CHAP. XXIV.

Cumberland writes the poem of CALVARY.-Dr. DRAKE injudiciously endeavours to rank it with the PARADISE LOST.-Examination of this claim, and a further examination of Dr.DRAKE's competency as a critic.-The merits of the poem briefly stated.—Cumberland's account of its composition.-Writes a tract upon Christianity, which commences with too much levity; but the other parts good. The conclusion of it extracted for its animation.

CUMBERLAND had now appeared in various departments of literature, and in most of them with success. He had distinguished himself as a dramatist, as an essayist, and as a novelist, and he had displayed powers of very respectable quality in other paths of exertion. But his ambition led him to take a bolder flight, and he attempted the arduous composition of an epic poem. Arduous it certainly was, in him, for it forced him into immediate and unavoidable comparison with Milton; a comparison from which few can expect to retire but with discomfiture.

The Calvary of Cumberland is a poem which no judicious critic will venture to place on an equality, either as a whole, or in any of its parts,

with the Paradise Lost of Milton. This is a preeminence it can never merit, nor ever will obtain. A mighty chasm separated the genius of the one from the other; nor do I hesitate to pronounce, that the highest flights of Cumberland's muse barely excel the lowest of Milton's. I will not institute a comparison between them, for it would be tacitly acknowledging a parallelism, of whose existence I can never be persuaded. I would as willingly compare him with Shakspeare as a dramatist, as with Milton as an epic poet.

In this opinion, however, I differ from a gentleman who has highly praised Cumberland's Calvary, and whom Cumberland has highly praised in return. These are literary courtesies very custo mary, but without any weight in deciding an abstract point of criticism.

Dr. Drake, in his Literary Hours, a work qualified to afford some amusement in a vacant moment, has entered upon an elaborate and diffuse examination of this poem, and with as much solemnity and circumstantial inquiry, as Addison bestowed upon the Paradise Lost. He considers it under all the usual properties of an epic poem, and very gravely pronounces that it is complete in its fable, in its characters, and in its sentiments. Aristotle himself could not have decided the question with a greater assumption of infallibility.

Dr. Drake, after some introductory observations upon Milton, Klopstock, and Young, whom he

calls "three divine bards," though it appears he understands nothing of the German poet's divinity, but what the imperfect glimpses of a translation afford, proceeds to inform his readers that the "Calvary of Mr. Cumberland is a work imbued with the genuine spirit of Milton, and destined, therefore, most probably, to immortality." To this induction, indeed, no one will object, who admits the premiss, but as I do not admit the premiss I must be permitted to doubt whether posterity will know much of Calvary, except as it may be remembered among the collected productions of the author.

Encomiastic criticism, however pleasing to a candid mind, is not always the positive evidence of a strong one. To praise is easy, because it is generally received without examination; and because it is less difficult to find pleasure in mediocrity, than to shew in what mediocrity consists. Whoever has been attentive to the history of modern literature, will have observed numerous instances of boundless panegyric, bestowed, by contemporary writers, upon works which are now consigned to merited oblivion. Cumberland is not the first who has been told by a good-natured friend, or by an incompetent critic, that he wrote with all the fire of Milton and Shakspeare; nor is he the last who will find that the voice of kindness, and the voice of justice, pronounce two different judgments.

It is certainly possible, nay, I am willing to think it probable, that Dr. Drake believed, and does still believe, that the poem of Calvary has in it many qualities which entitle it to be compared with Paradise Lost. There is nothing extraordinary in this, because we are familiar with paradoxes just as extraordinary. The decisions of taste are reducible to no demonstration, and Dr. Drake may at least justify his by the example of Johnson, who thought Dryden's Ode to Mrs. Anne Killigrew, the noblest that our language has ever produced. If, therefore, a critic of Johnson's sagacity, could be seduced into an opinion like this, why may not Dr. Drake say that Cumberland writes like Milton?

To say it, however, is not to prove it, and L wish Dr. Drake could have done more than say it. He does, indeed, attempt to do more, for he quotes, with profusion, those passages from Calvary which he deems not inferior to any in Paradise Lost. Nor is this all. He opposes Cumberland to Milton in parallel cases, where they both exhibit the same character, and he avows that, on some occasions, Cumberland excels Milton. I need not tell the reader, that my opinion is contrary to this; and if he requires to have his own settled on the same basis, he has nothing to do but to inspect the selections of Dr. Drake. I doubt, indeed, if any one ever concurred with him in this decision, except Cumberland himself.

Dr. Drake is fond of figurative language and unmeaning epithets. Not contented with elevating Cumberland to an equality with Milton, he takes another flight, and raises him to a level with Shakspeare. "The speeches of the demons, in the first book," says he, "and those of Mammon and Iscariot in the second and third, are woven in the loom of Shakspeare, and have imbibed much of his colouring and spirit." This is surely too much. I am as willing, however, that Cumberland should be the corrival of Shakspeare as of Milton; but I am afraid Dr. Drake has unintentionally proved the only way in which he can be said to have woven in the loom of Shakspeare, by selecting the passages which he has adopted, almost literally, from that writer.

Dr. Drake has devoted nearly a hundred pages to the task of proving Cumberland's affinity to Milton and Shakspeare, and of displaying his own powers as a critic. How successfully he has attained the first object I have already declared my opinion and I fear he has succeeded no better in the second. I do not wish to speak disrespectfully of Dr. Drake, for I have heard that his private character is amiable; but I must freely own, that I think him wholly incompetent to the office of general and abstract criticism. His papers upon Cumberland's Calvary are written with that quiet mediocrity of talent, with that easy accuracy of familiar truths, and with that tone of insipid talk