ERRATUM. In Vol. III. p. 161, lines 13, 14, for "Dryden has said of his lines," read "Drayton has said in his lines." BOOK VII.-(continued.) THE LATTER PART OF THE EIGHTEENTH CENTURY. THE death of Samuel Johnson, in the end of the year 1784, makes a pause, or point of distinction, in our literature, hardly less notable than the acknowledgment of the independence of America, the year before, makes in our political history. It was not only the end of a reign, but the end of kingship altogether, in our literary system. For King Samuel has had no successor; nobody since his day, and that of his contemporary Voltaire, has sat on a throne of literature either in England or in France. Of the literary figures, however, that had previously appeared upon the scene, many continued to be conspicuous for years after this date, some throughout the rest of the century or longer. Burke, the most eminent of them all, survived till 1797; and, having already raised himself to distinction by his publications and speeches in connexion with the American war, won his highest fame in the finishing part of his career by his wonderful oratorical displays on the impeachment of Hastings, and his writings, outblazing everything he had before produced, on the French revolution. Adam Smith did not die till 1790; his countryman, Dr. Robertson, not till 1793; Robertson's illustrious brother historian, Gibbon, not till 1794. Of the poets and cul VOL. VI. B tivators of light literature, or the belles lettres, who have been already mentioned, Thomas Warton lived till 1790, Ossian Macpherson till 1796, Mason and his friend Horace Walpole till 1797, Joseph Warton till 1800. Other writers, again, our notices of whom will be found in the preceding volume, outlived Johnson by many years. Thus Beattie only died in 1803; Anstey, the author of the New Bath Guide, in 1805; John Home, the author of Douglas, in 1808; Bishop Percy and Richard Cumberland in 1811; Adam Ferguson, the historian of the Roman Republic, in 1816; Richard Brinsley Sheridan the same year; Sir Philip Francis, presumed to be Junius, in 1818; Miss Sophia Lee in 1824; Henry Mackenzie in 1831; Miss Burney (afterwards Madame d'Arblay) not till 1840. These writers, and others whose names might be added, had all produced the works by which they were first made known, most of them those to which they chiefly owe their reputation, before the close of the Johnsonian era. COWPER. It is a remarkable fact that, if we were to continue our notices of the poets of the last century in strict chronological order, the first name we should have to mention would be that of a writer, who more properly belongs to what may be called our own day, and to the very latest era of our poetry. Crabbe, whose Tales of the Hall, the noblest production of his powerful and original genius, appeared in 1819, and who died so recently as 1832, published his first poem, The Library, in 1781; some extracts from it are given in the Annual Register for that year. But Crabbe's literary career is divided into two parts by a chasm, or interval during which he published nothing, of nearly twenty years; and his proper era is the present century. One remark, however, touching this writer may be made here: his first manner was evidently caught from Churchill more than from any other of his predecessors. And this was also the case with his contemporary Cowper, the poetical writer whose name casts the greatest illustration upon the last twenty years of the eighteenth century. William Cowper, born in 1731, twenty-three years before Crabbe,—we pass over his anonymous contributions to his friend the Rev. Mr. Newton's collection of the Olney Hymns, published in 1776,-gave to the world the first volume of his poems, containing those entitled TableTalk, The Progress of Error, Truth, Expostulation, Hope, Charity, Conversation, and Retirement, in 1782; his famous History of John Gilpin appeared the following year, without his name, in a publication called 'The Repository; his second volume, containing The Task, Tirocinium, and some shorter pieces, was published in 1785; his translations of the Iliad and the Odyssey in 1791; and his death took place on the 25th of April, 1800. It is recorded that Cowper's first volume attracted little attention: it certainly appears to have excited no perception in the mind or eye of the public of that day that a new and great light had arisen in the poetical firmament. The Annual Register for 1781, as we have said, gives extracts from Crabbe's Library; a long passage from his next poem, The Village, is given in the volume for 1783; the volume for 1785 in like manner treats its readers to a quotation from the News |