To each his sufferings: all are men, The unfeeling, for his own. Yet ah, why should they know their fate! AN ELEGY WRITTEN IN A CHURCH-YARD. * Beneath those rugged elms, that yew-tree's shade, The rude forefathers of the hamlet sleep. The breezy call of incense-breathing morn, The swallow twittering from the straw-built shed, Full many a gem of purest ray serene The dark, unfathom'd caves of ocean bear; Fair laughs the morn and soft the zephyr blows, In gallant trim the gilded vessel goes, Youth on the prow and Pleasure at the helm; It would be idle to descant on the diction or imagery of verses like these. We will only advert to the prophetic intimation of the catastrophe in the last clause. Had the poet described the tempest itself with the power of Virgil in the first book of his Æneid, it would have failed in this instance to produce the effect of sublime and ineffable horror, of which a glimpse appears in the background, while the gallant vessel is sailing with wind, and tide, and sunshine, on a sea of glory. All the sweeping fury of the whirlwind, awake and ravening over his evening prey," would have been less terrible than his "grim repose;" and the shrieks and struggles of drowning mariners less affecting than the sight of 66 "Youth on the prow and Pleasure at the helm," "regardless" of the inevitable doom on which they were already verging. SECTION VIII. JAMES BEATTIE (1736-1803), a native of Scotland, was the last of those who can properly be placed in the first order of the poets of this time. In 1771, while professor of moral philosophy at Aberdeen, he published his celebrated poem, The Minstrel, which describes, in the stanza of Spenser, the progress of the imagination and feelings of a young and rustic poet. Beattie also wrote several philosophical and controversial works, which attracted considerable attention in their day. His poetry is characterized by a peculiar meditative pathos. The contemplation of the works of Nature is recommended in the following stanzas : Oh, how canst thou renounce the boundless store All that the mountain's sheltering bosom shields, O how canst thou renounce, and hope to be forgiven! X. These charms shall work thy soul's eternal health, U But these thou must renounce, if lust of wealth He has been justly called the great painter of Nature's scenery and Nature's joys. His chief merit consisted in describing her, and the pleasure afforded by a contemplation of her infinite and glorious varieties. "Touched by his more than magic pencil, every thing around us lives, and breathes, and speaksspeaks forth its Creator's praise: the little hills rejoice on every side; the trees of the fields clap their hands, and all creation joins in one general song." He excelled in delineating, not the strong and boisterous passions of the human heart, but its gentler emotions and more pleasing traits. Of himself he says: "I solitary court The inspiring breeze, and meditate the book Warm from the heart, to pour the moral song." The "Seasons" are the most read and generally admired of his works, yet not without its faults. The language is sometimes inflated-style sometimes monotonous, but from continued elevation. The digressions have been objected to as blemishes, but by others have been approved and admired as essential to the highest merit of the poem. Some have pronounced his "Castle of Indolence" altogether superior to the "Seasons." It was designed as a satire upon his own indolent character, and an incentive to the young to put forth vigorous exertions. Several tablets were erected to his memory, containing beautiful inscriptions. Beneath one of these was written this beautiful passage from the season of Winter: "Father of Light and Life! Thou good Supreme! O teach me what is good! teach me thyself; Save me from folly, vanity, and vice, From every low pursuit! and feed my soul With knowledge, conscious peace, and virtue pure, His great work, "The Seasons," with a few pre cepts intermingled, presents, in beautiful series and harmonious connection, the phenomena of nature and the operations of man contemporary with these, through the four seasons; forming, in fact, a biographical memoir of the infancy, maturity, and old age of an English year. Thus beautifully has Montgomery described it. A short characteristic specimen of Thomson was given in the chapter on Personification. Other specimens will be found in the following section: Some characteristic traits of Thomson and Cowper are given by Hazlitt, as follows: "Thomson, the kind-hearted Thomson, was the most indolent of mortals, and of poets. His faults are, that he is often affected through carelessness, and pompous from unsuspecting simplicity of character. He seldom writes a good line but he makes up for it by a bad one. Cowper has surpassed him in the picturesque part of his art, in marking the peculiar features and curious details of objects; no one has yet come up to him in giving the sum total of their effects, their varying influences on the mind. He does not go into the minutia of a landscape, but describes the vivid impression which the whole makes upon his own imagination; and thus transfers the same unbroken, unimpaired impression to the imagination of his readers. He describes, not to the eye alone, but to the other senses, and to the whole man. He puts his heart into his subject, writes as he feels, and humanizes whatever he touches. He makes all his descriptions teem with life. His blank verse is not harsh, nor utterly untunable; but it is heavy and monotonous; it seems always laboring up hill. "If Cowper had a more polished taste, Thomson had, beyond comparison, a more fertile genius, more impulsive force, a more entire forgetfulness of himself in his subject. If in Thomson you are sometimes offended with the slovenliness of the author by profession, determined to get through his task at all events; in Cowper you are no less dissatisfied with the finicalness of the private gentleman, who does not care whether he completes his work or not; and in whatever he does, is evidently more solicitous to please himself than the public. He shakes hands with nature with a pair of fashionable gloves on. He had neither Thomson's love of the unadorned beauties of nature, nor Pope's exquisite sense of the elegances of art. Still he is a genuine poet, and deserves all his reputation. His worst faults are amiable weaknesses, elegant trifling. He has left a number of pictures of domestic comfort and social refinement, as well as of natural imagery and feeling, which can hardly be forgotten but with the language itself. His satire is also excellent. It is pointed and forcible, with the polished manners of the gentleman, and the honest indignation of the virtuous man. His religious poetry wants elevation and fire. His story of John Gilpin has, perhaps, given as much pleasure to as many people as any thing of the same length that ever was written." SECTION X. COWPER. He is one of the most instructive and pleasing of English poets, and is decidedly one of the best specimens of an easy and graceful epistolary style. His most admired poem is the Task, some parts of which are inimitably good, but there are others rather trifling. "His language," says Campbell, "has such a masculine, idiomatic strength, and his manner, whether he rises into grace or falls into negligence, has so much plain and familiar freedom, that we read no poetry with a deeper conviction of its sentiments having come from the author's heart." He is distinguished for a rich and chastened humor in most of his writings, though at times he was the victim of most lamentable melancholy. In the description of the quiet pleasures of domestic life, he much excels, as may be seen in the fourth book of the Task. He is the author of many other poems, and of some admirable |