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

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 "Childe of Elle," and other minstrel tales of his composition, must always be remembered 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 antiquaries, 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.

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 composition, 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 reprinted at Edinburgh,

composition, of which we find not a trace in the rudeness of the ancient ditty. I can bear witness 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 present century, have, in repeated instances, dignified 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 honored 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 Bannerman likewise should not be forgotten, whose "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.

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 observe the costume, style, or manner, either of the old minstrel or ballad-singer, but assumed a structure 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, as amusing themselves with conversing about poetry. Mr. Burchell observes, that the British poets, who

ity.' It did not require his talents to pursue this vein of raillery, for it was such as most men could 'imitate, 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 been 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

i 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 in 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 Spanish Ballads, 1823 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.

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 Goethé, 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 letters, 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 peculiar 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

It was so late as the 21st day of April, 1783 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, be came 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 ce casional 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 disadvantages, especially the risk of extravagance and bombast, was the means of giving free scope to the genius of Goethe, 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 spirit, although they were at that time known to 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.

ame time, the accomplished critic showed himself equally familiar with the classical rules of the French stage, and failed not to touch upon the acknowledged advantages which these produced, by the encouragement and regulation of taste, though at the risk of repressing genius.

But it was not the dramatic literature alone of the Germans which was hitherto unknown to their neighbors—their fictitious narratives, their ballad poetry, and other branches of their literature, which are particularly apt to bear the stamp of the extravagant and the supernatural, began to occupy the attention of the British literati.

In Edinburgh, where the remarkable coincidence between the German language and that of the Lowland Scottish, encouraged young men to approach this newly discovered spring of literature, a class was formed, of six or seven intimate friends, who proposed to make themselves acquainted with the German language. They were in the habit of living much together, and the time they spent in this new study was felt as a period of great amusement. One source of this diversion was the laziness of one of their number, the present author, who, averse to the necessary toil of grammar and its rules, was in the practice of fighting his way to the knowledge of the German by his acquaintance with the Scottish and Anglo-Saxon dialects, and, of course, frequently committed blunders which were not lost on his more accurate and more studious companions. A more general source of amusement, was the despair of the teacher, on finding it impossible to extract from his Scottish students the degree of sensibility necessary, as he thought, to enjoy the beauties of the author to whom he considered it proper first to introduce them. We were desirous to penetrate at once into the recesses of the Teutonic literature, and therefore were ambitious of perusing Goethé and Schiller, and others whose fame had been sounded by Mackenzie. Dr. Willich (a medical gentleman), who was our teacher, was judiciously disposed to commence our studies with the more simple diction of Gesner, and prescribed to us "The Death of Abel," as the production from which our German tasks were to be drawn. The pietistic style of this author was ill adapted to attract young persons of our age and disposition. We could no more sympathize with the overstrained sentimentality of Adam and his family, than we could have had a fellow-feeling with the jolly Faun of the same author, who broke his beautiful jug, and then made a song on it which might have affected all Staffordshire. To sum up the distresses of Dr. Willich, we, with one consent, voted Abel an in

1 Alexander Fraser Tytler, a Judge of the Court of Session by the title of Lord Woodhouselee, author of the well-known "Elements of General History," and long eminent as Professor

sufferable bore, and gave the pre-eminence, in point of masculine character, to his brother Cain, or even to Lucifer himself. When these jests, which arose out of the sickly monotony and affected ecstasies of the poet, failed to amuse us, we had for our entertainment the unutterable sounds manufactured by a Frenchman, our fellow-student, who, with the economical purpose of learning two languages at once, was endeavoring to acquire German, of which he knew nothing, by means of English, concerning which he was nearly as ignoHeaven only knows the notes which he uttered, in attempting, with unpractised organs, to imitate the gutturals of these two intractable languages. At length, in the midst of much laughing and little study, most of us acquired some knowledge, more or less extensive, of the German language, and selected for ourselves, some in the philosophy of Kant, some in the more animated works of the German dramatists, specimens more to our taste than "The Death of Abel."

rant.

About this period, or a year or two sooner, the accomplished and excellent Lord Woodhouselee,' one of the friends of my youth, made a spirited version of "The Robbers" of Schiller, which I believe was the first published, though an English version appeared soon afterwards in London, as the metropolis then took the lead in every thing like literary adventure. The enthusiasm with which this work was received, greatly increased the general taste for German compositions.

While universal curiosity was thus distinguishing the advancing taste for the German language and literature, the success of a very young student, in a juvenile publication, seemed to show that the prevailing taste in that country might be easily employed as a formidable auxiliary to renewing the spirit of our own, upon the same system as when medical persons attempt, by the transfusion of blood, to pass into the veins of an aged and exhausted patient, the vivacity of the circulation and liveliness of sensation which distinguish a young subject. The person who first attempted to introduce something like the German taste into English fictitious dramatic and poetical composition, although his works, when first published, engaged general attention, is now comparatively forgotten. I mean Matthew Gregory Lewis, whose character and literary history are so immediately connected with the subject of which I am treating, that a few authentic particulars may be here inserted by one to whom he was well known,2

Lewis's rank in society was determined by his birth, which, at the same time, assured his fortune. His father was Under-Secretary at War, at that

of History in the University of Edinburgh. He died in 1810.-ED.

2 See more of Lewis in the Life of Scott, vol. ii.

pp.

8-14.