began to have written laws, to sigh for their own devastations,
and in vain v
wish for all those cities and towns which they had
utterly destroyed, living either in the camp, or in wretched
huts, such as they had left in Germany. When a nation begin to
feel their wants, they soon become more industrious to procure
these articles of which they are destitute. Exchange begets
a necessity to coin money; at home the Anglo-Saxons chiefly
contented themselves with living money, or exchange; but,,
to foreigners the metals became necessary, Gold might be gi
ven in weight, but I believe the Anglo-Saxons at no time coin-
ed money of that the most valuable metal; silver was the
gene-
ral medium. The intercourse between the continent gradually
increased, and with it learning and the arts, as far as they
were then known to the south of Europe, and these late law-
less brutal Anglo-Saxons, as ignorant as ferocious, became a
people little inferior to their neighbours in France and Italy,
yet very inferior indeed to what the Britons were when first
left by the Romans, and the kingdom incalculably so in point
of wealth, in the number and extent of their cities and towns.
These places, collections of dwellings, were what now we should
scarcely think worthy to be classed with our larger villages;
and there could be no comparison respecting the structures of
stone or brick, with all the conveniency, all the magnificence
such as had dignified the great capital of the world, and a few
wretched cabins formed of hurdles, daubed with clay, and
whitened with chalk and water, covered with thatch, and in-
stead of a tesselated pavement, the natural earth strewed with
rushes. The dress of the great, and their accommodations in
other respects, were rudely magnificent, perhaps, but the
cloathing of all below them was wretched and vile. This
was the less noticed, because all Europe having suffered by the
like calamities of subjection, by unenlightened northern bar-
barians, experienced the same degradation.

The monarchy of England, founded by Egbert, a prince who had received all the advantage of an education in the court of Charlemagne, naturally augmented the strength, as it did the splendour, of the Anglo-Saxons, but as if a blessing never was to be possessed by the southern part of Britain, without an

1

heavy affliction, in the reign of this our first monarch, arrived another nation of northern plunderers, called Danes, though not confined to what is now usually called Denmark; these sea robbers were dispersed over Holstein, and countries still more north. These were essentially the same people as the Saxons, and many of them had been neighbouring hordes, who, from a like reason, the want of room, sought food and necessaries by plunder, but the countries which once formed the Roman empire, having been already conquered, by preceding swarms, it left these no prospect of succeeding in gaining a new home; they, therefore, having elected sea-kings, fitted out ships, and became formidable by their depredations, by landing unexpectedly on the coasts of the continent, or those of Britain, and by carrying all before them by fire and sword, retreated to their vessels heavily laden with the plunder of únoffending people. These Pagans now were as barbarously bigotted against the Anglo-Saxon Christians, as the Pagan Saxons had been to the believing Britons.

The Danes having found the comparative riches of the Anglo-Saxons, poured forth upon the coasts in such numbers that at length the latter could not withstand them. Emboldened by success, and perhaps tired of an unsettled and precarious life, they began to form ideas of not only plundering the wretched inhabitants, but entirely subjugating them, and gaining the country. England submitted to their cruel domina. tion, but Alfred freed his country by emerging from his retirement, engaging and defeating them; yet the northern parts of England were settled by these hereditary enemies to the Anglican name; and at last, under Canute, the monarchy went from the line of Cerdic, the ancestor of the West Saxon kings, to the sovereign of Denmark, to whose sceptre also bent Sweden and Norway. The kingdom of England was benefited by Canute: it ended a contest of more than a century and an half. His making England the seat of his government, receiving baptism, and adopting the mildness of the Gospel, with the valour of the hero, he was beloved at home, and feared abroad. Under him England gained domestic quietness; as common Christians the Anglo Saxons and the

Danes better amalgamated. The sacred edifices had been destroyed, and the unoffending regular and secular clergy and nuns, indiscriminately and wantonly slaughtered; the Christian Danes made atonement for their former wickedness, by their pious liberality, Canute setting them an example. The cities and towns, and indeed the whole kingdom improved under his protecting care: Commerce, which had began to greatly enrich the Anglo-Saxons under Alfred and his suc cessors, was much extended under the royal Dane, from the prudent preference he gave to them. Denmark, Sweden, and Norway, from sending forth what may be called navies of robbers, now equipped fleets of merchantmen to Britain; and the connexion of England with Italy and France, was renewed and extended. Under Harold I. England lost her advantages with the three northern kingdoms. At the death of the besotted Hardicanute, England recovered herself, the Anglo-Saxon monarchy being restored in the person of Edward the Confessor. [To be concluded in another Number.}

THE POETS AND THE CRITIC.

