Panegyric sinks before the name of Shakespeare.* His dramatic fame has become proverbial, and is now beyond increase or diminution by posterity. If the conduct of his plays be sometimes dilatory, perplexed, and inprobable; no man ever redeemed those errors by such triumphant power over the difficulties character and poetry. His knowledge of the workings of the human breast in all the varieties of passion, gives us the idea that he had either felt and registered every emotion of our being, or had attained the knowledge by some faculty restricted to himself. He is, above all poets, the poet of passion; not merely of the violent and gloomy distortion into which the greater trials of life may constrain the mind, but of the whole range of the simple, the lovely, and the sublime. His force and flow have the easy strength of the tide; and his lights and shadows are thrown with the rich negligence, yet with the intensity and grandeur of the colours of heaven on the ocean.

Shakespeare's fertility increases the surprise at this accumulation of poetic power. Within twenty-three years he produced thirty plays, indisputably genuine ; and contributed largely to five more, if he did not altogether write them. Of the thirty, twelve are

Born at Stratford upon Avon, 1564-died, 1616

master-pieces, whose equals are not to be found in the whole compass of the living languages, nor perhaps of the dead. Yet, susceptible as he must have been of the poet's delight in praise, he seems to have utterly disregarded fame. He left his writings to the false and garbled copies of the theatre. It is not known that he even cared whether they ever passed to posterity. He retired from active life-from the pleasures of general society, which he must have been eminently capable of enjoying-and from authorship, a still severer sacrifice,—while he was yet in the prime of years, and gave himself up to the quiet obscurity of the country, without allowing us room for a suspicion that he ever regretted his abandonment of the world.

No man ever seems to have been so signally unconscious of what mighty things he was doing, or of the vast space that he must fill in the eyes of the future. And this unconsciousness, the rarest distinction and clearest evidence of great minds, crowns his su premacy; for it must have proceeded from either the creative facility that made all effort trivial, or the still nobler faculty, that sense of excellence, which makes all that genius can do feeble and dim, to the vivid and splendid form of perfection perpetually glowing before the mind.

Milton's genius was equal to his theme, and his theme comprehended the loftiest, loveliest, and most solemn subjects that touch the heart or elevate the understanding of man. We live at too remote a period to discover how far his powers may have been excited or trained by his time. But the characteristic of the poetic mind is, to be impressed by all influences, to be laying up its treasures from every event and vicissitude, to be gathering its materials of future brilliancy and power from the highest and lowest sources, from the visible and the invisible, till it coerces those vaporous and unformed things into shape, and lifts them up for the admiration of the world, with the buoyancy and radiance of a cloud painted by the sun. The stern superstitions of the republicans, the military array of the land, the vast prayer-meetings, and the fierce and gloomy assemblages, whether for war, council, or worship, are to be traced in Milton; and the most unrivalled fragments of the Paradise Lost,' may be due to his having lived in the midst of an age of public confusion, of sorrow and of slaughter.

Milton was the most learned of poets. Learning oppresses the nerveless mind, but invigorates the powerful one. The celestial armour of the Greek hero,

• Born in London, 1608, died 1674.

which let in death to his feeble friend, only gave celestial speed and lightness to the limbs of the chosen champion. But the true wonder is, the faculty by which Milton assimilates his diversified knowledge, and makes the most remote subservient to his theme. His scholarship is gathered from all times and all languages; and he sits in the midst of this various and magnificent treasure from the thousand provinces of wisdom, with the majesty of a Persian king.

Dryden revived poetry in England, after its anathe ma by the Puritans, and its corruption by the French taste of Charles II. and his court. He was the first who tried the powers of the language in satire to any striking extent: and his knowledge of life, and his masculine and masterly use of English, placed him at the summit of political poets, a rank which has never been lowered. No English poet wrote more voluminously, and none retained a more uncontested superiority during life. By a singular fortune, his vigour and fame increased to the verge of the grave.

A rapid succession of Poets followed, of whom Pope retains the pre-eminence. His animation and poig nancy made him the favourite of the higher ranks; a favour which seldom embodies itself with the permanent

• Born, 1631, died 1700

·

feelings of a people. But the poetry of the Essay on Man,' however founded on an erroneous system, has the great preservative qualities that send down authorship to remote times. Its dignity, force, and grandeur fix it on the throne of didactic poetry. Pope's compliance with habits, then sanctioned by the first names of society, has humiliated his muse. But no man will desire to extinguish the good for the sake of the evil; and in the vast and various beauty, morality, and grace of Pope, we may wisely forget that he ever wrote an unworthy line.

It is not the purpose of this rapid sketch to more than allude to subsequent writers. Our own age has produced individuals, whose ability will be honoured to the latest period of the language. But the genuine praise of the Poet rests with posterity: and of those noble ornaments of our country, and it can possess none nobler, happily all survive, with the exception of Keats, Wolfe, and the mightier name of Byron.

Keats died at an early age, probably long before his powers were matured; but not till he had given promise of excellence in his peculiar style. His versification was chiefly formed on the model of Spencer; and few as his poems are, they exhibit a rich and delicate conception of the beauty of our language