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b. 1720.

The Odes of Collins are fuller of the fine and spontad. 1759.neous enthusiasm of genius, than any other poems ever written by one who wrote so little. We close his tiny volume with the same disappointed surprise, which overcomes us when a harmonious piece of music suddenly ceases unfinished. His range of tones is very wide: it extends from the warmest rapture of self-entranced imagination, to a tenderness which makes some of bis verses sound like gentle weeping. The delicacy of gradation with which he passes from thought to thought, has an indescribable charm, though not always unattended by obscurity; and there is a marvellous power of suggestion in his clouds of allegoric imagery, so beautiful in outline, and coloured by a fancy so purely

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and ideally refined. His most popular poem, "The Passions," can hardly be allowed to be his best of some of his most deeply marked characteristics it conveys no adequate idea. Readers who do not shrink from having their attention put to the stretch, and who can relish the finest and most recondite analogies, will delight in his Ode entitled "The Manners," and in that, still nobler and more imaginative," On the Poetical Character." Every one, surely, can understand and feel the beauty of such pieces as the Odes "To Pity," "To Simplicity," "To Mercy." Nor does it require much reflection to fit us for appreciating the spirited lyric "To Liberty;" or for being entranced by the finely-woven harmonies and the sweetly romantic pictures, which, in the “Ode to Evening," remind us of the youthful poems of Milton.*

* WILLIAM COLLINS.

I. ODE WRITTEN IN THE BEGINNING OF THE YEAR 1746.

How sleep the brave who sink to rest,
By all their country's wishes blest!
When Spring, with dewy fingers cold,
Returns to deck their hallowed mould,
She there shall dress a sweeter sod
Than Fancy's feet have ever trod.

By Fairy hands their knell is rung;
By forms unseen their dirge is sung:
There Honour comes, a pilgrim gray,
To bless the turf that wraps their clay:
And freedom shall awhile repair,
To dwell, a weeping hermit, there.

II. ODE TO PITT.

Pella & Bard is Euripides: The river Arun runs by the birthplace of Otway.
Oh thou, the friend of man, assign'd

With balmy hands his wounds to bind,
And charm his frantic woe;

When first Distress, with dagger keen,

Broke forth to waste his destined scene,
His wild unsated foe!

By Pella's Bard, a magic name,

By all the griefs his thought could frame,

Receive my humble rite!

Long, Pity! let the nations view

Thy sky-worn robes of tenderest blue,

And eyes of dewy light!

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CHAPTER XII.

THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY.

SECTION FOURTH: THE LITERATURE OF THE THIRD GENERATION.

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PROSE. 1. The Historians-Their Literary Character and Views of Art-Hume's History.-2. Robertson and Gibbon-The Character of each-Minor Historical Writers. -3. Miscellaneous Prose--Johnson's Talk and Boswell's Report of it--Goldsmith's Novels Literature in Scotland--The First Edinburgh Review-Mackenzie's Novels -Other Novelists.-4. Criticism--Percy's Reliques-Warton's History-Parliamentary Eloquence-Edmund Burke-Letters.-5. Philosophy-(1.) Theory of Literature-Burke-Reynol is--Campbell-Home-Blair-Smith-(2.) Political Economy -Adam Smith.-6. Philosophy continued-(3.) Ethics-Adam Smith-TuckerPaley (4.) Metaphysics and Psychology-Thomas Reid.-7. Theology-(1.) Scientific-Campbell-Paley-Watson-Lowth-(2.) Practical-Porteous-Blair-Newton and others.-POETRY. 8. The Drama-Home's Douglas-Comedies of Goldsmith and Sheridan-Goldsmith's Descriptive Poems.-9. Minor Poets-Their Various Tendencies-Later Poems-Beattie's Minstrel.-10. The Genius and Writings of Cowper and Burns.

PROSE LITERATURE.

1. BETWEEN the period we have last studied, and the reign of George the Third, there were several connecting links: One of these was formed by a group of Historians, whose works must always be classical monuments in English literature. The publication of Hume's History of England began in 1754: Robertson's History of Scotland appeared in 1759, and was followed by his Reign of Charles the Fifth, and his History of America; and Gibbon's Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire was completed in twelve years from 1776.

These celebrated men, and others who profited by their teaching, viewed a great history as a work of literary art, as a work in which the manner of communication ought to possess an excellence correspondent to the value of the knowledge communicated. It is likewise characteristic of them, that, while all were active thinkers, and found or made occasion for imparting the fruits of their reflection, their works are properly Histories, not Historical Dissertations. They are narratives of events, in which the elucidation of the laws of human nature or of the progress of society

is introduced merely as illustrative and subordinate. The distinction is note-worthy for us, in whose time the favourite method of historical writing is of the contrary kind.

Perhaps history, so conceived and limited, was never written b. 1711. better than by David Hume. Never was the narrative d. 1776. of interesting incidents told with greater clearness, and good sense, and quiet force of representation: never were the characters, and thoughts, and feelings of historical personages described in a manner more calculated to excite the feeling of dramatic reality, yet without overstepping the propriety of historical truth, or trespassing on the prominence due to great facts and great principles. His style may be said to display, generically, the natural and colloquial character of the early writers of the century. But it is specifically distinguished by features giving it an aspect very unlike theirs. It has not their strength and closeness of idiom; a want attributable to two causes. Hume was a Scotsman, born in a country whose dialect was then yet more distant than it now is from English purity; and French studies concurred with French reading in determining still further his turn of phraseology and construction. It has been the duty of more recent writers to protest against his strong spirit of partisanship, which is made the more seductive by his constant good temper and kindliness of manner; and his consultation of original authorities was so very negligent, that his evidence is quite worthless on disputed historical questions. But, if his matter had been as carefully studied as his manner, and if his social and religious theories had been as sound as his theory of literary art, Hume's history would still have held a place from which no rival could have hoped to degrade it.

2. In their manner of expression, Robertson and Gibbon, though unlike each other, are equally unlike Hume. They want his seemingly unconscious ease, his delicate tact, his calm yet lively simplicity. Hume tells his tale to us as a friend to friends: his successors always seem to hold that they are teachers and we their pupils. This change of tone had long been coming on, and was now very general in all departments of prose: very few writers belonging to the last thirty years of Johnson's life escaped the epidemic disease of dictatorship. Both Robertson and Gibbon may have been, by circumstances peculiar to each of them, predisposed to adopt the fashionable garb of dignity. The temptation of the former lay simply in his provincial position, which made his mastery of the language a thing to be attained only by study and imitation. An untravelled Scotsman might have aspired to harangue like Rasselas, but durst not dream of talking

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