Then ages hence, when thou no more
Shalt creep along the sunny shore,
Thy copied beauties shall be seen;
Thy red and azure mixed with green,
In mimic folds thou shalt display;--
Stay, lovely, fearful adder, stay.




JONATHAN SWIFT.


In contemplating the lives and works of the preceding poets in this
third volume of 'Specimens,' we have been impressed with a sense, if not
of their absolute, yet of their comparative mediocrity. Beside such
neglected giants as Henry More, Joseph Beaumont, and Andrew Marvell, the
Pomfrets, Sedleys, Blackmores, and Savages sink into insignificance. But
when we come to the name of Swift, we feel ourselves again approaching
an Alpine region. The air of a stern mountain-summit breathes chill
around our temples, and we feel that if we have no amiability to melt,
we have altitude at least to measure, and strange profound secrets of
nature, like the ravines of lofty hills, to explore. The men of the
sixteenth and seventeenth centuries may be compared to Lebanon, or
Snowdown, or Benlomond towering grandly over fertile valleys, on which
they smile--Swift to the tremendous Romsdale Horn in Norway, shedding
abroad, from a brow of four thousand feet high, what seems a scowl of
settled indignation, as if resolved not to rejoice even over the wide-
stretching deserts which, and nothing but which, it everlastingly
beholds. Mountains all of them, but what a difference between such a