and that he must be a very unhappy critic who condemned it. This is a fair specimen of the manner in which Johnson has been so repeatedly convicted of rancour, prejudice, and envy. To such attacks we have nothing to reply: we have no expectation of convincing or reforming the wilfully blind, or the obstinately wicked.

It is at least but reasonable to require that they who impeach the integrity of Johnson with so much eagerness and perseverance, should shew us that those passages of the bard which Johnson has censured as obscure, are easily understood, and that the imitator of an ode is entitled to equal praise with its author. The more Gray's productions are examined, the more will his readers be convinced that they are rather the production of intense labour and extensive reading, than of a very vigorous, or very poetical imagination.

But it is now time to leave Mr. Stockdale, and close this review with a few brief observations on the literary character of Dr. Johnson.

Between the conclusion of the Spectator and the commencement of the Rambler, there are no essays to be found, except in the "Champion" of Fielding, which are not disgusting and contemptible. It was Johnson who first taught us to unite the opposite beauties of regularity and variety, energy and elegance. Since the appearance of the Rambler, some regard to the melody of his periods, and the construction of his sentences has become absolutely necessary to every writer who wishes to be read, and our diurnal newspapers are written with greater elegance than many of the most elaborate productions of the age of Anne.

If the Essays of Johnson are distinguished by majesty of period, and magnificence of diction, his ideas and his images are equally glowing and sublime. If the prevailing characteristic of his style be uniformity, it cannot be denied that it is uniformity of excellence. He who forms a style superior to that of his predecessors, must necessarily be distinguished by some peculiarity of language and construction. Even of those sesquipedalian words which so frequently occur in the Rambler, the repetition may partly be excused on account of the felicity with which they are adopted. He who can enchain the attention of his reader by the novelty of his thoughts, and the sublimity of his images; whose slightest efforts of composition display the imagination of a poet, and the judgment of a philosopher; and whose precepts have a powerful and invariable tendency to promote the interests of religion, and of virtue, may surely be forgiven, if he sometimes oversteps the rigid boundaries of language, and endeavours to elevate his diction to the energy and magnificence of his own conceptions.

That he may have been frequently excelled in grace of manner and abstruseness of learning, few of his admirers will be inclined to dipsute. But if his works be considered collectively, he is superior to every other writer in the profundity and elegance of his criticism, the energy and brilliance of his diction, the beauty and fertility of his illustrations.

However he may have been influenced by prejudice or passion in some of his opinions, there is no subject on which he has employed his powers, without elucidating it by the vigour and originality of his ideas, and adorning it by the splendour and elegance of his language.

RELIQUES OF ROBERT BURNS; CONSISTING CHIEFLY OF ORIGINAL LETTERS, POEMS, AND CRITICAL OBSERVATIONS ON SCOTTISH SONGS. COLLECTED AND PUBLISHED BY R. H. CROMEK. London. Cadell and Davies. 8vo. pp. xxiii. 453. 1808.

WHEN posterity's clear and steady gaze, undazzled by the prejudices and partialities with which contemporary criticism is blinded, shall have analysed the lustre of Burns's fame, the

:

orb that now glares so broadly and so brightly, seems destined to fade from its glittering greatness. Possibly, in the present period, a period scarcely mature for the accomplishment of such a prediction, the theorist, who ventures to examine this literary star, may share the fate of Galileo, and suffer as a heretic; but confidence in the justness of a cause is a strong support against the terrors even of persecution itself. It is the peculiar fate of prediction, that while its very nature is irresistibly suspicious, the facts which could accredit it, are necessarily too remote to do it justice.

Burns appears to have possessed an understanding, unusually vigorous and active, but heavily clogged by prejudice. His poetical genius, though very seldom exalted, was accidentally eloquent. He was by no means destitute of imagination, and he had a still larger proportion of feeling; but both the one and the other were greater than his taste. His humour was like a manual jest, sometimes amusing, but almost always vulgar. He undoubtedly rose far above the ordinary class of plain people, but not far above the generality of those who lift themselves into any degree of fame. He was a poet, but surely not an astonishing poet, except when considered as a peasant. There was more cause of surprise in his ever raising himself from the level of his native condition, than in the feats he performed when the exaltation was effected; for, after all, he was not a phoenix: he became a subject of curiosity, merely by having contrived to break his shell, and come forth without hatching.

