THE NEW ROMANTIC POETRY (CONTINUED).
Robert Burns. His Poems. His Career. George Crabbe. Thomas Campbell.
Samuel Rogers. P. B. Shelley. John Keats. Other Writers.
ROBERT BURNS.
If Moore was, in the opinion of his age, an Irish prodigy, Burns is, for
all time, a Scottish marvel. The one was polished and musical, but
artificial and insidiously immoral; the other homely and simple, but
powerful and effective to men of all classes in society. The one was the
poet of the aristocracy; the other the genius whose sympathies were with
the poor. One was most at home in the palaces of the great; and the other,
in the rude Ayrshire cottage, or in the little sitting-room of the
landlord in company with Souter John and Tam O'Shanter. As to most of his
poems, Burns was really of no distinct school, but seems to stand alone,
the creature of circumstance rather than of the age, in an unnatural and
false position, compared by himself to the daisy he uprooted with his
ploughshare:
Even thou who mourn'st the daisy's fate,
That fate is thine--no distant date;
Stern Ruin's ploughshare drives elate,
Full on thy bloom,
Till crushed beneath the furrow's weight
Shall be thy doom!
His life was uneventful. He was the son of a very poor man who was
gardener to a gentleman at Ayr. He was born in Alloway on the 25th of
January, 1759. His early education was scanty; but he read with avidity
the few books on which he could lay his hands, among which he particularly
mentions, in his short autobiography, _The Spectator_, the poems of Pope,
and the writings of Sterne and Thomson. But the work which he was to do
needed not even that training: he drew his simple subjects from
surrounding nature, and his ideas came from his heart rather than his
head. Like Moore, he found the old tunes or airs of the country, and set
them to new words--words full of sentiment and sense.
HIS POEMS.--Most of his poems are quite short, and of the kind called
fugitive, except that they will not fly away. _The Cotter's Saturday
Night_ is for men of all creeds, a pastoral full of divine philosophy. His
_Address to the Deil_ is a tender thought even for the Prince of Darkness,
whom, says Carlyle, his kind nature could not hate with right orthodoxy.
His poems on _The Louse, The Field-Mouse's Nest_, and _The Mountain
Daisy_, are homely meditations and moral lessons, and contain counsels for
all hearts. In _The Twa Dogs_ he contrasts, in fable, the relative
happiness of rich and poor. In the beautiful song
Ye banks and braes of bonnie Doun,
he expresses that hearty sympathy with nature which is one of the most
attractive features of his character. His _Bruce's Address_ stirs the
blood, and makes one start up into an attitude of martial advance. But his
most famous poem--drama, comedy, epic, and pastoral--is _Tam o' Shanter_:
it is a universal favorite; and few travellers leave Scotland without
standing at the window of "Alloway's auld haunted kirk," walking over the
road upon which Meg galloped, pausing over "the keystane of the brigg"
where she lost her tail; and then returning, full of the spirit of the
poem, to sit in Tam's chair, and drink ale out of the same silver-bound
wooden bicker, in the very room of the inn where Tam and the poet used to
get "unco fou," while praising "inspiring bold John Barley-corn." Indeed,
in the words of the poor Scotch carpenter, met by Washington Irving at
Kirk Alloway, "it seems as if the country had grown more beautiful since
Burns had written his bonnie little songs about it."
HIS CAREER.--The poet's career was sad. Gifted but poor, and doomed to
hard work, he was given a place in the excise. He went to Edinburgh, and
for a while was a great social lion; but he acquired a horrid thirst for
drink, which shortened his life. He died in Dumfries, at the early age of
thirty-seven. His allusions to his excesses are frequent, and many of them
touching. In his praise of _Scotch Drink_ he sings _con amore_. In a
letter to Mr. Ainslie, he epitomizes his failing: "Can you, amid the
horrors of penitence, regret, headache, nausea, and all the rest of the
hounds of hell that beset a poor wretch who has been guilty of the sin of
drunkenness,--can you speak peace to a troubled soul."
