We leave these simple facts to tell their own tale, and plead their own cause. They certainly are not of a nature either to provoke or to justify that opposition which appears to have been exerted against the society. Whether they ought to have an opposite effect must be left to the judgment of our readers.

ART. VIII.-Prospectus and Specimen of an intended National Work. By William and Robert Whistlecraft, of Stow Market, in Suffolk, Harness and Coliar-makers. Intended to comprise the most interesting Particulars relating to King Arthur and his Round Table. Second Edition. London, 1818.

EVERY accurate observer of the course of human affairs during the last twenty years must have been struck with the great changes which have taken place in the mode of conducting literary and military warfare, and with the opposite directions in which the current of revolution has flowed in these two departments of intellectual exertion. In the days of our fathers campaign often passed away after campaign without a single decisive event; it was an established maxim of the military art, that a general never fought but when he was quite at a loss what else to do; and the consequence was, that news-mongers and newspaper editors, deemed themselves not unfortunate, if a year of war furnished one tolerably bloody battle to gratify the idle curiosity of the one class, and fill the empty purses of the other. Our lot has been cast in a less sluggish age. We belong to a generation, which, turning a disdainful eye on all languid operations, carries on war with a spirit so truly warlike, that when recourse is once had to arms, battles are of monthly instead of annual recurrence, and that too, without any diminution, but rather with an increase of bloodshed and devastation in each. Gladly would we hail this alteration as a proof that, as the world advances in years additional vigour is infused into the nature of man, and that all which we have been taught concerning the perfectibility of our species is something more than a collection of unmeaning sounds: but, when we extend our view more widely, appearances meet our eye which speedily banish the pleasing delusion. Physiologists assure us, that the amount of vital energy in the animal frame is so limited, that one organ can never attain to a high degree of strength without impairing proportionally the force of some other part. So while the improvement of human society has been displaying itself in

the augmented rapidity and decisiveness of warlike operations, symptoms of increased tardiness and heaviness of movement may be discovered in the field of literary combat. The daily skirmishes between authors and critics, of which the newspapers were once the scene, are now nearly at an end; the great conflicts were wont to occur regularly once a month; at present three months' preparation is requisite; and if attacks are still made monthly, these are of less importance than they once were.

We are too deeply embued with the philosophical spirit of the age, not to maintain that this change in the tactics of the critical host must be regarded as an instance and an effect of that grand law of nature to which we have just alluded. At the same time, as we are aware that there are few results in the formation of which several circumstances do not co-operate, the care of our reputation for sagacity and candour makes it adviscable for us to admit, that there are other causes, besides the one already mentioned, which have had a share in producing the slowness that at present distinguishes the marching pace of reviewers. Among these causes we would class what is generally thought to be a great improvement on the art itself. It is now quite contrary to rule for a critic to proceed immediately up to the work which it is his duty to attack. He must break ground at a cautious distance; he must rear formidable batteries of general principles, and maintain a long, a loud, and a stunning cannonade of general reasonings, before he engages in closer combat with the foe. He is thus compelled to drag after him a quantity of ammunition and heavy artillery, which cannot fail to encumber his motions. Whether in this alteration the art of critical warfare has undergone an improvement, or merely an alteration, we must presume to doubt. The patrons of the change tell us, that it enables periodical publications to convey much more complete information than when they confined themselves to the proper task of criticism, and to insinuate valuable principles into minds, whose appetite for knowledge is too weak to lead them to peruse any thing more solid than the occasional productions of the day. It may be doubted (for we leave our military metaphor behind us, partly because it is unwilling to continue any longer in our service, and partly because, when we reason, military personages should be kept at a distance) whether books, rather than topics, are not the proper subjects of criticism; whether reviews are not generally read at hours, and in a frame of mind, in which we are too little inclined to mental exertion to make any addition to our stores of knowledge; and whether they, whose powers of thought are so feeble, or whose relish for truth is so faint, that they either are not able or are never tempted to seek instruction in the great

works of human intellect, are likely to gain any thing by the perusal of arguments, which thus take them by surprise in the pages of the Reviewer; and are too fugitive to be distinctly impresed. But the weighty objection to the prevailing fashion of criticism, is the trouble which it occasions to the critic; especially when he has a book before him, as we now have, on such a subject and in such a style, as to afford no opportunity of expatiating in those general reasonings to which our fraternity is become so partial. Such a situation is always vexatious and perplexing in the extreme; but it is doubly mortifying to us at present, because it is one in which, when we took up Messrs. Whistlecrafts' book, we had no suspicion of being placed. "Prospectus and Specimen of an intended National Work" was a title so imposing, that it brought into our minds the "exegi monumentum ære perennius" of Horace, with a multitude of kindred associations, and suggested the most grave and interesting topics of discussion. We besides anticipated, with perhaps no slight degree of self-applause, the public good of which we might be the source, by throwing out a few hints for improving the splendour and magnificence of the edifice. And if the national monument, when completed with all the amendments which we meant to propose, should be deemed worthy of general admiration, why might not this na tional work be adopted as a national memorial of the triumphant issue of the late war? What though the poem might have been originally constructed without any such view? Has not the victory of Waterloo been commemorated by a bridge begun before it was won, without any compassion for the perplexity, which hundreds and thousands of years hence may be thus occasioned to chronologers and antiquaries, who, meeting with a battle fought in one year, and the trophy to perpetuate the remembrance of it founded long before, to reconcile the apparent contradiction will probably be forced to suppose, that, in the beginning of the nineteenth century, there presided in the councils of Britain, a prescient spirit, which, at the distance of years, could with unerring certainty foresee the issue of the most dubious conflicts? In contemplating so lofty a destination for the national work of Messrs. Whistlecraft, our fancy was not at all checked by the inglorious designation of harness and collar makers. We reflected, that the modesty of genius had, probably, sought concealment under a lowly garb; and even if the authors should in reality follow the humble occupation to which they lay claim, has not Mr. Cobbett again and again demonstrated, that it is by the hands and fingers of artisans and labourers alone, that every thing valuable is produced?

