ll's, or Pope's, or Johnson's,
and to compare it with some of the leading poetical works of the
present, such as the poems of Wordsworth, Coleridge, Shelley, and Byron,
and not to feel as if you were reading the productions of two different
races of beings--so different are the style, the sentiments, the modes
of thought, the imagery, the temperament, and the spirit of the poets
and the poetry. It is like stepping, we will not say from the frigid,
but from the temperate into the torrid zone. In the one class of authors
you find the prevalence of strong sense, flanked by wit and by fancy,
but without much that can be called imaginative or romantic. In the
other, imagination or fancy is the regnant faculty; and if wit and sense
are there too, they are there as slaves, the "Slaves of the lamp," to
the imperious imaginative power. The style of the one is clear,
masculine, sententious, and measured; that of the other is bold,
unmeasured, diffuse, fervid, and sometimes obscure. The one style may be
compared to a clear crescent; the other to a full, but partially
eclipsed, moon. The sentiment of the one is chiefly the sublimation of
passion: bitter contempt, noble indignation, a proud, stern patriotism,
sometimes united with a sombre, but manly melancholy, are the principal
feelings expressed; that of the other, although occasionally morbid, is
far more varied, more profound, purer, on the whole, and more poetical.
The thought of the one is acute and logical; that of the other aspires
to the deep, if not to the mystical and the transcendental. The subjects
of the poets of the eighteenth century are generally of a dignified cast
(except in the case of satirical productions), such as "The Temple of
Fame," "The Pleasures of Imagination," "The Traveller," "London," and
"The Vanity of Human Wishes." The subjects of the other class are as
varied as their mode of treatment is often daringly peculiar. The
leech-gatherer on his lonely moor, the pedlar on his humble rounds, the
tinker linked by a "fellow-feeling" to the animal he beats and starves,
a mad mariner, a divorced wife, a wandering roue--such characters as
these have called forth the utmost stretch of the powers of our best
modern poets. The images of the former race of poets are limited to what
are called classical subjects--including in this term the ancient
mythologies, the incidents in Grecian and Roman story, the more
beautiful objects of nature, and the more popular produc