the mind, that the genius of the nation should have been so unlike itself; that, producing minds of such surpassing genius in poetry, it should yet present such barren tracts-periods in which the whole life and soul of poetical feeling seem extinguished in her literature. The phenomenon might, perhaps, be reasonably explained, and the poetical character of the English genius vindicated, if it were necessary, from this seeming disparagement. But the chief object of these observations in this place was to mark the first quality that strongly strikes us in the perusal of the Essay, namely, the singular happiness of Mr Campbell's method or style of criticism and narrative, which, conducting his reader through a period of very long duration, and often of so unpromising a complexion, does nevertheless carry him on throughout with continual lively interest and new gratification. There is in fact a spirit in Mr Campbell's style, a springing force of life, which never suffers the mind to tire, and with great conciseness and precision of expression, a quick flashing play of fancy, which, never drooping, though often silent, starts up at unexpected turns, and seizes upon the imagination with the fascination of a poet's spell; so that it is not wonderful, however unattractive the ground may be on which he is sometimes forced to tread, that he should lead his reader over it with steps as light as his own. Indeed, he will not dwell on that which does not please him. And not undertaking a full and formal exposition of the history of our poetry, but rather to mark out its æras, its changes, its various character, it is enough for him, with a bold and rapid pencil, to sketch and indicate its form and features, without working up into diligent detail the full portraiture. It is neither a history nor à philosophical disquisition; but it is such a view of English poetry as a mind of quick and clear intelligence, gifted with exquisite discernment alike of the highest and most beautiful qualities of poetry, and glancing in its own knowledge, down the history of the people and their works of poetry, might fling back from its own thoughts upon the eye of others. The reader who takes up this volume must not go to it to immerse himself in learned research; he must not look for such fulness of information as will super sede his further study; he must not expect such development of the beauty and power of the great works that will be shewn him, as shall leave no after-work for his own indolent understanding to perform in the study of its own impressions. He gives his hand into the hand of a delightful guide, who will traverse with him with rapid step various regions-some of magnificence and beauty-some rugged and bare-who will direct his attention to every thing worthy of it-who will lift up his steps in air, when they might stumble on earth-but who, whether among beauty or barrenness, will bear him along, with unreposing and untired speed, till he relinquishes him delighted with the course he has run, and the scenes he has beheld, and longing to turn again and revisit them, and to sit alone in the midst of them, in the solitude of his own enjoyment. Such a work is really precious to those who, with the love of poetry, and the desire to possess their minds with the riches of our own literature in this kind, have not the leisure, or not the exclusive application of their studies to poetry, which would enable or warrant them to search out these riches through the numerous, and often rare, and even obscure volumes in which they lie scattered. The man of letters only dare devote himself to the research, through the extensive fields of literature, of all that is excellent, or characteristic, or for any other reason interesting in the literary productions of the genius of his country; and even of these, not many, perhaps, have that patient love of the subject, and that quick and unwearied perception of the qualities of literature, which would make such research of full avail. But there are humbler students, in great number, to whom the poetry and the genius of their country are dear, who, delighted with its greater and more wonderful works, bear affection and desire to all its genuine productions-are glad to meet its spirit in any of its forms-feel themselves drawn by a strong and natural interest to every thing that bears the just name of poetry-and would extend their acquaintance with the poetry they love, and nourish their sensibility to its various excellence, by conversing with all whom the spirit of poetical sensibility has ever animated. To them such a body of the beauties of English poetry is indeed a treasure. They turn over its changeful pages, and discover name after name unknown to them before, and find annexed to many a name, the memorials of a spirit, which was quickened with their own sensibility to beauty, to whom the appearances of the world, or the workings of thought, were cast in a peculiar mould; they find the powerful spirit of poetry working in bosoms which had to them no existence before; they meet it in dark times, like the sudden flash of a broad stream in gloomy woods; they find its lowly, modest flowers stealing