A N

E S SAY

ON THE APPLICATION OF

NATURAL HISTORY

то

POETRY.

N

O literary complaint is more frequent and general than

that of the infipidity of

Modern Poetry. While the votary of science is continually gratified with new objects opening to his view, the lover

of poetry is wearied and disgusted with a perpetual repetition of the fame images, clad in almoft the fame language. This is ufually attributed to a real deficiency of poetical genius in the prefent age; and fuch caufes are affigned for it as would leave us little room to hope, for any favourable change. But this folution, as it is invidious in its application, and difcouraging in its effects, is furely alfo contradictory to that just relifh for the beauties of poetry, that taste for found and manly criticifin, and, that improvement in the other elegant, arts, which must be allowed to characterife our own times. The state in which poetry has been tranfmitted to us will probably afford a truer, as well as a more favourable explanation of the

fact.

fact. It comes to us, worn down, enfeebled, and fettered.

THE Epopea, circumfcribed as it perhaps neceffarily is within very narrow limits, fcarcely offers to the most fertile invention a fubject at the fame time original and proper. Tragedy, exhausted by the infinite number of its productions, is nearly reduced to the fame condition. The artificial conftruction of the Ode almost inevitably throws its composer into unmeaning imitation. Elegy, converfant with a confined, and almoft uniform train of emotions, cannot but frequently become languid and feeble. Satire, indeed, is still fufficiently vigorous and prolific; but its offspring is little fuited to please a mind

B 2

ge

a mind fenfible to the charms of It would feem, then,

nuine poetry: that novelty was the prefent requifite, more, perhaps, than genius: it is therefore of importance to enquire what fource is capable of affording it.

02 THAT novelty fhould have been the leaft fought for in that very walk which might be expected to yield it in the greatest abundance, will, doubtless, appear extraordinary. Yet, if it be admit ted that the grand and beautiful objects which nature every where profufely throws around us, are the most obvious store of new materials to the poet, it must alfo be confeffed that it is the store which of all others he has the most sparingly touched. An ingenious critic, Mr.

Warton,

Warton, has remarked that " every painter of rural beauty fince the time of Theocritus (except Thomfon) has copied his images from him, without ever looking abroad into the face of nature themselves.*”. If this be not strictly juft, it is at least certain that fupineness and fervile imitation have prevailed to a greater degree in the defcription of nature, than in any other part of poetry.

The effect of this has been, that defcriptive poetry has degenerated into a kind of phraseology, confifting of combinations of words which have been fo long coupled together, that, like the hero and his epithet in Homer, they are become infeparable companions. It is amufing, under fome of the most