Hoping the lesser beasts would not essay
An element more merciless than they :-
But fearless they pursue, nor can the flood
Quench their dire thirst, alas! they thirst for blood!

There are many harmonious passages in Quarles' Emblemes, first printed it is said in 1635, though the edition here quoted is the Cambridge copy of 1643.

Not eat? Not taste? Not touch? Not cast an eye Upon the fruit of this fair Tree? And why?

Why eat'st thou not what Heaven ordain'd for food?
Or canst thou think that bad which Heaven call'd good?

Why was it made, if not to be enjoy'd?
Neglect of favours makes a favour void.

What sullen star ruled my untimely birth,
That would not lend my days one hour of mirth!
How oft have these bare knees been bent, to gain
The slender alms of one poor smile, in vain!
How often tired with the fastidious light,
Have my faint lips implored the shades of night?
How often have my mighty torments pray'd
For lingering twilight, glutted with the shade?
Day worse than night, night worse than day appears;
In fears I spend my nights, my days in tears:

I moan unpitied, groan without relief;
There is nor end, nor measure of my grief.
The smiling flower salutes the day; it grows
Untouch'd with care; it neither spins nor sows.
Oh that my tedious life were like this flower,
Or freed from grief, or finish'd with an hour!
Why was I born? Why was I born a man?
And why proportion'd by so large a span?
Or why suspended by the common lot,
And being born to die, why die I not?
Ah me! why is my sorrow wasted breath
Denied the easy privilege of death?
The branded slave, that tugs the weary oar,
Obtains the Sabbath of a welcome shore.

Here let us stop. That Denham and Waller improved this kind of versification, and that Dryden perfected it, there is no one to doubt or deny. But the debt that is due to Denham and Waller has been strangely overrated; they were not the fathers of this kind of verse, but the successful cultivators; and so far were they from improving our versification generally, that every kind of metre, the couplet excepted, was written with greater harmony and excellence before they wrote, than it was in their age or has since been.

B.

"THE slow sale," says Johnson, "and tardy reputation of Paradise Lost have been always mentioned as evidences of neglected merit, and of the uncertainty of literary fame; and inquiries have been made, and conjectures offered, about the causes of its long obscurity and late reception. But has the case been truly stated? Have not lamentation and wonder been lavished on an evil that was never felt?

"That in the reigns of Charles and James the Paradise Lost' received no public acclamations, is readily confessed. Wit and Literature were on the side of the Court: and who that solicited favour or fashion would venture to praise the defender of the regicides? All that he himself could think his due, from evil tongues in evil days, was that reverential silence which was generously preserved. But it cannot be inferred, that his Poem was not read, or not, however unwillingly, admired."

"The sale," he goes on to say, "if it be considered, will justify the public. Those who have no power to judge of past times but by their own, should always doubt their conclusions. The call for books was not in Milton's age what it is in the present. To read was not then a general amusement; neither traders nor often gentlemen thought themselves disgraced by ignorance. The women had not then aspired to literature, nor was every house supplied with a closet of knowledge. Those indeed who professed learning were not less

learned than at any other time; but of that middle race of students who read for pleasure or accomplishment, and who buy the numerous products of modern typography, the number was then comparatively small. To prove the paucity of readers, it may be sufficient to remark, that the nation had been satisfied from 1623 to 1664, that is forty-one years, with only two editions of the works of Shakspeare, which probably did not together make one thousand copies.

"The sale," he adds, "of thirteen hundred copies in two years, in opposition to so much recent enmity, and to a style of versification new to all, and disgusting to many, was an uncommon example of the prevalence of genius. The demand did not immediately increase; for many more readers than were supplied at first the nation did not afford. Only three thousand were sold in eleven years; for it forced its way without assistance; its admirers did not dare to publish their opinion; and the opportunities now given of attracting notice by advertisements were then very few; the means of proclaiming the publication of new books have been produced by that general literature which now pervades the nation through all its ranks."

In answer to what Johnson has advanced, let us ask in his own words, "Has the case been truly stated?" The century that was satisfied with but two editions of Shakspeare in forty-one years, called for three of Paradise Lost in ten,

and three of Prince Arthur in two. "That Prince Arthur found readers," says Johnson, "is certain; for in two years it had three editions; a very uncommon instance of favourable reception, at a time when literary curiosity was yet confined to particular classes of the nation." But it was no uncommon instance, for the same age demanded edition after edition of Cowley, of Waller, of Flatman, and of Sprat. There was no paucity of readers: the sale of Paradise Lost was slow because it was not to the taste of the times: our very plays were in rhyme; and the public looked with wonder on Shakspeare when improved by Shadwell, Ravenscroft, and Tate. Dryden, who wrote when Cowley was in the full blaze of his reputation, and Milton neglected and unknown, lived long enough to see and tell of a distinct change in public opinion, and Milton stand where Cowley had stood.

