continued to the 21st of October, 1680, a period of seventeen months. The parliament was now split into the two factions, known by the appellation of Whigs and Tories, and the proceedings of the House of Commons were very anomalous; it impeached several of the corrupt judges, passed a resolution against placemen sitting in the House, ordered that no one should lend money to the King in anticipation of his revenue, read a bill for securing the calling and sitting of frequent parliaments, and passed a bill to exclude the duke of York, which the Lords, at the King's command, rejected. This parliament was prorogued on the 10th of January following, and never met again. A new parliament met on the 21st of March, 1681, and revived the Exclusion bill; this so offended the King, that at the end of seven days he dissolved the parliament, and never called another. It is now known that Charles had, in consideration of the pension granted him by the king of France, bound himself never to assemble another parliament. Notwithstanding the proceedings in the House of Commons in the two last parliaments, so corrupt was the government in every essential particular, so infamous the courts of law, so debased the public men of both factions, with but few exceptions, and so supine the people, that all hope of restoring or establishing the liberties of the nation was abandoned, and many of the friends of freedom quitted their country in despair. The nation appeared as on the eve of a base submission to the court, and an absolute surrender to the King of all pretensions to control his power was expected, when his death somewhat changed the anticipated course of events. James II immediately assumed the crown, and had his pride flattered and his bigotry increased, by the servile adulations contained in numerous addresses, some of them singularly base and mean. He at once became a pensioner of the king of France, to whom he sent an apology for having summoned a parliament. The corporations had been new-modelled, and James calculated on a House of Commons as servile as he could wish; by means of such a House he expected to be put into a condition to dispense altogether with parliaments, and in this he was not disappointed. At the opening of this perfectly infamous assembly, on the 22nd of May, 1685, the King, in his speech, said, "There is one popular argument which I foresee may be used against what I ask of you, from the inclination men have to frequent parliaments, which some may think would be best secured by feeding me from time to time by such portions as they shall think convenient; and this argument I VOL. VIII.-W. R. X will answer once for all, that this would be a very improper method to take with me, and, that the best way to engage ine to meet you often, is to use me well. I expect, therefore, that you will comply with me in what I have desired, and that you will do it speedily, that this may be a short session, and we may meet again to all our satisfactions." The House instantly voted the King an annual revenue of upwards of two millions sterling, to continue during his life; a revenue so large as to make the calling of parliament unnecessary, unless an extraordinary emergency should arise. In a little more than a month from the opening of the parliament, the King prorogued it till the 9th of November; after sitting only nine days, it was again prorogued, and was not again assembled. James had fully resolved never to hold another parliament. Early in the month of June, and while the parliament was sitting, the duke of Monmouth landed with a small force in the West of England, and soon afterwards published a declaration of the reasons which had induced him and his partizans to make war upon the King. The declaration is noticed by Ralph, as "coinciding perfectly with the prejudices and passions of those it was principally addressed to, and of course was well calculated to answer the great ends in view; and had for its basis the following self-evident propositions, viz. "1. Government was not instituted for the private interest or personal greatness of the governors, but the security and protection of the governed. 2. It cannot be imagined that mankind would part with their power to arm their governors against themselves, or to be rendered more miserable than they were in the state of nature. These principles were applied to England." A long narrative followed, pointing out abuses, and abounding with imputations. Exaggerated as some of the statements were, and false as were also several of the charges, much that was stated was substantially true, and it proposed much that was useful. It pledged the duke and his partizans "to use their utmost endeavours to procure the several laws, rights, and privileges, following: "1. That no Protestant, of what persuasion soever, shall for the future, be molested or troubled for the exercise of his religion. 2. That parliaments shall be annually chosen and held, and shall not be prorogued, dissolved, or discontinued within the year, till petitions shall be answered, and grievances redressed." There were two other articles, one of which related to the militia, the other to corporations. It put many very important matters on a proper basis; but the people were not prepared to take advantage of circumstances, and the attempt to rouse them failed. The total discomfiture of Monmouth increased the power of James, of which, had he known how to make a discreet use, he might, perhaps, have succeeded in establishing a despotism. But his pride and ignorance caused him to precipitate measures which ruined him, compelled him to fly the land, and brought about the Revolution of 1688. ART. II.