautifully executed; and the attention of Addison's friend had been probably directed to the ballad stanza (for the stanza is all which is imitated) by the praise bestowed on Chevy Chase in the Spectator.

Upon a later occasion, the subject of Mallet's fine poem, Edwin and Emma, being absolutely rural in itself, and occurring at the hamlet of Bowes, in Yorkshire, might have seduced the poet from the beau ideal which he had pictured to himself, into something more immediately allied to common life. But Mallet was not a man to neglect what was esteemed fashionable, and poor Hannah Railton and her lover Wrightson were enveloped in the elegant but tinsel frippery appertaining to Edward and Emma; for the similes, reflections, and suggestions of the poet are, in fact, too intrusive and too well said to suffer the reader to feel the full taste of the tragic tale. The verses are doubtless beautiful, but I must own the simple prose of the Curate's letter, who gives the narrative of the tale as it really happened, has to me a tone of serious veracity more affecting than the

ornaments of Mallet's fiction. The same author's ballad, William and Margaret," has, in some degree, the same fault. A disembodied spirit is not a person before whom the living spectator takes leisure to make remarks of a moral kind, as,

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less likely to be mistaken, as he was the first living
poet I recollect to have seen.' His poem had the
distinguished honor to be much admired by our
celebrated philosopher, Dugald Stewart, who was
wont to quote with much pathos, the picture of
resignation in the following stanza :—

"And while his eye to Heaven he raised,
Its silent waters stole away."

After enumerating so many persons of undoubt ed genius, who have cultivated the Arcadian style of poetry (for to such it may be compared), it would be endless to enumerate the various Sir Eldreds of the hills and downs whose stories were to be the name assigned to this half-ancient, half woven into legendary tales—which came at length modern style of composition.

In general I may observe, that the supposed fa cility of this species of composition, the alluring simplicity of which was held sufficient to support it, afforded great attractions for those whose ambition led them to exercise their untried talents in verse, but who were desirous to do so with the least possible expense of thought. The task seems of the Muses, the same advantages which an in to present, at least to the inexperienced acolyte strument of sweet sound and small compass offer to those who begin their studies in music. In either case, however, it frequently happens that the scholar, getting tired of the palling and monotonous character of the poetry or music which he produces, becomes desirous to strike a more independent note, even at the risk of its being a more difficult one.

The same simplicity involves an inconvenience fatal to the continued popularity of any species of poetry, by exposing it in a peculiar degree to ridicule and to parody. Dr. Johnson, whose style of poetry was of a very different and more stately description, could ridicule the ballads of Percy, in such stanzas as these,

"The tender infant, meek a mild,

Fell down upon a stone;

The nurse took up the squalling child,
But still the child squall'd on;"

with various slipshod imitations of the same quat

2 Happily altered by an admiring foreigner, who read

"The silent waters stole away."

ity. It did not require his talents to pursue this vein of raillery, for it was such as most men could anitate, and all could enjoy. It is, therefore, little wonderful that this sort of composition should be repeatedly laid aside for considerable periods of time, and certainly as little so, that it should have beer. repeatedly revived, like some forgotten melody, and have again obtained some degree of popularity, until it sunk once more under satire, as well as parody, but, above all, the effects of satiety. During the thirty years that I have paid some attention to literary matters, the taste for the ancient ballad melody, and for the closer or more distant imitation of that strain of poetry, has more than once arisen, and more than once subsided, in consequence, perhaps, of too unlimited indulgence. That this has been the case in other countries, we know; for the Spanish poet, when he found that the beautiful Morisco romances were excluding all other topics, confers upon them a hearty malediction.2

A period when this particular taste for the popular ballad was in the most extravagant degree of fashion, became the occasion, unexpectedly, indeed, of my deserting the profession to which I was educated, and in which I had sufficiently advantageous prospects for a person of limited ambition. I have, in a former publication, undertaken to mention this circumstance; and I will endeavor to do so with becoming brevity, and without more egotism than is positively exacted by the nature of the story.

I may, in the first place, remark, that although the assertion has been made, and that by persons who seemed satisfied with their authority, it is a mistake to suppose that my situation in life or place in society were materially altered by such success as I attained in literary attempts. My birth, without giving the least pretension to distinction, was that of a gentleman, and connected me with several respectable families and accomplished persons. My education had been a good one, although I was deprived of its full benefit by indifferent health, just at the period when I ought to have been most sedulous in improving it. The young men with whom I was brought up, and lived most familiarly, were those, who, from opportunities, birth, and talents, might be expected to make the greatest advances in the career for which we were all destined; and I have the pleasure still to preserve my youthful intimacy with no inconsiderable number of them, whom their merit has carried forward to the highest

1 Percy was especially annoyed, according to Boswell, with

"I put my hat upon my head,

And walked into the Strand,

honors of their profession. Neither was I m a situation to be embarrassed by the res angusta domi, which might have otherwise brought painful additional obstructions to a path in which progress is proverbially slow. I enjoyed a moderate degree of business for my standing, and the friendship of more than one person of consideration and influence efficiently disposed to aid my views in life. The private fortune, also, which I might expect, and finally inherited, from my family, did not, indeed, amount to affluence, but placed me considerably beyond all apprehension of want. I mention these particulars merely because they are true. Many better men than myself have owed their rise from indigence and obscurity to their own talents, which were, doubtless, much more adequate to the task of raising them than any which I possess. But although it would be absurd and ungracious in me to deny, that I owe to literature many marks of distinction to which I could not otherwise have aspired, and particularly that of securing the acquaintance, and even the friendship, of many remarkable persons of the age, to whom I could not otherwise have made my way; it would, on the other hand, be ridiculous to affect gratitude to the public favor, either for my general position in society, or the means of supporting it with decency, matters which had been otherwise secured under the usual chances of human affairs. Thus much I have thought it necessary to say upon a subject, which is, after all, of very little consequence to any one but myself. I proceed to detail the circumstances which engaged me in literary pursuits.

