4. WILLIAM COLLINS (1721-1759) was born at Chichester, and educated at Winchester and Oxford. He left the University with a reputation for "ability and indolence." His ambition was to be a literary man; and he went to London "with many projects in his head, and little money in his pocket." In 1747 he published his Odes; but no one bought, or read, or noticed them. He called in the edition, burnt every copy, and left London for Germany, where his uncle was serving with his regiment. He died insane. Mr. Hazlitt says: "He might have done the greatest things. The germ is there." He is generally ranked with the great lyric writers in English literature-Ben Jonson, Milton, and Gray. Mr. Hazlitt thinks his Ode on the Poetical Character the best of all his writings. His ode on The Passions is full of picturesque writing; but the allegory seems too persistent and artificial. The lines on Hope are frequently quoted: But thou,' O Hope! with eyes so fair, What was thy delighted measure? 2 A soft responsive voice was heard at every close; And Hope enchanted smiled, and waved her golden hair. Perhaps, however, his most characteristic poem is a short Ode written in the year 1746. It is full of a soft melancholy rhythm which is peculiar to this poet. ODE. How sleep the brave who sink to rest 5. WILLIAM SHENSTONE (1714-1763) is the author of two poems that were once famous, and which even now are sometimes read. They are The Schoolmistress, and The Pastoral Ballad. The Schoolmistress is written in the Spenserian stanza, and in the Spenserian style. In every village marked with little spire, Embowered in trees, and hardly known to fame, For unkempt hair, or task unconned, are sorely shent. The Pastoral Ballad is remarkable as the longest poem in the English language that is written in the anapæstic measure. Ye shepherds, so cheer | ful and gay | Whose flocks | never care | lessly roam | The first foot is usually an iambus; and, as both the iambus and the anapæst belong to the same system (having the accented syllable last), this is quite admissible. There is here and there a fine delicacy of touch, and that ease which comes from long practice, visible in the verses. The "pastoralism" is absurd, and of the mock-melting kind; but the feeling of the lines is often sweet and true. Thus : 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. But the sentiment becomes ridiculous when the 66 deserted swain" utters his complaint in the following unnaturally natural style: Ye shepherds, give ear to my lay, And take no more heed of my sheep: 6. In the midst of the highly conventional and artificial kinds of poetry which were cultivated in the last half of the eighteenth century, one seed was planted which was to grow splendid fruit in the nineteenth. This was the Reliques of English Poetry (1765)—a book which consisted chiefly of a collection of old ballads, and which led back the poetical feeling of England to the fresher sources of inspiration which lay behind the poetical vocabulary of the time. Poetry had dwindled into mere rhetoric, and from rhetoric into commonplace. "Little by little," says Mrs. Browning, "by slow and desolate degrees, thought had perished out of the way of the appointed and most beaten rhythm; and we had the beaten rhythm, without the living footstep-we had the monotony of the military movement, without the heroic impulse." The Reliques were collected by THOMAS PERCY (1729-1811), Bishop of Dromore. Burns drew his inspiration from the old songs of his native country; and the publication of the SCOTTISH MINSTRELSY by Sir W. Scott, in 1802, did much also to strip off "the conventionalities of phrase and rhythm." EXERCISES TO CHAPTER XX. Ex. 1. Prepare the passage from Gray with the following notes:1. Far from the warmer sun (of Italy and Greece), and from the zephyr ("summer gale ") of these countries. 2. Thy; he is addressing England ("Albion "). 3. Shakspeare. Darling is a double diminutive of dear, by the addition of el and ing. 4. What time and at that time—a Latin idiom. 5. Nature. 6. Pencil-in the sense of brush. 7. Clear, as opposed to muddy. 8. In spring, when the year is at its best. 9. An allusion to the scene in the Merchant of Venice, when Bassanio opens the right casket, and Portia exclaims: How all the other passions fleet to air, etc. 10. Probably an allusion to the play of Macbeth. 11. Perhaps Hamlet is the play of which Gray was thinking. 12. Romeo and Juliet probably. 13. Milton. 14. Extasy (now generally written ecstasy) is a Greek word=standing out (of one's self). 