style, "Ode to Despair;" "Topographical Description of Paris;" "The Sailor;" more agreeably interspersed with some effusion of Mrs. Barbauld, or Mrs. Opie; mingled, again, with sundry "Observations on the Present State of the War," written by some sleepy newspaper editor, whose language we might assimilate with, "We have received intelligence from," &c. Here and there, perhaps, a straggling beam of genius broke through the mental twilight, in the shape of, "Some Account of the poet, Burns;" a Rustique by Bloomfield, or an elegant sonnet by Bowles or Charlotte Smith. The rest of would-be-sonneteers, tragedy-writers, and essayists, have long ago found, with their mediocrities, a congenial oblivion in "the tomb of all the Capulets."
But suddenly, and without much premise to warrant the commencement of such an era, the department of our imaginative literature was established in patronage and importance; and those "trivial, fond records," which were wont only to sparkle a brief endurance in the mutable columns of a newspaper, or doomed, when existing in fragile manuscript, "to die and be forgot," found a refuge from their Lethean fate in the numerous Magazines which the increased taste, and avidity for reading, evinced by the public, had called into existence. Still there was a desideratum, which these adornments of English Literature, "The Annuals," alone supplied. The casual tones which emanated from the "transcendent masters of the lyre," were not to be lost to "the public ear" for want of "a circulating medium;" and Ackermann, a name familiar to the lovers of pictorial art, had the honour of first setting England the example of preserving her valuable anthology, by producing his attractive Annual, "The Forget-Me-Not;" a species of literature which presents us with the pleasing facility of holding yearly communion with our poets and authors, without being subjected to the tedium of awaiting their protracted appearance in a more voluminous shape. We can now more frequently greet Anacreon Moore, wreathing his harp with the paternal shamrock, characteristically mingled with "pansies for love;" Montgomery, mourning over our nature's degradation; telling us of the affections and passions of earth, yet luring us to higher hopes and brighter consummation; his every line evincing that chastened sorrow which Byron threw into the portrait of the Sheffield bard—
"With broken lyre, and cheek serenely pale."
Coleridge, dropping "some natural tears," on viewing the altered features of his native valley; sweetly and affectionately telling of
"The meadow, and its babbling brook,
Where roses in the ripple shook."
Southey, forgetting the ungentler theme of "battle field" amidst the sublimity of rock and lake. Campbell, pouring from his plaintive shell a tender eulogy to his northern home—a glowing tissue of
Dreams Of the Highland mountains, and echoing streams,
And broken glades, breathing their balm.
—Scott, terrifically depicting a Sassenagh tournament, or inditing a stirring appeal to the "blue bonnets," to settle some Border broil. James Hogg, "the Scottish Virgil," on whom has surely fallen the mantle of inspiration from the Mantuan bard, coming forth in all the richness of the "Noctes Ambrosianae," from the misty hill where he dominates "the king of shepherds." Delta, elegantly pensive, sighing beneath the blighted trees which flourished over his boyhood; and listening to the rhetoric of the changing seasons. Alaric Watts, "the fireside bard," giving us a touching apostrophe to his "youngling of the flock," in melting verse, warm from that kindred fancy
"Whose blessed words
Can bid the sweetest dreams arise;
Awaken feeling's tenderest chords,
And drown in tears of joy the eyes."
T.K. Hervey, following in the same bright path, or enthusiastically rapt amidst the beauty and bloom of Australia.—Bernard Barton, bringing us snatches of vernal philosophy, gathered in the silence of murky woods, and the solitude of perfumed meadows.—John Clare, swearing everlasting fealty to his beauteous Mary, by the elm-shadowed cottage of her bowery home; thanking heaven for the benison of love and rurality.—Richardson, the poet of India, sonnetizing amidst the superb cupolas and temples which gem the banks of the deified Ganges, longing to exchange his fevered abode for salubrious England.—Pringle transforming the repulsive features of a South African desert into matter for piteous song; and illumining, by the brightness of his genius, the terrible picture of Caffre barbarity and degradation.—Roscoe, revelling in the sweets of Italian lore, his own lips "touched with a live coal" from the altar of poesy.—Washington Irving, grasping at the intellect, and speculating on the wit and fancy, of all climes; so speedily transplanting himself (bodily as well as mentally) from the back woods of America to the land of Columbus—from the vineyards of France to the valleys of Yorkshire—as almost to induce a belief in his power of ubiquity.—Allan Cunningham, sympathizing with the sorrows of one "who never told her love," and weaving a tearful elegy over her flower-strewn grave, or painting the fiercer incidents of piratical warfare, on the ocean's solitudes.—Felicia Hemans, her lyre musically blending the song of sounding streams with the spontaneous melody of the "feathered choir" composing an epicedium to the memory of departed days, and proving her glorious claims to the poetic character, "creation's heir."—Mary Russell Mitford, great in her histrionic portraitures of liberty, whether patrician or plebeian; yet not forgetting in her dramatic wanderings, her happy village; but drawing us, "by the cords of love," to the rustic scene; amplifying that fine axiom of the Stratford bard—
"Gives not the hawthorn bush a sweeter shade
To shepherds, looking on their silly sheep,
Than does the embroider'd canopy to kings?"
J.H. Wiffen, dating from the sentimental seclusion of Woburn Abbey, a song replete with all the grace and imagination of his "Ionian Hours."—Charles Lamb, the "deep-thoughted Elia," introducing us to the maidenly residence of his cousin Bridget; delighted with delighting; his fancy expatiating on a copious medley of subjects between the stiff Mandarins on the old fashioned china, and that Beaumont and Fletcher, the purchase of his rigid economy, ere his talents had brought him fame and fortune.—Letitia Landon "the English Sappho," a being existing but in the atmosphere of love and flowers; equally sensitive at the opening of a violet as at the shutting of a rose. But our list of the living is too extended; and we will speak of some of the departed.
Interspersed with the emanations of our existing bards, we have, occasionally, those precious morceaux which have been bequeathed us by the illustrious dead. Trifles, yet how esteemed! Remembrances of Byron, with his fiery impetuosity, spurning the trammels of worldly sorrow; and prescribing death as a panacea for his lamentable despair; yet subduing us with refined regrets, as he was wont, in his changing mood,
"To sun himself in heaven's pure day."
Shelley, misanthropically commencing with the turbulence of the chainless sea: a spirit matured to madness by the overawing and supernatural terrors of German romance: as he asserts himself to be, in his lamentation for the author of Endymion, one who
"Had gaz'd on Nature's naked loveliness,
Acteon-like, until he fled away."
John Keates, forsaking the land of his fame, and prematurely resigning his "quiet breath," on that spot
"Where dwelt the muses at their natal hour;"
leaving to the less sensitive reviewers to prove, whether he had been "led astray by the light from heaven, or by his own clouded and tempestuous genius:"
"That fire within so fiercely burned
That whence it came it soon returned."
Maturin, though corrupted and enervated by the follies and dissipation of the anti-poetic city, becoming, in his lucid intervals, "himself again," in the composition of a splendid dramaticle.—Henry Neele, the "martyr-student," inviting us to share in the intense admiration of intellect; forcibly demonstrating
