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object as that of the extensive subject to which they relate, and whose varied beauties, power and influences they exemplify with such attractiveness and purity. We pretend not to have escaped the charge of being out of order, if we allow ourselves to be judged according to the grave rules of parliamentary usage; but as keeping to the question, in that sense, was no part of our profession, we presume further remark upon this point will be superfluous.

The history of the mind and of the literary career of Mrs. Hemans, must certainly be pleasing to any one who loves to contemplate the progress of a singularly industrious, pure, and aspiring spirit, through its several stages, to a high and valuable reputation. Her intellect, though strong, and full of that which was as high-toned as it was poetical, was always essentially feminine in its developments. It has been justly said by Mrs. Jameson, that Mrs. Hemans' poems, "could not have been written by a man; their love is without selfishness ; their passion without a stain of this world's coarseness; their high heroism unsullied by any grosser alloy of mean ambition."

We have no fear about the increasing fame of Mrs. Hemans. Her poetry is of a kind to live. It is of a kind to gain honour with the lapse of years; and it may well be a peculiar and pleasing reflection with her admirers, that all who become the friends of her muse will come up to a good cause, and rank themselves as the friends of virtue. We lament that her light is extinguished, and her harp still. But even as we lament, we cannot but remember that there may be a selfishness in our sorrow, as we repeat to ourselves,

"Wo unto us-not" her-" for" she "sleeps well."

Meanwhile we would not carry our critical gallantry quite so far as to induce a belief that we consider this fair author, upon whose poetical example we have so amplified, in no degree liable to imperfections, under the common ban of genius, as well as of humanity. We could find fault in this, and all like cases, with perfect ease; but we doubt whether it would result in any thing like utility to the cause of literature. We hold it to be vain to torture ourselves-though it may gratify some bilious readers-in finding fault, where we have more than tolerable reason to be thankful and delighted. Verbal criticism we abjure, save in instances of high criminality. The purest language under heaven lies open to the animadversions of a caviling, misconstruing, uneasy spirit of scrutiny. Where thought goes far to redeem the work, we are fain, therefore, to let words alone. As to poetry, viewed as the subject-matter upon which severe criticism is to sit in judgment, we are free to

say that we think it has been hardly dealt by, very unfairly examined, very unjustly judged, and very ignorantly sentenced. We have taken occasion, in another place, to speak of the critical and poetical sentiments as rarely combined, and as affording, in most instances where they are assumed, very natural exhibitions of a want of sympathy. We have seen cases which may be called extremely hard ones, in this particular. The court in which they were tried had no title to its jurisdiction drawn from any portion of any healthy literary charter whatever, or from common sense itself; yet prosaic, unimaginative, and unlearned as it was, it presumed to sit upon the matter it had irreverently brought to its tribunal, with all the circumstance and pretension with which it would pass upon subjects to which it might lay some claim of knowledge and authority. No one will deny that this is a highly dangerous proceeding in the business of criticism. It is dangerous as regards both the writer and the reviewer; for the former may be made bitter by the harsh and undeserved judgment to which he is subjected; or on the other hand expanded beyond all rational dimensions by the flattery with which he is dismissed; while the latter is sure to render himself eminently ridiculous by his criticism in the minds of all whose literary judgment is untrammeled.

But let us pass from this to a few closing considerations suggested by our still expanding subject. Poetry has seen times of greater veneration, indeed, than our own. Time was when its votary was all but deified. The oaken crowns of Homer and Virgil proved the enthusiastic worship of their countrymen. But it was the worship of a listening and excited, not of a reading and thinking people. They were triumphs indeed that Racine and Voltaire could boast, when theatres rose up to them, and welcomed them as the poetic fathers of their country. It was high honour that encircled Petrarca, thought of as divine in his shadowy Vaucluse, and received as divine amidst the plaudits of all Italy. It was a proud thing for Tasso to be set apart to be crowned with laurel at the Capitol, in the midst of popes and prelates and cardinals. Yet the fame of the blind bard of the isles was not full, till temples and statues rose upon his ashes, and cities contended for the honour of his birth-place. The Latin poet commanded an admiration that derived its chief glory from the patronage and power of Augustus. The Euripides of France enjoyed a literary renown as great as a taste so decidedly national would admit, while the poet was torn between the struggles of his great genius and the tyranny of court criticism. Petrarch retains, in many of our recollections, but a romantic celebrity; and it is not the honours rendered, nor yet the coronation decreed him, that can blind us to the

belief, that, in poetry, the highest moral elevation was not reached even by Tasso the Repentant.'

Though the art, then, and its successful and commanding votaries, may find that the period of their more peculiar and unqualified veneration has passed by, they need indulge no apprehensions about the destruction or decay of the principle of their influence. That principle is imperishable. It is founded as deeply and as securely as human nature itself. It appeals to feelings and sympathies that are born with us, and that go with us to the grave. We cannot escape from its power if we would. It stirs the heart like music, and finds its response as unfailing as its pulsations. Those instances of submission to its enchantment, and of honour paid to its supremacy, to which we have adverted, though not repeated to the eye in this our day, are still no strange tribute in the spirit-land of sympathetic and uncorrupted natures.

