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tuously,) is truly wonderful; in our days the author, who should be rash enough to publish one such volume, as the many which Edward Grimeston and Philemon Holland sent into the world, would, in all probability, be punished for his folly by imprisonment for life at the suit of his printer. How is it that the purchasers of books were so much more numerous then than now?

IX. From the time of Shakspeare to that of Milton, our taste was rather retrograde than progressive. The metaphysical poetry, as it has not very happily been termed, gained ground, and seduced many men whose quick and shaping fancy might else have produced works worthy of immortality. Donne could never have become a Poet, unless Apollo, taking his ears under his divine care, would have wrought as miraculous a change in their internal structure, as of old he wrought in the external of those of Midas. The power of versifying is a distinct talent, and a metrical ear has little more connexion with intellect than a musical one. Of this, Donne is a suffi

cient example. In Cowley, the metaphysical style arrived at perfection, and with him it may be said to have ended. Butler is to be classed with these Poets, and he has the single merit of having applied happily and appropriately a style so monstrous.

In the higher departments of poetry, no successful effort was made during half a century. Beaumont's Psyche, and Henry More's Song of the Soul, the two longest and most laborious productions, are unreadably dull. Sandy's. translation of Ovid is less musical than Golding's; and May, though more truly a Poet than Daniel, and perhaps than Drayton, counterbalanced the advantage which Nature had given hin, by writing in couplets, the very worst possible measure for narrative, but which was now insensibly gaining ground. The Drama was extinguished: that race of dramatick writers which no other age and no other country has yet equalled, had past away, and there was no en-) couragement to raise up successors. The nation was too busy to be amused, and we had now imbibed the barbarizing superstition of Scotland. Far be it from me to speak of the Puritans

without respect, but their religious tenets as they regard discipline I think bad, and as they regard doctrinals worse. Fanaticism, in whatever shape it appears, is fatal to intellectual ad

vancement.

The minor kinds of poetry. flourished; from no writers can so beautiful an anthology be formed, as from those of this age. Wither and Quarles deserve especial mention, notwithstanding the frequent oddities of the one, and the long fits of dullness of the other.

X. After the Restoration the people had leisure for fine literature, but the return of Charles had nearly proved more fatal to it than all the preceding troubles. Milton was excepted from the act of amnesty; and the mercy which induced the worst of a bad race to spare him, was so capricious, and apparently so motiveless, that it may almost be considered as providential. A French school was now established in the country of Chaucer, of Spenser,. and of Shakspeare, in that country wherein Milton still flourished; that is to say, where in age, blindness, poverty and disgrace, he produced the Paradise Lost; but flourished is the

word which historians and biographers use when they speak of learned men, whose lives are usually past in difficulty and distress, and I preserve it because it is so excellently inapplicable. In an age of such shameless profligacy, the Paradise Lost could not be duly appreciated. Andrew, Marvel indeed praised it, and praise from such a man must have been gratifying even to Milton; Dryden turned an epigram in its commendation; but if Dryden had had any real feeling of the excellence of what he commended, he could never have debased its subject, by his abominable drama. This was all the contemporary praise which it received. It was impossible that any work of Milton's could become fashionable under the Stuarts. His fame, says Winstanley, is gone out, and stinketh like the snuff of a candle, because he was a most notorious traitor, and did belie the memory of that blessed martyr King Charles I. But though Milton: himself had laboured under no political odium, his wonderful work was of too high a character to become popular, till the people were instructed to admire it. The opinion of the few

was at length transmitted to the many, aided by the story of the poem which gave it a sort of religious authority; and now every-body believes in the merit of Paradise Lost, as they believe in their Creed, and in ninety-nine instances out of a hundred, with as little comprehension of the mysteries of the one as of the other.

. XI. The Drama revived-but what a revival! It was like Samson waking in the lap of Dalilah, after he had been shorn of his strength. Tragedy was rant and rhyme; Comedy absurdity and obscenity.-At no time was the public taste (dim enough at all times) so utterly darkened; for Settle divided the suffrages of the people with Dryden.

The writers of this and the succeeding generation, understood their own character better than it has been understood by their successors; they called themselves Wits instead of Poets, and Wits they were; the difference is not in degree, but in kind. They succeeded in what they aimed at, in satire and in panegyrie, in ridiculing an enemy, and in flattering

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