themselves from sight, yet breathing up, as the incense of nature, their own exquisite perfume. Whether we read with this tender love to poetry which is the natural endowment of multitudes of minds, or with that temper in which more of observation and philosophy is mingled, with the interest and curiosity to note the various character which the genius of a nation has in different ages put on, or with which, in the same age, nature has gifted individual genius-to both alike such volumes as these, which bring together, from all quarters, the objects of love, or the materials of speculation and inquiry, have a rich interest; but the interest, it need not be said, is effected not by the purpose, but by the execution of the work. The natural interest attached to such a work, has at different times occasioned the attempt of accomplishing it. And our own language is not without interesting collections of the kind. But neither have they been as wide-ranging and copious as this which is now given to us; nor has the genius of poetry in them been brought to its selection. The student must, in this, place much reliance upon his guide. He trusts to possess a concentrated representation of the poetical genius of his country, a cabinet of its natural productions, and it is essential that this representation be just. If it is to shew him the excellence of poetry in his own tongue, the specimens must be culled by a hand that is most conversant with excellence; if it is to shew him its character, they must be selected by an eye of most discriminating discernment of characteristic feature. It is pleasant to be able to rely implicitly, and to know that the unlaboured study which we bring to such chosen volumes as these, bears with it the truth and fidelity which belonged to the laborious studies of a mind of clear discernment and high faculties. Mr Campbell, as we have observed, does not intend to enter at large into the critical disquisitions which may belong to his subject; but when he has chosen to engage in them, he shews a singular nicety and precision of examination. The Essay sets out with some consideration of the formation of the English language under the power of the Norman conquest: and the subject, though of the kind commonly felt to be unattractive, and though pursued with some critical argument, serves well to illustrate what we have said of the happiness or skill with which Mr Campbell takes his readers over the most unpromising groundthe first sixteen pages nearly being occupied with the consideration of a position of Mr Ellis, respecting the proper era of the formation of this new language. We shall quote the beginning, because it is a fair example of the language of the whole shewing, that though the writer does not fear to use boldly his own language as a poet, for more powerful illustration even in matters of argumentative discussion; yet, in general, there is great simplicity, clearness, and precision of stylenot merely an absence of superfluous ornament, but an unusual closeness of expression, which would almost seem bare, if it were not for that ease and spirit, that inherent life in the words which never for a moment ceases to animate the mind of the reader. "The influence of the Norman conquest upon the language of England, was like that of a great inundation, which at first buries the face of the landscape under its waters, but which at last subsiding, leaves behind it the elements of new beauty and fertility. Its first effect was to degrade the the inferior orders; and by the transference Anglo-Saxon tongue to the exclusive use of of estates, ecclesiastical benefices, and civil dignities, to Norman possessors, to give the French language, which had begun to prevail at Court from the time of Edward the Confessor, a more complete predominance among the higher classes of society. The native gentry of England were either driven into exile, or depressed into a state of dependence on their conqueror, which habituated them to speak his language. On the other hand, we received from the Normans the first germs of romantic poetry; and our language was ultimately indebted to them for wealth and compass of expression, which it probably would not have otherwise possessed.' "The Saxon language, we are told, had ceased to be poetically cultivated for some time previous to the conquest. This might be the case with regard to lofty efforts of composition, but Ingulphus, the secretary of William the Conqueror, speaks of the popular ballads of the English, in praise of their heroes, which were sung about the streets; and William of Malmsbury, in the twelfth century, continues to make mention of them. The pretensions of these ballads to the name of poetry we are unhappily, from the loss of them, unable to estimate. For a long time after the conquest, the native minstrelsy, though it probably was never altogether extinct, may be supposed to have sunk to the lowest ebb. No human pursuit is more sensible than poetry to national pride or mortification, and a race of peasants, like the Saxons, struggling for bare subsistence, under all the dependence, and without the protection of the feudal system, were in a state the