work is universally read; his other performances, though bearing all the marks of his very peculiar genius, are universally neglected. The law that governs this result, we shall not venture to state. Fourthly, it has often been remarked that the best works are produced when criticism is least known. One reason is, fear destroys spontaneity. Fifthly, our estimate of a writer's originality is often a deception. Virgil set down with a desperate resolution to imitate Homer; and he is no more like him than the Venus de Medici is like the old man of the mountains among the White Hills of New Hampshire. Thomson never tried to imitate Virgil, and yet one could almost conclude that the soul of the one had transmigrated into the other. The forte of both is beautiful description. We call Homer original; and Dr. Anthon, in his late edition of Horace, declares that few authors have less claims to originality than the Roman lyrist. It would not be wonderful, however, if Horace had added more to the field of invention than was ever added by Homer. For first, Homer is a shadow, and there is some danger that even his personality will vanish; secondly, who knows what help he had in the previous elements which time has confirmed and the laws of thought have allowed to perish? and lastly, the later author has, in some respects, the harder task, as Horace himself complains: tuque Rectius Iliacum carmen deducis in actus It should be remembered that, in certain stages of civilization, certain poets stand in a peculiar position with respect to their predecessors: they are like the last leaf on a limb in how dull a man of real genius could be. It was too dull for the theatre in Charles II.'s day; and yet it is wicked enough to be the work of genius - perhaps we ought to add, of his genius. 1 That is, in the relish for the beautiful. They differ in that Virgil is concise, and Thomson tends to the verbose. autumn; time has swept away the books they read; the helps they enjoyed and all the scaffolding by which they were assisted to erect the fabric of their exclusive reputation. Such was Homer (if he was a personal being), such was Shakspeare; such are all the monarchs in literature who occupy the throne in the early ages. We call them original because all their early helps are forgotten. Sixthly, a remarkable phenomenon in literature is the temporary popularity of some writers; they go up like meteors, and expire almost as soon, while others of a permanent reputation are of a very slow acceptance. In our own memory, Hervey's Meditations were universally read; they called the attention of thousands of sentimentalists to religion, who had never read a page of religious reading before. Hervey in the closet was like Whitefield in the desk, an object of popular attention. Ossian was regarded as a sublime poet by some of the most reputable critics. — Blair, Gray, Hume; and the poetry of the Della Cruscan school was read with rapture in London and imitated in America by Robert Treat Paine and Mrs. Morton, and a host of others. Cowper's reputation was of slow growth; but what a difference now! All this we attribute to caprice. But there is a law. The reading public had been satiated with the imitations of Pope; and in such a state, even the mawkish Della Cruscan folly seemed at first to be original. It was certainly an innovation. Seventhly, with this is connected another fact: some authors are killed by the first blow of criticism, like a snake under a switch; and from others the critic's censures rebound like a rifle-ball from the hide of a rhinoceros. Thus 1 Whoever has read Don Quixote, must have noticed how attractive, how fatally sweet, was the reading of books of chivalry in that age, and how Amadis de Gaul, in its four folio volumes, is the most tedious detail of incredible nonsense that was ever put into the hands of a lover of fiction. How is it that what was once so sweet has now become so wearisome; and how different its attrac tions from Homer, or even the Arabian Nights. The strong temporary attraction of each of them, and the permanency of the two latter, are remarkable examples of the different gradations of genius, and their different effects on mankind. Hervey seemed to sink under the first remarks of his contemporaries;1 his gaudy hexameters were no sooner pointed out than they palled upon the taste of even the vulgar reader. Most of us remember the severe Article in the Edinburgh Review on James Montgomery; it hardly impeded, for a moment, his reputation. The poet will live, when the critic is forgotten. Here, too, is a law too obvious for us to state. Eighthly, when an author is generally accepted, there is generally a great change in the progress of his reputation. We fancy that the rhapsodist that fortunately got the name of Homer,2 had not the least foretaste of his future reputation. The progress to immortality is commonly this: a poor shack is found to have some pleasing qualities; he has a brave invention and a spontaneous wit; nobody thinks of making a prodigy of him. He lays indeed strong hold of 1 It is more remarkable that Hervey should sink under criticism, inasmuch as some of the strictures on him are obviously unjust. For example, the following passage we remember to have seen subjected to the caustic knife. It is from his MEDITATIONS AMONG THE TOMBS, page 38: "Not long ago, I happened to spy a thoughtless Jay. The poor bird was idly busied in dressing her pretty plumes, or hopping carelessly from spray to spray. A sportsman, coming by, observed the feathered rover. Immediately he lifts his tube and levels his blow. Swifter than a whirlwind flies the leaden death; and in a moment lays the silly creature breathless on the ground." What labor! What circumlocution, said the critic, to say that "a gunner shot a bird!" But the object of the author is not merely to say that a gunner shot a bird. The author is musing - meditating detaining the idea. It is a picture of a meditating mind. We might as well laugh at Pope, who uses the same circumlocution to exhibit the same pic ture. He lifts his tube, he levels with his eye; Windsor Forest, lines 128, 129. 