Burns was a great letter-writer, and thought he excelled in that art; but,
valuable as his letters are, in presenting certain phases of his literary
and personal character, they display none of the power of his poetry, and
would not alone have raised him to eminence. They are in vigorous and
somewhat pedantic English; while most of his poems are in that Lowland
Scottish language or dialect which attracts by its homeliness and pleases
by its _couleur locale_. It should be stated, in conclusion, that Burns is
original in thought and presentation; and to this gift must be added a
large share of humor, and an intense patriotism. Poverty was his grim
horror. He declared that it killed his father, and was pursuing him to the
grave. He rose above the drudgery of a farmer's toil, and he found no
other work which would sustain him; and yet this needy poet stands to-day
among the most distinguished Scotchmen who have contributed to English
Literature.
GEORGE CRABBE.--Also of the transition school; in form and diction
adhering to the classicism of Pope, but, with Thomson, restoring the
pastoral to nature, the poet of the humble poor;--in the words of Byron,
"Pope in worsted stockings," Crabbe was the delight of his time; and Sir
Walter Scott, returning to die at Abbotsford, paid him the following
tribute: he asked that they would read him something amusing, "Read me a
bit of Crabbe." As it was read, he exclaimed, "Capital--excellent--very
good; Crabbe has lost nothing."
George Crabbe was born on December 24th, 1754, at Aldborough, Suffolk. His
father was a poor man; and Crabbe, with little early education, was
apprenticed to a surgeon, and afterwards practised; but his aspirations
were such that he went to London, with three pounds in his pocket, for a
literary venture. He would have been in great straits, had it not been for
the disinterested generosity of Burke, to whom, although an utter
stranger, he applied for assistance. Burke aided him by introducing him to
distinguished literary men; and his fortune was made. In 1781 he published
_The Library_, which was well received. Crabbe then took orders, and was
for a little time curate at Aldborough, his native place, while other
preferment awaited him. In 1783 he appeared under still more favorable
auspices, by publishing _The Village_, which had a decided success. Two
livings were then given him; and he, much to his credit, married his early
love, a young girl of Suffolk. In _The Village_ he describes homely scenes
with great power, in pentameter verse. The poor are the heroes of his
humble epic; and he knew them well, as having been of them. In 1807
appeared _The Parish Register_, in 1810 _The Borough_, and in 1812 his
_Tales in Verse_,--the precursor, in the former style, however, of
Wordsworth's lyrical stories. All these were excellent and very popular,
because they were real, and from his own experience. _The Tales of the
Hall_, referring chiefly to the higher classes of society, are more
artificial, and not so good. His pen was most at home in describing
smugglers, gipsies, and humble villagers, and in delineating poverty and
wretchedness; and thus opening to the rich and titled, doors through which
they might exercise their philanthropy and munificence. In this way Crabbe
was a reformer, and did great good; although his scenes are sometimes
revolting, and his pathos too exacting. As a painter of nature, he is true
and felicitous; especially in marine and coast views, where he is a
pre-Raphaelite in his minuteness. Byron called him "Nature's sternest
painter, but the best." He does not seem to write for effect, and he is
without pretension; so that the critics were quite at fault; for what they
mainly attack is not the poet's work so much as the consideration whether
his works come up to his manifesto. Crabbe died in 1832, on the 3d of
February, being one of the famous dead of that fatal year.
Crabbe's poems mark his age. At an earlier time, when literature was for
the fashionable few, his subjects would have been beneath interest; but
the times had changed; education had been more diffused, and readers were
multiplied. Goldsmith's _Deserted Village_ had struck a new chord, upon
which Crabbe continued to play. Of his treatment of these subjects it must
be said, that while he holds a powerful pen, and portrays truth vividly,
he had an eye only for the sadder conditions of life, and gives pain
rather than excites sympathy in the reader. Our meaning will be best
illustrated by a comparison of _The Village_ of Crabbe with _The Deserted
Village_ of Goldsmith, and the pleasure with which we pass from the
squalid scenes of the former to the gentler sorrows and sympathies of the
latter.
THOMAS CAMPBELL.--More identified with his age than any other poet, and
yet forming a link between the old and the new, was Campbell. Classical
and correct in versification, and smothering nature with sonorous prosody,
he still had the poetic fire, and an excellent power of poetic criticism.
