n
country, its poetry has been absolutely redeemed by it. I do not think
that there is an able writer in verse of the present day who would not
be proud to acknowledge his obligations to the _Reliques_; I know that
it is so with my friends; and, for myself, I am happy in this occasion
to make a public avowal of my own.

Dr. Johnson, more fortunate in his contempt of the labours of Macpherson
than those of his modest friend, was solicited not long after to furnish
Prefaces biographical and critical for the works of some of the most
eminent English Poets. The booksellers took upon themselves to make the
collection; they referred probably to the most popular miscellanies,
and, unquestionably, to their books of accounts; and decided upon the
claim of authors to be admitted into a body of the most eminent, from
the familiarity of their names with the readers of that day, and by the
profits, which, from the sale of his works, each had brought and was
bringing to the Trade. The Editor was allowed a limited exercise of
discretion, and the Authors whom he recommended are scarcely to be
mentioned without a smile. We open the volume of Prefatory Lives, and to
our astonishment the _first_ name we find is that of Cowley!--What is
become of the morning-star of English Poetry? Where is the bright
Elizabethan constellation? Or, if names be more acceptable than images,
where is the ever-to-be-honoured Chaucer? Where is Spenser? where
Sidney? and, lastly, where he, whose rights as a poet,
contradistinguished from those which he is universally allowed to
possess as a dramatist, we have vindicated,--where Shakspeare?--These,
and a multitude of others not unworthy to be placed near them, their
contemporaries and successors, we have _not_. But in their stead, we
have (could better be expected when precedence was to be settled by an
abstract of reputation at any given period made, as in this case before
us?) Roscommon, and Stepney, and Phillips, and Walsh, and Smith, and
Duke, and King, and Spratt--Halifax, Granville, Sheffield, Congreve,
Broome, and other reputed Magnates--metrical writers utterly worthless
and useless, except for occasions like the present, when their
productions are referred to as evidence what a small quantity of brain
is necessary to procure a considerable stock of admiration, provided the
aspirant will accommodate himself to the likings and fashions of his
day.

As I do not mean to bring down this retrospect to our ow