most ungenial to feelings of poetical enthusiasm. For more than one century after the conquest, as we are informed, an Englishman was a term of contempt. So much has time altered the associations attached to a name, which we should now employ as the first appeal to the pride or intrepidity of those who bear it. By degrees, however, the Norman and native races began to coalesce, and their patriotism and political interests to be identified. The crown and aristocracy having become during their struggles, to a certain degree, candidates for the favour of the people, and rivals in affording them protection, free burghs and chartered corporations were increased, and commerce and social intercourse began to quicken. Mr Ellis alludes to an Anglo-Norman jargon having been spoken in commercial intercourse, from which he conceives our synonymes to have been derived. That individuals, imperfectly understanding each other, might accidentally speak a broken jargon may be easily conceived; but that such a lingua Franca was ever the distinct dialect, even of a mercantile class, Mr Ellis proves neither by specimens nor historical evidence. The synonymes in our language may certainly be accounted for by the gradual entrance of French words, without supposing an intermediate jargon. The national speech, it is true, received a vast influx of French words; but it received them by degrees, and subdued them, as they came in, to its own idioms and grammar. "Yet, difficult as it may be to pronounce precisely when Saxon can be said to have ceased and English to have begun, it must be supposed that the progress and improve ment of the national speech was most considerable at those epochs, which tended to restore the importance of the people. The bypothesis of a sudden transmutation of Saxon into English appears, on the whole, not to be distinctly made out. At the same time, some public events might be highly favourable to the progress and cultivation of the language. Of those events, the esta blishment of municipal governments and of elective magistrates in the towns, must have been very important, as they furnished materials and incentives for daily discussion and popular eloquence. As property and secu rity increased among the people, we may also suppose the native minstrelsy to have revived. The minstrels, or those who wrote for them, translated or imitated Norman romances; and, in so doing, enriched the language with many new words, which they borrowed from the originals, either from want of corresponding terms in their own vocabulary, or from the words appear. ing to be more agreeable. Thus, in a ge neral view, we may say that, amidst the early growth of her commerce, literature, and civilization, England acquired the new form of her language, which was destined to carry to the ends of the earth the blessings from which it sprung." The following passage shews how well Mr Campbell has known, without any air of studied philosophy, and without assuming the weightiness of a historian, to involve both philosophical speculation and political history in his story of literature; and how well his style can preserve the graver tone of such subjects without losing in the least degree its own native spirit and grace. "The most liberal patronage was afforded to Norman minstrelsy in England by the first kings of the new dynasty. This encouragement, and the consequent cultivation of the northern dialect of French, gave it so much the superiority over the southern or troubadour dialect, that the French language, according to the acknowledgment of its best informed antiquaries, received from England and Normandy the first of its works which deserve to be cited. The Norman trouveurs, it is allowed, were more eminent narrative poets than the Provençal troubadours. No people had a better right to be the founders of chivalrous poetry than the Normans. They were the most energetic generation of modern men. Their leader, by the conquest of England in the eleventh century, consolidated the feudal system upon a broader basis than it ever had before possessed. Before the end of the same century, chivalry rose to its full growth as an institution, by the circumstance of martial zeal being enlisted under the banners of superstition. The crusades, though they certainly did not give birth to jousts and tournaments, must have imparted to them a new spirit and interest, as the preparatory images of a consecrated warfare. And those spectacles constituted a source of description to the romancers, to which no exact counterpart is to be found in the heroic poetry of antiquity. But the growth of what may properly be called romantic poetry, was not instantaneous after the con roes of romance. 