friends
of Colonel Gardiner, and a valued correspondent of Doddridge and Watts.
Curiously enough, though the great merit of his piece has been
acknowledged by critics such as Southey, it has been regarded as an
imitation of the _Night Thoughts_ of Young. 'Blair's _Grave_,' says
Southey in his _Life of Cowper_, 'is the only poem I can call to mind
which has been composed in imitation of the _Night Thoughts_;' and though
Campbell himself steered clear of the error, we find it introduced in a
note, as supplementary to the information regarding Blair given in his
_Essay on English Poetry_ by his editor, Mr. Cunningham. It is
demonstrable, however, that the Scotchman could not have been the
imitator. As shown by a letter in the Doddridge collection, which bears
date more than a twelvemonth previous to that of the publication of even
the first book of the _Night Thoughts_, Blair, after stating that his
poem, then in the hands of Isaac Watts, had been offered without success
to two London publishers, states further, that the greater part of it
had been written previous to the year 1731, ere he had yet entered the
ministry; whereas the first book of Young's poem was not published until
the year 1744. Poetry such as that of Blair is never the result of
imitation: its verbal happinesses are at least as great as those of
the _Night Thoughts_ themselves, and its power and earnestness
considerably greater. 'The eighteenth century,' says Thomas Campbell,
'has produced few specimens of blank verse of so powerful and simple a
character as that of the _Grave_. It is a popular poem, not merely
because it is religious, but because its language and imagery are free,
natural, and picturesque. The latest editor of the poets has, with
singularly bad taste, noted some of the author's most nervous and
expressive phrases as vulgarisms, among which he reckons that of
friendship, the "solder of society." Blair may be a homely, and even a
gloomy poet, in the eye of fastidious criticism; but there is a
masculine and pronounced character even in his gloom and homeliness, that
keeps it most distinctly apart from either dulness or vulgarity. His
style pleases us like the powerful expression of a countenance without
regular beauty.' Such is the judgment on Blair--destined, in all
appearance, to be a final one--of a writer who was at once the most
catholic of critics and the most polished of poets. There succeeded to
the author of the _Grave_, a group of