add so much to the harmony of his versification, seem to arise out of no conviction that could be produced on his mind by his arguments, but from a pitiful love of saying something new, or, as Longinus better expresses it, δια το περι τας νοησεις καινοσπονδον, which shuts his eyes to the judicious criticism of more sound and able critics. Comparing the amorous language of Adam to Eve with that of Paris to Helen, he makes this silly observation, "had he (Paris) made love to Helen in the language of Milton, Menelaus might have trusted him with perfect security." P. 117. It is, however, enough to say of Mr. K. to disqualify him for a fair judge of the merits of Milton, that, from his remarks at p. 117, he appears to have no taste for the sublime of poetry. For his various, and not always justifiable attacks on Mr. Burke, he thus excuses himself: "At present I shall merely observe, in justice to his memory, that, in his latter days, he laughed very candidly and good-humouredly at many of the philosophical absurdities, which will be here exposed; and I must add, in justice to myself, that I should not have thus undertaken to expose them, had they not been since adopted by others, and made to contribute so largely to the propagation of bad taste." P. xxix. The volume is not, we confess, without its instructive and amusing passages, and we shall take pleasure in seeking a few that embrace both these agreeable qualities. Discussing the question relating to the propriety of conforming to the dramatic unities, Mr. K. necessarily agrees with Dr. Johnson's remarks, in his luminous preface to Shakespeare, and on the unity of action submits these observations: "Unity of action has been held to be a still more essential requisite both of epic and dramatic poetry, than either unity of time or identity of place; and here it is asserted, the venerable authority of the father of poetry is decisive and unquestionable; the action, in cach of the two poems of the Iliad and the Odyssey, being simply one; namely, the anger of Achilles, and the restoration of Ulysses. "But is it quite certain that any precise and determinate idea is here attached to the word action; or whether it is not used, sometimes to signify the subject of the poem, which is the cause of the actions described in it, and sometimes the actions themselves, which are the effects of that cause? "Questions of this kind are always best answered by examples; which at once explain the matter, and solve the doubts if they admit of solution. I shall therefore briefly compare the action of the Iliad with that of the tragedy of Macbeth; not because these two poems are justly esteemed to be the highest efforts of D human genius; but because, in the one, unity of action is supposed to be most strictly preserved; and in the other, most openly viclated. "In the tragedy of Macbeth, there are evidently two distinct principal actions, the usurpation of Macbeth by the murder of Duncan, and the destruction of the usurper by the restoration of Malcolm; besides many subordinate or episodical actions; such as the murder of Banquo, of Macduff's family, &c. &c. "But are the actions of the Iliad at all lest distinct or less numerous ? Is not the quarrel of Agamemnon and Achilles one, the defeat and blockade of the Greeks another, the return of the myrmidons and death of Hector another, besides innumerable subordinate actions, which result from these? Had the anger of Achilles with Agamemnon been the action of the poem, it must have ceaseď with their reconciliation; and then how lame and defective would have been the conclusion! The mighty and all-accomplished hero would have been introduced, with so much pomp of poetry, merely to wrangle with his prince, weep for his mistress, and carve a supper for three of his friends. Yet a German critic, of more sense and learning than feeling or sentiment, thinks that the original poem' must have ended thus, since the unity of action requires it. "Strict unity of action, indeed, requires that the whole poem should be confined to the quarrel and reconciliation: for the defeat and blockade of the Greeks are as much distinct actions, as the death and funeral of Hector, and are not at all more connected with the principal subject. It is true that all the distinct actions, both principal and subordinate, are connected with each other; and arise, in the most natural gradation, from the anger of Achilles, which is the subject of the poem, and the cause of them all. But are not they equally connected in the tragedy? and do not all arise, in a gradation equally just and natural, from the ambition of Lady Macbeth, which is the subject of the one, as the anger of Achilles is of the other? It is this ambition, instigated by the prophesies of the witches, that rouses the aspiring