The wide field of discussion, which these views opened to us,

gradually closed, as we advanced in the perusal of the prospectus and specimen. When we reached the end, we were convinced that the national work of Messrs. Whistlecraft was neither meant nor fitted for the end to which we fondly wished to adapt it. The speculations, in which we were ready to indulge, were therefore useless; and, what was still more mortifying, though we could tell what the prospectus did not mean, it was no easy matter to say what it did mean. The two brothers have framed their cipher so artfully, that it may be read by three or four keys; and if any presumptuous critic, obtaining one of these, should attempt to unfold the secrets of the puzzle, they can immediately spring forward with another, and expose his mistake. We were

for some time at a loss which of the keys to choose; and we had almost resolved to consider the work as a code of political wisdom, when we were deterred by the very delicate discussions in which we found ourselves entangled, in interpreting some of the passages where allusions are made to recent events:

"Before the feast was ended, a report

Fill'd every soul with horror and dismay;
Some ladies on their journey to the court
Had been surpris'd, and were convey'd away,
By the aboriginal giants, to their fort,-

An unknown fort,-for government, they say,
Had ascertain'd its actual existence,

But knew not its direction, nor its distance."

With the Reports of Secret Committees still wet from the press, would it not have been rank imprudence to venture on a commentary upon the last three lines? We therefore resolved to walk in a less thorny track than that of politics; and accordingly we announce to our readers, that the work of Messrs. Whistlecraft ought to be considered as a choice collection of the peculiar beauties of the present age of English poetry, from which young gentlemen will derive no less advantage in their attempts to acquire a truly modern and fashionable poetical taste, than from their Gradus ad Parnassum in the composition of nonsense Latin

verses.

Recollecting the old saying, that example is better than precept, we shall not lay down any general canons of criticism which might be deduced from the verses of these Suffolk bards; we shall rather sketch the outline of the structure of the work, and quote a few of the most brilliant passages, that our readers may enjoy the fragrance while we explore the recesses of the flowers. The national work is divided, according to the most approved fashion, into cantos; and is preceded by what has hitherto had no appropriate name in poetry, though in prose it is usually called a preface, or an introduction, or an advertise

ment to the reader. Messrs. Whistlecraft denominate it a proem; and we think the poetical nomenclature is indebted to them for the appellation. The office of the proem is to serve as a kind of lumber-room for things that have no connexion with the subject of the work, or with one another, but which can, without much difficulty, be done into rhyme. The genius of the Whistlecraft family is very conspicuous in the execution of this part of their

task.

"I've often wish'd that I could write a book,

Such as all English people might peruse;

I never should regret the pains it took,

That's just the sort of fame that I should choose;
To sail about the world like Captain Cook,

I'd sling a cot up for my favourite muse,

And we'd take verses out to Demerara,
To New South Wales, and up to Niagara.
"Poets consume exciseable commodities,

They raise the nation's spirit when victorious,
They drive an export trade in whims and oddities,
Making our commerce and revenue glorious;
As an industrious and pains-taking body 'tis
That poets should be reckoned meritorious ;
And, therefore, I submissively propose

To erect one board for verse, and one for prose.

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*

*

*

Each board to have twelve members, with a seat

To bring them in, per annum, five hundred neat."

We know not which excellence is most conspicuous in this passage; the poetical art with which it is composed, or the skill with which that art is concealed. Horace long ago enacted, as a fundamental law of verse, that poetry should begin with smoke and end with fire, rather than begin with fire and end in smoke. In conformity with this ancient maxim, the commencement of our national work is studiously depressed, and mean almost to slovenliness; here are no coruscations to dazzle us; all is simple and unassuming; the commonest things are expressed in the commonest words; and if the poet should not afterwards soar to the loftiest heights of Parnassus, he at least has the comfortable assurance of being in no danger of tumbling lower. The versification has a merit highly prized of late days. We do not allude to the double rhymes at the end of the first stanza, nor to the rich treble rhymes in the second; but to the pleasing harshness with which their melody is diversified, and which, in modern criticism, is held to add as great a charm to the graceful flow of verse, as a rivulet gains, when, from a smooth, still, course it begins to glide with a rippling lively current over a pebbly bed. This is a secret