In this wholesome and honourable consciousness, then, let the poet find his unfailing satisfaction. His is a high duty; for he strikes his harp for the world-for the benefit as well as delight of his fellows, with whom he mingles on the broad pathway of life. His, too, is a high reward; for he finds it in the applause of the good and great, who render it to his genius in a still more unqualified strain, where the brilliancy of the poet is rendered yet brighter by the worth of the man. Such duty and such reward are surely better than those of an earlier, though perhaps a more romantic age, and surely the best, disconnected with his art, which can await him on the common journey; and though to the mighty masters of a more enthusiastic but less enlightened period, the tribute of praise was rendered with more direct and almost royal manifestations, the regard with which the writer, of true poetic power--of the true inspiration, is now met by an admiring people-a whole land— the world, may well be deemed equivalent to the best admiration of which genius has been the recipient on its most triumphant way.

"Il fut reçu dans l'académie des Aetherei de Padoue sous le nom de Pentito, du Repentant, pour marquer, qu'il se repentait du temps qu'il croyait avoir perdu dans l'étude du droit, et dans les autres, ou son inclination ne l'avait pas appelé.-Voltaire: Essai sur le Poesie epique. Le Tasse.

ART. II.-Memoires biographiques, litteraires et politiques de MIRABEAU; écrits par lui même; par son frère; son oncle; et son fils adoptif. 8 vols. 8vo. Paris: 1834–6.

Eloquence, like poetry, seems a natural gift, and not an acquired talent. Efficiency, and even superiority, may be attained in both, without decided genius; though no one will rise, by mere labour, to the highest development of the powers and resources of these arts, without some talent greater than the acquired. Cicero, with that true fidelity and affection which every one feels for the means of his elevation, ranks elequence as the first of the arts; and, without acceding to this opinion in its full extent, but making some allowance for prejudice and vanity, it cannot be denied that it is a very great possession-a tremendous instrument for talent to hold, and one of the highest and noblest attainments the human mind can reach, or to which human genius can aspire. It is then no condescension, with the greatest mind, if it lie within the direction of its pursuits and purposes, to attempt, if nature is deficient, the increase of its resources, by adding the accomplishment of oratory. Still there can be no doubt that the elements of eloquence are gifts of nature; that it is a peculiar and uncommon power; that the different faculties which are required in its creation, seldom meet in one individual, and are beyond the reach of most men, even in the humblest degree. The great Roman orator says, with some exultation, see how many mathematicians there are how many poets-h -how many distinguished in every department of knowledge--but how few orators; and the assertion appears as true as it is forcible. It is borne out by the history of nations. Whether it is the creature of circumstance, a mere accident of intellect, or the production of a highly cultivated condition of society, or to whatever cause our speculations may extend, the fact appears to be, that a great orator is a very infrequent and extraordinary event.

Multo tamen pauciores oratores, quam poetæ boni reperientur, which, as it is true, elevates oratory to a higher place than is usually assigned to it; though it does not depress, at the same time, its noble sister art. Greece, in the midst of her refinement, through all the struggles of ambition, with all her magnificent attainments in every department in which the human intellect has excelled or can excel--in the beauty and perfection of her philosophy-her political changes and convulsions--her freedom--and with a people of the most apt and acute genius, and possessing every other attribute that has made her the admiration of ages-had, or has left, but few orators. There was every variety of incident in her career to

call forth all the various powers of mind--all those hues of hope, and shades of depression, that excite and gladden, or try the firmness and energies of the soul. Nothing was wanting, in her character or condition, to aid and exalt every display of intellect, and nurture into greatness every aspirant for fame. Yet she had but one great orator; though, indeed, one whose existence is an era, and whose name stands as the emblem of perfection in his art; whose glory not only surpasses, but overshadows and consumes the merit of every contemporary, and has come down to the present time with the brilliancy of fame and vivid reality, which belong to a living power. The great rival of Greece had but two of high reputation, and only one of the first order. This certainly bears out Cicero, and proves that the gift of eloquence is seldom granted; or that there are difficulties to contend with, in its attainment, that are insuperable to most minds. Like most things in which the highest efforts of intellect are concerned, there must be, to develope them fully, a correspondence between the moral, mental and political condition of society; or, in other words, the highest degree of civilization is, if not essential, still extremely important in bringing out the refinements of art. An individual of extraordinary genius, governed by that irrepressible instinct that leads him on in pursuit of the object he is best fitted to attain, may succeed in his design. He does it in defiance of society, in defiance of all the obstacles of a rude age or personal circumstances, He acts not through his will, but by an impulse of nature, to which his will is obedient. He is in so far an inspired person--one who is beyond the common relations of men, and forms no example of the necessity or the value of an improved social state, in drawing forth and shaping the objects and aspirations of intellect. Great minds do not, to all appearance, come when they are the most wanted. They visit the earth at times when their whole career must be a struggle; when the difficulties they must surmount, task all their powers; when the conflict is not only with those external influences that are strong, but with their effects, that control and overlay every energy. They must war not only with the prejudices of others, but with their own; hold a contest, hand to hand, not with the peculiar feelings alone that society regards as its great defences, but with all the corruptions with which time and ignorance incrust it, and, what is still more painful, and demands still greater exertion, with all those impressions that are found associated with every movement and every emotion of the individual's own heart and faculties. A mind that conquers such difficulties, and issues from so desperate a struggle, not only victorious, but with its character stamped indelibly on the age, and affecting those which succeed it, is not to be brought within

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