temper of her husband, and urges him to the commission of a crime, the consciousness of which embitters the remainder of his life, and makes him suspicious, ferocious, and cruel; whence new crimes excite new enemies, and his destruction naturally follows." P. 269-272. The following animadversions are well founded: "In the Odyssey" (Mr. K. has no doubt that it was not the production of the author of the Iliad, p. 269) "there generally less detail, as well as less variety and brilliancy of imagery; but the attention to truth, in all circumstances of common observation, is so far the same, that we might securely pronounce the passage, in which the notes of the nightingale are treated as notes of sorrow, to be the production of a later age, even if the judgment of the ancient grammarians, and the less questionable authority of modernisms in the language, had not marked the whole episode, in which it is introduced, to be spurious: for the habits of life both of the poet and his audience, in that early stage of society, must have forced them to observe that the notes of singing birds are notes of amorous joy and exultation; and that they are all mute in grief or calamity. Accordingly we find that, when he does take an image of distress from the lamentations of birds for the loss of their young, he takes it from birds of prey, which do scream and make loud moan when their nests are plundered. Virgil nevertheless, i his blended imitation of both passages, has, in defiance of truth and nature, re tained the more delicate and interesting image, and attributed the thrilling note of sorrow expressed in the scream of the eagle or the vulture to the song of the nightingale; and there can be no doubt that the courtly critics, for whom he wrote, thought this a most judicious and elegant amendment; nor do the courtly or even scholastic critics of the present day probably entertain very different sentiments: but nevertheless had the old Greek bard obtruded such a palpable misrepresentation of what every one knew upon the rude but observant assemblage of warriors, ploughmen, and herdsmen, for whom he sang, not all the melody of either of the Homeric or Virgilian verse would have kept them together for many minutes; at the same time that they would have listened for hours, with all the mute and greedy attention of implicit faith, to the extravagant tales of Cyclops, Læstrygons, Scylla, Æolus, &c. : for of those they knew nothing, and had therefore no grounds for disbelief; which, among persons not used to speculative or analogical reasoning, is generally a sufficient motive for belief." Page 281-3. How a "high bred Princess" should act, if a naked shipwrecked sailor were to present himself before her, asking relief, we should have been at a loss to guess, and though Mr. K. confidently informs us, we are so little acquainted with this description of high bred' feeling, that it still puzzles us. The reader shall judge: "When the Princess Nausicaa and her maids are washing their garments in the river, and the naked shipwrecked mariner appears as a suppliant before them, they act precisely as a high bred Princess and her half bred maids would now. The one, with real dignity, and real delicacy, listens to his supplications and relieves his necessities; while the others, mistaking, as usual, affectation for dignity, and timidity for delicacy, run screaming away." P. 285-6. Mr. K. frequently indulges in humorous illustrations, but not always in such perhaps as may be thought perfectly to consist with the dignity of a philosophical treatise. "I am aware, indeed," says he, at p. 183, "that it would be no easy task to persuade a lover that the forms, upon which he dotes with such rapture, are not really beautiful, independent of the medium of affection, passion, and appetite, through which he views them. But before he pronounces either the infidel or the sceptic guilty of blasphemy against nature, let him take a mould from the lovely features or lovely bosom of this master-piece of creation, and cast a plum-pudding in it (an object by no means disgusting to most men's appetites), and, I think, he will no longer be in rapture with the form, whatever he may be with the substance." And, at p. 375, by way of elucidation, he supposes Mr. Burke walking up St. James's-Street without his breeches. If Mr. Knight ́ were laid bare in the same manner, for the purpose of shewing the weakness of his principles, he would not fail to get a severe flogging. We must now conclude our extracts with one from Part the Se cond, Of Judgment: "Horace's advice of preferring the characters and fictions of the Iliad to those of common nature or history, as the materials of tragedy, seems to me very ill adapted to the principle of modern drama; how well soever it may have suited the