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But here is a passage which will live forever-in which not one word could be altered for the better-not one omitted but for the worse-not one added that would not be superfluous-a passage that proves that fiction is not the soul of poetry, but truth-but, then, such truth as was never spoken before on the same subject-such truth, as shows that, while Thomson was a person of the strictest veracity, yet was he very far indeed from being a matter-of-fact man:

A MAN PERISHING IN THE SNOW.

"As thus the snows arise, and foul and fiero
All winter drives along the darken'd air,
In his own loose-revolving field the swain
Disaster'd stands; sees other hills ascend,
Of unknown, joyless brow; and other scenes,
Of horrid prospect, shag the trackless plain;
Nor finds the river, nor the forest, hid
Beneath the formless wild; but wanders on,
From hill to dale, still more and more astray,
Impatient flouncing through the drifted heaps,
Stung with the thoughts of home; the thoughts of home
Rush on his nerves, and call their vigor forth
In many a vain attempt.

How sinks his soul!

What black despair, what horror fills his heart!
When, for the dusky spot, which fancy feign'd
His tufted cottage rising through the snow,
He meets the roughness of the middle waste,
Far from the track and bless'd abode of man;
While round him night resistless closes fast,
And ev'ry tempest howling o'er his head
Renders the savage wilderness more wild.
Then throng the busy shapes into his mind
Of cover'd pits, unfathomably deep,

A dire descent, beyond the pow'r of frost!
Of faithless bogs; of precipices huge,

Smooth'd up with snow; and what is land unknown,
What water, of the still unfrozen spring,

In the loose marsh or solitary lake,

Where the fresh fountain from the bottom boils.
These check his fearful steps, and down he sinks
Beneath the shelter of the shapeless drift,
Thinking o'er all the bitterness of death,
Mix'd with the tender anguish nature shoots
Through the wrung bosom of the dying man,
His wife, his children, and his friends unseen.
In vain for him th' officious wife prepares
The fire fair-blazing and the vestment warm;
In vain his little children, peeping out

Into the mingled storm, demand their sire,
With tears of artless innocence. Alas!
Nor wife, nor children, more shall he behold,
Nor friends, nor sacred home. On every nerve
The deadly winter seizes, shuts up sense,
And, o'er his inmost vitals creeping cold,
Lays him along the snows a stiffen'd corse."

SECTION XI.

OLIVER GOLDSMITH (1728-1774).

"The Traveler" and "The Deserted Village" are beautiful descriptive poems. The latter is said to contain some of the happiest pictures of rural life and character in the English language. His "Vicar of Wakefield," a prose tale, is also much admired.

The following extracts are from the "Deserted Village :"

"Sweet was the sound, when oft, at evening's close,
Up yonder hill the village murmur rose ;

There, as I pass'd with careless steps and slow,
The mingled notes came soften'd from below;
The swain responsive as the milk-maid sung;
The sober herd that low'd to meet their young;
The noisy geese that gabbled o'er the pool;
The playful children just let loose from school;
The watch-dog's voice that bay'd the whispering
And the loud laugh that spoke the vacant mind:
These all in sweet confusion sought the shade,
And fill'd each pause the nightingale had made."

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THE COUNTRY SCHOOLMASTER.

"Beside yon straggling fence that skirts the way,
With blossom'd furze unprofitably gay,
There, in his noisy mansion, skill'd to rule,
The village master taught his little school;

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;

The village all declared how much he knew
"Twas certain he could write and cipher too;
Lands he could measure, times and tides presage ;
And e'en the story ran that he could gauge:
In arguing, too, the parson own'd his skill,
For, e'en though vanquish'd, he could argue still;
While words of learned length, and thundering sound,
Amazed the gazing rustics ranged around;
And still they gazed, and still the wonder grew,
That one small head could carry all he knew.
But pass'd is all his fame; the very spot
Where many a time he triumph'd, is forgot."

Another, more humorous example, was given in part iii., chap. xv.

SECTION XII.

GEORGE CRABBE.

His powers of imagination are not uncommon, but he possessed a talent for making accurate and minute observations on the realities of life. The moral tendency of his writings is good. His portraits are mostly from humble life-exhibiting virtues as well as vices.

