to the lyrical character in the face of educated nations. In this particular, as in most others, what they want in the integrity of their assumption, they make up in swagger and impudence. To believe themselves, they are the finest lyrical poets in the whole world; but with two or three exceptions, there has not been a lyrical poet of mark since the Saxon Heptarchy, nor before. Having no lyrical poetry of their own, they have imported such as their scanty learning has enabled them to get from other countries. But, alas! how does the lyric muse lose herself amidst the damps and fogs of uncongenial England! The lyrical poetry of all other countries is distinguished by particular characteristics, by its forms, coloring, and temperament. There is nothing of this kind in English lyrical poetry; it takes all forms and colors. It is national only in one sense, it never fails, opportunity serving, to hymn the praise of “Britannia's happy isle, Blessed by a patriot monarch's smile.” Upon this point all the lyrists are unanimous. The want of historical elements is made up by the intensity of the glorification. The great topics are British liberty, British loyalty, British supremacy over the sea and the East Indians. More unfortunate topics could not have been hit upon. To speak of British liberty, in the face of the crushed descendants of the Saxon savages; of British loyalty, with two millions of Chartists ready to rise in arms, with all Wales in insurrection, with the starving hordes of Ireland on the eve of rebellion; to boast of British naval supremacy, with the history of Dutch and American triumphs staring at them in the annals of the world; is an absurdity of which nothing but the dull arrogance of the Englishman is capable. As to the East Indians, nothing can exceed the interest these oriental lyrists take in their picturesque heads and flowing limbs, — except the interest they take in their lacks of rupees and their lands. It is quite impossible to account for the incredible folly which tempts them to indulge in such themes, unless we refer it to the same infatuation which makes them boast of their morality, in the face of their filthy newspaper and weekly press, and the disgusting debaucheries of their priests and nobles, and to plume themselves upon their honesty, in the teeth of a government which has loaded the country with a debt it never dreams of paying, and despite a nine teen years' suspension of cash payments by the Bank of England, still fresh in the memory of the present generation. Gray was a meritorious imitator of the ancients; he explored industriously all the mines of the lyric poetry of Greece and Rome; he is entitled to the praise of a skilful stringer together of foreign gems; but he is no English lyrical poet. Cowley's metaphysical conceits were mostly stolen from the Italian. Dryden, Pope, and Addison wrote a few pieces of lyrical jingle, to be set to music on special occasions. Coleridge stole his lyrical poems, as well as his pretended philosophy, from the Germans. Campbell is a Scotchman, and so was Burns. Tom Moore is a licentious Irishman. The only representative, therefore, of English lyrical poetry is Henry James Pye, Esq., poet-laureate of George the Third. On account of his preeminence among the poets of his day, he was appointed to fill the place once occupied by the ponderous Ben Jonson; and his new year's and birthday odes, composed in honor of that heroic and museinspiring Dutchman, George the Third, present the lyrical genius of England in a favorable light. They produced an immense excitement in their time, and continue to be read with unabated enthusiasm by the lovers of that highly popular work, the " Annual Register." That Americans may see what trash satisfies the coarse taste of the English, we quote two or three passages. "O'er the vexed bosom of the deep, When rushing wild with frantic haste, The surface of the watery waste; Anxious he throws the inquiring eye, If haply through the gloom that round him lowers Whose patriot zeal, whose bold emprise, She bends from scenes of blood the averted eye, And courts the smiles of peace 'mid shouts of victory.” The following stanzas, full of sound and fury, were sung on his Majesty's birthday. "Triumphant o'er the blue domain Of hoary Ocean's briny reign, Or on the fragile bark adventure o'er, Tempt her tempestuous seas, and scale her rocky shore? Should the dim mist, or midnight shade, Her laurelled brow she ne'er will veil, Or shun the shock of fight, though numerous hosts assail."+ We rather think this is enough. If the reader desires. more of this delectable poetry, we refer him to the volumes of the Annual Register," about the beginning of the present century. In the words of a brother poet, "Here 't was thou mad'st the bells of fancy chime, * Annual Register, Vol. XXXIX., p. 442. ↑ Ibid, Vol. XL, p. 444. If our readers are surprised at the tone and temper of this article, so unlike any thing which has hitherto appeared in the pages of this journal, we commend them to an attentive perusal of the paper from the "Foreign Quarterly Review," the title of which we have placed at the head of our remarks; and "we conclude by saying," in the words of another of our respected English contemporaries, "that we have no national prejudices ourselves, nor any wish to foster them in others." ART. II.- Speeches and Forensic Arguments. By DANIEL WEBSTER. Boston: Tappan and Dennet, 1830-1843. 3 vols. 8vo. THE verbal honors of literature in this country are lavished with a free hand. The mind of the nation is held responsible for all the mediocrity which rushes into print. Every thin poetaster, who wails or warbles in a sentimental magazine, is dignified with the title of an American author, and is duly paraded in biographical dictionaries and "specimens" of native poets. Literary reputations are manufactured for the smallest consideration, and in the easiest of all methods. A clique of sentimentalists, for example, find a young dyspeptic poet, and think they see in his murmurings a mirror which reflects the "mysteries" of our nature. Two or three excitable patriots are in ecstasies at discovering a national writer, when they bring forward some scribbler who repeats the truisms of our politics, or echoes the slang of our elections. These fooleries, it must be admitted, are not peculiar to this country. They are now practised in most civilized communities. In England, a poem by Mr. Robert Montgomery passed through eleven editions, attaining a greater circulation in a year or two, than the writings of Words worth had obtained in twenty. The art of puffing, an art which has succeeded in consummating the divorce between words and ideas, is the method employed on both sides of the Atlantic for effecting this exaltation of mediocrity. For our own part, we deny that the swarm of writers, to whom we have adverted, are to be considered as the representatives of the national mind, or that their productions are to be deemed a permanent portion of our national literature. A great portion of the intellectual and moral energy of the nation is engaged in active life. Those who most clearly reflect the spirit of our institutions are those who are not writers by profession. If we were to make a list of American authors, a list which should comprehend only such as were animated by an American spirit, we should pass over the contributors to the magazines, and the select men who lead representative assemblies or contend for vast schemes of reform. We should attempt to find those who were engaged in some great practical work, who were applying large powers and attainments to the exigencies of the times, and who were stirred by noble impulses, and laboring to compass great ends. The thoughts and feelings, which spring warm from the hearts and minds of such men in such positions, would be likely to possess a grandeur and elevation before which the mere trifling of amateurs in letters would be humbled and abased. Believing thus, that our national literature is to be found in the records of our greatest minds, and is not confined to the poems, novels, and essays which may be produced by Americans, we have been surprised that the name of Daniel Webster is not placed high among American authors. Men in every way inferior to him in mental power have obtained a wide reputation for writing works, in every way inferior to those spoken by him. It cannot be, that a generation like ours, continually boasting that it is not misled by forms, should think that thought changes its character, when it is published from the mouth instead of the press. Still, it is true, that a man who has acquired fame as an orator and statesman is rarely considered, even by his own partisans, in the light of an author. He is responsible for no book." The records of what he has said and done, though perhaps constantly studied by contemporaries, are not generally_regarded as part and parcel of the national literature. The fame of the man of action overshadows that of the author. We are so accustomed to consider him as a speaker, that we are somewhat blind to the great literary merit of his speeches. The celebrated argument in reply to Hayne, for instance, was intended by the statesman as a defence of his |