During the last ten years of the eighteenth century, the art of poetry was at a remarkably low ebb in Britain. Hayley, to whom fashion had some years before ascribed a higher degree of reputation than posterity has confirmed, had now lost his reputation for talent, though he still lived beloved and respected as an amiable and accomplished man. The Bard of Memory slumbered on his laurels, and He of Hope had scarce begun to attract his share of public attention. Cowper, a poet of deep feeling and bright genius, was still alive, indeed; but the hypochondria, which was his mental malady, impeded his popularity. Burns, whose genius our southern neighbors could hardly yet comprehend, had long confined himself to song-writing. Names which are now known and distinguished wherever the English language is spoken, were then only beginning to be mentioned; and, unless among the small number of

And there I met another man
With his hat in his hand."-ED.

2 See the Introduction to Lockhart's Spamsh Ballads, 1923 p. xxii.

persons who habitually devote a part of their leisure to literature, even those of Southey, Wordsworth, and Coleridge, were still but little known. The realms of Parnassus, like many a kingdom at the period, seemed to lie open to the, first bold invader, whether he should be a daring usurper, or could show a legitimate title of sovereignty.

It was so late as the 21st day of April, 1788 that the literary persons of Edinburgh, of whom, at that period, I am better qualified to speak than of those of Britain generally, or especially those of London, were first made aware of the existence of works of genius in a language cognate with the English, and possessed of the same manly force of expression. They learned, at the same time, that the taste which dictated the German compositions was of a kind as nearly allied to the English as their language. Those who were accustomed from their youth to admire Milton and Shakspeare, became acquainted, I may say for the first time, with the existence of a race of poets who had the same lofty ambition to spurn the flaming boundaries of the universe,' and investigate the realms of chaos and old night; and of dramatists, who, disclaiming the pedantry of the unities, sought, at the expense of occasional improbabilities and extravagancies, to present life in its scenes of wildest contrast, and in all its boundless variety of character, mingling, without hesitation, livelier with more serious incidents, and exchanging scenes of tragic distress, as they occur in common life, with those of a comic tendency. This emancipation from the rules so servilely adhered to by the French school, and particularly by their dramatic poets, although it was attended with some disad zantages, especially the risk of extravagance and bombast, was the means of giving free scope to the genius of Goethé, Schiller, and others, which, thus relieved from shackles, was not long in soaring to the highest pitch of poetic sublimity. The late venerable Henry Mackenzie, author of "The Man of Feeling," in an Essay upon the German Theatre, introduced his countrymen to this new species of national literature, the peculiarities of which he traced with equal truth and

As far back as 1788, a new species of literature began to be introduced into this country. Germany, long known as a powerful branch of the European confederacy, was then, for the first time, heard of as the cradle of a style of poetry and literature, of a kind much more analogous to that of Britain, than either the French, Spanish, or Italian schools, though all three had been at various times cultivated and imitated among us. The names of Lessing, Klopstock, Schiller, and other German poets of eminence, were only known in Britain very imperfectly. "The Sorrows of Werter" was the only composition that had attained any degree of popularity, and the success of that remarkable novel, notwithstanding the distinguished genius of the author, was retarded by the nature of its incidents. To the other compositions of Goethe, whose talents were destined to illuminate the age in which he flourished, the English remained strangers, and much more so to Schiller, Bürger, and a whole cycle of foreigners of distinguished merit. The obscurity to which German literature seemed to be condemned, did not arise from want of brilliancy in the lights by which it was illuminated, but from the palpable thickness of the, darkness by which they were surrounded. Frederick II. of Prussia had given a partial and ungracious testimony against his native language and native literature, and impolitically and unwisely, as well as unjustly, had yielded to the French that superiority in let-spirit, although they were at that time known to ters, which, after his death, paved the way for their obtaining, for a time, an equal superiority in arms. That great Prince, by setting the example of undervaluing his country in one respect, raised a belief in its general inferiority, and destroyed the manly pride with which a nation is naturally disposed to regard its own peculiar manners and pe

culiar literature.

Unmoved by the scornful neglect of its sovereigns and nobles, and encouraged by the tide of native genius, which flowed in upon the nation, German literature began to assume a new, interesting, and highly impressive character, to which it became impossible for strangers to shut their eyes. That it exhibited the faults of exaggeration and false taste, almost inseparable from the first attempts at the heroic and at the pathetic, cannot be denied. It was, in a word, the first crop of a rich soil, which throws out weeds as well as flowers with a prolific abundance

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him only through the imperfect and uncongenial medium of a French translation. Upon the day already mentioned (21st April, 1788), he read to the Royal Society an Essay on German Literature, which made much noise, and produced a powerful effect. "Germany," he observed, “in her literary aspect, presents herself to observation in a singular point of view; that of a country arrived at maturity, along with the neighboring nations, in the arts and sciences, in the pleasures and refinements of manners, and yet only in its infancy with regard to writings of taste and imagination. This last path, however, from these very circumstances, she pursues with an enthusiasm which no other situation could perhaps have produced, the enthusiasm which novelty inspires, and which the servility incident to a more cultivated and critical state of literature does not restrain." At the

1 "Flammantia monia mundi.”—Lucretius.

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