2 Professor Tyler has somewhat weakened his argument for an individual Homer (in the Bibliotheca Sacra, Oct. 1857) by making it too strong. He overlooks the fact, which must be true, that if there be one Homer, he must have availed himself of the collected inventions and even songs of all the bards that preceded him. It is contrary to all analogy, for the perfection of the Iliad and Odyssey to be the sole production of one mind. Even Shakspeare, to whom he compares Homer, if he was the greatest inventor, was likewise the greatest thief that ever existed. Perhaps we may compromise the dispute by saying there might be one Homer, but the effects of thousands of intellects appear in his works. It must be so, unless he was a miracle. the public attention, he is regarded very much as a dancing dog or a climbing monkey. The rich look on him with a kind of protecting, patronizing eye, and learning and reputation stand aloof from his fate. But he delights every one; and finally dies, and the world at last finds, when it has lost, that it once possessed, a Shakspeare, a Cervantes, a Defoe. There is a little poem now known as a specimen of solitary excellence (we allude to Blair's Grave), a poem original in its design, happy in its execution, and restoring the language of elder poetry to an artificial age. It forced its way up from stalls and peddlers' packs to the attention of poets and critics, and utters sentiments which found an echo in the universal heart. That poem has passed as severe a test to prove its merits as the works of any primitive genius. It has commanded the unconscious suffrage of mankind. Ninthly, the best poets are not always most read. Genius often moves in a line not pleasing, and lavishes its power on subjects not attractive. Yet they stir the memory by a recondite attraction. Dante, Chaucer, Spencer, are poets which one would be content to praise, if he might only be excused from reading them. Tenthly, there is a law behind caprice illustrated in the fate of the ballad poetry of almost all nations. The ballads of the English went into obscurity and were restored to attention, partly by the criticism of Addison, but surely by a deeper law, by their intrinsic power of forcing their impression on the minds of the common people. Some critics have complained that the Romans suffered their extravagant admiration of Greek models to supersede and destroy their own racy literature. The fact was, it was a necessary law that Greek perfection should crowd out the barren, dry efforts of their own rude and unenlightened countrymen. cedar on Lebanon is a much more conspicuous object than a shrub in a hole of the rock. This law is very extensive. Whatever has great interest is apt to live. This, to be sure, is limited by the fact that we cannot remember everything, and that sometimes an accidental interest is found in the subject and comes not from the genius of the author. Thus A Homer seized on a splendid theme. War was the passion of the age. The fall of Troy was a blazing event and deeply interesting. His genius, though great, was helped by his subject; his earnestness, his simplicity, his touching a congenial chord, his narrative clearness (that is, it is real poetry, and yet the narrative is so clear that his ornaments flow over events as the lucid waters of the brook flow over the pebbles at the bottom, to shed on them a soft, watery light, and yet by refraction to make them more clearly defined, than if placed in the air itself and sparkling in the light of the sun), the rhapsodist that repeated his battles and the sensitiveness of those that heard them, his good fortune, his real merit, all conspired to make his poem live. We attribute too much to the burning of the Alexandrian library. A library is often a splendid sepulchre. There is a living law which transcends all libraries. The truth is, the best works are preserved by their own vitality. Before the invention of the art of printing, perhaps the law was still more rigid and self-executing. The best works were oftenest copied and therefore stood the best chance of preservation. History, too, has a similar law. The events that illustrate some GREAT PRINCIPLE of civilization happen late and are recorded. They excite general attention and are preserved; whereas the barbarous battles of savage hordes, create by a happy law their own oblivion. Perhaps we may safely conclude that all the best works are preserved, though some meritorious ones are lost. It is a general law, though somewhat disturbed by causes which to our ignorance still remain as accidents. You see it in the individual. When a person repeats a story or poem to you, the most important points you remember. You remember, too, your own impressions. Some you strongly retain; some you dimly recover. Now the world is a person and has a combinate memory. It must be conceded that the literary attractions of a piece are not the only cause of its preservation. National pride, national taste, the location of a city, the pride of a peculiar family, the very absurdity of a production, if it is an amusVOL. XV. No. 60. 69 |