which might be endured by a young man yet new to critical disquisition, or by any man with a head capable only of reading without thinking. There are, in his Literary Hours, however, some pleasing tales, sometimes pleasingly told, but they are more frequently disfigured by a finical affectation of style; by a diction oppressed and obscured by metaphorical confusion, unmeaning epithets, and superlative phrases of rapture.

*

His papers on Cumberland, however, are not without their utility. The selections which he has made from Calvary, though they do not prove what they are intended to prove, comprise, perhaps, the very best passages in the poem, and he who has not read it, but wishes to know by what excellences Cumberland is entitled to be regarded as the rival of Milton, may better satisfy that curiosity by perusing these concentrated efforts of his genius, than by perusing the whole poem.

Calvary is certainly a very pleasing production. The versification is harmonious, the images are often poetical, and the action is one of unfailing interest. A general air of easy elegance pervades the whole, an unconstrained fluency of language which is very agreeable to the ear, but which makes very little impression on the mind. Some parts too are laboured into dignity and animation, but the reader is always unmoved. He lays down the book without a desire to resume it, and when he

does resume it, his interest in the narrative is never so strong that he is unwilling to quit it.

This defect may be partly attributed, perhaps, to the nature of the subject. No curiosity is excited because we know what is to be told; we are familiar with all the principal events, and anticipate the catastrophe. This inherent defect of plan could be compensated only by the highest efforts of poetry, by the introduction of all those striking descriptions, those sublime flights, and those exquisite moral touches of sentiment, with which Milton has relieved the radical imperfection of his fable, but which were wholly beyond the attainment of Cumberland. His action proceeds with an even tenor of narration; and the utmost effect, which I believe the poem capable of producing, is that of a pleasing apathy of mind, a gentle acquiescence, undisturbed either by any tumultuous throes of delight, or by any harsh provocations of disgust.

Such is my opinion of Calvary, delivered from unfeigned conviction, and without any anxiety as to its reception. They who differ from me may probably think it a vain or a foolish one, as I perhaps should theirs, if I knew it as explicitly; Dr. Drake must think it so, for he thinks the poem embued with the genuine spirit of Milton; but as I have always been unwilling to form my notions upon those of others, without the conviction of my reason, I shall be contented to bear any interpretation

which can be put upon this judgment, till I feel a sufficient motive to alter it.

In the Supplement, which Cumberland published to his Memoirs, he very naturally takes an opportunity of thanking Dr. Drake, whom he justly calls his "kind reviewer," for the praises he bestowed upon Calvary; but I believe he conceded, in the warmth of his judgment, a power to that critic's commendation, which no one but the object of it will be willing to allow, when he says that he obtained for his poem, "a place amongst our British Classics." Let the event decide.

Cumberland seems to have regarded this work with so much affection, and has detailed its origin and progress with so much minuteness, that the reader would hardly consider me excuseable if I omitted to insert the account here:

"The mental gratification which the exercise of fancy, in the act of composition, gives me, has, (with the exception only of the task I am at present engaged in), led me to that inordinate consumption of paper, of which much has been profitless, much unseen, and very much of that which has been seen, would have been more worthy of the world, had I bestowed more blotting upon it before I committed it to the press; yet I am now about to mention a poem not the most imperfect of my various productions, of which the first manuscript copy was the only one, and that, perhaps, the fairest I had ever put out of my hands.

Heroic verse has been always more familiar to me, and more easy in point of composition, than prose; my thoughts flow more freely in metre, and I can oftentimes fill a page with less labour and less time in verse of that description, than it costs me to adjust and harmonise a single period in prose, to my entire satisfaction.

"The work I now allude to is my poem of Cal vary, and the gratification, of which I have been speaking, mixed, as I trust, with worthier and more serious motives, led me to that undertaking. It had never been my hard lot to write, as many of my superiors have been forced to do, task-work for a bookseller, it was therefore my custom, as it is with voluptuaries of another description, to fly from one pursuit to another for the greater zest which change and contrast to gave my intellectual pleasures. I had, as yet, done nothing in the epic way, except my juvenile attempt, of which I have given an extract, and I applied myself to the composition of Calvary, with uncommon ardour; I began it in the winter, and, rising every morning some hours before day-light, soon dispatched the whole poem of eight books, at the average of full fifty lines in a day, of which I kept a regular account, marking each day's work upon my manuscript. I mention this because it is a fact; but I am not so mistaken as to suppose that any author can be entitled to take credit to himself for the little care he has bestowed

upon

his

compositions.

"It was not till I had taken up Milton's immortal poem of Paradise Lost, and read it studiously and completely through, that I brought the plan of Calvary to a consistency, and resolved to venture on the attempt. I saw such aids, in point of character, incident, and diction, such facilities, held out by the sacred historians, as encouraged me to hope I might aspire to introduce my humble Muse upon that hallowed ground without profaning it.

"As for the difficulties, which, by the nature of his subject Milton had to encounter, I perceived them to be such as nothing but the genius of Milton could surmount; that he has failed in some instances cannot be denied, but it is matter of wonder and admiration, that he has miscarried in so few. The noble structure he has contrived to raise with the co-operation of two human beings only, and those the first created of the human race, strikes us with astonishment; but at the same time it forces him upon such frequent flights beyond the bounds of nature, and obliges him in so great a degree to depend upon the agency of supernatural beings, of whose persons we have no prototype, and of whose operations, offices, and intellectual powers, we are incompetent to form any adequate conception, that it is not to be wondered at, if there are parts and passages in that divine poem, that we either pass over by choice, or cannot read without regret.