That the sale of thirteen hundred copies of a three-shilling book in two years was an uncommon example of the prevalence of genius, Mr. Wordsworth was among the first to disprove. Yet so difficult is it to eradicate an error insinuatingly advanced by a popular author, that Johnson's overthrown statement has been printed without contradiction in every edition of his Lives, and has found an additional stronghold for its perpetuity in the Works of Lord Byron. "Milton's politics kept him down," says Byron; "but the epigram of Dryden, and the very sale of his work, in proportion to the less reading time of its publication, prove him to have been honoured by his contemporaries."*

But Blackmore, who wrote when literary curiosity was yet confined, if we may believe Johnson, to particular classes of the nation, has told us in an acknowledged work that Paradise Lost lay many years unspoken of and entirely disregarded. No better testimony could possibly be wished for; and as the passage has hitherto passed without extract or allusion, we shall quote it at length: "It must be acknowledged," says Sir Richard Blackmore, "that till about forty years ago Great Britain was barren of critical learning, though fertile in excellent writers; and in particular had so little taste for epic poetry, and were so unacquainted with the essential properties and peculiar beauties of it, that Paradise Lost, an admirable work of that kind, published by Mr. Milton, the great ornament of his age and country, lay many years unspoken of and entirely disregarded, till at length it happened that some persons of greater delicacy and judgment found out the merit of that excellent poem, and by communicating their sentiments to their friends, propagated the esteem of the author, who soon acquired universal applause."†

To strengthen Blackmore in a position which

is the very reverse of Johnson, there are other authorities and circumstances, less curious, it is true, but still of interest. "Never any poet," writes Dennis, "left a greater reputation behind him than Mr. Cowley, while Milton remained obscure, and known but to few." 66 When Milton first published his famous poem," Swift writes to Sir Charles Wogan, "the first edition was long going off; few either read, liked, or understood it, and it gained ground merely by its merit."

But it had other assistance: "It was your lordship's encouraging" (writes Hughes to Lord Somers) "a beautiful edition of Paradise Lost that first brought that incomparable poem to be generally known and esteemed." This was in 1688; and such, if we may judge the present by the past, was then the influence of Lord Somers, that in a dedication of Swift's Tale of a Tub to the same great man, the bookseller says, with ill-concealed satisfaction and in a very grateful strain, "Your Lordship's name on the front, in capital letters, will at any time get off one edition." Whatever Somers did, the poem had made no great way till Philips published his Splendid Shilling, Addison his translation from Virgil, and his delightful papers in The Spectator, that seem to have written it into repu

tation.

True it is, we must add, that it had been called by Dryden in 1674, when its author was but newly in his grave, "one of the greatest, most noble, and most sublime poems, which either the age or nation has produced;" that The State of Innocence was suggested by it; that Dryden, the most popular of living poets, and the great critic of our nation, had repeatedly published his high approval, and, better still, had turned his glorious epigram in its praise; nay more, that the Earl of Roscommon, who was dead in 1684, had written in Milton's measure and manner. Yet Johnson would have us believe that its admirers did not dare to publish their opinions! But all were not of his way of thinking; and Rymer, who was in poetry what his name would denote, could speak of it in 1678, as "that Paradise Lost of Milton's, which some are pleased to call a poem ;"** and Prior and Montague, of its author, in 1687 as “a rough unhewn fellow, that a man must sweat to read him."

This was the general feeling of the age; and the truth is, as Sir Walter Scott has observed. that the coldness with which Milton's mighty epic was received upon the first publication, is traceable to the character of its author, so obnoxious for his share in the government of Cromwell, to the turn of the language, so different from that of the age, and the seriousness of a subject so discordant with its lively frivolities.

**Letter to Fleetwood Shepherd on the Tragedies of the Last Age, p. 143.

tt The Hind and the Panther Transversed, &c. Baves says, after quoting a liquid line, I writ this line for the ladies. I hate such a rough unbewn fellow as Milton;" &c.