99 Till the middle of the beautifies those masses of frost-work, which are to melt before its noon-day heat." It is not our intention to give an analysis of this Essay. We wish to set before our readers some such idea of its contents as may excite their de quest; and it was not till "English Richard ploughed the deep,' that the crusaders seem to have found a place among the he-,sire to read it at large. The Early History of English Poetry, which fol lows the last passage we have quoted, is given very succinctly-shewing very critical consideration of what has been best written, and is best known of the subject; but not requiring much critical consideration from the reader, whose labour the author has taken upon himself, presenting, in a distinct and quick succession, the chief and characteristic features of our growing or proceeding poetry. We quote the following passage for the simplicity, clearness, and force, with which it brings in the matter of national history in connexion with national literature a quality which we may be permitted the twelfth century, or possibly later, no work of professed fiction, or bearing any semblance to epic fable, can be traced in Norman verse-nothing but songs, satires, chronicles, or didactic works, to all of which, however, the name of romance, derived from the Roman descent of the French tongue, was applied in the early and wide acceptation of the word. To these succeeded the genuine metrical romance, which, though often rhapsodical and desultory, had still invention, ingenuity, and design, sufficient to distinguish it from the dry and dreary chronicle. The reign of French metrical romance may be chiefly assigned to the latter part of the twelfth, and the whole of the thirteenth century; that of English metrical romance, to the latter part of the thirteenth, and the whole of the fourteenth century. Those ages of chivalrous song were, in the meantime, fraught with events which, while they undermined the feudal system, gradually prepared the way for the decline of chivalry itself. Literature and science were commencing, and even in the improvement of the mechanical skill, employed to heighten chivalrous or superstitious magnificence, the seeds of arts, industry, and plebeian independence were unconsciously sown. One invention, that of gun-powder, is eminently marked out as the cause of the extinction of chivalry; but even if that invention had not taken place, it may well be conjectured that the contrivance of other means of missile destruction in war, and the improvement of tactics, would have narrowed that scope for the prominence of individual prowess, which was necessary for the chivalrous character, and that the progress of civilization must have ultimately levelled its romantic consequence. But to anticipate the remote effects of such causes, if scarcely within the ken of philosophy, was still less within the reach of poetry. Chivalry was still in all its glory; and to the eye of the poet appeared as likely as ever to be immortal. The progress of civilization even ministered to its external importance. The early arts made chivalrous life, with all its pomp and ceremonies, more august and imposing, and more picturesque as a subject for description. Literature, for a time, contributed to the same effect, by her jejune and fabulous efforts at history, in which the athletic worthies of classical story and of modern romance were gravely connected by an ideal genealogy. Thus the dawn of human improvement smiled on the fabric which it was ultimately to destroy, as the morning sun gilds and to say, will surprise many of those who, having known Mr Campbell only in his poetry, may have been disposed to accuse him of too elaborate and diligent contrivance of ornamented expression. It is that which intro duces the mention of the first two decidedly original poets of the English language-Langlande and CHAUCER. "The reign of Edward III. was illustrious not for military achievements alone; it was a period when the English character displayed its first intellectual boldness. It is true that the history of the times presents a striking contrast between the light of intelligence which began to open on men's minds, and the frightful evils which were still permitted to darken the face of society. In the scandalous avarice of the church, in the corruptions of the courts of judicature, and in the licentiousness of a nobility, who countenanced disorders and robbery, we trace the unbanished remains of barbarism; but, on the other hand, we may refer to this period, for the genuine commencement of our literature, for the earliest diffusion of free inquiry, and for the first great movement of the national mind towards emancipation from spiritual tyranny. The abuses of religion were, from their nature, the most powerfully calculated to arrest the public attention; and Poetry was not deficient in contributing its influence, to expose those abuses, both as subjects of ridicule and of serious indignation. Two poets of this period, with very different powers of genius, and probably addressing themselves to different classes of society, made the corrup tions of the clergy the objects of their satire taking satire not in its mean and personal acceptation, but understanding it as the mo ral warfare of indignation and ridicule against turpitude and absurdity. Those writers were Langlande and Chaucer, both of whom have been claimed, as primitive reformers, by some of the zealous historians of the Reformation. At the idea of a full separation from the Catholic Church, both Langlande and Chaucer would possibly have been struck with horror. The doctrine of predestination, which