He was the son of a merchant, and was born at Glasgow on the 27th of July,
1777. He thus grew up with the French revolution, and with the great
progress of the English nation in the wars incident to it. He was
carefully educated, and was six years at the University of Glasgow, where
he received prizes for composition. He went later to Germany, after being
graduated, to study Greek literature with Heyne. After some preliminary
essays in verse, he published the _Pleasures of Hope_ in 1799, before he
was twenty-two years old. It was one of the greatest successes of the age,
and has always since been popular. His subject was one of universal
interest; his verse was high-sounding; and his illustrations modern--such
as the fall of Poland--_Finis Poloniæ_; and although there is some
turgidity, and some want of unity, making the work a series of poems
rather than a connected one, it was most remarkable for a youth of his
age. It was perhaps unfortunate for his future fame; for it led the world
to expect other and better things, which were not forthcoming. Travelling
on the continent in the next year, 1800, he witnessed the battle of
Hohenlinden from the monastery of St. Jacob, and wrote that splendid,
ringing battle-piece, which has been so often recited and parodied. From
that time he wrote nothing in poetry worthy of note, except songs and
battle odes, with one exception. Among his battle-pieces which have never
been equalled are _Ye Mariners of England_, _The Battle of the Baltic_,
and _Lochiel's Warning_. His _Exile of Erin_ has been greatly admired, and
was suspected at the time of being treasonable; the author, however, being
entirely innocent of such an intention, as he clearly showed.
Besides reviews and other miscellanies, Campbell wrote _The Annals of
Great Britain, from the Accession of George III. to the Peace of Amiens_,
which is a graceful but not valuable work. In 1805 he received a pension
of £200 per annum.
In 1809 he published his _Gertrude of Wyoming_--the exception referred
to--a touching story, written with exquisite grace, but not true to the
nature of the country or the Indian character. Like _Rasselas_, it is a
conventional English tale with foreign names and localities; but as an
English poem it has great merit; and it turned public attention to the
beautiful Valley of Wyoming, and the noble river which flows through it.
As a critic, Campbell had great acquirements and gifts. These were
displayed in his elaborate _Specimens of the British Poets_, published in
1819, and in his _Lectures on Poetry_ before the Surrey Institution in
1820. In 1827 he was elected Lord Rector of the University of Glasgow; but
afterwards his literary efforts were by no means worthy of his reputation.
Few have read his _Pilgrim of Glencoe_; and all who have, are pained by
its manifestation of his failing powers. In fact, his was an unfinished
fame--a brilliant beginning, but no continuance. Sir Walter Scott has
touched it with a needle, when he says, "Campbell is in a manner a bugbear
to himself; the brightness of his early success is a detriment to all his
after efforts. He is afraid of the shadow which his own fame casts before
him." Byron placed him in the second category of the greatest living
English poets; but Byron was no critic.
He also published a _Life of Petrarch_, and a _Life of Frederick the
Great_; and, in 1830, he edited the _New Monthly Magazine_. He died at
Boulogne, June 15th, 1844, after a long period of decay in mental power.
SAMUEL ROGERS.--Rogers was a companion or consort to Campbell, although
the two men were very different personally. As Campbell had borrowed from
Akenside and written _The Pleasures of Hope_, Rogers enriched our
literature with _The Pleasures of Memory_, a poem of exquisite
versification, more finished and unified than its pendent picture;
containing neither passion nor declamation, but polish, taste, and
tenderness.
Rogers was born in a suburb of London, in 1762. His father was a banker;
and, although well educated, the poet was designed to succeed him, as he
did, being until his death a partner in the same banking-house. Early
enamored of poetry by reading Beattie's _Minstrel_, Rogers devoted all his
spare time to its cultivation, and with great and merited success.
In 1786 he produced his _Ode to Superstition_, after the manner of Gray,
and in 1792 his _Pleasures of Memory_, which was enthusiastically
received, and which is polished to the extreme. In 1812 appeared a
fragment, _The Voyage of Columbus_, and in 1814 _Jacqueline_, in the same
volume with Byron's _Lara_. _Human Life_ was published in 1819. It is a
poem in the old style, (most of his poems are in the rhymed pentameter
couplet;) but in 1822 appeared his poem of _Italy_, in blank verse, which
has the charm of originality in presentation, freshness of personal
experience, picturesqueness in description, novelty in incident and story,
scholarship, and taste in art criticism. In short, it is not only the best
of his poems, but it has great merit besides that of the poetry. The story
of Ginevra is a masterpiece of cabinet art, and is universally
appreciated. With these works Rogers contented himself. Rich and
distinguished, his house became a place of resort to men of distinction
and taste in art: it was filled with articles of _vertu_; and Rogers the
poet lived long as Rogers the _virtuoso_. His breakfast parties were
particularly noted. His long, prosperous, and happy life was ended on the
18th December, 1855, at the age of ninety-two.
