out for celebration: the inventors of useful arts, the reformers of savage countries, the benefactors of mankind are extolled in verse, they are raised to the skies: and the poet, having praised them as the first of men whilst on earth, deifies them after death, and, conscious that they merit immortality, boldly bestows it, and assigns to them a rank and office in heaven appropriate to the character they maintained in life. Hence it is that the merits of a Bacchus, a Hercules, and numbers more, are amplified by the poet, till they become the attributes of their divinity; altars are raised, and victims immolated to their worship. These are the fanciful effects of poetry in its second stage: religion overheated turns into enthusiasm ; enthusiasm forces the imagination into all the visionary regions of fable, and idolatry takes possession of the whole Gentile world. The Egyptians, a mysterious, dogmatizing race, begin the work with. symbol and hieroglyphic; the Greeks, a vain ingenious people, invent a set of tales and fables for what they do not understand, embellish them with all the glittering ornaments of poetry, and spread the captivating delusion over all the world.

In the succeeding period we review the poet in full possession of this brilliant machinery, and with all Olympus at his command: surrounded by Apollo and the Muses, he commences every poem with an address to them for protection; he has a deity at his call for every operation of nature: if he would roll the thunder, Jupiter shakes Mount Ida to dignify his description; Neptune attends him in his car, if he would allay the ocean; if he would let loose the winds to raise it, Eolus unbars his cave; the spear of Mars and the ægis of Minerva arm him for the battle; the arrows of Apollo scatter pestilence through the air! Mercury flies upon the messages of Jupiter; Juno raves with jealousy, and Venus leads the Loves and Graces in her train. In this class, we contemplate Homer and his inferior brethren of the epic order; it is their province to form the warrior, instruct the politician, animate the patriot; they delineate the characters and manners; they charm us with their descriptions, surprise us with their incidents, interest us with their dialogue; they engage every passion in its turn, melt us to pity, rouse us to glory, strike us with terror, fire us with indignation; in a word, they prepare us for the drama, and the drama for us.

A new poet now comes upon the stage; he stands in person before us: he no longer appears as a blind and wandering bard, chanting his rhapsodies to a throng of villagers collected in a group about him, but erects a splendid theatre, gathers together a whole city as his audience, prepares a striking spectacle, provides a chorus of actors, brings music, dance, and dress to his aid, realizes the thunder, bursts open the tombs of the dead, calls forth their apparitions, descends to the very regions of the damned, and drags the Furies from their flames to present themselves personally to the terrified

spectators. Such are the powers of the drama; here the poet reigns and triumphs in his highest glory.

The fifth denomination gives us the lyric poet chanting his ode at the public games and festivals, crowned with olive and encompassed by all the wits and nobles of his age and country: here we contemplate Stersichorus, Alcæus, Pindar, Callistratus: sublime, abrupt, impetuous, they strike us with the shock of their electric genius; they dart from earth to heaven: there is no following them in their flights; we stand gazing with surprise; their boldness awes us, their brevity confounds us: their sudden transitions and ellipses escape our apprehension; we are charmed we know not why, we are pleased with being puzzled, and applaud although we cannot comprehend. In the lighter lyric we meet Anacreon, Sappho, and the votaries of Bacchus and Venus; in the grave, didactic, solemn class we have the venerable names of a Solon, a Tyrtæus, and those who may be styled the demagogues in poetry: Is liberty to be asserted, licentiousness to be repressed? Is the spirit of a nation to be roused? It is the poet, not the orator, must give the soul its energy and spring. Is Salamis to be recovered? It is the elegy of Solon must sound the march to its attack. Are the Lacedemonians to be awakened from their lethargy? It is Tyrtæus who must sing the war-song, and revive their languid courage.

Poetry next appears in its pastoral character: it affects the garb of shepherds and the language of the rustic; it represents to our view the rural landscape and the peaceful cottage. It records the labors, the amusements, the loves of the village nymphs and swains, and exhibits nature in its simplest state: it is no longer the harp or the lyre, but the pipe of the poet, which now invites our attention. Observer, No. 67.

ÆSCHYLUS AND SHAKSPEARE COMPARED.

When I see the names of these two great luminaries of the dramatic sphere, so distant in time but so nearly allied in genius, casually brought in contact by the nature of my subject, I cannot help pausing for a while in this place to indulge so interesting a contemplation, in which I find my mind balanced between two objects that seem to have equal claims upon me for my admiration. Eschylus is justly styled the father of tragedy, but this is not to be interpreted as if he was the inventor of it: Shakspeare with equal justice claims the same title, and his originality is qualified with the same exception. The Greek tragedy was not more rude and undigested when Eschylus brought it into shape, than the English tragedy was when Shakspeare began to write. If, therefore, it be granted that he had no aids from the Greek theatre, (and I think this is not likely to be disputed,) so far these great masters are upon equal ground. Eschylus was a warrior of high repute,

