subjects taken from common life, they cannot reach the highest degree of their profession, and excel ín historical painting. But it ought to be considered, that as they are obliged to follow the current of the fashion, they have rarely an opportunity of putting their abilities to a full and fair trial. For what they can effect we may appeal to several excellent pictures which adorn Windsor palace, the Shakespeare, the Milton, and the Macklin galleries, as well as several private collections. If there be instances in which they have failed in their efforts to embody with adequate force and spirit, the conceptions of a Shakespeare and a Milton, we must consider how impossible it is to express by colours the efforts of the imagination, and to bring into one point of time the successive particulars of description. A failure in this respect is rather the defect of the art, than of the artist.

Instead of lavishing immense sums upon the continent in the purchase of more pictures by the old masters, would it not be more honourable to the national character, to foster the genius of our own painters, and give a new incitement to their exertions. These purposes might be effected, if the noble and the opulent would follow the example of the illustrious founder of the royal academy, and patronize eminent artists. The field for their exertions is extensive and fruitful, and they possess one decided advan tage over the great masters; as they are not confined by the superstitious fashion of the age to one particu lar description of subjects. Subjects indeed are so far from being wanted, that it is rather a difficult task to select, than to discover them. The choice might rest with the artists themselves, who are the best judges of their own powers of execution. The history of our

own country considered not merely with a view to war, but the arts of peace presents a wide range of topics. Let the public patronise the execution of a series of pictures to form a national gallery, let each eminent. painter be well remunerated for the picture he undertakes, and a fair experiment might be made to convince the world whether British genius, fostered by British liberality, was not capable of producing such works of art, as would confer distinguished honour upon our age and country.

III. POETRY.

As eloquence differs from common narrative, by the use of figurative and metaphorical expressions, and a greater conspicuousness of style; so poetry is distinguished from oratory by words and expressions still more vivid and more ardent.* And what more strongly marks the line of separation between poetry and eloquence, is the ornament of verse. This gives to it a specific character, and adorns it with peculiar graces; and it is this, which, by the harmony and variety of numbers adapted to every subject, affords so much delight to the ear. To the different kinds of poetry custom has assigned various kinds of metre; to the epic is appropriated heroic, and to the ode unequal verse; and this custom is so firmly established, that

* The characteristic distinctions of poetry, eloquence, and history, are touched with his usual spirit, judgment, and taste, by Quintilian, lib. x, c. 1, sect. 3. lib. xii, c. 10, sect. 4. Reynolds's Discourses.

any violation of it would offend the public taste, and raise such strong prejudices against a writer, as an exalted genius only could overcome. The Fairy Queen of Spenser maintains its ground among the first poems in our language, although written in the Italian stanza: but who ever reads the heroic poem of Gondibert, written by Davenant in elegiac verse?

Assisted by the observations which we have made in different parts of this work, upon the poets of various countries both ancient and modern, sacred and profane, we may form some notions, and it is hoped such as are not inaccurate, of their respective merits. The more we examine into the nature of genuine poetry, the more traces we shall find in its productions of that transcendent genius, which we have endeavoured to delineate, and which reigns supreme in all the provinces of poetry, painting and music. To ascertain poetry by its effects may come within the sphere of the critic, and the man of taste: but to describe its extensive powers, and its potent influence and to mark its raptures and flights, "in thoughts that breathe, and words that burn :" when soaring on eagle wings "it ascends the highest heaven of invention," belongs exclusively to the poet himself. Let then the votary of the muses develope the mysteries of his charming art, and speak for himself: and let me, to supply my imperfect description, refer my readers to Horace, when he addresses Melpomene in the most exquisite of his lyric strains ;-to Gray, describing the progress of poetry or rather let me call for the assistance of Shakespeare.

"The poet's eye in a fine frenzy rolling,

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven,

And as imagination bodies forth

The form of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing

A local habitation and a name."

Of the nature and effects of the art, the sweet and original strains of the Minstrel may give no imperfect idea:

"But hail ye mighty masters of the lay,

Nature's true sons, the friends of man and truth!
Whose song, sublimely sweet, serenely gay,
Amus'd my childhood, and informed my youth.
O let your spirit still my bosom sooth;

Inspire my dreams, and my wild wanderings guide:
Your voite each rugged path of life can smooth;
For well I know, wherever ye reside,

There harmony, and peace, and innocence abide."

Beattie's Minstrel, xlii.

It is by such exertions as we admire in the choicest productions of ancient and modern times, that a poet communicates to his reader his own enthusiastic feelings, and opens those avenues of pleasure, which lead immediately to the imagination, and the heart. Such an extensive influence as he, and indeed every good writer, obtains over the mind, shows that literature justly claims to itself, among human inventions, a place much higher than the other imitative arts. The charms of music are vague and indefinite in their expression of emotions and passions, and short in their continuance. Painting is confined to objects of sight, and to a single point of time; but eloquence and poetry, to the advantages of them both, add many others, which are peculiarly their own. They admit a succession, a variety, and an accuracy of

ideas, and strengthen first impressions by a detail of striking particulars. They include a series of successive facts, which comprehend a whole subject from beginning to end. They rank higher in the scale of imitative excellence, in proportion to the exertion of mind employed in their productions, and the superior pleasure they convey. All the conceptions which the soul is able to form, all the beauties of nature and emotions of passion, all the range of sensible and abstract ideas, come within their reach; so that the field which they open to taste is the most extensive, fruitful and agreeable, in which we can possibly expatiate.

And here, as the principles of taste can only be founded with justness and solidity upon a knowledge of the GREEK AND ROMAN CLASSICS, we may fairly inquire more particularly into the nature of their pretensions to the high rank, which they have for ages held among literary productions. Is their value overrated, and do they owe their reputation solely to the venerable garb which antiquity has thrown around them? The classical scholar needs not be apprehensive lest his favourite authors should suffer by a fair answer to this question: for we can reply with the confidence of truth, that the estimation in which they are held is founded upon the most solid grounds. We view more particularly in Homer, Xenophon, Demosthenes, Eschylus, Sophocles, Virgil, Cicero, Livy, and Horace, that ardour of genius, that air of originality, that insight into the nature of man, and knowledge of the passions, that simplicity, and inimitable beauty both of thought and expression, which have deservedly obtained them the most conspicuous places in the temple of fame. They have enlarged