brief but animated sketch of the whole career of Copleston, from his election to a fellowship at Oriel, drawn by the same competent hand : : "As he left the scene of election, one of them bade him to recollect that he owed his preferment to free competition and to merit alone, and never to forget the principle on which his fellowship was won. This charge was in full accordance with his own high and honourable feelings; and throughout his influential career at Oxford, as well as in the administration of his diocese, 'detur digniori' was his unvarying rule. It was thus that, under his auspices, the college which had adopted him for its own, and of which he became subsequently the head, rose in honour and renown. Its fellows and its tutors were henceforward the foremost men in the University of Oxford, and were often summoned thence to high and honourable stations in the realm while within its walls was trained and nurtured many a youth whose early distinction in literature and science was but the precursor of future triumphs on a wider field. In our list of prelates and of statesmen will be found names which haply owe all their present reputation to that wise and judicious administration which the Provost of Oriel exercised in his college. But not to that college alone was this influence confined; for to him, far more than to any other man, is due the happy change which, early in this century, took place in the studies of the University of Oxford. To him mainly we owe the introduction of a real and searching examination instead of that which had become a mockery and a delusion: to him, the emulation excited by honourable distinction, which has bent many a spirit to intellectual and ennobling pursuits that might otherwise have been devoted to indolence or vice. For this, his college, his university, the realm of England, owes much to Edward Copleston. He planned and matured that course and system which has formed and fashioned for usefulness her rising youth. "From the university he was summoned to preside over the diocese of Llandaff in the year 1828, having previously filled for a short time the dignified office of Dean of Chester. His future career, there is less need to trace, for we write for those who have seen and marked his course when the same principles of administration were followed by the same effects. His diocese was elevated and improved under its zealous bishop, as had been the College of Oriel under its distinguished provost. His preferments were given away on public grounds alone. None of his own name or kin, though there were among them men well meet for office, were either beneficed or placed. "On those who had laboured in the diocese were all its benefices invariably bestowed. He never listened to the solicitations of the great any more than to the dictates of private or personal regard. Placed in the see of Llandaff when translations were frequent, and when this diocese was regarded but as a stepping-stone to another, he early expressed his resolve to abide amongst us; and here he has remained to die" (223). 375 ART. VII.-Scenes from Scripture, with other Poems. By the Rev. GEORGE CROLY, LL.D., Author of "Salathiel," &c. London: Colburn. 1851. IT is a very common remark that the age of poetry has passed away; that it has been scared from our shores by the discordance of the locomotive and the spinning-jenny; that, in fact, Utilitarianism has superseded the fine arts, and we are sinking down into a-matter-of-fact and moneyloving people. And, if we were to take for a criterion the emanations of the press, we should ourselves believe that the spirit of song had ceased in the land. But it is not so: Utilitarianism may be waging war against the graces of life; but painting flourishes in spite of it. Music had never so many votaries we maintain two Italian Operas, where, three years ago, we had but one, and that not very efficiently supported; while the monster concerts of M. Jullien, and other attractions of a similar and even more recherché kind, are crowded to a suffocating excess. The taste of the public for poetry we believe to be quite as keen as ever it was. The fault lies, not in the demand, but in the supply. We look back, through a long vista of years, on the progress and influence of poetry in our own day; and we remember with what enthusiasm everything which deserved the name of poetry has been welcomed by the public. And we travel back a long way when we revert to the "Borough" of Crabbe, the Wilkie of verse; for, like that great painter, as his genius is developed in his earlier and more valuable productions, he portrayed what he saw, and nothing else: he had little or no imagination: fidelity of description was his forte, and the public did homage to it. His sketches were bold, vigorous, and true. To travel back further still, to the Lake School-Southey and Coleridge-the former sung too much, and the latter far too little, and he was the greater genius of the two; yet their verses were in every mouth. Then came Scott with his "Lay of the Last Minstrel," his "Marmion," and "Lady of the Lake," the last the most poetical of all; and those who remember their first appearance will not require to be reminded of the potency of their spell on the public mind. Then came Byron, whose genius, piqued by the rough handling experienced by his early poems, flashed upon the world in the full development of his mighty mind, in the first cantos of "Childe Harold." Scott, with a self-appreciation which did high honour to his good sense, saw his own star pale before the brighter yet steady blaze of the rival genius, and sought and won undying fame in another field, in which his marvellous aptitude for description, both of character and scenery, that constituted the great charm of his poetical romances, has