SUMMARY.

Peculiar Geniuses: Chaucer · · Spenser — Dante —Cowley — Dryden — Pope-Southey― Milman - Shakspeare.—On sacred Poetry.-Episode on Palestine.-Hebrew Poets: Moses-Job-David-Solomon-Isaiah-Jeremiah -Ezekiel, &c.-The Koran of Mohammed.-Union of Saint and Poet; English sacred Poets: Herbert-Crashaw-Waller-Roscommon-Pomfret—

West-Parnel-Milton-Klopstock-Gessner-Young-Addison-Barbauld

Blair-Porteus-Cowper-Watts-Grahame —Montgomery, &c.—The abuse of poetic Genius; Lord Byron —Shelley.—Influence of Poetry-Guilt of it's misapplication.-Connexion with Sculpture, Painting, and Music.-Address to the King-On George the Third-Misanthropy-Address to CriticsTo Lord Liverpool.-Penitential Recollections: Chaucer-Waller-Petrarch. -Conclusion-To Poesy.-Influence of Time on works of Genius.

Canto H.

SOME lofty spirits to no class belong,
But seem at home in every theme of song;
Exuberant Natures! prodigies of mind!
Bound by no rule, but models of their kind.

Father of Bards that breathe a British air,
Descriptive CHAUCER! brilliant, debonair,
Minutely accurate, diffusely bright!

Thy Knights appear embattling in our sight:
Drawn to the life, his "tale" each Pilgrim tells,
While on our view the scene luxuriant swells.
Thou first great spirit, of the Muses lov'd,
That o'er the night of Saxon darkness mov'd!
Lonely, as great! till mightier Spenser wrote,

From every Bard two hundred

Bard two hundred years remote.

Ah! peerless SPENSER! Fiction's favorite child!

Thy mind, full-fraught with virgin fancies wild,
Ranges, at will, amongst conceptions rare,
And endless labyrinths of invention fair;

Itself, the soul of harmony, is found
Convey'd, in all the melodies of sound.

Knights, palmers, fairies, giants, all are seen,
In fairy toils to please a "fairy Queen ;”

To bring great Virtues, in their turn, to view,
And lead to emulate the Knights he drew.

Just at the day-break of Italia's light, When Gothic darkness scarce had wing'd its flight, Great DANTE shone; o'erwhelming, mystic, bold, Piercing the clouds o'er deepest mystery roll'd. A gloomy satirist! painting fiends so well, That Milton chose to copy Dante's “hell.” Such "Il Inferno" as, he saith, withal, Found in this world it's dark original; A better copy then, or, may be, now, Than most indulgent moralists allow;

* D'Israeli's Curiosities of Literature, vol. i.

*

And sure he knew, for whom the tragic light
Of faction's flame illum'd a cruel flight.

'Twas Dante's praise to' express, with richer glow, The monkish visions of "ALBERICO;"

To rescue Genius, lost in Learning's tomb,

And scare the midnight of monastic gloom.

In fancy's reign, with awful Dante, glow'd
The brilliant COWLEY, of scholastic mode;
Then, in the train, the mightier DRYDEN shines,
A Genius form'd for more superb designs;
Soon, at his side, his rival POPE arose,

Whose verse, mellifluent, as sweet nectar flows:
If Dryden's Genius bursts and blazes higher,
The voice of Pope sounds sweetest of the quire:
We rise with Dryden to the starry wain,
But walk with Pope across a velvet plain.
With Cowley's fancy, and with Pindar's fire,
The Laureat SOUTHEY Sweeps his pregnant lyre;
While o'er the crowd of modern Bards, immense,
MILMAN obtains his just pre-eminence,

In whom appear, in rich communion placed,

A hallow'd judgment, and a perfect taste.

Of Dramatists, a countless host we find
In every age, of every rank and kind,

From roving Thespis, with his face besmear'd,
Till SHAKSPEARE, greatest of the race, appear'd;
Whose works to scan is not a province mine,
Yet, for the last, admit one duteous line!*
Like Homer, Dante, Milton, Spenser, Young,
The Bard of Avon hath sublimely sung :
What loftier praise can fondest judge confer?
Yet must concede his warmest flatterer,

* The reader who feels disposed to have accurate and ample criticisms upon the genius and writings of Shakspeare, will find all he wants in Mr. Dryden's Delineation; in the Preface to Dr. Johnson's edition of Shakspeare; in Mr. Hazlitt's Lectures; and in many other places. To have entered more fully into criticisms upon dramatic compositions, would have introduced us to such poets as Archilochus, Eschylus, Sophocles, Euripides, Aristophanes, Menander, Terene, Plautus, Corneille, Moliere, Racine, Alfieri, Göthe, Schiller, Jonson, Beaumont, Fletcher, &c. &c.; an undertaking for which the author of the Bardiad feels himself to possess neither competence of knowledge; nor, from higher motives, the smallest inclination.