total neglect of Mr. Cumberland's just and pressing claims did not prevent him from seeking lord North's acquaintance in private. The candid and prepossessing character given of his lordship as a gentleman and a man of accomplishment, reflects the highest honour on our author, considering what grounds of complaint he had against him as a minister. "When in process of time I saw and knew lord North in his retirement from all public affairs, patient, collected, resigned to an af nicting visitation of the severest sort, when all but his illuminated mind was dark around him, I contemplated an affecting and an edifying object, that claimed my admiration and esteem; a man, who when divested of that incidental greatness, which high office for a time can give, self-dignified and independeut, rose to real greatness of his own creating, which no time can take away; whose genius gave a grace to every thing he said, and whose benignity shed a lustre upon every thing he did; so richly was his memory stored, and so lively was his imagination in applying what he remembered, that after the great source of information was shut against himself, he still possessed a boundless fund of information for the instruction and delight of others. Some hours (and those not few) of his society he was kind in bestowing upon me: I eagerly courted, and very highly prized them." The last sentence reminds us of an anecdote, not furnished by our author, but by one well acquainted with the noble humourist. Should its fidelity be denied, the inventor must at least obtain credit for having happily fallen in with lord North's peculiar vein of pleasantry. Once on a time, Mr. Cumberland invited himself to read to his lordship, and the ladies of the family, a piece he had been preparing for the stage. Lord North parried the proposal, as long as it was consistent with good manners so to do. An author's charity, in communicating such pleasure, as his own works are capable of affording, is not easily to be frustrated. An evening was fixed, and the reading commenced. My lord availed himself of his constitutional infirmity, to drop asleep; but awoke almost instantaneously, with a profusion of courtly excuses, and many a dire anathema against his lethargic tendency. The poet admitted the plea, himself in turn apologizing for the mere explanatory dulness of a first act. Yet he could not help flattering himself that the attention of the company would be awakened, and their interest excited, by the progress and developement of the plot. The drowsy fit still returned at intervals: but unfortu nately, in one of the most important scenes, on which the whole seemed to hinge, his lordship took it into his head to dream. He fancied himself in his place in the house; and most provokingly vociferated, "Question, Question, Question!" with such pertinacity and strength of lungs, as completely to overpower the argument of the play, and the gravity of the little audience. The list of unpublished dramas is very long; and some of them are promised to public curiosity. The author professes never to have written any piece so much to his own satifaction, as his tragedy on the subject of the elder Brutus. We recollect to have seen some parts of The four or five years ago at Drury Lane. False Demetrius, while it was in rehearsal Whether the interior politics of the theatre, or an unfavourable opinion of the piece, stopped it in its progress, we are not informed; but our own opinion of what we saw and heard was not strongly in its favour. Of all our author's tragic efforts, The Carmelite has left the most pleasing impression on our minds. Then, however, Mrs. Siddons not only exhibited those transcendent powers of understanding and execution, which never for a moment have been eclipsed even by the intervention of ill health, but wore the charm of novelty. We cannot therefore at this distance determine, in what proportions our thanks should have been divided between the poet and the actress. The mention of this play leads Mr. Cumberland to express his just contempt for the frivolous taste of admiring boyish actors. The Mysterious Husband is a well devised and well written tragedy of its peculiar species. The character of lord Davenant is strongly, and that of lady Davenant affectingly drawn. We rather wonder that the concluding scene should have produced such strong agitations as the author has described; for we consider the catastrophe as feebly worked up. The situations are evidently copied from the last scene of the Gamester; but the pathos is far less moving, and shrinks from a comparison with that natural and affecting tragedy. Our author dilates largely on his epic poem of Calvary, and appears highly pleased with the success of his effort. We do not consider the present as a fit occasion for entering copiously into the merits of his literary labours, with the exception of that immediately under review. We therefore leave it to our readers, to form their own judgment, how far he has qualified himself for the delicate office of examining his own pretensions. He seems often to value most what the public has relished least. After all, he will probably ride down to posterity, on the shoulders of his West Indian and his Observer. The last character in which this veteran servant of the public appears, is that of Major Commandant of the Tunbridge Volunteers. Like a Lothario of seventythree, he is armed for either field: Mars and the Muses alternately take possession of his vigorous old age, and claim him for their own. The narrative ends rather abruptly; but we have the pleasure of learning, that the selection and arrangement of our author's posthumous works is undertaken by Sir James Bland Burges, Mr. Rogers, and Mr. Richard Sharpe. The task could not have been consigned to better hands, either for the fame of the author, or the gratification of the public. On a review of the whole work, we can promise to the reader much entertaining, and much interesting matter. Whether it will entirely answer the expectations, which the world was entitled to form of it as a literary performance, we should feel more hesitation in deciding. We cannot easily forgive such a laxity of style, in a writer who aspires to be a classic. Whole pages are bestowed on trite argu mentations and common-place morality, which had been better filled with literary anecdote and history. The sentences are often out of all measure, harmony, equilibrium; nor should such words as reconciliatory, accreditation, ignoramusca for ignorant persons, and one or two others, have proceeded from the pen of M. Cumberland. We feel it the more incumbent on us to notice these