hes of critical study; on history, chronology, and
divinity. He had begun three tragedies, on Boadicea, Ines de Castro, and
a fictitious story; several poems in Greek, and a translation of Samson
Agonistes. The selection which Mr. Southey has made, consists of copious
extracts from his letters, poems, and essays.

Mr. Southey has truly said of him, that what he is most remarkable for
is _his uniform good sense_. To Chatterton, with whom this zealous
friend and biographer has mentioned him, he is not to be compared.
Chatterton has the force of a young poetical Titan, who threatens to
take Parnassus by storm. White is a boy differing from others more in
aptitude to follow than in ability to lead. The one is complete in every
limb, active, self-confident, and restless from his own energy. The
other, gentle, docile, and animated rather than vigorous. He began, as
most youthful writers have begun, by copying those whom he saw to be the
objects of popular applause, in his own day. He has little distinct
character of his own. We may trace him by turns to Goldsmith,
Chatterton, and Coleridge. His numbers sometimes offend the ear by
unskilful combinations of sound, as in these lines--

But for the babe she bore beneath her breast:

And--

While every bleaching breeze that on her blows;

And sometimes, though more rarely, they gratify it by unexpected
sweetness. He could occasionally look abroad for himself, and describe
what he saw. In his Clifton Grove there are some little touches of
landscape-painting which are, as I think, unborrowed.

What rural objects steal upon the sight,
* * * * *
The brooklet branching from the silver Trent,
The whispering birch by every zephyr bent,
The woody island and the naked mead,
_The lowly hut half hid in groves of reed,
The rural wicket and the rural stile,
And frequent interspersed the woodman's pile_.

Among his poems of later date, there is one unfinished fragment in this
manner, of yet higher beauty.

Or should the day be overcast,
We'll linger till the show'r be past;
Where the hawthorn's branches spread
A fragrant cover o'er the head;
And list the rain-drops beat the leaves,
Or smoke upon the cottage eaves;
Or silent dimpling on the stream
Convert to lead its silver gleam.

THE END.

End of Project Gutenberg's Lives of the English Poets, by Henry Francis Cary

*** END OF THIS PROJECT GUTENBER