[Select Works of the British Poets, with Biographical and Critical
Prefaces by Dr. Aikin. 8vo. Lond. 1824. Price 18s. in boards.]
This is a volume which we hold to be eminently deserving of a place in
our library list. Its merits are, first, that it contains an
extraordinary quantity of matter for the price, and is therefore a very
cheap book; and secondly, that it contains almost nothing but what is
excellent in quality, and is therefore a book whose possession is really
a treasure. It is also beautifully printed.
To those who do not know the volume, its title may not convey a correct
notion of what it is. It is not a collection of poetical _extracts_, but
of entire poems. None of the pieces are in any way abridged or altered.
Whatever is given is printed in an unmutilated and perfect form, as it
came from the pen of the author, and is to be found in the fullest and
most authentic edition of his works. The book becomes, in this way, in
the literal sense of the expression, a poetical library,--that is to
say, an assemblage not of scattered leaves, from the works of our poets,
but of their principal works themselves. Here are the whole of the
Paradise Lost, the Paradise Regained, the Comus, and the Samson
Agonistes, of Milton; Dryden’s Palemon and Arcite, in three books; J.
Philips’s Cyder, in two books; Addison’s Campaign, and his Letter from
Italy; Prior’s Alma, and his Solomon; Gay’s Trivia, and his Shepherd’s
Walk; Somerville’s Chase; Pope’s Rape of the Lock, his Essay on Man, and
his Moral Essays; Thomson’s Seasons, his Castle of Indolence, and his
Liberty, in five parts; Churchill’s Rosciad; Young’s Night Thoughts, and
his Universal Passion; Akenside’s Pleasures of Imagination; Goldsmith’s
Traveller, and his Deserted Village; Johnson’s London, and his Vanity of
Human Wishes; Armstrong’s Art of Preserving Health; Cowper’s Task, his
Review of Schools, his Table Talk, and his Conversation; and Beattie’s
Minstrel. In addition, there are a great number of smaller pieces by
these writers, and also by Ben Jonson, Cowley, Waller, Parnell, Rowe,
Green, Tickell, Hammond, Swift, A. Philips, Collins, Shenstone, Gray,
Smollet, Lyttleton, the Wartons, and Mason. These poems probably contain
altogether considerably more than 100,000 lines; and certainly could not
be purchased, in any other form in which they have ever been published,
for anything like the cost of the present volume. The biographical and
critical notices with which the productions of each writer are
introduced, are short and unpretending; but although they cannot be
described as containing anything either very profound or very brilliant,
the opinions which they advance are for the most part inoffensive and
sensible enough, and at least as records of dates, compiled from common
sources, but we believe tolerably accurate, they will be found useful.
There is another edition of this book, divided into several volumes, and
sold at a considerably higher price; but that in one volume, which we
have described, is the edition both for the single student and also for
the economically conducted subscription library. In this shape too it is
a capital book for the traveller’s trunk or portmanteau--a whole library
of delightful reading, which hardly occupies the room of a single change
of linen. The publishers, we ought likewise to mention, have lately
brought out another volume to match with the present, containing many of
the principal works (the whole of the Faery Queene among others) of our
earlier poets. This is also an extremely beautiful book, but, from being
larger than its predecessor, it is considerably dearer. The critical
notices have the advantage of being from the pen of Mr. Southey.
There is no department in which English literature is richer than in
that of poetry, nor is the literature of any country richer in this
department than that of England. For nearly five hundred years, that is
to say from the middle of the fourteenth century, when Chaucer
flourished, to the middle of the nineteenth in which we ourselves live,
our language has been constantly accumulating wealth of this
description. Of all the works of former times, the writings of our old
poets are beyond all comparison those which are still the best known,
and may be most truly said yet to live. A great poem is indeed the only
sort of literary production that ever gains a real immortality. Among
prose works, one supplants another as successive generations come into
being; and the older are little more than remembered in name, almost
without being ever read. Certainly, they lose altogether their popular
acceptance. The reason of this is to be found, without looking for it in
any superior excellence, or preeminent natural attraction, which poetry
may possess. A great poem is the only sort of work which can be said to
be really finished and perfect--to be something which any addition would
injure. All other works are written for the time merely till others on
the same subject shall be composed, with the aid of better lights, to
take their places; poems only are written for all ages. Milton knew this
well, when, resolving, as he has himself recorded, to produce a work
which men should not willingly let die, he addressed himself to the
composition of a great poem. The only other species of work that can
compete in this respect with a great poem is a work of pure science. The
same quality of perfection (not absolute excellence, but absolute
_finish_), which belongs to the former, may belong also to the latter,
_in so far as it goes_. Thus, the Iliad of Homer has descended to us, a
popular book, from the remotest times, and, along with it, the Elements
of Euclid.
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