imagination beyond that which consists in illustration and embellishment. Imagination in the subject, design, thought, sentiment, character, story, is never attempted. Of this subordinate class are almost all didactic, descriptive, ethic, satiric, and occasional poems; nay, nearly all the lyric poems of secondary writers. Such will be found to be, with scarcely half a dozen exceptions, the mass of modern verse-writers, who fill the three last volumes of Campbell's Collection.

Even Cowper had little invention: but then his fancy is so vivid and natural, that it takes the force and glow, and has all the magic, of imagination.

Burns alone is mainly inventive; and answers the qualities of poetical fiction, which the doctrines of Phillips, advocated by this long Note, inculcate.

The outline of the character of Beattie's EDWIN is conceived with great poetical sweetness; but the details of the design are very meagrely filled up; and there is little invention in «forming the train of events,» by which the end was to be produced. Besides, the merit of a finished plan is wanting it is easy to commence and execute boldly a detached part: the trial lies in completion.

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The genius of Thomas Warton all my early associations and prejudices are inclined to favour. But I must confess that my judgment cannot attribute to him much of the inventive faculty. He was an exquisite scholar; he had a vast store of rich poetic phraseology: he had an eye for the beautiful appearances of Nature; and a clear, shining, elegant fancy to reflect them but still there was an indefinable mixture of the formal and the quaint, which betrayed a little too much of the artist; a little too much of acquired taste: his fancy therefore moved in trammels; and I cannot find much of genuine and unaffected fiction in his Crusade, and Grave of King Arthur.

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But if these be hypercriticisms, he cannot stand among the very great while he is deficient in high moral enthusiasm, and that delineation of the Passions which enraptures us by its fervid eloquence. For these, his native calmness of temper, his secluded habits, his literary pursuits, his independance and exemption from the conflicts of the world, his philosophic content, his addiction to the tranquil amusements of rural solitude and unambitious society, all unfitted him. A serene chearfulness of this kind reflected itself with unambitious fidelity upon his pages; and made him the Bard of Rural Inscriptions, and Hamlet-Imagery.

It is scarcely necessary to say any thing of Darwin, because he is laid aside by universal consent. The monotony of his subject, his language, his metre, his gorgeous but mechanical personifications, the moment the glare of novelty had subsided, produced something even stronger than satiety. There was a childishness in these pompous and dazz ling embellishments of a subject more than unpoetical.

Of Goldsmith it cannot but follow, if these principles are admitted, that he possessed no prime ingredient of the poetical character. Neither in the Traveller, nor in the Deserted Village, can any pretence be made to the quality of Fiction. He has some fancy, sufficiently simple and clear: but by no means strong; and not always pure. His language is lucid, free from affectation, and easy; his thoughts are ingenious; and his sentiments amiable; but they surely often want vigour. To my ear also there is an half-wailing tone, which depresses the spirits, and strikes one as more feminine than manly.

I have already mentioned Mason. He had very rich and highly accomplished faculties for the embellishments of poetry: but in seeking for ornament, he appears to have neg

lected matter; and only regarded thoughts and sentiments, so far as they served as receptacles for the garments of his florid style. Yet all expression, which is laboured, appears to me to destroy its intended effect. The freshness and native force of the thought evaporates in the toil. Not that splendid language is unwanting to splendid ideas but if it rises not with the ideas themselves, if there is not that happy union of mental vigour, which throws them forth both together, any supply of painful art and far-sought ingenuity will but encumber rather than assist the impression. Mason's poetry bears a surface of picturesque imagery; of polished arrangement of words; and flowing metre: it shines, but yet it conveys no warmth; and therefore his dramas never succeeded on the Stage where interest and emotion are required. At present his poems seem a good deal neglected, even in the closet: perhaps too much neglected: they are certainly, in defiance of these grand defects, the productions of no ordinary hand. Mason was, at any rate, a very powerful and accomplished artist.

Forty persons have died in the present Century, whose names demand insertion in the Poetical Register of England. Of these it will scarcely be pretended that any one has claims to the first rank of poetry (1). The authors of Vers de Societé ; the familiar Describers of life and manners; the Satirists; the Wits; the Songsters; the Translators fill up their day; and yield to new intruders on the stage, whom changing circumstances call forth to supersede them. The major part of them have little else of poetical ingredient in their compositions than the metre. Many of them are wanting even in the slightest covering of poetical dress. That energy of fee

(1) This was written before the death of LORD BYRON.

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ling, which a poet's visions raise; that grandeur of view; extent of thought; and fire of words; are quite alien to them. Felicity of execution may sometimes overcome inferiority of matter : an extraordinary skill in the arts of composition may soften a strict scrutiny into primary essentials.

These minor writers adapt the technical machinery of poetry to some topic of momentary attraction; and they communicate a short and feeble impulse to minds already prepared for the occasion. There are always authors who can by the aid of personal character and activity, while living, impart an adscititious force to the little intrinsic strength of their literary endeavours to please. But I do not know, that any of this modern list would desire to rest upon that claim.

Among the best poems of this period are those which have come from female pens. There is in M.rs ELISABETH CARTER a majesty of moral sentiment, and a purity, elegance, conciseness, and force of expression, which place her few and very finished poems high in those ranks which do not aspire to the praise of creative fiction.

It cannot be denied, that in M.rs CHARLOTTE SMITH, there is more of imagination; and so far, she belongs to a more poetic order: but she is more unequal; is less vigourous in style; has less depth of thought; and less elevation of sentiment.

Miss SEWARD has some occasional happy lines; some beauty and even splendor of imagery: but her frequent inequalities; her turgid passages; her laboured affectation; and her ambition of false beauties, overload, and annihilate the value of her poems. She was of the Darwinian school; and her early intimacy with this neighbouring poet, before he chose to appear to the world in his own name, is sufficiently apparent in all her principal productions.

Of Hayley, Jerningham, Jephson, Sheridan, Cumberland, Wolcot, Maurice, Payne-Knight, etc., it is unnecessary to discriminate the traits. They are familiar to the Public : and every one knows that they do not belong to the School of Fiction. There are others too recently deceased to render it delicate to say much about them. Yet one whom I knew personally, and whose amiable unassuming manners fixed the regard of every acquaintance, who knew how to estimate the human character, I cannot on this occasion leave entirely unnoticed. BLOOMFIELD, who drew with such simple fidelity the Farmer's Boy, which represented his own early life, was a genuine poet : — not indeed a great poet: he had fiction; but it was not of the most elevated cast: yet he had some of the charms of the pastoral poets of Queen Elizabeth; and some perhaps which they never reached. If ever I finish those Characters of our chief English Poets, which I have long been preparing, I will speak of him more specifically; and endeavour to analyse his merits and his defects.

But while looking back at this long Note to Phillips's Preface, as well as to the Preface itself, which together tend to establish a rigour of principles and rules such as will bear hard on a large portion of those commonly received as Poets, one is tempted to inquire, how, standing as they do on the basis of reason and taste as well as of authority, they may be a little relaxed by some candid and liberal interpretation, which yet does not outrage all rational limits.

That Fiction is the soul of Poetry, is so universally admitted, as soon as stated, that it is unnecessary to suppose that it can be called in question. Yet in the direct and po