frequently delineate it as though the observ- | that of Father John, which is moral! How ing eye were that of a dog, not that of a different is the grave and resolute courage of man. The faculty of Reflection, similarly, Artevelde from that of Van den Bosch, which as they delineate it, works apart from that is animal, or that of Gilbert Matthew, which mens melior which alone sustains it with the is sullen pride, or that of Orleans, which is true food of reason, and inspires its nobler chivalrous, or that of the Hermit, which is aims. In the absence of spiritual insight, spiritual zeal! society as delineated by them was often a thing gregarious rather than human. Imagination emptied her urns to bathe and irradiate the wastes of the senses: the understanding directed those actions the root of which was in the appetites; but the inmost spirit of the spectator starved amid abundance, for the same hand which pampered the body had "sent leanness into the soul." That these early dramatists were men of great intellects and great energies cannot be denied. They possessed all gifts, had they but known how to use them aright; and their genius could have failed in no attempt, had it cared to subject itself to the true and the good. But the imagination which works for the senses loses its spiritual heritage, and sells its birthright for a mess of pottage. Their offences were those of their age, for they did not rise superior to it. Our age has offences of a different kind, and our literature reflects them. Their offences would not be tolerated in our day; but while acknowledging the moral improvement evinced by modern literature, we have yet almost always to lament an inferiority, on the part of our recent poets, as regards intellectual keenness and energy. That inferiority of itself has disqualified them for the higher drama. Ben Jonson said of a young competitor, "My son Cartwright writes all like a man." Among our modern dramatic aspirants some have written like women, and some like philosophers, but few like men. Mr. Taylor is an exception. His genius is characterized by robust strength, and the drama is plainly its native region. We know of nothing in our earlier dramatists more manly and vigorous than many passages in his writings, such as, to refer to the plays not included in our criticism, the last scene in Edwin the Fair, or that in which the dying Van den Bosch addresses the downcast Burghers after his defeat. His characters are real characters. In ideality they seem to us sometimes deficient, but never in reality; and they are not merely superficially described,a thing too common among the attempts of modern dramatists,-but evoked and exhibited with the hand of power. It is this reality which makes one character wholly different from another, even when they have most in common. How unlike, for instance, is the statesmanlike wisdom of Clarenbald from that of Wulfstan, which is metaphysical, or To return to some of our earlier remarks: the specialty of Mr. Taylor's geuius appears to us to consist in its uniting the masculine strength of our early drama with the richer variety, the thoughtfulness, and the purer sentiment of our later poetry. Others among our modern poets have carried farther, some one, some another merit of that poetry. His characteristic consists in his being a connecting link between the two periods. It would be curious to compare the different modes in which the poets of different periods have gone through their poetic education. In our own time it has been the fashion to say that Nature is the only true instructress, and that the mountains and forests are the colleges in which her sons must graduate. Our earlier dramatists generally began with the universities, and then precipitated themselves upon the society of the metropolis as exhibited at the theatres, where they often combined a great deal of undigested learning with not a little of debauchery. In such a career there was more to develop the intelligence than to discipline that part of our being in which the intellect and the moral sense blend; that part of it from which the most permanent poetry proceeds. We can imagine that, at least for some departments of poetry, the training of professional, public, or official life, may be as auspicious as either of the other modes. It occupies the mind with persons at once and with things, and thus disciplines at the same time the faculties of observation and reflection. For dramatic poetry, which at heart is ever a serious thing, we suspect it to be, in its place, the best school; and it has the advantage also of being a safe, in proportion as it is an arduous one. Imagination cannot be created even by mountains and forests; and where it exists, its products will be great and healthy in proportion to the vigour of the whole moral being to which it is wedded; for high poetry is the offspring, not of the imagination only, but of the whole moral being. The relation in which Mr. Taylor stands to our other modern poets must be very imperfectly understood without an acquaintance with his minor poems, in which his resemblance to them is chiefly to be found. With the exception of the exquisite lyrics scattered through their plays, the