Misc. Pr. Works, vol. i. p. 141.

A Christian poem, that should have found its greatest admirers and received its warmest advancement from the Established Church, met there with open and avowed opposition. Milton, hateful as he was to the churchmen for the violence of his political tenets, encountered in the whole collected body of established clergy, that dislike which Sprat when Dean of Westminster professed to feel at the mention of his name,a name too odious, as he said, to be engraven on the walls of a Christian church. What the

clergy should have read, honoured, and encouraged for their cloth, if not for their conscience' sake, was left in the same disregarded state by the laity, who did not profess or wish for once to be wiser than those whose duty it was to direct their minds to good and holy books, and Milton worked his way against every obstacle slowly but surely. No poem ever appeared in an age less fitted or less inclined to read, like, or understand it, than did Paradise Lost.*

C.

Was the daughter of Sir William Kingsmill of Sidmonton in the county of Southampton, maid of honour to the Duchess of York, and wife to Heneage Earl of Winchelsea. A collection of her poems was printed in 1713; several still remain unpublished.

"It is remarkable," says Wordsworth, "that

excepting the Nocturnal Reverie, and a passage or two in the Windsor Forest of Pope, the poetry of the period intervening_between the publication of Paradise Lost and The Seasons does not contain a single new image of external nature."

A NOCTURNAL REVERIE.

In such a night, when every louder wind Is to its distant cavern safe confined; And only gentle Zephyr fans his wings, And lonely Philomel still waking sings; Or from some tree, famed for the owl's delight, She, hollowing clear, directs the wanderer right; In such a night, when passing clouds give place, Or thinly vail the heavens' mysterious face; When in some river, overhung with green, The waving moon and trembling leaves are seen; When freshen'd grass now bears itself upright, And makes cool banks to pleasing rest invite, Whence springs the woodbine, and the bramble-rose, And where the sleepy cowslip shelter'd grows; Whilst now a paler hue the foxglove takes, Yet chequers still with red the dusky brakes; When scatter'd glow-worms, but in twilight fine, Show trivial beauties watch their hour to shine; Whilst Salisbury stands the test of every light, In perfect charms and perfect virtue bright; When odours which declined repelling day, Through temperate air uninterrupted stray; When darken'd groves their softest shadows wear, And falling waters we distinctly hear;

When through the gloom where venerable shows Some ancient fabric, awful in repose;

93

While sunburnt hills their swarthy looks conceal,
And swelling haycocks thicken up the vale:
When the loosed horse now, as his pasture,
Comes slowly grazing through the adjoining meads,
Whose stealing pace and lengthen'd shade we fear
Till torn-up forage in his teeth we hear;
When nibbling sheep at large pursue their food,
And unmolested kine rechew the cud;
When curlews cry beneath the village-walls,
And to her straggling brood the partridge calls;
Their short-lived jubilee the creatures keep,
Which but endures whilst tyrant man does sleep;
When a sedate content the spirit feels,
And no fierce light disturbs, whilst it reveals;
But silent musings urge the mind to seek
Something too high for syllables to speak;
Till the free soul to a composedness charm'd,
Finding the elements of rage disarm'd,
O'er all below a solemn quiet grown,
Joys in the inferior world and thinks it like her own:
In such a night let me abroad remain,

Till morning breaks, and all's confused again,
Our cares, our toils, our clamours are renew'd,
Or pleasures, seldom reach'd, again pursued.

Yet Mr. Hallam is inclined to think that the sale was great for the time; and adds, "I have some few doubts, whether Paradise Lost, published eleven years since, would have met with a greater demand."-Lit. Hist. vol. iv. p. 427.

3 x 2

ABSENCE. Jago, 605.

ADDISON (Joseph), specimens of, 387, 388.

Elegy on the Death of. Tickell, 415.
Agrippina, a Fragment. Gray, 550.
AKENSIDE (Mark), notice of, 531; allusion to, 589.
Specimens of, 532-537.

ALEXANDER (William). See STERLINE (Earl of).
Ambition, reflections on. Anon., 282.

America, discovery and happiness of, predicted.
Dwight, 654

Anacreontics, by Oldmixon, 418.
Angler's Wish. Walton, 331.

Anglo-Saxon Language, influence of the Norman

Conquest on, 1.

When it began to be English, 2.

ANONYMOUS Poets, specimens of, 237, 281, 337, 370,
558, 582, 585.

