of

PERSONAL

The greatest coxcomb and the greatest oaf that ever met in blank verse or prose. -WALPOLE, HORACE, 1742, To Sir Horace Mann, March 3; Letters, ed. Cunningham, vol. 1, p. 136.

We spent the evening with Miss Hamilton; who, I fancy, will have another name by the time you get this letter. I was much amused with hearing old Leonidas Glover sing his own fine ballad of "Hosier's Ghost," which was very affecting. He is past eighty. Mr. Walpole coming in just afterward, I told him how highly I had been pleased. He begged me to entreat for a repetition of it. I suppose you recollect that it was the satire conveyed in this little ballad upon the conduct of Sir Robert Walpole's ministry, which is thought to have been a remote cause of his resignation. It was a very curious circumstance to see his son listening to the recital of it with so much complacency. Such is the effect of the lapse of time. I have rarely heard a more curious instance of the absence of mind produced by poetic enthusiasm, than that which occurred when the author of "Leonidas" made one of a party of literati

ed.,

assembled at the house of Mr. Gilbert West, at Wickham. Lord Lyttleton, on opening his window one morning, perceived Glover pacing to and fro with a whip in his hand, by the side of a fine bed of tulips just ready to blow, and which were the peculiar care of the lady of the mansion, who worshiped Flora with as much ardour as Glover did the Muses. His mind was at that instant teeming with the birth of some little ballad, when Lord Lyttleton, to his astonishment and dismay, perceived him applying his whip with great vehemence to the stalks of the unfortunate tulips; all of which, before there was time to awaken him from his revery, he had completely levelled with the ground: And when the devastation he had committed was afterward pointed out to him, he was so perfectly unconscious of the proceeding that he could with difficulty be made to believe it.-MORE, HANNAH, 1785, Letter to her Sister, June 16; Memoirs, ed. Roberts, vol. 1, p. 229.

At the age of twenty-five he published nine books of his "Leonidas." The poem was immediately taken up with ardour by Lord Cobham, to whom it was inscribed, and by all the readers of verse, and leaders

of politics, who professed the strongest attachment to liberty. It ran rapidly through three editions, and was publicly extolled by the pen of Fielding, and by the lips of Chatham. Even Swift in one of his letters from Ireland, drily inquires of Pope, "who is this Mr. Glover, who writ 'Leonidas,' which is reprinting here, and hath great vogue?" Overrated as "Leonidas" might be, Glover stands acquitted of all attempts or artifice to promote its popularity by false means. He betrayed no irritation in the disputes which were raised about its merit; and his personal character appears as respectable in the ebb as in the flow of his poetical reputation.-CAMPBELL, THOMAS, 1819, Specimens of the British Poets.

LEONIDAS

1737

Some contemporary writers, calling themselves critics, preferred "Leonidas' in its day to "Paradise Lost;" because it had smoother versification, and fewer hard words of learning. The re-action of popular opinion, against a work that has been once over-rated, is apt to depress it beneath its just estimation. It is due to "Leonidas" to say, that its narrative, descriptions, and imagery, have a general and chaste congruity with the Grecism of its subject. It is far, indeed, from being a vivid or arresting picture of antiquity; but it has an air of classical taste and propriety in its design; and it sometimes places the religion and manners of Greece in a pleasing and impressive light. . . . The undeniable fault of the entire poem is, that it wants impetuosity of progress, and that its characters are without warm and interesting individuality. What a great genius might have made of the subject, it may be difficult to pronounce by supposition; for it is the very character of genius to produce effects which cannot be calculated. But imposing as the names of Leonidas and Thermopylæ may appear, the subject which they formed for an epic poem was such, that we cannot wonder at its baffling the powers of Glover.-CAMPBELL, THOMAS, 1819, Specimens of the British Poets.

We are not without our literary talk either. It did not extend far, but as far as it went, it was good. It was bottomed well; had good grounds to go upon. In the cottage was a room, which tradition

was

authenticated to have been the same in which Glover, in his occasional retirements, had penned the greater part of his "Leonidas." This circumstance nightly quoted, though none of the present inmates, that I could discover, appeared ever to have met with the poem in question. But that was no matter. Glover had written there, and the anecdote was pressed into the account of the family importance. It diffused a learned air through the apartment. - LAMB, CHARLES, 1824, Captain Jackson, Essays of Elia.

Glover's "Leonidas," though only party spirit could have extolled it as a work of genius, obtained no inconsiderable sale, and a reputation which flourished for half a century. It has a place now in the two great general collections, and deserves to hold it. The author has the merit of having departed from bad models, rejected all false ornaments and tricks of style, and trusted to the dignity of his subject. And though the poem is cold and bald, stately rather than strong in its best parts, and in general rather stiff than stately, there is in its very nakedness a sort of Spartan severity that commands respect.--SOUTHEY, ROBERT, 1835, Life of Cowper, vol. II, ch. XII.

Nor probably was Glover's blank verse epic of "Leonidas" which appeared so early as 1737, much read when he himself passed away from among men, in the year 1785, at the age of seventy-four, although it had had a short day of extraordinary popularity, and is a performance of considerable rhetorical merit.-CRAIK, GEORGE L., 1861, A Compendious History of English Literature and of the English Language, vol. II, p. 287.

It is not altogether deficient in poetical merit, but as an epic it is a decided failure.-BALDWIN, JAMES, 1882, English Literature and Literary Criticism, Poetry, p. 287.

Power is visible in this epic, which displays also a large amount of knowledge, but the salt of genius is wanting, and the poem, despite many estimable qualities, ist now forgotten.--DENNIS, JOHN, 1894, The Age of Pope, p. 244.

GENERAL

The "Athenaid," which could not be included in Anderson's collection, is