-The Pelican Island. By James Montgomery. In Nine MR. MONTGOMERY is less of an egotist than almost any modern poet; and it is, therefore, difficult to ascertain whether he is satisfied with the measure of fame which has been allotted to him by his contemporaries. His feelings on this subject must depend entirely upon the ends which he proposed to himself when he commenced his literary career. If his ambition induced him to wish for nothing further than that his works should circulate rapidly and widely-that they should be admired and purchased by a large class of readersit has been abundantly gratified. His name is enrolled among the regular favourites of the public, and the critics have generally treated him with the respect which they are expected to pay to those whom their masters honour. But if his views in early life were more extensive and daring; if he trusted that his works would be most praised by those whose praise would be most precious to him; if he calculated upon the admiration of that class whose admiration in itself outvalues many editions, and is doubly agreeable, because it eventually secures the admiration of all others, the treatment which his poems have received must have caused him many painful disappointments and misgivings. That he has been loudly extolled by many whose silence would have been the least injurious homage they could have offered, is a misfortune which he might endure with patience; but that his works should have been received with indifference by men of genius, that amid the din of vulgar panegyric he should so seldom recognise the encouraging voices of those who are competent to appreciate his merits, is a fate which he has a right to deplore, and which, we will venture to add, he had no reason to expect. This mortifying indifference on the part of men who are generally the most equitable, as well as the most experienced, judges of kindred excellence, may be accounted for, we think, without disparagement to Mr. Montgomery's claims upon our admiration as a real and undoubted poet. A very perverse theory was prevalent among the critics of the last century, and finds favour among those writers of our own day who have an interest in propagating it; that the true and only test of a poet's merit is his popularity with the multitude. Against this opinion, which, by a very common progress, had risen from a paradox into a common-place; and which was diligently fostered by patrons, loungers, et id genus omne, who wished to have it believed that there was at least one subject which they could understand without study or reflection, those writers who felt that they had thoughts which could not be intelligible to the herd of vulgar minds, stoutly combated. They maintained that there was nothing in argument or experience to justify such a notion; that the principle of all other studies was at variance with it; for no one will contend that a metaphysician or a natural philosopher who thinks and reasons deeply will be acceptable to those who do not think or reason; finally, that there is nothing in the peculiar characteristics of poetry to take it out of the general rule. To the favourite argument of their opponents, that the difference of poetry from all other studies consists in its having for its (immediate as well as ultimate) end the production of pleasure, and, therefore, that the kind of poetry which produces the most pleasure is necessarily the best, they answered that this reasoning, if pushed to the extent which is necessary in order to support the opinion in question, must lead to one of two absurd conclusions: either it supposes that poetry, because its design is to produce pleasure, has the power of reversing the laws of human nature, and of compelling persons differently constituted to take delight in the same pleasure, though it be framed for the very attribute in which they differ, viz. their intellects; or else, admitting the impossibility of gratifying both classes at once, it supposes that the quality of an intellectual pleasure is to be determined by something else than the quality of the intellects that are affected by it. Examples, upon which the supporters of this hypothesis principally rely, are, it was contended, decidedly against them. Neither Eschylus, nor Dante, nor Milton, has the slightest pretension to the name of a popular poet. Even if Johnson's attempt to confute the well-authenticated traditions respecting the early reception of Paradise Lost had been more successful, there is sufficient evidence to convince all who are willing to be convinced, that the veneration expressed for it in the present day by all classes, is almost solely the result of that deference which inferior minds pay to those who think; and that by the majority it is less read and less relished than almost any other English poem. Before we can judge whether Shakspeare, who at first sight seems an authority on the other side, is really such, he must be divested of all that theatrical fame which, in reality, is paid, not to him, but to Garrick, Kemble, Siddons, and Kean. Nor is this the only element which must be taken from his popularity. We must deduct likewise all that appertains to him as the unconscious representative of national ostentation and insolence -a reputation to which he, of all writers, least deserved to be subjected, seeing that the most marked characteristic of his writings is the indifference displayed in them to merely local peculiarities, and the anxiety to bring forward those qualities in which human nature is the same all over the globe. If we separate in our minds the reputation of Shakspeare from these its accidental accessories, and if we take the pains to observe, further, that the parts of his works which are generally dwelt upon with the greatest satisfaction, are those in which the peculiarities of his genius are not revealed-we shall, perhaps, scarcely be disposed to consider that he (by which we mean his works, and not his name) is, any more than his brethren, a favourite of the multitude. A similar observation is applicable to the two great poets of our own day, Wordsworth and Shelley. It is true that the clamour which was raised against the poetical innovations of the former, by exciting discussion, has been the means of procuring him many disciples whose intelligent and earnest panegyrics have done much to extend the fame of his merits in quarters where they are really little understood or appreciated. But even the enthusiasm of these admirers, which constantly leads them to mistake the echoes of their own praises for fresh voices lifted up in adoration of their idol, cannot blind them to the fact, that his writings are still, and will long remain, "caviare to the general." And Shelley, who combined every essential requisite of the poetical character with nearly every accidental gift that can grace and adorn it, who was more vigorous in his imagination, more harmonious in the structure of his verse, more absolute in his tyranny over language, more impregnated with genuine classical feeling than any poet since Milton, and whose poetry is a continuous stream of lofty, though sometimes misdirected feeling is unknown to the majority of readers, and is slightly esteemed by a large portion of the remainder, because he has not laboured (after the example of some popular favourites) to produce in the mind those alternate states of delirious excitement and miserable depression, which are as inconsistent with the spirit of poetry as they are unfriendly to human happiness. These arguments, and this evidence, we think entirely con |