aberrations from the line of classical usage, because the delinquent is of sufficient credend standing to be quoted as an authority, The general habits of writing in our la guage are much improved of late years; but we deprecate that negligence into which many men of high repute have al most affectedly fallen, as if a correct and elegant style was no longer an object di ambition, because it is become more com mon. At the same time, these censures, not affecting the vitals of the biographic interest, are conceived in the pure love of truth and critical precision. Though ele vated by our office to preside in an august tribunal, our feelings towards Mr. Cumberland are like those of a newly created judge towards a veteran barrister: we interpose our authority in court, with a stem and supercilious regard, but in our closet, we stand in awe of the knowledge his long practice has acquired, and of the eloquence his various pleadings have displayed. CHAPTER IX. POETRY. OUR poetical list is this year unusually copious, and amidst a large quantity of trash will, we believe, be found to contain a very respectable proportion of works of merit. The art of versification, like most other arts, keeps pace with the progressive advances of luxury and civilization. When from the feebleness and languor of the social machine it is requisite that all the forms of intercourse should be highly polished, in order to diminish a friction which in its more vigorous state was imperceptible, a correspondent taste in poetry is sure to spring up; the rules of versification are made more strict, and the Graces and muses are not thought worthy of being admitted into fashionable company unless they have been under the tuition of a French dancingmaster. Hence sound usurps the place of sense; and a delicate perception of the mere sensual pleasure of musical cadence, comes to be confounded with a taste for and judgment in poetry. In England this change has been rapidly going on of late years; and on comparing our modern verse-writers with those who lived a century ago, it is impossible not to be struck with the vast superiority of the former over the latter in all that relates to the mechanical and musical part of poetical composition. This, as far as it goes, is, no doubt, a very material improvement; but in numerous instances that might be cited, it has been acquired at the expence of more valuable qualities; or, what is equally bad, has cheated the public into the opinion that harmony will atone for the absence of all the other qualifications for poetry, especially when seasoned with a little licentiousness, or conjoined with that nauseous whining sentimenta lity, the bane of every vigorous exertion and every high attainment in literature or morals. A just disdain of the affectation of this sect gave birth to another, which running into the opposite extravagance of simplicity, or to speak more properly, of discord in versification and baldness of expression, for a time divided the suffrage of the public; fortunately, however, each presented a broad mark for satire; and though we by no means justify the bitterness with which they were assailed, yet we may be allowed to rejoice that the excesses of each have nearly passed away, and that English poetry may now safely acknowledge her obligations to both. In our opinion, no age of British literature has been so favourable to the production of excellent poetry as the present is: the degree of encouragement is greater than at any former period, and both writers and readers are more fully aware that splendour of versification, high-wrought but consistent imagery, natural manners, and propriety of sentiment, are not merely compatible, but are the indispensable characteristics of such poetry as will delight not merely on a first perusal, but long after the glow of novelty is gone; as will survive not merely a few years, but be coeval with the language itself. ART. I.-Specimens of early English Metrical Romances, chiefly written during the early Part of the fourteenth Century; to which is pr. pxed an historical Introduction, intended to illustrate the Rise and Progress of romantic Composition in France and England. By GEORGE ELLIS, ESQ. In three Volumes, 8vo. pp. 387, 404, and 419. "THESE volumes," says the author, are intended to supply a chasm in the Specimens of Early English Poets, by explaining more fully the progress of our poetry and language, from the latter part of the thirteenth, to the middle of the fourteenth century, and to exhibit a general view of our romances of chivalry in their earliest and simplest form." Mr. Ellis begins his introduction by tracing the history of the romance language, which in its most extensive sense comprises all the dialects of which Latin was the basis; in this country, however, it originally meant that dialect of the French which the Normans introduced; it then applied to all works composed in that dialect, and finally appropriated to tales of chivalry, the delight of our ancestors, and the great boast of their literature, if so it may be called. The oldest specimen of this language is the oath of Louis le Germanique, addressed, in 842, to the French army of his brother Charles le Chauve. Mr. Ellis infers that this was the general language of France, and not a southern dialect, because Aquitaine and Neustria were the original dominions of Charles, and great part of his army came from those provinces. This uniformity was broken by the invasions and settlement of the Normans. "From these invasions ultimately resulted the division of the romance language into an almost infinite number of dialects, which subsisted during the greater part of the tenth century. It is not meant that the Normans materially contributed to this change, by importing into the conquered country a barbarous jargon composed of foreign and discordant materials; because it is evident that their influence in this respect must have been confined to the territory within which they formed their establishment. But uniformity of speech throughout a large extent of country can only arise from an easy and constant intercourse between its inhabitants; and the interruption of this intercourse must give birth to a diversity of dialects. The prevalence of the Latin had resulted from the extent and Stability of the Roman empire; and the purity of the romance could only have been preserved by the permanence of that of Charfemagne. His partition of his extensive territory, and the disputes amongst his immediate successors, enervated the strength of the French monarchy, and laid open the country to the ravages of the northern invaders; whose triumphs were less