ANSTEY (Christopher), notices of, 342, 727.

Specimen of his Bath Guide, 728.

Argalia, adventures of. Chamberlayn, 257–263.
Argentile and Curan, a tale. Warner, 38, 129.
ARMSTRONG (Dr. John), notice of, 586-588.
Specimens of, 588-590.

Athens described. ton, 311.
AYRES (Philip), specimens of, 338.
AYTON (Sir Robert), Songs by, 281, 371.

Poem said to have been written by, 141, note.

BALE (Bishop), an early dramatic author, 29.
BALLADS.

Robene and Makyne. Henrysone, 82.
Dowsabel. Drayton, 176.

On a Wedding. Sir J. Suckling, 238,
The Chronicle. Cowley, 287.
Colin's Complaint. Rowe, 383.

From the What-d'ye-call-it. Gay, 405.
Colin and Lucy. Tickell, 416.
Sally in our Alley. Carey, 498.
William and Margaret. Mallet, 509.
Sir Charles Bawdin. Chatterton, 540.
May-Eve, or Kate of Aberdeen. Cunning-
ham, 558.

Owen of Carron. Langhorne, 595.
Hosier's Ghost. Glover, 636.

BAMPFYLDE (John), Sonnets by, 675, 676.
Barbour (John), his Bruce, 80.

BARKLAY (Alexander), critical notice of, 21.
Bateson's Madrigals, specimens from, 119.

Bath, public breakfast at, described. Anstey, 728,
Baucis and Philemon, a Tale. Swift, 431.
BEATTIE (Dr. James), account of, 720.

Specimens of, 722.

His admiration of Thomson, 450.

BEAUMONT (Francis), and FLETCHER (John), notices
of, 149, 150.

Specimens of their dramatic productions,
150-160.

Critical observations on them, 46.

BEAUMONT (Sir John), notice of, 165.
Specimen of his Poems, 166.
Further extracts from, 732.

Beauty, vanity of. Gascoigne, 100.

Final cause of our pleasure in. Akenside, 534.
Mental. Akenside, 534.

Bedford (Lucy, Countess of), epigram on. Ben
Jonson, 207.

BEHN (Aphra), specimens of, 351.

Bird's Collection of Songs, specimens from, 119.
BISHOP (Rev. Samuel), specimens of, 674, 675.
BLACKLOCK (Thomas), notice of, 662.

Specimens of, 663, 664.

BLACKSTONE (Sir Wm.), specimen of, 602.
BLAIR (Robert), notice of, 446.

Specimens of, 447-449.

BOOTH (Barton), specimen of, 406.

Bowles (Rev. Mr.), his strictures on Pope, remarks
on, 58-62, 423.

BRATHWAITE (Richard), notice and specimen of,
308, 309.

BRAMSTON (James), specimen of, 437-439.

BRERETON (Jane), Poem attributed to Lord Chester-
field, written by, 562.

BRETON (Nicholas), 37, 147.

Specimens of his Poems, 147, 148.
Brevity of Human Life. Quarles, 244.
BROME (Alexander), notice of, 283.

Specimens of his Poems, 283, 284.
BROOKE (Lord). See GREVILLE.
BROOKE (Henry), notice of, 605.

Specimen of, 606-608.

BROWN (Dr. John), notice of, 517.

Specimens of his Poems, 518.
BROWN (Thomas), specimens of, 365.
BROWNE (Isaac Hawkins), specimens of, 488-490.
BROWNE (William), notices of, 38, 245.

Extracts from, 245, 246.

BRUCE (Michael), notices of, 520.

Specimens of his Poems, 520, 521.
BULTEEL (John), specimen of the Poetry of, 299.
Bunyan's Pilgrim's Progress, remarks on, 28.
BURNS (Robert), account of, 676-680; notice of, 484.
Specimens of, 680-687.

Thought borrowed from Dr. Young, 511, note.
Anecdote of, 593, note.

His opinion of Cowper's Task, 690, note.

BUTLER (Samuel), specimens of, 321-330; alluded

to, 54.

BYROM (John), Pastoral by, 490.

Epigram by, 558.

Byron (Lord), referred to, 57, 482, 500, 521, 547, 567,
618, 680, 708, 710.

CAMBYSES'S ARMY, destruction of. Darwin, 718.
Cambyses, Preston's Tragedy of, 30.
Canace, death of. Lydgate, 78.
Canterbury Tales, Prologue to, 69.