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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 schylus 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 Eschylus 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 mortuus loquitur;1 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.

"The Sabbath" was warmly received throughout Scotland. It came from the heart; and it spoke to the heart of the nation. Grahame's vocation was now confirmed; and, in the following two years, during the long recess of the Scottish courts, he retired with his family to a cottage at Kirkhill, on the classic banks of the Esk, and gave himself up to

"Calm contemplation and poetic ease."

He now determined to abandon the law, and zealously prepared himself for the ministry. This had been his early, his constant wish. His appearance, voice, manner, as well as his talents and his piety, were all in keeping with that calling. He was ordained in 1809, and soon after settled with his family in Shipton, in Gloucestershire. This year he published his "British Georgies," a didactic agricultural poem. His health had long been delicate, and he was induced, in 1811, to go to Edinburgh for a change of air and for medical advice. But it was apparent to all that his days on earth could not be long. He had a natural desire of breathing his last in his own native city, and Mrs. Grahame set out with him, on the 11th of September, for Glasgow. He was barely able to reach the place, and died there on the 14th of September, 1811, in the forty-seventh year of his age, most sincerely and deeply lamented by a large circle of friends.2

Of the character of Grahame's poetry, there is now scarcely but one opinion. Its great charms are, its elevated moral tone, and its easy, simple, and unaffected description. "His 'Sabbath' will always hold its place among those poems which are, and deserve to be, in the hands of the people." He exhibits great tenderness of sentiment, which runs through all his writings, and sometimes deepens into true pathos. "We do not know any poetry, indeed, that lets us in so directly to the heart of the writer, and produces so full and pleasing a conviction that it is dictated by the genuine feelings which it aims at communicating to the reader. If there be less fire and elevation than in the strains of some of his contemporaries, there is more truth and tenderness than is commonly found along with those qualities."4

SABBATH MORNING.

How still the morning of the hallow'd day!
Mute is the voice of rural labor, hush'd
The ploughboy's whistle and the milkmaid's song.
The scythe lies glittering in the dewy wreath
Of tedded grass, mingled with fading flowers
That yester-morn bloom'd waving in the breeze.
Sounds the most faint attract the ear-the hum
Of early bee, the trickling of the dew,

The distant bleating midway up the hill.
Calmness seems throned on yon unmoving cloud.

But,

Notwithstanding a rather severe criticism in the "Edinburgh Review," v. 437. subsequently, in reviewing the author's "Georgics," the same Review made amends for its former severity.-See xvi. 213.

Professor Wilson has written some beautiful lines to his memory, a portion of which will

be found under the author's name.

Quarterly Review," iii. 457. "Edinburgh Review," xvi. 216.

To him who wanders o'er the upland leas,

The blackbird's note comes mellower from the dale;
And sweeter from the sky the gladsome lark
Warbles his heaven-tuned song; the lulling brook
Murmurs more gently down the deep-sunk glen;
While from yon lowly roof, whose curling smoke
O'ermounts the mist, is heard at intervals
The voice of psalms, the simple song of praise.
With dove-like wings Peace o'er yon village broods;
The dizzying mill-wheel rests; the anvil's din
Hath ceased; all, all around is quietness.
Less fearful on this day, the limping hare

Stops, and looks back, and stops, and looks on man,
Her deadliest foe. The toil-worn horse, set free,
Unheedful of the pasture, roams at large;
And, as his stiff unwieldy bulk he rolls,
His iron-arm'd hoofs gleam in the morning ray.
But chiefly man the day of rest enjoys.

Hail, Sabbath! thee I hail, the poor man's day!
On other days, the man of toil is doom'd

To eat his joyless bread lonely, the ground

Both seat and board, screen'd from the winter's cold
And summer's heat by neighboring hedge or tree;
But on this day, embosom'd in his home,

He shares the frugal meal with those he loves;
With those he loves he shares the heartfelt joy
Of giving thanks to God-not thanks of form,
A word and a grimace, but reverently,
With cover'd face and upward earnest eye.
Hail, Sabbath! thee I hail, the poor man's day!
The pale mechanic now has leave to breathe
The morning air pure from the city's smoke;
While wandering slowly up the river-side,
He meditates on Him whose power he marks
In each green tree that proudly spreads the bough,
As in the tiny dew-bent flowers that bloom
Around the roots; and while he thus surveys

With elevated joy each rural charm,

He hopes (yet fears presumption in the hope)
To reach those realms where Sabbath never ends.

A SUMMER SABBATH WALK.1

Delightful is this loneliness; it calms

My heart: pleasant the cool beneath these elms
That throw across the stream a moveless shade.
Here Nature in her midnoon whisper speaks;

How peaceful every sound!-the ring-dove's plaint,
Moan'd from the forest's gloomiest retreat,

While every other woodland lay is mute,

"The genius of Grahame is characterized by that cheerfulness which seeks and sees beauty in all the aspects of creation, and finds delight in whatever is high, holy, pure, and of good report.' This must be felt by every one capable of dissociating fanaticism from true religion; and of believing that Christianity and gloom. instead of being synonymous terms, are utterly irreconcilable and separated."-MOIR.

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