Crabbe, if not the most natural, is, in the opinion of Hazlitt, the most literal of descriptive poets. He exhibits the smallest circumstances of the smallest things-the non-essentials of every trifling incident. He describes the interior of a cottage like a person sent there to distrain for rent. You know the Christian and surnames of every one of his heroes-the dates of their achievements, whether on a Sunday or a Monday-their place of birth and burial, the color of their clothes and of their hair, and whether they squinted or not. He takes an inventory of the human heart exactly in the same manner as of the furniture of a sick room; his sentiments have very much the air of fixtures; he gives you the petrifaction of a sigh, and carves a tear, to the life, in stone. Almost all his characters are tired of their lives, and you heartily wish them dead. Crabbe's poetry is like a museum or a curiosity-shop: every thing has the same posthumous appearance, the same inanimateness and identity of character. He seems to rely, for the delight he is to convey to his reader, on the truth and accuracy with which he describes only what is disagreeable.

SECTION XIII.

SAMUEL ROGERS.

Distinguished for a melodious flow of verse, a happy choice of expression, a power of touching the finer feelings, and of describing mental as well as visible objects with effect. It is thought by some that the English language does not afford a more finished composition, in regard to language, than the "Pleasures of Memory." Upon his poems he bestowed the greatest

labor and cultivation. "Italy" is another fine poem, as you may learn from the extract here appended:

ROME.

"I am in Rome! Oft as the morning ray
Visits these eyes, waking at once, I cry,

Whence this excess of joy? What has befallen me?

And from within a thrilling voice replies,

Thou art in Rome! A thousand busy thoughts
Rush on my mind, a thousand images;

And I spring up as girt to run a race!

*

*

*

Thou art in Rome! the city that so long
Reign'd absolute, the mistress of the world;
The mighty vision that the prophets saw,
And trembled.

+

Thou art in Rome! the city where the Gauls,
Entering, at sunrise, through her open gates,
And, through her streets silent and desolate,
Marching to slay, thought they saw gods, not men;
The city that, by temperance, fortitude,
And love of glory, tower'd above the clouds,
Then fell-but falling, kept the highest seat,
And in her loneliness, her pomp of wo,

Where now she dwells, withdrawn into the wild,
Still o'er the mind maintains, from age to age,
Her empire undiminish'd.

*

And I am there!

Ah, little thought I, when in school I sat,
A schoolboy on his bench, at early dawn
Glowing with Roman story, I should live
To tread the Appian, once an avenue
Of monuments most glorious, palaces,
Their doors seal'd up and silent as the night,
The dwellings of the illustrious dead-to turn
Toward Tiber, and, beyond the city gate,
Pour out my unpremeditated verse,

Where, on his mule, I might have met so oft
Horace himself-or climb the Palatine,
Dreaming of old Evander and his guest,
Dreaming and lost on that proud eminence,
Long while the seat of Rome, hereafter found
Less than enough (so monstrous was the brood
Engender'd there, so Titan-like) to lodge
One in his madness; and, the summit gain'd,
Inscribe my name on some broad aloe-leaf,

* Nero.

That shoots and spreads within those very walls
Where Virgil read aloud his tale divine,

Where his voice falter'd, and a mother wept
Tears of delight!"

SECTION XIV.

THOMAS CAMPBELL (1777-1844).

To the suggestion and eloquent advocacy of this distinguished man the London University is said to have owed its origin.

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"The Pleasures of Hope" is a splendid poem. "Its polish is exquisite, its topics felicitously chosen, and its illustrations natural and beautiful. He lifts you up to an exceedingly high mountain, and you see all nature in her loveliness, and man in the truth of his character, with hope irradiating, cheering, and sustaining him in the numerous ills of life. 'Gertrude of Wyoming' is preferred by some readers even to his Pleasures of Hope.' It is a sad tale, told with tenderness as well as genius. But if these had never been written, his songs would have given him claims as a first-rate poet. They cover sea and land. Their spirit stirs the brave, whatever may be their field of fame; whether the snow is to be their winding-sheet, or the deep their grave. National songs are of the most difficult production and of the highest value. They are the soul of national feeling and a safeguard of national honor."-(See Knapp's Pursuits of Literature.)

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Of" The Pleasures of Hope," ""the music," says Professor Wilson, now deepens into a majestic march-now it swells into a holy hymn-and now it dies away, elegiac-like, as if mourning over a tomb; never else than beautiful, and ever and anon, we know not why, sublime. As for Gertrude of Wyoming, we love her as if she were our only daughter-filling our life with bliss, and then leaving it desolate. Never saw we a ship till Campbell indited 'Ye Mariners of England.' Sheer hulks before our eyes were all ships till that strain arose, but ever since in our imagination have they brightened the roaring ocean."

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