Johnson lived in the full tide popularity: courted; listened to; flattered; worshipped.

Gray (I beleive) says « a dead Lord only ranks with a Commoner ». After death, the prejudices in his favour, which accompany him in life, are extinguished. He is examined with the samne impartiality, as any plebeian.

In what consisted the difference between Gray, and Lyttelton ?

Lyttelton had numerous advantages over Gray in the opportunity of seeing mankind; in converse with the business of life; and in that impulse and that skill, which are generated by collision of intellects ! But all these could not counteract the superiority of natural gift.

In the internal construction of Gray's mind was vigor and fire.

In that of Lyttelton, gentleness and facility, but feebleness. He had no invention he was therefore not deficient in plain sense, because he was not exposed to be led astray by ignes fatui. But then in wanting force, he wanted that piercing sagacity, which gives to common sense its greatest

use.

Gray, in the unstimulating and drowsy ease of a College life, suffered the higher powers of his mind to slumber, and rust, while he was content to amuse himself by employing his prodigious memory. Whoever reads his Letters, will be convinced that this is not too severe a censure.

His serious Letters (for his trifling ones sadly betray the affectations of a petit-maitre), give great interest, from the depth and accuracy of the knowlege, with which they are tinctured; and the delightful skill of deep and perfect

scholarship, under the influence of pure, acute, and lofty

But in the profusion of these treasures, we regret those still more valuable riches, which he seems too lazy to bring forth! We have few of the results of his own original powers of thinking! He recalls to us the facts of history; the opinions of moralists; the sentiments and images of poets; the explanations of scholars; etc. but he seldom gives us his own thoughts, and theories. It is the evil, into which an unproportionate cultivation of memory leads the most powerful minds.

But Gray could think powerfully; imagine powerfully; and invent powerfully! His BARD is a proof of his rich

and sublime Invention!

At the epoch at which Gray wrote, the powers of Invention seem almost to have ceased in English poetry unless a few personifications and allegorical abstractions, may be called Invention; which Jos. Warton, when he wrote the Preface to his Early Poems, seems to have thought.

I am not sure, that we have made much improvement by the extravagant Inventions of modern days.

And what Invention is there in the major part of the poets in Johnson's Collection? Has Denham Invention? Has Waller Invention? Perhaps a simile; or a metaphor will be -called Invention ! There is more Invention in Butler : but he wants dignity of subject. Blackmore, Swift, Addison, Gay, Phillips, Savage, Somerville, Tickel, Hammond, Dyer, Mallet, Watts, etc., want Invention. Even Shenstonc cannot be said to have shewn Invention, unless in his Elegy of Jesse, « Why mourns my friend ».

I would give Dryden credit for Invention from the manner in which he has expanded the Tales of Boccacio; and Prior, for his expansion of the Nut-Brown Maid! So Pope, for his Eloisa to Abelard; and his Rape of the Lock !

Ode to the Passions! I can discover nothing, on which I can found Akenside's claim to Invention

Beattie's Minstrel entitles him to this distinction. But where shall we find it for Cowper? Many of the Songs of Burns will entitle him to this praise.

Mighty then, but prostituted name of Poet, to how few dost thou properly belong?

Was a man with the genius, erudition, and habits of GRAY happy? His life was probably a mixture of extreme enjoyment, and bitter suffering. His hours of energy passed in pure and noble occupations; lifted above worldly cares; unpressed by worldly biasses: but man is yet a dependant being. His instinctive affections told him so he exclaimed ;

« Poor Moralist! and what art Thou?

A solitary fly!

No hive hast thou of hoarded sweets! >>

His ardors must often have stagnated within him, for want of objects cold fogs must have congregated over his heart and have

Frozen « the genial current of his soul ».

The first quality of a poet is universally allowed to be Invention: the power of imagining new combinations of incidents or scenery; and associating them with a lively description of the sentiments that would naturally be excited in such situations. Of the productions exhibiting an equal quantity of invention, those are the best, of which the ingredients are the most magnificent, or the most pathetic,

On this principle, Milton stands at the head of our poets (separate from the Dramatic); — and Spenser next to him. Perhaps Chaucer stands third, in right of his Canterbury Tales.

If invention be the character of a poet, how do those shew the characters, who are mere portrait-painters ?

By selection of circumstances; by picturesqueness of language; by vividness of colouring. There is even in this a minor sort of novelty of combination.

VIII.

POETRY.

Subjects of Poetry compared to distant Views.

« A step, methinks, may pass the stream;
So little distant dangers seem.

So we mistake the future's face,
Eyed through Hope's delusive glass!
As yon summits soft and fair,
Clad in colours of the air,

Which, to those who journey near

Barren, and brown, and rough appear;
Still we tread the same coarse way;

The present's still a cloudy day ».

Dyer's Grongar Hill.

It is the same with subjects of poetry: Matters of Fiction

are better described than matters of reality

because they are seen at a distance; and without the barrenness and roughness, which are mixed up in actual life. He therefore who takes upon himself to describe his own circumstances and feelings, undertakes a task less congenial with the nature of poetry.

IX.

COWPER.

:

The character of Cowper given by Campbell is very elegantly and discriminatively written. It observes accurately upon his want of invention and upon the charm arising from portraiture; viz. a delineation of self, when that self is full of simplicity and interest of pure and virtuous sentiment; of moral rectitude; of energetic indignation of vice.

But still compositions can scarcely be deemed to possess the higher qualities of poetry, without INVENTION. The power and gratification of imagining things more beautiful than reality is a quality implanted in our nature and it is to satisfy this propensity, that the grand faculties of poetry are called forth.

What is called the poetry of REASON may be very beautiful; but still it is not the highest kind of poetry.

The ornaments of poetry may be applied to moral lessons, and practical sentiments: and they may illustrate and heighten the force and beauty of those lessons and sentiments : but there the poetry is subordinate to the matter; not the matter to the poetry.