left him unapproached, and-it is a bold word-unapproachable. The best of his successors in the same class of literature is immeasurably behind him. And here we are reminded of a circumstance which should be held in honoured remembrance by every literary man. The vials of vituperation were emptied upon George IV. while he lived, and upon his memory when he was dead; but he was the only Sovereign of his line who practically patronized literature. Nay, he did more: he gathered her gifted sons about his table, and made them forget the patron in the friend. George IV., as Prince of Wales, Regent, and King, contributed upwards of five thousand pounds to the Literary Fund," which owed its establishment to his generous sympathy with a class of men who, of all others, are the most helpless in adversity. And he honoured literature as well as helped it—the first baronet he created, after his accession, was a literary man-WALTER SCOTT. 66 But to return to our immediate theme. Was the British public insensible to the genius of Moore? Did not the thrilling music of his melodies find an echo in every heart? True -they were unequal: many of them tame-others unjustly national; but, taken as a whole, they will ever be ranked among the choicest specimens of lyric poetry in the language. But his "Lalla Rookh" burst upon the world with a brilliancy which cast all his former efforts into shade. Let the number of editions through which the poem has passed speak for the public appreciation of it. Many of our readers will, doubtless, remember the debut of an author who appeared, some three or four years before the death of Byron, in a small volume of poems entitled "Dramatic Scenes," published under the assumed name of Barry Cornwall. He was lifted by the "breath of popular applause suddenly into fame. Who that has read will ever forget his "Magdalen " "O'er her temple one blue vein Ran like a tendril: one, through her shadowy hand, or the exquisite lines, which we quote from memory, and have forgotten the title of the poem- "The maid was dying; youth and beauty-all Men love or women dote on-was decaying; And, one by one, life's finest powers did fall Before the touch of Death, who seemed delaying As if he'd not the heart, at once, to call The maiden to her home." Not to multiply instances, we pass on to an epoch which we hold to be a very memorable and important one in the history of modern literature-we allude to the era of the "Annuals "a class of publication which owes its origin to the "German Illustrated Almanacs," and which was introduced, in an English form, by the late Mr. Ackermann, to whose memory be all honour; for he was a spirited and liberal publisher-non inexpertus loquor-and a kind-hearted man. The merit, however, of raising the standard of annual literature is due to Mr. Alaric Watts, on whose editorial acumen and taste the early numbers of "The Literary Souvenir" reflect the highest honour. We are prepared for the allegation that the success of the "Annuals" was mainly, if not altogether, attributable to their pictorial embellishments. We do not believe it; but, on the contrary, are of opinion that the "Annuals" were sustained by their literature, and our position is supported by the fact that, as soon as the excellence of the contributions ceased to be a feature in their pageswhen peer was practically held to be synonymous with poetand editors boasted, not only in private but in print, of their titled contributors, the " Annuals" declined in popularity, and finally dwindled down to one or two miserable mockeries of their former selves, which owed their protracted lives to "voluntary contributions "-and voluntary contributions, as far as our editorial experience is concerned, are usually worth what they cost. Nevertheless, we hold to our position, and maintain that it is to the "Annuals" that we owe the introduction of many a gifted son of genius, who might otherwise have been lost to us. We could point to several who have since achieved for themselves high fame in the field of imaginative literature; and, if we are challenged to the proof, we would adduce a volume of miscellaneous poetry, published in 1841, under the title of the "English Helicon." It consists of nearly four hundred octavo pages, mainly made up of specimens actually transferred from the "Annuals;" of which class of publications, the editor, Mr. T. K. Hervey, remarks, in his preface to this graceful volume-" They did good service in their day, notwithstanding, which should not be forgotten either by the author or the public. On the painted wings of these humming-birds, the fame of the former was wafted faster and further than it could have been through the ordinary channels of publication; and the latter will find "The land of dreams!-how sad it is, To meet the eye whose glance in this Ah! why must midnight's grief or fear Or they who went to grieve me here, Or voices fill mine eyes with tears, Whose silence has been wept for years?" Another stanza, and we will not trespass further on the patience of our reader : "And so I touch the dreaming land Upon its wildest shore, A dreary sea, and dreary strand- Oh! never more its flowery heights Stand out to meet mine eyes; And, most of all, youth's guiding lights Have fallen from life's skies: And Hope, that was my pilot then, Will never sail with me again !" Can anything be more touchingly beautiful than the last couplet? We cannot pass over the fact which we gather from the same volume-namely, that the author of "Modern Painters," "The Seven Lamps of Architecture," and "The Stones of Venice," was first known to the public in the pages of an "Annual," in which his poem of "The Scythian Banquet Song" was printed anonymously; but in the volume to which we now refer it bears his name. It was written many years, |