was a leading tenet of the first Protestants, is not, I believe, avowed in any of Chaucer's writings, and it is expressly reprobated by Langlande. It is, nevertheless, very likely that their works contributed to promote the Reformation. Langlande, especially, who was an earlier satirist and painter of manners than Chaucer, is undaunted in reprobating the corruptions of the papal government. He prays to Heaven to amend the Pope, whom he charges with pillaging the Church, interfering unjustly with the King, and causing the blood of Christians to be wantonly shed; and it is a curious circumstance, that he predicts the existence of a king, who, in his vengeance, would destroy the monasteries." Langlande, the supposed author of the Visions of Piers Plowman, is thus characterized: "The verse of Langlande is alliterative, without rhyme, and of triple time. In modern pronunciation it divides the ear between an anapastic and dactylic cadence; though some of the verses are reducible to no perceptible metre. Mr Mitford, in his Harmony of Languages, thinks that the more we accommodate the reading of it to ancient pronunciation, the more generally we shall find it run in an anapæstic measure. His style, even making allowance for its antiquity, has a vulgar air, and seems to indicate a mind that would have been coarse, though strong, in any state of society. But, on the other hand, his work, with all its tiresome homilies, illustrations from school divinity, and uncouth phraseology, has some interesting features of originality. He employs no borrowed materials; he is the earliest of our writers in whom there is a tone of moral reflection, and his sentiments are those of bold and solid integrity. The zeal of truth was in him; and his vehement manner sometimes rises to eloquence, when he denounces hypocrisy and imposture. The mind is struck with his rude voice, proclaim ing independent and popular sentiments, from an age of slavery and superstition, and thundering a prediction in the ear of papacy, which was doomed to be literally fulfilled at the distance of nearly two hundred years. His allusions to contemporary life afford some amusing glimpses of its manners. There is room to suspect that Spenser was acquainted with his works; and Milton, either from accident or design, has the appearance of having had one of Langlande's passages in his mind, when he wrote the sublime description of the lazar-house, in Paradise Lost." VOL. IV. The following is his account of Chaucer : "The simple old narrative romance had become too familiar in Chaucer's time, to invite him to its beaten track. The poverty of his native tongue obliged him to look round for subsidiary materials to his fancy, modern foreign source that should not apboth in the Latin language, and in some pear to be trite and exhausted. His age. was, unfortunately, little conversant with the best Latin classics. Ovid, Claudian, and Statius, were the chief favourites in poetry, and Boethius in prose. The allegorical style of the last of those authors, seems to have given an early bias to the taste of Chaucer. In modern poetry, his first, and long continued predilection was attracted by the new and allegorical style of romance, which had sprung up in France in the thirteenth century, under William de Lorris. We find him, accordingly, during a great part of his poetical career, engaged among the dreams, emblems, flower-worshippings, and amatory parliaments, of that visionary school. This, we may say, was a exercise for so strong a genius; and it must gymnasium of rather too light and playful be owned, that his allegorical poetry is often puerile and prolix. Yet, even in this walk of fiction, we never entirely lose sight of that peculiar grace and gaiety which distinguish the Muse of Chaucer; and no one who remembers his productions of the House of Fame, and the Flower and the Leaf, will regret that he sported for a season in the field of allegory. Even his pieces of this description, the most fantastic in design, and tedious in execution, are generally interspersed with fresh and joyous descriptions of external nature. "In this new species of romance, we per ceive the youthful Muse of the language, in love with mystical meanings and forms of fancy, more remote, if possible, from reality, than those of the chivalrous fable itself; and we could sometimes wish her back from her emblematic castles, to the more solid ones of the elder fable; but still she moves in pursuit of those shadows with an impulse of novelty, and an exuberance of spirit, that is not wholly without its attraction and delight. Chaucer was afterwards happily drawn to the more natural style of Boccaccio, and from him he derived the hint of a subject, in which, besides his own original portraits of contemporary life, he could introduce stories of every description, from the most heroic to the most familiar.” Surely the reader misses something here. He expects that when the first mighty name of English Poetry is dwell with some plenitude of descripbrought before him, the author will tion on the great faculties and powers of a spirit, which, if the age in which it lived among men had left of itself 4 U |