Mr. Cromek, in this collection, which he has published as a supplementary volume to Dr. Currie's edition of Burns, has interwoven only so much of his own, as will make his readers regret that he has interwoven no more. His adoration of his author, that almost invariable weakness of commentators, a little obscures his critical perspicacity; but he sometimes evinces a very true and tender feeling. Thus he observes, in recording Burns's love for Mary Campbell, and the

sacredness with which he kept the anniversary of her death,

that

1

"There are events in this transitory scene of existence, seasons "of joy or of sorrow, of despair or of hope, which, as they "powerfully affect us at the time, serve as epochs to the history of " our lives. They may be termed the trials of the heart.-We "treasure them deeply in our memory, and as time glides silently away, they help us to number our days." (Reliques, p. 238. note.)

Mr. Cromek, even when considered no longer as an original author, still deserves respect, as a compiler. His work affords not only an opportunity for discussing the powers of the Scottish poet, but additional and very valuable data for appreciating them.

In order to form a just idea concerning Burns, we must bestow some attention on his general manner of thinking and expressing himself: and this examination may be best effected by promiscuous extracts from his prose and poetry.

It is generally thought that his great excellence is found in those pieces, where humble and characteristic description is sometimes softened with serious passages, and sometimes streaked with broad humour. Such are the Cotter's Saturday Night, and the tale of Tam O'Shanter. But, though the Cotter's Saturday Night undoubtedly deserves great praise, it is for other than poetical merit that this praise is due. Of late, indeed, a notion has gone abroad, which the popularity of some very energetic descriptions in rustic life appears to have greatly promoted, that these vivid, plain, coarse descriptions of actual nature, are evidences of poetical genius. But the title of Poetry, if it is of necessity due to all imitations of nature in verse, must be given to every line that has common sense and correct metre: and this must be confessed to induce an insurmountable absurdity. Poetry is conversant with the sublime, and with the tender, and with the pathetic, and with what Mr. Burke distinctively denominates the fine, and with the pleasingly picturesque, and with every modifi

cation of the beautiful; but not with descriptions of disgusting, vulgar, mean, or even familiar objects. Now what poetry is there in such lines as these?

"November chill blaws loud wi' angry sugh;
The short'ning winter-day is near a close;
The miry beasts retreating frae the pleugh;
The black'ning trains o' craws to their repose:
The toil-worn Cotter frae his labour goes,
This night his weekly moil is at an end,
Collects his spades, his mattocks, and his hoes,
Hoping the morn in ease and rest to spend,
And weary, o'er the moor, his course does hameward

bend."

(Currie's Burns, Vol. III. p. 174.)

In this description, there is an obvious resemblance to the opening of Gray's Elegy in a Country Church-yard; but there is no poetry, nothing but what, exclusively of the rhyme, the honest Cotter himself might very easily have uttered extempore. Nor is it possible to pronounce a judgment at all more flattering, on the poetry of those accurate strokes of character, which are shortly after presented in the lines on the reception of the eldest daughter's lover:

"Wi' kindly welcome Jenny brings him ben;
A strappan youth; he taks the mother's eye;
Blythe Jenny sees the visit's no ill ta'en;

The father cracks of horses, pleughs, and kye."

(Ibid. p. 176.)

Now these extracts are by no means selected as inferior parts of the poem, because in truth the whole tenour is very equal: nor is it intended to insinuate, that this tenour is in itself unworthy of approbation; but one may be permitted to urge, that it is not to be applauded as poetry. If the stanzas were translated into another language, or even simply divested of their rhyme, would the "disjecti membra poetæ," the scattered limbs of the poet, be perceived in that new modification? More probably the lines would be taken for memoranda, col