The position of Rogers may be best illustrated in the words of Sir J.
Mackintosh, in which he says: "He appeared at the commencement of this
literary revolution, without paying court to the revolutionary tastes, or
seeking distinction by resistance to them." His works are not destined to
live freshly in the course of literature, but to the historical student
they mark in a very pleasing manner the characteristics of his age.
PERCY B. SHELLEY.--Revolutions never go backward; and one of the greatest
characters in this forward movement was a gifted, irregular, splendid,
unbalanced mind, who, while taking part in it, unconsciously, as one of
many, stands out also in a very singular individuality.
Percy Bysshe Shelley was born on the 4th of August, 1792, at Fieldplace,
in Sussex, England. He was the eldest son of Sir Timothy Shelley, and of
an ancient family, traced back, it is said, to Sir Philip Sidney. When
thirteen years old he was sent to Eton, where he began to display his
revolutionary tendencies by his resistance to the fagging system; and
where he also gave some earnest in writing of his future powers. At the
age of sixteen he entered University College, Oxford, and appeared as a
radical in most social, political, and religious questions. On account of
a paper entitled _The Necessity of Atheism_, he was expelled from the
university and went to London. In 1811 he made a runaway match with Miss
Harriet Westbrook, the daughter of the keeper of a coffee-house, which
brought down on him the wrath of his father. After the birth of two
children, a separation followed; and he eloped with Miss Godwin in 1814.
His wife committed suicide in 1816; and then the law took away from him
the control of his children, on the ground that he was an atheist.
After some time of residence in England, he returned to Italy, where soon
after he met with a tragical end. Going in an open boat from Leghorn to
Spezzia, he was lost in a storm on the Mediterranean: his body was washed
on shore near the town of Via Reggio, where his remains were burned in
the presence of Lord Byron, Leigh Hunt, and others. The ashes were
afterwards buried in the Protestant cemetery at Rome in July, 1822.
Shelley's principles were irrational and dangerous. He was a
transcendentalist of the extreme order, and a believer in the
perfectability of human nature. His works are full of his principles. The
earliest was _Queen Mab_, in which his profanity and atheism are clearly
set forth. It was first privately printed, and afterwards published in
1821. This was followed by _Alastor, or the Spirit of Solitude_, in 1816.
In this he gives his own experience in the tragical career of the hero.
His longest and most pretentious poem was _The Revolt of Islam_, published
in 1819. It is in the Spenserian stanza. Also, in the same year, he
published _The Cenci_, a tragedy, a dark and gloomy story on what should
be a forbidden subject, but very powerfully written. In 1820 he also
published _The Prometheus Unbound_, which is full of his irreligious
views. His remaining works were smaller poems, among which may be noted
_Adonais_, and the odes _To the Skylark_ and _The Cloud_.
In considering his character, we must first observe the power of his
imagination; it was so strong and all-absorbing, that it shut out the real
and the true. He was a man of extreme sensibility; and that sensibility,
hurt by common contact with things and persons around him, made him morbid
in morality and metaphysics. He was a polemic of the fiercest type; and
while he had an honest desire for reform of the evils that he saw about
him, it is manifest that he attacked existing institutions for the very
love of controversy. Bold, retired, and proud, without a spice of vanity,
if he has received harsh judgment from one half the critical world, who
had at least the claim that they were supporting pure morals and true
religion, his character has been unduly exalted by the other half, who
have mistaken reckless dogmatism for true nobility of soul. The most
charitable judgment is that of Moir, who says: "It is needless to disguise
the fact--and it accounts for all--his mind was diseased; he never knew,
even from boyhood, what it was to breathe the atmosphere of healthy
life--to have the _mens sana in corpore sano_."
But of his poetical powers we must speak in a different manner. What he
has left, gives token that, had he lived, he would have been one of the
greatest modern poets. Thoroughly imbued with the Greek poetry, his
verse-power was wonderful, his language stately and learned without
pedantry, his inspiration was that of nature in her grandest moods, his
fancy always exalted; and he presents the air of one who produces what is
within him from an intense love of his art, without regard to the opinion
of the world around him,--which, indeed, he seems to have despised more
thoroughly than any other poet has ever done. Byron affected to despise
it; Shelley really did.