15. This is the phrase of the Latin poet Lucretiusflammantia mania mundi (the flaming walls of the world). 16. We should now say space and time. The difference between place and space is that place is determined or defined space; while space is indeterminate and infinite place. 17. So Milton Dark with excessive bright thy skirts appear! 18. But it was Milton's political and not his poetical labours that brought on his blindness. Ex. 2. Mr. Palgrave says: "This ode-The Bard-is founded on a fable that Edward I., after conquering Wales, put the native poets to death. After lamenting his comrades, the bard prophesies the fate of Edward II. and the conquests of Edward III.: his death and that of the Black Prince: of Richard II., with the wars of York and Lancaster: the murder of Henry VI., and of Edward V. and his brother. He turns to the glory and prosperity following the accession of the Tudors, through Elizabeth's reign; and concludes with a vision of the poetry of Shakspeare and Milton." Write out the above in columns, and place opposite each event the stanza in which it is alluded to. Ex. 3. Write an analysis-similar to the above-of Gray's ode on the Progress of Poesy. Ex. 4. Prepare the two passages from Collins with the following notes: 1. The passion described in the stanza before this was despair. With woful measures wan Despair,- = 2. Measure = tune or air. The verse here breaks into the gayer and sprightlier trochaic. 3. Still was generally used in the poetry of the eighteenth century as equivalent to ever or always. 4. Bade hail=saluted. The scenes at distance correspond with the feelings of hope, which looks forward to a more or less distant time. 5. Theme subject set (a Greek word). 6. It was her own voice; but writers of this period thought they gained something by using the indefinite article a in a passage like this instead of her. 7. All belongs to the noun wishes. 8. Hallow is the verb from holy. A halwe in Chaucer's time meant a saint (from Latin sanctus, holy—through the French). Halwe became hallow; and we still have hallow in the sense of saint in the name of All Hallows' Day. 9. Dirge from the Latin dirige, which is the beginning of a psalm (v. 8) that used to be read at funeralsDirige, Dominus meus = Lead me, O Lord. 10. Such personifications are very common-too common-in the eighteenth century. Ex. 5. Compare Collins's description of Hope, with the following from Spenser: With him went Hope in rank, a handsome maid, In silken samite she was light arrayed, [Points of comparison: 1. Personal appearance. 2. Dress. 3. What she does. 4. Character. 5. Agreement with the common ideas regarding Hope.] Ex. 6. Write down the archaisms in form and in words which occur in the stanza from Shenstone's Schoolmistress on p. 360. 1. CHAPTER XXI. BURKE, GIBBON AND OTHERS. DMUND BURKE (1729-1797) was born in Dublin, where his father was an attorney in good practice. His father was a Protestant; his mother a Roman Catholic; his uncles, with whom he spent several of his earlier years, were Catholics also; and his schoolmaster was a Quaker. Experience thus gave him the best lessons in what was then the new virtue of "toleration." He was a student of Trinity College, Dublin, and in 1747 was entered of the Middle Temple. But neither at college nor in London did he give himself to regular study; miscellaneous reading -especially poetry-filled his time and thoughts. 2. In 1761 he was Private Secretary to the Secretary for Ireland; and in 1765, he obtained the higher appointment of Secretary to the Prime Minister, Lord Rockingham, who was his friend through life. In 1766 he entered Parliament as member for Wendover. In the famous dispute with the American Colonies, which ended in the separation from us of the "United States," he took the side of the colonists, and advocated their cause with eloquence that has never had a parallel. He sat in Parliament for eight-and-twenty years. The event which is perhaps the most memorable one in his life, is his conduct of the impeachment of Warren Hastings. The trial began in 1788 and ended in 1794; but judgment was not delivered till 1796. Burke's opening speech lasted four days; and his reply nine. Macaulay, who regards Burke as his model of style, says of this oration "The energy and pathos of the great orator extorted expressions of unwonted admiration from the stern and hostile chancellor, and, for a moment, seemed to pierce even the resolute heart of the defendant. The ladies in the galleries, unaccustomed to such displays of eloquence, excited by the solemnity of the occasion, |