An English Garner | Page 7

Sprat, Cowley,
and Denham[1] blended the ease and plasticity of colloquy with the
solidity and dignity of rhetoric, of that style in which Dryden was soon
to become a consummate master.
The Advice to a Young Reviewer brings us into a very different sphere
of criticism, and has indeed a direct application to our own time. It was
written by Edward Copleston, afterwards Dean of St. Paul's and Bishop
of Llandaff. Born in February 1776 at Offwell, in Devonshire,
Copleston gained in his sixteenth year a scholarship at Corpus Christi
College, Oxford. After carrying off the prize for Latin verse, he was
elected in 1795 Fellow of Oriel. In 1800, having been ordained priest,
he became Vicar of St. Mary's. In 1802 he was elected Professor of
Poetry, in which capacity he delivered the lectures subsequently
published under the title of _Praelectiones Academicae_--a favourite
book of Cardinal Newman's. In 1814 he succeeded Dr. Eveleigh as
Provost of Oriel. In 1826 he was made Dean of Chester, in 1828
Bishop of Llandaff and Dean of St. Paul's. He died at Llandaff, on
October 14th, 1849. Copleston is one of the fathers of modern Oxford,
and from his provostship date many of the reforms which transformed
the University of Gibbon and Southey into the University of Whateley,
of Newman, of Keble, and of Pusey. The brochure which is printed
here was written when Copleston was Fellow and Tutor of Oriel. It was
immediately inspired, not, as is commonly supposed, by the critiques in
the Edinburgh Review, but by the critiques in the British Critic, a
periodical founded in 1793, and exceedingly influential between that
time and about 1812. Archbishop Whateley, correcting a statement in

the Life of Copleston by W.J. Copleston, says that it was occasioned by
a review of Mant's poems in the _British Critic_[2]. But on referring to
the review of these poems, which appeared in the November number of
1806, plainly the review referred to, we find nothing in it to support
Whateley's assertion. That the reviews in the British Critic are,
however, what Copleston is parodying in the critique of _L'Allegro_ is
abundantly clear, but what he says about voyages and travels and about
science and recondite learning appear to have reference to articles
particularly characteristic of the Edinburgh Review. It was not, however,
till after the date of Copleston's parody that the Edinburgh Review
began conspicuously to illustrate what Copleston here satirises; it was
not till a time more recent still that periodical literature generally
exemplified in literal seriousness what Copleston intended as
extravagant irony. It is interesting to compare with Copleston's remarks
what Thackeray says on the same subjects in the twenty-fourth chapter
of Pendennis, entitled 'The Pall Mall Gazette.' This brochure is
evidently modelled on Swift's 'Digression Concerning Critics' in the
third section of the Tale of a Tub, and owes something also to the
Treatise on the Bathos in Pope's and Swift's Miscellanies, as the title
may have been suggested by Shaftesbury's Advice to an Author. The
Advice itself and the supplementary critique of Milton are clever and
have good points, but they will not bear comparison with the satire of
Swift and Pope.
The excerpt which comes next in this Miscellany links with the name
of the author of the Essay of Dramatic Poesy the name of the most
illustrious of his contemporaries. The difference, indeed, between
Milton and Dryden is a difference not in degree merely, but in kind, so
immeasurably distant and alien is the sphere in which they moved and
worked both as men and as writers. It has sometimes been questioned
whether Dryden is a poet. Few would dispute that Milton divides with
Shakespeare the supremacy in English poetry. In Dryden as a man there
is little to attract or interest us. In character and in private life he
appears to have been perfectly commonplace. We close his biography,
and our curiosity is satisfied. With Milton it is far otherwise. We feel
instinctively that he belongs to the demi-gods of our race. We have the
same curiosity about him as we have about Homer, Aeschylus, and
Shakespeare, so that the merest trifles which throw any light on his

personality assume an interest altogether out of proportion to their
intrinsic importance. Our debt to Ellwood is, it must be admitted, much
less than it might have been, if he had thought a little more of Milton
and a little less of his somewhat stupid self and the sect to which he
belonged. But, as the proverb says, we must not look a gift-horse in the
mouth, and we are the richer for the Quaker's reminiscences. With
Ellwood's work, the _History of Thomas Ellwood, written by Himself_,
we are only concerned so far as it bears on his relation with Milton.
Born in