We cannot help thinking that, had he lived after passing through the fiery
trial of youthful passions and disordered imagination, he might have
astonished the world with the grand spectacle of a convert to the good and
true, and an apostle in the cause of both. Of him an honest thinker has
said,--and there is much truth in the apparent paradox,--"No man who was
not a fanatic, had ever more natural piety than he; and his supposed
atheism is a mere metaphysical crotchet in which he was kept by the
affected scorn and malignity of dunces."[37]
JOHN KEATS.--Another singular illustration of eccentricity and abnormal
power in verse is found in the brief career of John Keats, the son of the
keeper of a livery-stable in London, who was born on the 29th October,
1795.
Keats was a sensitive and pugnacious youth; and in 1810, after a very
moderate education, he was apprenticed to a surgeon; but the love of
poetry soon interfered with the surgery, and he began to read, not without
the spirit of emulation, the works of the great poets--Chaucer, Spenser,
Shakspeare, and Milton. After the issue of a small volume which attracted
little or no attention, he published his _Endymion_ in 1818, which, with
some similarity in temperament, he inscribed to the memory of Thomas
Chatterton. It is founded upon the Greek mythology, and is written in a
varied measure. Its opening line has been a familiar quotation since:
A thing of beauty is a joy forever.
It was assailed by all the critics; but particularly, although not
unfairly, by Jeffrey, in the _Edinburgh Review_. An article in
_Blackwood_, breathing the spirit of British caste, had the bad taste to
tell the young apothecary to go back to his galley-pots. The excessive
sensibility of Keats received a great shock from this treatment; but we
cannot help thinking that too much stress has been laid upon this in
saying that he was killed by it. This was more romantic than true. He was
by inheritance consumptive, and had lost a brother by that disease. Add to
this that his peculiar passions and longings took the form of fierce
hypochondria.
With a decided originality, he was so impressible that there are in his
writings traces of the authors whom he was reading, if he did not mean to
make them models of style.
In 1820 he published a volume containing _Lamia_, _Isabella_, and _The Eve
of St. Agnes_, and _Hyperion_, a fragment, which was received with far
greater favor by the reviewers. Keats was self-reliant, and seems to have
had something of that magnificent egotism which is not infrequently
displayed by great minds.
The judicious verdict at last pronounced upon him may be thus epitomized:
he was a poet with fine fancy, original ideas, felicity of expression, but
full of faults due to his individuality and his youth; and his life was
not spared to correct these. In 1820 a hemorrhage of brilliant arterial
blood heralded the end. He himself said, "Bring me a candle; let me see
this blood;" and when it was brought, added, "I cannot be deceived in that
color; that drop is my death-warrant: I must die." By advice he went to
Italy, where he grew rapidly worse, and died on the 23d of February, 1821,
having left this for his epitaph: "Here lies one whose name was writ in
water." Thus dying at the age of twenty-four, he must be judged less for
what he was, than as an earnest of what he would have been. _The Eve of
St. Agnes_ is one of the most exquisite poems in any language, and is as
essentially allied to the simplicity and nature of the modern school of
poetry as his _Endymion_ is to the older school. Keats took part in what a
certain writer has called "the reaction against the barrel-organ style,
which had been reigning by a kind of sleepy, divine right for half a
century."
OTHER WRITERS OF THE PERIOD.
In consonance with the Romantic school of Poetry, and as contributors to
the prose fiction of the period of Scott, Byron, and Moore, a number of
gifted women have made good their claim to the favor of the reading world,
and have left to us productions of no mean value. First among these we
mention Mrs. FELICIA DOROTHEA HEMANS, 1794-1835: early married to Captain
Hemans, of the army, she was not happy in the conjugal state, and lived
most of her after-life in retirement, separated from her husband. Her
style is harmonious, and her lyrical power excellent; she makes melody of
common-places; and the low key in which her poetry is pitched made her a
favorite with the multitude. There is special fervor in her religious
poems. Most of her writings are fugitive and occasional pieces. Among the
longer poems are _The Forest Sanctuary_, _Dartmoor_, (a lyric poem,) and
_The Restoration of the works of Art to Italy_. _The Siege of Valencia_
and _The Vespers of Palermo_ are plays on historical subjects. There is a
sameness in her poetry which tires; but few persons can be found who do
not value highly such a descriptive poem as _Bernardo del Carpio_,
conceived in the very spirit of the Spanish Ballads, and such a sad and
tender moralizing as that found in _The Hour of Death_:
Leaves have their time to fall,
And flowers to wither, at the north-wind's breath,
And stars to set--but all,
Thou hast all seasons for thine own, O Death!