LONGINUS,

on the Sublime, says that HOMER shews the vast reach and capacity of his ideas, when he describes Discord in these words:

Ουρανώ εξήριξε καρη, και επι χθονι βαίνει.

copied closely by VIRGIL in his Fame:

II. S. v. 443.

Ingrediturque solo et caput inter nubila condit.

En. 4. v. 177.

i. e. She walks on the earth, and hides her head in the clouds.

Now I cannot help thinking that there is something very absurd in this personification. SIR JOSHUA REYNOLDS said

that he had seen figures of MICHAEL ANGELO, of which it was difficult to determine, whether they were in the highest degree sublime, or in the greatest degree ridiculous. Here seems to be a parallel case, and with all due deference to the mighty critic, who takes the former position, I take the latter. A figure with its feet on the ground, and its head in the clouds, appears to me to be playing at blind man's buff, and by no means powerfully to represent the idea of Discord and Fame spreading themselves, and filling the whole world. If the head be hidden to conceal their origin, it is still unsatisfactory, as it regards sublimity. Our SHAKSPEARE's description of Slander, will bear the nearer investigation, both of poetry and

common sense.

Slander,

Whose head is sharper than the sword, whose tongue
Out.venoms all the worms of Nile, whose breath
Rides on the posting winds, and doth belye

All corners of the world. Kings, queens, and states,
Maids, matrons, nay the secrets of the

This viperous slander enters.

grave

Cymbeline.

Milton's Satan preparing for combat, is said by Addison, Spect. No. 321, to be as sublime as the Discord of Homer, or the Fame of Virgil

Satan alarm'd,

Collecting all his might, dilated stood

Like Teneriff or Atlas unremov'd:

His stature reach'd the sky, and on his crest
Sat horror plum'd.

There is in this something of the ridiculous, which belongs to a Brobdignag out-Brobdignag'd. It is said that we must be able to walk in the shoes of persons described, or we cannot well understand them-there's certainly no walking in these shoes! Had Satan been about to combat with a mortal foè, this would have been a very good ruse, and even then a crest, on which horror sat plum'd so very high as to reach the clouds, would have been seen too dimly to have had its full

1

effect. According to the poet's imagination, it was a very silly unavailing swell. Leaving the description of the devil with his head touching the sky (where he would least wish to trust it) look at another, which we can understand, and pro nounce at once worthy of our admiration, the sublimity of the poet, and the majesty of the fiend.

He, above the rest,

In shape and gesture proudly eminent
Stood like a tow'r; his form not yet had lost
All her original brightness, nor appear'd
Less than arch-angel ruin'd, and th' excess
Of glory obscur'd.

"Like a tower," we feel and comprehend, but when he reaches the sky, we walk between his legs, and know nothing about the matter.

I must agree, however, that they are all considerably more sublime, (if you are not inclined to laugh) than Hesiod's Melancholy-Tns d'ex per piva muža peov, in Scut. Herc. v. 267, whom the poet (to be delicate) accuses of not using her pocket handkerchief, not as it respects her eyes, but her nose, which, says the critic, is not a terrible image, but a hateful one--or as we might say, rather nasty than sublime.

I again differ from LONGINUS with regard to what he says of the immortal coursers. He exclaims, how Homer magnifies and exalts his deities-rarely I think, and here it is doneby` giving them some extraordinary leapers. The exclamation in. troduces this passage from the Iliad

Οσσον Ε. τ. 770.

For as a shepherd from some point on high,
O'er the wide main extends his boundless eye,
Thro' such a space of air, with thund'ring sound,
At one long leap th' immortal coursers bound.

Pope.

A long leap indeed; but not so long as the critic would make us believe, for he adds, την όρμην κ. τ. λ. "The poet

U U--VOL. VII.*