It may perhaps be said, Is not Peter Pindar the English Beaumarchais? does he not, like him, turn sham greatness inside out, and demolish the superstitious awe with which privileged persons and classes are surrounded in the imaginations of the vulgar? No, he is not comparable to Beaumarchais; for Beaumarchais did a solid and necessary work, and he did not. Continental kings, before the French Revolution, however personally despicable they might be, were formidable, because the political system was despotic, because they wielded an enormous power irresponsibly, and could consign to a perpetual dungeon by their lettres de cachet, unless prudence restrained them, any private citizen who might offend them. Yet traditional reverence and mistaken piety surrounded these kings with a halo of majesty and sanctity in their people's eyes; he therefore who undermined this reverence, who exhibited kings and queens as just as miserable forked bipeds, just as silly, greedy, and trifling, as men and women in general, did a good and necessary work as one of the pioneers of freedom. But in England, in the eighteenth century, kings had no such powers; religious worship, thought, and its expression, were almost entirely free;1 our political liberties were in the main secure; no king could send an Englishman to prison at his own caprice, or subject him to arbitrary taxation, or deprive him of representation in parliament. What serious harm, then, could the utmost conceivable folly, malignity, and even profligacy, in the king and the royal family do to the people at large? None whatever; there was therefore no object sufficient to justify a satire, no dignus vindice nodus. On the other hand, the mere fact of the Hanoverian family being seated on the throne, however it might surround itself with German menials and wait1 Of course I am not speaking of Ireland.

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ing women like Madame Schwellenberg, whom Wolcot lashes with indignant patriotism, constituted, in the eyes of every Englishman of sense, a standing protest on behalf of the sovereign right of the people to control its own destinies, and as such should have made that limited and muzzled royalty sacred from assault. A man who wrote so much, and whose tongue, as he says of himself,1

"So copious in a flux of metre,
Labitur et labetur,"

could not but say a good thing occasionally. The postscript to his "Epistle to James Boswell, Esq.,' being a supposed conversation between Dr. Johnson and the author, contains a well-known sally:

"

P.P. "I have heard it whispered, Doctor, that, should you die before him, Mr. Boswell means to write your life."

Johnson. "Sir, he cannot mean me so irreparable an injury. Which of us shall die first, is only known to the great Disposer of events; but, were I sure that James Boswell would write my life, I do not know whether I would not anticipate the measure by taking his.”

Since Dryden we have had no political satirist comparable to Moore. In "The Fudge Family in Paris," the letters of Mr. Phelim Fudge to his employer, Lord Castlereagh, are an ironical picture of European society from the point of view of the Holy Alliance. "The Parody on a Celebrated Letter”—that addressed by the Prince Regent to the Duke of York in 1812 - is a piece of cutting satire, in which every line has its open or covert sting.

Among the many shorter poems which fall under the description of political satire, none has attained greater notoriety than "Lilliburlero," or better deserved it than "The Vicar of Bray." The doggerel stanzas of the

1 1 Apologetic Postscript to Ode upon Ode.

former were sung all over England about the time of the landing of William III., and are said to have contributed much to stir up the popular hatred against James. "The Vicar of Bray" is a witty narrative of the changes in political sentiment which a beneficed clergyman, whose fundamental principle it is to stick to his benefice, might be supposed to undergo between the reigns of Charles II. and George I. The first and the last stanzas are subjoined:

Pastoral Poetry: Spenser, Brown, Pope, Shenstone.

Of the pastoral poetry of Greece, such as we have it in the exquisite "Idyls" of Theocritus, our English specimens are but a weak and pale reflection. The true pastoral brings us to the sloping brow of the hill, while the goats are browsing below; and on a rustic seat, opposite a statue of Priapus, we see the herdsmen

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singing or piping, yet shunning to try their skill in the midday heats, because they fear to anger Pan, who then "rests, being a-weary, from his hunting." Even Virgil's "Eclogues," graceful and musical as they are, possess but a secondary excellence: they are merely imitations of Theocritus, and do not body forth the real rural life of Italy. The only English poetry which bears the true pastoral stamp is that of Burns and other Scottish writers, and for this reason: that, like the Greek pastoral, it is founded on reality; it springs out of the actual life and manner of thought of the Scottish peasant. If it is rough-hewn and harsh in comparison with its Southern prototype, that is but saying that the Scottish peasant, though not despicably endowed, is neither intellectually nor æsthetically the equal of the Greek.

The chief pastoral poems that we have are Spenser's "Shepherd's Kalendar," Drayton's "Eclogues,' Browne's "Britannia's Pastorals," and Pope's and Shenstone's" Pastorals," besides innumerable shorter pieces. It is scarcely worth while to make extracts. Browne's so-called pastorals ought rather to be classed as descriptive poems, since they are destitute of that dramatic character which the true pastoral (which is, in fact, a rudimentary drama) should always possess.

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"Britannia's Pastorals " are in two books, each containing five "" songs or cantos. A thread of narrative runs through them, but does not furnish much that is interesting, either in character or in incident. The conduct of the story of Marina and her lovers is far too discursive. Each song is introduced by an "argument," as in the "Faerie Queen;" and the coloring of the whole work is strongly Spenserian. But the digressions and intercalated discussions on all sorts of matters, chiefly however, amatory, make it very tedious reading. A true feeling for natural beauty, a special love for the scenery of his native Devon, and a corresponding power of rich and picturesque description, are Browne's chief merits.

1 Theocritus, Idyl I.

Pope, in the introduction to his "Pastorals," explained his conception of a pastoral poem, as of an ideal picture of the simplicity and virtue, the artless manners, fresh affections, and natural language of the golden age, apart alike from courtly refinements and realistic coarseness. In executing this conception he is very happy, especially in the third and fourth pastorals. Shenstone's "Pastoral Ballad " has some delicately turned phrases; we subjoin a stanza or two:

"When forced the fair nymph to forego,
What anguish I felt at my heart!

Yet I thought—but it might not be so —
'Twas with pain that she saw me depart.
She gazed, as I slowly withdrew,

My path I could hardly discern;

So sweetly she bade me adieu,

I thought that she bade me return."

The nymph proves faithless; and "disappointment is the burden of the concluding part or canto of the poem:

"Alas! from the day that we met,

What hope of an end to my woes?
When I cannot endure to forget

The glance that undid my repose.
Yet time may diminish the pain:

The flower, and the shrub, and the tree,
Which I reared for her pleasure in vain,
In time may have comfort for me."

Descriptive Poetry: "Polyolbion," " Cooper's Hill," "The Seasons."

This kind of poetry labors under the want of definite form and scope: it is accumulative, not organic; and consequently is avoided, or but seldom used, by the greater masters of the art. The most bulky specimen of descriptive verse that we possess is Drayton's "Polyolbion;" the most celebrated, Thomson's "Seasons."