Such poems as these will live when the greater part of what she has
written has been forgotten, because its ministry has been accomplished.
_Mrs. Caroline Elizabeth Norton_, (born in 1808, still living:) she is the
daughter of Thomas Sheridan, and the grand-daughter of the famous R. B.
Sheridan. She married the Hon. Mr. Norton, and, like Mrs. Hemans, was
unhappy in her union. As a poet, she has masculine gifts combined with
feminine grace and tenderness. Her principal poems are _The Sorrows of
Rosalie_, _The Undying One_, (founded on the legend of _The Wandering
Jew_,) and _The Dream_. Besides these her facile pen has produced a
multitude of shorter pieces, which have been at once popular. Her claims
to enduring fame are not great, and she must be content with a present
popularity.
_Letitia Elizabeth Landon_, 1802-1839: more gifted, and yet not as well
trained as either of the preceding, Miss Landon (L. E. L.) has given vent
to impassioned sentiment in poetry and prose. Besides many smaller pieces,
she wrote _The Improvisatrice_, _The Troubadour_, _The Golden Violet_, and
several prose romances, among which the best are _Romance and Reality_,
and _Ethel Churchill_. She wrote too rapidly to finish with elegance; and
her earlier pieces are disfigured by this want of finish, and by a lack of
cool judgment; but her later writings are better matured and more correct.
She married Captain Maclean, the governor of Cape Coast Castle, in Africa,
and died there suddenly, from an overdose of strong medicine which she was
accustomed to take for a nervous affection.
_Maria Edgeworth_, 1767-1849: she was English born, but resided most of
her life in Ireland. Without remarkable genius, she may be said to have
exercised a greater influence over her period than any other woman who
lived in it. There is an aptitude and a practical utility in her stories
which are felt in all circles. Her works for children are delightful and
formative. Every one has read and re-read with pleasure the interesting
and instructive stories contained in _The Parents' Assistant_. And what
these are to the children, her novels are to those of larger growth. They
are eighteen in number, and are illustrative of the society, fashion, and
morals of the day; and always inculcate a good moral. Among them we may
particularize _Forester_, _The Absentee_, and _The Modern Griselda_. All
critics, even those who deny her great genius, agree in their estimate of
the moral value of her stories, every one of which is at once a
portraiture of her age and an instructive lesson to it. The feminine
delicacy with which she offers counsel and administers reproof gives a
great charm to, and will insure the permanent popularity of, her
productions.
_Jane Austen_, 1775-1817: as a novelist she occupied a high place in her
day, but her stories are gradually sinking into an historic repose, from
which the coming generations will not care to disturb them. _Pride and
Prejudice_ and _Sense and Sensibility_ are perhaps the best of her
productions, and are valuable as displaying the society and the nature
around her with delicacy and tact.
_Mary Ferrier_, 1782-1855: like Miss Austen, she wrote novels of existing
society, of which _The Marriage_ and _The Inheritance_ are the best known.
They were great favorites with Sir Walter Scott, who esteemed Miss
Ferrier's genius highly: they are little read at the present time.
_Robert Pollok_, 1799-1827: a Scottish minister, who is chiefly known by
his long poem, cast in a Miltonic mould, entitled _The Course of Time_. It
is singularly significant of religious fervor, delicate health, youthful
immaturity, and poetic yearnings. It abounds in startling effects, which
please at first from their novelty, but will not bear a calm, critical
analysis. On its first appearance, _The Course of Time_ was immensely
popular; but it has steadily lost favor, and its highest flights are
"unearthly flutterings" when compared with the powerful soarings of
Milton's imagination and the gentle harmonies of Cowper's religious muse.
Pollok died early of consumption: his youth and his disease account for
the faults and defects of his poem.