pernicious from the misery, they immediately produced, than from the example of successful usurpation which they held out to private ambition. of petty tyrants, always in arms against each France was parcelled out amongst a number other, or against their sovereign; and the vul gar tongue, not yet subjected to the rules of grammar, or fixed by any just models of composition, was abandoned to all the innovations which might arise either from the ignorance or from the mixed races of the inhabitants, in the several independent districts into which the country was divided.” This reasoning seems to make it doubtful whether any uniformity of speech had subsisted before in the country; for the times when the intercourse between its inhabitants could be easy and constant, were few and short in comparison with those of warfare. Be this as it may, the Normans were the great improvers of the Roman or French language. The earliest work of northern French literature of which any remembrance remains, is a metrical life of Wandril and certain other saints, translated from the Latin, by Thibaut de Vernon, canon of Rouen, about the middle, probably, of the eleventh century. Of this only the name has been preserved. The oldest existing specia.it., or rather the oldest which has been dis covered, is the Liber de Creaturis of Philip de Than, a French metrical treatise on chronology, written soon after the year 1100. It appears, therefore, as far as present documents enable us to judge, that the northern Romance, or Nerihan French, was not employed as a written language till very near the time of the conquest; and it is certain that till the ac principal compositions in that language cession of Henry II., in 1154, all the were either devotional and moral tracts, lives of saints, scientific treatises, or chro nicles,.all metrical, and probably all translations. Songs and ballads there were in abundance; but Mr. Ellis says, "it may be safely affirmed that no trace of a pro fessed work of fiction, no semblance of an epic fable, in short no specimen of what found before the middle of the twelfth we should now call a romance, is to be century." The Normans had joculars or minstrels; this is undeniably proved by Doomsday. book, in which a certain Berdic, posstased of a large tract of land in Gloucestershire, is stiled joculator regis. "The register, of course, does not explain the talents of this joculator, or jougleur; but it may be fairly assumed that they were similar to those of the minstrel Taillefer, who, as Wace informs us, moult bien chantout,' and who preceded the duke of Normandy at the battle of Hastings singing about Charlemagne, and Rolland, and Olivier, and the vas sals who died at Roncesvalles.' We are fur ther informed by Gaimar, that he performed many marvellous feats of dexterity: throwing his lance into the air as if it were a small stick; catching it by the point before he cast it against the enemy; and repeating the same operation with his sword, so that they who beheld him considered him as a conjurer L'un dit à l'altre ki co veit, "Now, unless it could be proved that the Normans adopted the profession of minstrelsy from the French, of which there is no evidence, it must follow that they carried it with them from Denmark; and as bishop Percy has shown that a character nearly analogous existed amongst the Danes as well as the Anglo-Saxons, the derivation of the minstrels from the Scalds and Glee-men of the north, as established in the essay prefixed to the Reliques of Ancient English Poetry,' seems to rest upon as fair historical testimony as can be required in confirmation of such an opinion. It may, therefore, be reasonably admitted that Rollo carried with him his domestic. hards, who, when their native idiom began to fall into disuse, would have been compelled to exercise their talents in the newly-adopted language: but still the success of their poetical efforts must have depended on the state in which they found this language, to the perfection of which they could not, from their want of learning, materially contribute." The song of Taillefer (we fully agree with Mr. Ellis that William of Malms bury's words will justify no other interpretation) was a French song, and of a French champion, and this fact would tend to prove that the Normans had adopted the profession of minstrelsy from the French. If the Norman minstrels were the successors of the Scalds, it is extraordinary that they should have adopted the heroes of the conquered people with their language, almost to the exclusion of their own. The theories respecting the origin of the minstrels, like those respect ing the origin of romance, appear to us to be too exclusive. Poetry exists among many savage nations, and in all barbarous ones. The manners of the Gothic swarms differed little from each other. Saxons and Franks, Danes and Normans, would each bring with them their poets or harpers, whose fashion would be modified by the circumstances of the country in which they settled. They would bring with them songs of war, and learn hymns and legends. More settled courts and more permanent patronage encouraged more elaborate works. The Anglo-Saxons had certainly their metrical romances, if the term may be applied to poems for which there was, or was believed to be, historical foundation. Such are the History of Judith and that of Beowulf.* If indeed any country can be said to have given birth to chivalry and to romance it is this. The history of Beowulf is the oldest epic poem which has yet been produced in the vernacular languages of Europe, and the rudiments of chivalry, as has been shewn by Mr. Turner, certainly existed here before the Norman conquest. But any exclusive hypothesis upon these subjects is absurd. Poetry is almost as universal as language, and the first poets are storytellers; and with respect to knighthood, all barbarians have some kind of military nobility; it was found not only in the well organized kingdom of Mexico, but also among the wild tribes on the Oroo "The following may perhaps be accepted as a tolerable summary of the history of the minstrels. It appears likely that they were carried by Rollo into France, where they probably introduced a certain number of their native traditions; those, for instance, relating to Ogier le Danois, and other northern he roes, who were afterwards enlisted into the tales of chivalry; but that, being deprived of the mythology of their original religion, and cramped perhaps, as well by the sober spirit of christianity, as by the imperfection of a *It is greatly to be wished that Mr. Turner would favour us with an edition of this very curious poem. |