turn, Nichols ventured to offer a remark, and to illustrate it by a quotation from Dante. "At the name of Dante, Mr. Gray suddenly turned round to him, and said, 'Right; but have you read Dante, Sir?' 'I have endeavoured to understand him,' was the apt reply of Nichols."

I hope there is nothing apocryphal in the anecdote; but one strongly resembling it is related of Dryden. He was seated in his arm-chair at Will's, indulging in some commendation of his recently published Mac Flecknoe; he added that he valued himself the more upon it, because it was the first piece of ridicule written in heroics. There happened to be listening, in a corner of the room, an odd-looking boy, with short, rough hair, who mustered up sufficient hardihood to mutter that the poem was a very good one, but that he had not supposed it to have been the first ever written in that manner. Dryden, turning briskly on his critic, with a smile, said, "Pray, Sir, what is it that you did imagine to have been writ before?" "Boileau's Lutrin, and Tassoni's Secchia Rapita," was the answer. Dryden acknowledged the truth of the correction, and desired the censor to call upon him the next day. The boy with the rough hair was Lockier, afterwards Dean of Peterborough, who continued to enjoy the poet's acquaintance until his death. But his Italian chronology was somewhat at fault; for Pulci introduced the burlesque before Tassoni. As to Mac Flecknoe, recent criticism has softened the censure of Johnson. In four hundred lines, Mr. Hallam finds not one weak or careless. It need not be said that Dryden is wanting in the graceful humour of Tassoni, and the exquisite polish of Boileau. His wit had more weight than edge. It beat in armour, but could not cut gauze.

I ought to ask forgiveness of Boswell, or his shade, for comparing his biographical trials with those endured by Orrery, in his endeavours to smooth down the fretful Dean. What a dark,

THE CHARM OF COMMON WORDS.

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lowering face Onslow gives him;-" Proud, insolent, void of all decency, offensive to his friends, almost as much as to his enemies; hating all men, and even human nature itself; wanting to be a tyrant to gratify his ambition and disdain of the world." It might be instructive to draw a parallel between Swift and Sterne, as reflected in Gulliver and Tristram. In both we should find the same grotesque images, the same explosions of laughter, the same vividness of delineation, the same deep, jagged gashes into human nature, and the same lust for all that is degraded and revolting. Every disease of the soul has a clinical description. Each book of Swift is

A case of skeletons well done,
And malefactors every one.

Both possessed genius; but genius blasted with fire, and exiled from the pure heaven of imagination. Sterne had one softening quality of intellect, unshared by the Dean-the power of moving the heart. Our conviction of the hypocrisy of his pathos is the only check to its tyranny. Swift was the truer man, as Sterne was the more melodramatic.

AUGUST 9TH.

A STORY is told of an ancient painter who threw a brush at a picture; and another of Reynolds, who dipped it in cinder dust. Each produced the effect he desired. Again-Titian and Raffaelle did not employ costly colours, even in their oil-paintings, but chiefly earths and common colours. The experience and practice of great poets are the same. The bright image, that darted into the mind like a sunbeam; or the phrase, so hazardously ventured on, and so exquisitely significant, is the pencil hurled at the canvas, or rubbed in the cinders. Simple, every-day words are

the earths of the poet. The pen, not the pigment, gives the life and charm. Mr. Harrison, in his interesting view of the English Language, points out the magnificent impression, in Milton's hand, of the single epithet—

all too little seems

To stuff his maw-this vast unhidebound corpse.

Death is portrayed as a monster, not confined within superficies, and, therefore, by nature insatiable; a page would only have weakened the image. In poetical landscapes, this representative faculty of a few syllables is very surprising; as in the line of Beattie,

And lake dim gleaming on the smoky lawn;

and more vividly still in the exquisite verses of Wordsworth:

The grass is bright with rain-drops, -on the moors
The hare is running races in her mirth,

And with her feet she from the plashy earth

Raises a mist; that, glittering in the sun,

Runs with her all the way, wherever she doth run.

In marine views, Crabbe carried the art to its utmost boundary; read the sketch of the oyster-dredger,

cold and wet, and driving with the tide;

or of the shingle hot beneath the feet, and moist to the hand, as we turn up the wet shining stones in the sun. The lazy tide rakes its way back over the pebbles; the distant ship, the wind dying out of her sails, sinks to sleep on the sleeping sea; or the breeze freshens, and then the waves begin to stir,—

Their colours changing, when from clouds and sun

Shades after shades upon the surface run.

The three following specimens present picture-poetry in the most pleasing form:

Perhaps the one life-giving stroke of genius will be better appreciated, after comparing a description by Thomson with one by White:

CLOSE OF DAY.

THOMSON.

sober evening takes

Her wonted station in the middle air;
A thousand shadows at her beck. First
this

She sends on earth; then that of deeper
dye

Steals soft behind; and then a deeper
still,

In circle following circle, gathers round.
A fresher gale

Begins to wave the wood, and stir the stream,

Sweeping with shadowy gust the field of

corn;

While the quail clamours for his running

mate.

- A faint erroneous ray, Glanc'd from the imperfect surfaces of things,

Flings half the image on the straining eye; While wavering woods, and villages, and streams,

And rocks and mountain-tops that long retain'd

The ascending gleam, are all one swimming scene,

Uncertain if beheld.

CLOSE OF DAY.

WHITE OF SELBORNE.

When day, declining, sheds a milder gleam, What time the May-fly haunts the pool or stream;

When the still owl skims round the grassy mead,

What time the timorous hare limps forth
to feed:

Then be the time to steal adown the vale,
And listen to the vagrant cuckoo's tale;
To hear the clamorous curlew call his mate,
Or the soft quail his tender pain relate.
To mark the swift, in rapid giddy wing,
Dash round the steeple, unsubdued of wing.
While deep'ning shades obscure the face of
day,

To yonder bench, leaf-sheltered, let us stray,
Till blended objects fail the swimming sight,
And all the fading landscape sinks in night;
To hear the drowsy dorr come brushing by
With buzzing wing, or the shrill cricket cry;
To see the feeding bat glance through the
wood,

While o'er the cliff th' awakened churn-owl
hung,

Through the still gloom protracts his chattering song;

When, high in air, and pois'd upon his wings,

Unseen, the soft enamour'd wood-lark sings.

Mark the difference between the poet and the naturalist.