_Leigh Hunt_, 1784-1859: a novelist, a poet, an editor, a critic, a
companion of literary men, Hunt occupies a distinct position among the
authors of his day. Wielding a sensible and graceful rather than a
powerful pen, he has touched almost every subject in the range of our
literature, and has been the champion and biographer of numerous literary
friends. He was the companion of Byron, Shelley, Keats, Lamb, Coleridge,
and many other authors. He edited at various times several radical
papers--_The Examiner_, _The Reflector_, _The Indicator_, and _The
Liberal_; for a satire upon the regent, published in the first, he was
imprisoned for two years. Among his poems _The Story of Rimini_ is the
best. His _Legend of Florence_ is a beautiful drama. There are few pieces
containing so small a number of lines, and yet enshrining a full story,
which have been as popular as his _Abou Ben Adhem_. Always cheerful,
refined and delicate in style, appreciative of others, Hunt's place in
English literature is enviable, if not very exalted; like the atmosphere,
his writings circulate healthfully and quietly around efforts of greater
poets than himself.
_James Hogg_, 1770-1835: a self-taught rustic, with little early
schooling, except what the shepherd-boy could draw from nature, he wrote
from his own head and heart without the canons and the graces of the
Schools. With something of the homely nature of Burns, and the Scottish
romance of Walter Scott, he produced numerous poems which are stamped with
true genius. He catered to Scottish feeling, and began his fame by the
stirring lines beginning;
My name is Donald McDonald,
I live in the Highlands so grand.
His best known poetical works are _The Queen's Wake_, containing seventeen
stories in verse, of which the most striking is that of _Bonny Kilmeny_.
He was always called "The Ettrick Shepherd." Wilson says of _The Queen's
Wake_ that "it is a garland of fresh flowers bound with a band of rushes
from the moor;" a very fitting and just view of the work of one who was at
once poet and rustic.
_Allan Cunningham_, 1785-1842; like Hogg, in that as a writer he felt the
influence of both Burns and Scott, Cunningham was the son of a gardener,
and a self-made man. In early life he was apprenticed to a mason. He wrote
much fugitive poetry, among which the most popular pieces are, _A Wet
Sheet and a Flowing Sea_, _Gentle Hugh Herries_, and _It's Hame and it's
Hame_. Among his stories are _Traditional Tales of the Peasantry_, _Lord
Roldan_, and _The Maid of Elwar_. His position for a time, as clerk and
overseer of Chantrey's establishment, gave him the idea of writing _The
Lives of Eminent British Painters, Sculptors, and Architects_. He was a
voluminous author; his poetry is of a high lyrical order, and true to
nature; but his prose will not retain its place in public favor: it is at
once diffuse and obscure.
_Thomas Hope_, 1770-1831: an Amsterdam merchant, who afterwards resided in
London, and who illustrated the progress of knowledge concerning the East
by his work entitled, _Anastasius, or Memoirs of a Modern Greek_.
Published anonymously, it excited a great interest, and was ascribed by
the public to Lord Byron. The intrigues and adventures of the hero are
numerous and varied, and the book has great literary merit; but it is
chiefly of historical value in that it describes persons and scenes in
Greece and Turkey, countries in which Hope travelled at a time when few
Englishmen visited them.
_William Beckford_, 1760-1844: he was the son of an alderman, who became
Lord Mayor of London. After a careful education, he found himself the
possessor of a colossal fortune. He travelled extensively, and wrote
sketches of his travels. His only work of importance is that called
_Vathek_, in which he describes the gifts, the career, and the fate of the
Caliph of that name, who was the grandson of the celebrated Haroun al
Raschid. His palaces are described in a style of Oriental gorgeousness;
his temptations, his lapses from virtue, his downward progress, are
presented with dramatic power; and there is nothing in our literature more
horribly real and terror-striking than the _Hall of Eblis_,--that hell
where every heart was on fire, where "the Caliph Vathek, who, for the sake
of empty pomp and forbidden power, had sullied himself with a thousand
crimes, became a prey to grief without end and remorse without
mitigation." Many of Beckford's other writings are blamed for their
voluptuous character; the last scene in _Vathek_ is, on the other hand, a
most powerful and influential sermon. Beckford was eccentric and unsocial:
he lived for some time in Portugal, but returned to England, and built a
luxurious palace at Bath.
_William Roscoe_, 1753-1831: a merchant and banker of Liverpool. He is
chiefly known by his _Life of Lorenzo de Medici_, and _The Life and
Pontificate of Leo X._, both of which contained new and valuable
information. They are written in a pleasing style, and with a liberal and
charitable spirit as to religious opinions. Since they appeared, history
has developed new material and established more exacting canons, and the
studies of later writers have already superseded these pleasing works.