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is always confidered as the great criterion of refinement, as the French are to the Esquimaux Indians. Indeed, one cannot help-fmiling when the declamations of writers, and of the clergy in particular, against the luxury and refinement of their own several ages, are confidered. In the old English days, when the drawing-rooms of palaces were carpeted with clean straw, and maids of honour breakfafted on roast beef, the pulpits fhook with virulent invectives against pride of furniture, and delicacy of food. What more can be faid now, when forefts are robbed of their music for the fake of the rumps of the nightingales? What more will be faid, four centuries after this, when, I will venture to prophefy, luxury and refinement will be in such a state as justly to reflect upon this age the appellation of barbarous ?

THESE remarks are only made with a view to fhew the neceffity of defining what is meant by barbaric poetry before the fubject is further opened. To the poetry of the modern French, just as the above obfervations may be, we should no more think of giving the epithet of barbarous, than to that of the ancient Greeks or Romans.

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As in youth most people have felt an incli nation to write verfes, tho in a more mature age they have loft that defire; fo it is in the youth of fociety, if I may fo express myself, that poetry has moft flourished. Now this youth of fociety is commonly, like that of man, loft in tempeftuous paffions, which call forth extraordinary exertions of mind. Such exertions form the very life and foul of poetry. Homer was a witness of such emotions as arife in a barbarous ftate of fociety, ere he recorded them in the Iliad. Violent actions, and fudden calamities of all kinds, are the certain concomitants of uncivilized life: to these we owe a poetry warm, rapid, and impetuous, that, like a large river fwelling from a bleak mountain, carries the reader along in the barge of fancy, now by vales fragrant with wild flowers, now thro woods refounding with untaught melody, but most generally thro deferts replete with romantic and with dreadful profpects.

SOCIETY always paffes through three different ftages ere it arrives at refinement. The first is the mere favage ftate, during which the lord of the world is almoft on a level with the

brutes

brutes themselves: living like them in caves, or wretched huts, in the woods that faw him born, and subsisting on wild fruits, and fuch prey as his rude invention can feize by force or guile. Climate has fuch power over human happiness as fometimes to fix Society in this state without any hope of further progrefs: as for instance, in Lapland. The poetry of fuch a country must of course be always barbaric. The second stage is that of paftoral life. The third may be confidered as a kind of middle ftate between barbarifm and civilization; and is that in which the fhepherds of the fecond state begin to confederate together, for defence of themselves and their flocks, against such of their neighbours as are yet in the first condition, and who, ignorant of property, would admit of no law but force. For that effect towns are built, and, by the collifion of different minds, the arts and sciences begin to be ftruck out, which are in time to spread the light of refinement thro the community.

ALL poetry compofed in these different per riods of fociety may with propriety be termed barbaric; but more particulary that of the first

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and fecond. The Iliad, if not written during the third, is yet a living picture of its manners: and it is to this, as much as to any other circumstance, that it owes its wonderful fuperiority. For no ftate of fociety can be fo interefting as that in which the fun of science is beginning to rife, and discover prospects full of fplendor and novelty; and in which the mind, vegetating strongly, begins from a vigorous ftem to difplay the buds of elegance.

As in this stage of fociety poetry may be carried to the highest perfection, so the two firft do not impede its real influence: for what it wants in art, in elegance, in harmony, is fully compensated by a wild force of nature, by a fimplicity, by a pathos to which every heart is in unifon; attributes no lefs declarative of the power of poetry than the former. Love, a paffion of every age and climate, imparts his tenderness even to the favage breast amid the fnows of Lapland, as we may perceive from the fongs preferved by Scheffer, which you fo much admire; and which may be compared to the roses that grow wild, as Mr. Maupertuis informs us, on the banks of the rivers and lakes of that dreary country.

FROM

FROM what I have written, you will no doubt fee that I am ftill the fame fceptic in most matters that you left me; thinking always, with Sir Roger de Coverley, that "much may be faid on both fides:" fo that, if you wish to have an opinion on any subject, you will be much disappointed if you apply to me; but, if you defire to hear doubts instead of decifions, I may perhaps furnish you with a fufficiency.

As I know your fondness for such pieces of rude poetry as have intrinfic merit, I fubjoin two that may not perhaps have lain in your way.

THE first is extracted from a History of the Canary Islands by Captain Glas; and is one of the most exquifite pieces of elegiac poetry which I have ever met with. In the year 1418, you must know, Guillen Peraza, an enterprizing youth, was Governor of the Canary Islands; but attempting to reduce Palma, one of them, to the power of Spain, he was there killed, The following verfes were made on that occafion, and, as our author informs us, are re

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