the former for fresh efforts to gratify it. Thus the state of things may be prolonged ad infinitum, unless some voice should be raised sufficiently powerful to induce a change of system.

But, potent as are the causes to which we have last alluded, in promoting the degeneracy of the Drama, still it must not be disguised that these are not solely the origin of the evil. The incompetency of the Authors in whose hands rests the task of winning the public taste back to the legitimate Drama, is another, and not less influential cause. The Spectacles and Pageants with which the Managers feast the eyes of their Audiences, are as nearly as possible, perfect in their way. The Tragedies and Comedies which are occasionally produced, are the farthest possible removed from the standard to which they aspire. The Public chooses between them; and we can scarcely blame it's decision::

"Now forced, at length, her ancient reign to quit,
Nature sees Dulness lay the ghost of Wit;

Exulting Folly hails the joyous day,

And Pantomime and Song confirm her sway."

LECTURE THE FIFTH.

DIDACTIC, DESCRIPTIVE, PASTORAL, AND SATIRICAL POETRY.

Nature of Didactic and Descriptive Poetry :-Death and Life, the earliest Specimen of English Blank Verse:-Bishop Hall's Satires :-Brown's Pastorals:-Donne:-Butler's Hudibras:-Dryden, Pope, Akenside, Dyer, Armstrong, Young, and Goldsmith :-Thomson's Seasons:—Cowper.

OUR Lectures have already exhausted the more interesting topics, which a review of the history and merits of English Poetry presents to our consideration. The Harvest is past; and, we have now little more to do, than to garner in the comparatively scanty gleanings, which remain behind. The subject of the present Lecture is English Didactic, and Descriptive Poetry; including Pastoral and Satire. The Didactic Muse has been called "the least attractive of the Nine;" but if she has less beauty, she has, perhaps, more truth than her sisters. If she cannot soar as high, she treads more firmly. She addresses herself, not to

the Imagination and the heart, but to the understanding. She seeks not to please the fancy, but to improve the mind. She is, in fact, however, scarcely a legitimate denizen of the world of Poetry. She is too nearly allied to Prose, to mingle quite freely and gracefully with those gay "creatures of the elements," who people the regions of Fancy. She is an amphibious animal;

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parcel woman, parcel fish." She has powers which those who are exclusively confined to either element, do not possess; but then in neither does she move with the same freedom and unconstrainedness as they do. She has not the real sober prose step of the Historian and the Essayist, any more than she has the bold and fearless pinion of the Epic Poet, and the Dramatist. She has not

angelic wings, nor feeds on manna." She has rather the wings of the flying-fish, which, for a moment, elevate her towards the heaven of Poetry, whence she soon sinks exhausted, into her own native element of Prose.

The works of the Descriptive and Pastoral Muses are to the Epic and the Drama, what a trim and elegant flower-garden is to the wildness and magnificence of unadorned Nature; who is, "when unadorned, adorned the most." The descriptive passages which spring up amidst all the

awfulness and sublimity of Shakspeare and Milton, are like the delicious fruits and fragrant flowers which are found among the grandest and most terrific passages of Alpine scenery; while the continuous descriptions of Thomson and Cowper, are like flowers of every imaginable form and hue, exotic and native, got together and crowded into one bed. They bring home to those who cannot go in search of them, those treasures of Nature, which bolder spirits are content to scale Alpine steeps, and dive amidst mountain torrents to attain. The mind is not always prepared to accompany Shakspeare or Milton in their daring flights, any more than the body is always at leisure to undertake a journey to the Andes, or the Appenines. Then the pages of Goldsmith, and Thomson, and Cowper, yield as much enjoyment to the one, as the velvet lawn and the gaily ornamented parterre do to the other.

English Poetry has been, from the earliest period, as rich in description as the English taste has been observed to be particularly attached to external Nature. The humblest and most closelyconfined denizens of our English Cities have been remarked by foreigners to cherish this taste in the possession of a box of mignonette, a vase of flowers, or a solitary myrtle, or geranium. So,

too, in the most humble of our versifiers, if they possess any Poetical powers at all, they will be roused into action by the inspiration excited on beholding the face of Nature.

The earliest English Poets were fond and acute observers of Nature. The touches of scenic description in the ancient Ballads are numerous and beautiful; and Percy has preserved a fine relique of an old descriptive Poem, entitled "Death and Life,” the beauties of which cannot fail to be perceived, even through the veil of uncouth and antique language in which they are enveloped. The Poem is supposed by Percy to have been written as early as, if not earlier than, the time of Langbaine; and it is curious, as the oldest specimen of Blank Verse in our language. The following is an allegorical description of Life :

"She was brighter of her blee, than was the bright sonne; Her rudd redder than the rose, that on the rise hangeth. Meekly smiling with her mouth, and merry in her lookes; Ever laughing for love, as she the like wolde.

And as shee came by the banks, the boughs eche one

They lowted to that ladye, and lay'd forth their branches;

Blossoms and burgens breathed full sweete:

Flowers flourish'd in the frith, where she forth stepp'd;
And the grass that was grey, greened belive."

But it is to that golden age of our Literature,