LETTER XVII.

MR SAVILLE.

Lichfield, June 15, 1798.

It is unlucky, but I hope to Heaven it will not be more than unlucky, for your short residence in London, that here is a June whose cloudless ardours have not been paralleled during very many past years. The summer-solstice is generally ushered in by winds and showers; but, during the three past weeks, the rivers have shrunk in their banks, the channels of the brooks are dry; the lawns are brown and slippery; the earth wrinkles as in frost; birds sit silent in the centres of the hedge-rows; the cows stand with drooping neck in the reedy brooks; the streets are still vacant and dusty, and silence is over the hills at

noon.

I have passed the glowing hours from breakfast till dinner on the terrace, reading Urry's Life of Chaucer, published 1721, in the eleventh year of Dr Johnson's existence. It surprised me to see three of the sentences turned in John

son's peculiar manner, and following each other -thus:

"The court * at that time, consisted of all that was great and splendid. Every thing that could be desired contributed to make it glorious; -a long and happy reign, successful in victories abroad, filled it with heroes, and a just administration at home supplied it with men of learning. These are so inseparably linked together, that where there are men of valour, there can be no slavery and oppression; and where there are slavery and oppression, there can be no men of learning."

These sentences have a strength of expression, and roundness of construction unlike the loose and involved style of our prose-writers, so early in this century, even of that which was generally esteemed the best, as Addison's. I have been accustomed to consider the rounder and more nervous period to have been introduced by Dr Johnson: but these sentences are strikingly in his style, and not only in their construction, but in that imposing air of decision, which impresses ordinary minds with implicit faith in the veracity of dogmas of such point and antithesis, while rational investigation demonstrates their fallacy. Men of learning, and men of valour, are often the at

The court of Edward III.

tendants of very despotic thrones: as that of Augustus Cæsar evinced in former ages, and that of Louis the XIV. in later times. Thus vanishes the veracity of that assertion;-and thus, before the scrutiny of discerning thought, melts into inanity the first part of one of Johnson's sentences, the nature and style of which is extremely similar. "Where there is emulation there must be envy, and where there is envy, there can be no virtue." It will readily be granted, that where there is envy there can be no true virtue; but to blend and confound a generous with a base passion, by asserting, that where there is emulation there must be envy, ill became the moral philosopher.

It has always been confessed, as it has always been felt, that emulation is the prime source of excellence in every art, in every science, and in every virtue. It is as distinct from envy as true and tender affection is distinct from merely libidinous desire. Emulation loves-envy hates its object; emulation hopes-envy despairs; emulation is ingenuous-envy is deceitful; emulation is energetic-envy is indolent; emulation delights to contemplate its model, and to point out to others its every excellence-envy turns from its object, or examines it only to depreciate; emulation is the health of genius-envy its morbid disease. It was his disease who has pro

nounced that no virtue can exist in the mind it

envenoms.

That emulation may degenerate into envy, is certain, as an overflow of health may produce fatal distemper; but then it can only thus degenerate where the temper is morose. Passions, so different in their nature, and in their effects, can have no natural, much less inevitable tendency to incorporate.

While Chaucer's historian thus, in three sentences, resembles Johnson's style and manner, he writes of his author with a very different spirit from that which dipt in aquafortis the biographic pen which chronicled our poets. Mr Urry very beautifully descants on the genius and writings of the father of English verse; and with an efflorescence of diction, as little common to the prose of that period, as was the nervous compression as to style, in the preceding extract from the Life of Chaucer-thus:

"Chaucer's life was temperate and regular. He went to rest with the sun in summer, and, rising before it, enjoyed the pleasures of the best part of the day, his morning walk and fresh contemplations. Hence he had the advantage of describing the morning in that lively manner which we so often find exemplified in his works. The springing sun glows warm in his lines, and the

fragrant air breathes cool in his descriptions. We smell the sweets of the blooming haws, and hear the music of the feathered choir, whenever we take a forest-walk with him. The hour of the day is not easier to be discovered from the reflection of the sun in Titian's paintings, than in Chaucer's morning-landscapes."

It is amiable in the biographer of excellent persons to place every merit in the fullest light; and generous minds are more disposed to pardon a little over-weening partiality, than the slightest treachery of unjust depreciation; while, to ungenerous minds, more welcome is that caustic-spleen which gratifies their wish of levelling the exalted. Of Mr Urry's far more virtuous partiality, 1 met a striking instance in the following passage.

"In most of Chaucer's poems, where he designs an imaginary scene, he certainly copies it from a real landscape. In his Cuckow and Nightingale, the morning-walk may be traced at this day, from his house, through part of the park, into the vale under Blenheim Castle, as certainly as we may be assured that maples, instead of phylereas, were the ornaments round the bower."

Always charmed by local appropriation in poetic landscape, I eagerly turned to the passage referred to in Chaucer's Cuckow and Nightingale, and found it thus: