[ 3 ] SI was clofing my laft number, a learned friend made me a vifit, and finding I had been writing, inquired the fubject of the compofition. I told him that I had been throwing together a few defultory reflections on Defcriptive Poetry. As my friend had newly perufed Knight's Effay on the Greek Alphabet, he informed me, with very little ceremony, that he had a very mean opinion of critical compofitions, as well as of the fublime art of criticifm. Criticifm, faid he, affects to inform us when we thould approve and disapprove of literary compofitions, and applies her gauging-rod with equal precifion to the feelings of the heart and the flights of fancy. She pretends to direct our judgment and modulate our tafte, as if our judgment could not judge for itself, nor tatte decide without the help of rules. Shew any perfon of common fenfe, proceeded my friend, a ballad, an elegy, a heroic, or even a defcriptive poem, and he will be at no lofs to determine whether it be good or bad from the feelings which it excites in his mind. He can only give you his private opinion, you will fay; and after all, can your critic give you any thing more than his private A opinion? The public voice difregards all rules, and foon appreciates the genuine merit of any production. We fee tragedies and comedies compofed according to the very formulas of critical prescription; the critics pronounce that they shall be immortal, but the public voice condemns them at once to oblivion. Shakespear neither wrote by rules, nor is to be judged by rules; and there is the new Euripides of Germany, Kotzebue, who breaks all the unities, fets the poetics of Ariftotle at defiance, and yet prefides over all the emotions of the foul with irresistible fway. My friend continued to enumerate a multitude of fimilar initances, and then victoriously clenched his proof with the authority of Knight; who, in his Effay on the Greek Alphabet, admits no kind of critical merit but that which is verbal. To this fluent harangue I replied, that as this Knight has really very great merit as a verbal critic, it was a great pity that he should infiit upon depreciating thofe critics who extend their attention to fentences, and paragraphs, and chapters, and fections, and even to whole books; but that, with all deference to the Effay on the Greek Alphabet, I apprehended, 2 prehended, that the reafons of our ver. WORKSWORTH'S DESCRIPTIVE SKETCHES difplay great originality and poetical powers, joined with con. fiderable faults both of thought and diction. The author attempts to convey to the English reader a correct idea of Alpine fcenery: an undertaking arduous as it was bold; for, as he afferts, "the controuling influence which diftinguishes the Alps from all other fcenery, is derived from images which difdain the pencil." In conveying the general characters along with the individual fcenery, he is frequently very fuccefsful. His defcriptions are often graphically minute, but always sketched with energy and ftrong conception. We enjoy all the pleasures of the pedeftrian traveller, and are ready to admit with the author, that did happinefs refide on earth, her abode would be, Where murmuring rivers join the song of Even, Where falls the purple morning far and In flakes of light upon the mountain reft. We hear the road-elms of Gallia ruftling thin above his head-we attend him to the lake of Como, embofomed in chefnut groves, and trace the twining pathway beneath its purple roof of vines Whence oft at eve the viewlefs lingerer fees From rock-hewn ftceps the fail between the trees. In the defcription of the lake of Como, there are many picturefque delineations of that kind, which inclines to the beautiful; many which an Englishman can only figure in imagination-the cots placed under the towering rocks, with each its houfehold boat befide the door, The torrents fhooting from the clear blue fky, The towns like swallows nefis that cleave on high, The blazing forefts throwing rich golden verdure on the waves, are all of. |