splendid musical exhibitions of the Greek theatre. The vast and exalted images, which are raised in the mind, by the pomp of heroic verse, and the amplification of heroic fiction, shrink into a degree of meanness, that becomes quite ridiculous, when reduced to the standard of ordinary nature, and exhibited in the person of a modern actor. The impression, which the sight of Achilles, on the French stage, made upon me, will never be effaced: a more farcical and ludicrous figure could scarcely present itself to my imagination, than a pert smart Frenchman, well rouged, laced, curled, and powdered; with the gait of a dancing master, and the accent of a milliner, attempting to personate that tremendous warrior, the nodding of whose crest dismayed armies; and the sound of whose voice made even the war horse shudder. The generality of the audience, indeed, never having viewed the original through the dazzling and expansive medium of Homer's verses, thought only of the lover of Iphigenia; and were, of course, as well satisfied with Mons. Achille, as with any other amorous hero, that struts and frets his hour upon the stage." P. 305-6. The learned may read this work with safety, and perhaps find in it something to ruminate on; but the unlearned will do well to avoid it, as it is calculated incessantly to mislead their judgment and pervert their taste. An Account of the Life of Dr, Samuel Johnson, from his Birth to his Eleventh Year, written by himself. To which are added Original Letters to Dr. S. Johnson, by Miss Hill Boothby: from the MSS. preserved by the Doctor; and now in Possession of Richard Wright, Surgeon; Proprietor of the Museum of Antiquities, Natural and Artificial Curiosities, &c. Lichfield, 12mo. pp. 144. Phillips, 1805. The curious pages that compose this little volume were among that mass of papers which was ordered to be committed to the flames a few days before the Doctor's death, thirty-two of which were torn out by himself, and destroyed; the contents of those which remain are here given, says the Editor, with fidelity and exactness, p. v. Francis Barber, his black servant, unwilling, it seems, that all the MSS. of his illustrious master should be utterly lost, preserved these relics from the flames. By purchase from Barber's widow they came into the possession of the Editor, p. vi. These Annals, as they are called, occupy but four-and-twenty pages of this publication. The minuteness of description which they display, while we recollect the Colossus of literature who writes, defies all possible gravity of countenance. We shall select two or three passages: "1. 1709---10. "Sept. 7,* 1709, I was born at Lichfield. My mother had a very difficult and dangerous labour, and was assisted by George Hector, a man-midwife of great reputation. I was born almost dead, and could not cry for some time. When he had me in his arms, he said, here is a brave boy !+' "In a few weeks an inflammation was discovered on my buttock, which was at first, I think, taken for a burn; but soon appeared to be a natural disorder. It swelled, broke, and healed." P. 9---10. At p. 11. he proceeds thus: " It was discovered that my eyes were bad; and an issue was cut in my left arm, of which I took no great notice, as I think my mother has told me, having my little hand in a custard." The Doctor then tells us that he went to London in a stage coach, to be touched for the evil by Queen Anne. Riding in the carriage did not agree with him. "I was sick; one woman fondled me, the other was disgusted." P. 18. He now goes to school, and we are consequently informed of his youthful progress. "To learn Qua Genus, was to me always pleasing; and Ast in Præsenti was, I know not why, always disgusting." P. 20. Though we must smile at this detail, as it respects his boyish days, we may reasonably regret the loss of the latter part of his life written in the same elaborate manner. The greater part of this volume is taken up with the letters of Miss Hill Boothby, who, Dr. Johnson used to say, " had the best understanding he ever met with in any human being."|| "As an evidence," says the Editor, " of the value which he set upon the letters that he received from her, he numbered them, and had them bound in one volume." P. vi. The Doctor's share of the correspondence is printed in Mrs. Piozzi's Collection, and in Boswell's Life of him. Every thing concerning the great Moralist is interesting, and will be esteemed by the public. The Poetical Works of the Author of the Heroic Epistle to Sir William Chambers, 12mo. pp. 127. 4s. 6d. Phillips. 1805, THE intrinsic merit of these poems certainly entitled them to collection and re-publication. We were surprised, however, to find 18. of the present stile. Orig. This was written in Jan. 1765. Edit. Boswell's Life, vol. 1. p. 37, 4to. |