of a lofty, generous spirit, and deep as it should seem in the erudition of his times. In all these particulars he has great advantage over our countryman, who was humbly born, of the most menial occupation, and, as it is generally thought, unlearned. Eschylus had the whole epic of Homer in his hands, the Iliad, Odyssey, and that prolific source of dramatic fable, the Ilias Minor: he had also a great fabulous creation to resort to amongst his own divinities, characters ready defined, and an audience whose superstition was prepared for every thing he could offer. He had, therefore, a firmer and broader stage (if I may be allowed the expression) under his feet than Shakspeare had. His fables in general are Homeric, and yet it does not follow that we can pronounce for Shakspeare that he is more original in his plots, for I understand that late researches have traced him in all or nearly all. Both poets added so much machinery and invention of their own in the conduct of their fables, that whatever might have been the source, still their streams had little or no taste of the spring they flowed from. In point of character we have better grounds to decide; and yet it is but justice to observe that it is not fair to bring a mangled poet in comparison with one who is entire. In his divine personages, Eschylus has the field of heaven, and indeed of hell also, to himself; in his heroic and military characters, he has never been excelled: he had too good a model within his own bosom to fail of making those delineations natural. In his imaginary being, also, he will be found a respectable, though not an equal rival of our poet; but in the variety of character, in all the nicer touches of nature, in all the extravagancies of caprice and humor, from the boldest feature down to the minutest foible, Shakspeare stands alone. Such persons as he delineates never came into the contemplation of Eschylus as a poet; his tragedy has no dealing with them; the simplicity of the Greek fable, and the great portion of the drama filled up by the chorus, allow of little variety of character; and the most which can be said of Eschylus in this particular is, that he never offends against nature or propriety, whether his cast is in the terrible or pathetic, the elevated or the simple. His versification with the intermixture of lyric composition is more various than that of Shakspeare; both are lofty and sublime in the extreme, abundantly metaphorical, and sometimes extravagant.

Both were subject to be hurried on by an uncontrollable impulse, nor could nature alone suffice for either: Eschylus had an apt creation of imaginary beings at command—

He could call spirits from the vasty deep,

and they would come; Shakspeare, having no such creation in resource, boldly made one of his own. If schylus therefore was invincible, he owed it to his armor, and that, like the armor of

Eneas, was the work of the gods: but the unassisted invention of Shakspeare seized all and more than superstition supplied to Eschylus.

Observer, No. 69.

CHARACTER OF JOHNSON.

Alas! I am not fit to paint his character; nor is there need of it; etiam mortuu: loquitur; every man who can buy a book has bought a BOSWELL. Johnson is known to all the reading world. I also knew him well, respected him highly, loved him sincerely: it was never my chance to see him in those moments of moroseness and ill-humor which are imputed to him, perhaps with truth; for who would slander him? But I am not warranted by any experience of those humors, to speak of him otherwise than of a friend who always met me with kindness, and from whom I never separated without regret. When I sought his company he had no capricious excuses for withholding it, but lent himself to every invitation with cordiality, and brought good-humor with him, that gave life to the circle he was in.

He presented himself always in his fashion of apparel: a brown coat with metal buttons, black waistcoat, and worsted stockings, with a flowing bob-wig, was the style of his wardrobe; but they were in perfectly good trim, and with the ladies, whom he generally met, he had nothing of the slovenly philosopher about him. He fed heartily, but not voraciously, and was extremely courteous in his commendations of any dish that pleased his palate: he suffered his next neighbor to squeeze the China oranges into his wineglass, after dinner; which else, perchance, had gone aside and trickled into his shoes for the good man had neither straight sight nor steady nerves.

Who will say that Johnson would have been such a champion in literature such a front-rank soldier in the fields of fame-if he had not been pressed into the service, and driven on to glory with the bayonet of sharp necessity pointed at his back? If fortune had turned him into a field of clover, he would have lain down and rolled in it. The mere manual labor of writing would not have allowed his lassitude and love of ease to have taken the pen out of the inkhorn, unless the cravings of hunger had reminded him that he must fill the sheet before he saw the table-cloth. *

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Johnson's first style was naturally energetic, his middle style was turgid to a fault, his latter style was softened down and harmonized into periods more tuneful and more intelligible. His execution was rapid, yet his mind was not easily provoked into exertion: the variety we find in his writings was not the variety of choice arising

"He speaks even when dead."

from the impulse of his proper genius, but tasks imposed upon him by the dealers in ink, and contracts on his part submitted to in satisfaction of the pressing calls of hungry want; for, painful as it is to relate, I have heard that illustrious scholar assert (and he never varied from the truth of fact) that he subsisted himself for a considerable space of time upon the scanty pittance of four-pence halfpenny per day.

The expanse of matter which Johnson had found room for in his intellectual storehouse, the correctness with which he had assorted it, and the readiness with which he could turn to any article that he wanted to make present use of, were the properties in him which I contemplated with the most admiration. Some have called him a savage; they were only so far right in the resemblance, as that, like the savage, he never came into suspicious company without his spear in his hand, and his bow and quiver at his back. In conclusion, Johnson's era was not wanting in men to be distinguished for their talents; yet if one was to be selected out as the first great literary character of the time, I believe all voices would concur in naming him.

JAMES GRAHAME, 1765-1811.

JAMES GRAHAME, the author of the "Sabbath," was the son of a respectable attorney in Glasgow, and was born in that city on the 22d of April, 1765. He was educated at the excellent public schools of that city, and had a very early and strong desire to enter the clerical profession; but it was the long-cherished wish of his father that he should be bred to his own calling. Accordingly, our poet sacrificed his own wishes to those of his parent, and studied the law. Many irksome years the best years of his life-were wasted in this, to him, most uncongenial pursuit, and it was finally abandoned. For many years, however, he toiled on in it, and, from a sense of what he owed to his family, he gave to it all the attention of which a mind devoted to higher purposes was capable.

In 1804, he published anonymously his poem of "The Sabbath." He had kept from all his friends, and even from his wife, who was possessed of fine literary taste, all knowledge of what he had been engaged in, and laid a copy of his poem silently on his parlor table, as soon as it appeared. Mrs. Grahame was led by curiosity to examine it, and, while doing so, he was walking up and down the room, awaiting some remark from her. At length she burst into enthusiastic admiration of the performance, and, well knowing her husband's weak side, very naturally added-"Ah, James, if you could produce a poem like this!" Longer concealment was impossible; and Mrs. Grahame, justly proud of her husband's genius, no longer checked its bent.