minor poems of our carly dramatists are less known than they deserve to be. As might have been expected, they are for the most part narrative. In Mr. Taylor's, the meditative vein predominates. He has given us fewer than we could wish for; but these have a character of selectness, as if they had been drawn from a larger store. The longest is called the Eve of the Conquest. The night before the battle of Hastings, Harold sends to a neigh bouring convent for his daughter Edith; and, while the army slumbers around them, relates to her the chief incidents in his life, commanding her to record them, and thus vindicate his fame: "The Many, for whose dear behoof I lose The theme is one of warlike labours and of political wiles; but with these a brighter thread is interwoven. The following is the description of the Duke of Normandy's daughter, whose affections had fastened themselves upon Harold while he was sojourning, half as guest, and half as captive, at her father's court: "Of these the first The roseate richness of her childish bloom spread Forgetful, and the forward-leaning face Not less graphic is a very different portrait, that of William :— "His eye was cold and cruel, yet at times It flash'd with merriment; his bearing bold, Yet was he not devoid of courtly arts, He could be bland, attractive, frankly gay, Or lambent flames that lick'd whom at a word They might devour, was unextinguish'd still."-Vol. iii. p. 214. The record of Harold's early life concluded, the terrible battle and fatal overthrow are described. The poem ends thus: "In Waltham Abbey on St Agnes' Eve Uncover'd, by the taper's trembling light Of him whom Death, and not the Norman Had conquer'd; him the noblest and the last Of Saxon Kings; save one the noblest he; The last of all. Hard by the bier were seen Two women, weeping side by side, whose arms Clasped each the other. Edith was the one. With Edith Adeliza wept and pray'd.”—Vol. iii. p. 220. Eloquence in poetry is a quality as rare as that counterfeit of manly eloquence, rhetoric, once was common among us. If we associate the latter with Pope and his imitators, including much of what Lord Byron wrote in the heroic couplet, to the former must be conceded a place among the merits of Dryden. Among our more recent poets a splendid specimen of poetic eloquence. will be found in Southey's "Ode written during the Negotiations for Peace with Buonaparte in 1814." This quality is among the characteristics of Mr. Taylor's poetry. As an illustration of it, the ode entitled Heroism in the Shade may be cited. We can but make room for the last stanza :— "What makes a hero?-Not success, not fame, Inebriate merchants and the loud acclaim Of glutted avarice, -caps toss'd up in the air, Or pen of journalist with flourish fair, Bells peal'd, stars, ribands, and a titular name--These, though his rightful tribute, he can spare; His rightful tribute not his end or aim, Express'd in action, in endurance proved: Of rank heroic, 'tis to bear unmoved But worse, ingratitude and poisonous darts Launch'd by the country he had served and loved : This with a free unclouded spirit pure, renown: This is the hero's complement and crown; This miss'd, one struggle had been wanting still, One glorious triumph of the heroic will, One self-approval in his heart of hearts." The predominant characteristic, however, of Mr. Taylor's minor poems, is a certain meditative pathos. They have something in them of Wordsworth; but the thoughts are less discursive and less philosophical; something also of Southey, but the texture is finer and firmer. In the conciseness of their diction lies chiefly the difference between them and such of our modern poetry as they most resemble. In some pieces, as in Lago Varese, descriptive poetry is blended with personal interest; the lovely scene there described seems to be impersonated in the youthful" native of the clime," who forms the centre of the picture, and mitigates its pensiveness, though she cannot remove it. The Lugo Lugano, written in a stanza wholly original, is likewise a descriptive poem; but it gradually rises into a strain of statesmanlike thought, in which the "moral liberty" of light and humble hearts is contrasted with the "civil liberty" of charters and statutes, and a strong preference expressed for the former : "From pride plebeian and from pride high-born, From pride of knowledge no less vain and weak, From overstrain'd activities that seek Ends worthiest of indifference or scorn, From pride of intellect that exalts its horn In contumely above the wise and meek, Exulting in coarse cruelties of the pen, From pride of drudging souls to Mammon sworn, Where shall we flee and when ?" 'Thoughtfully by the side Ernesto sate Of her whom, in his earlier youth, with heart Then first exulting in a dangerous hope, Dearer for danger, he had rashly loved. That was a season when the untravell'd spirit, Not way-worn nor way-wearied, nor with soil Nor stain upon it, lions in its path Saw none, or seeing, with triumphant trust Tempestuously exalted, for awhile His heart ran mountains high, or to the roar Auspicious energy;-by land and sea How does the lady of his love look on the wreck ?— "Of this she saw not all-she saw but littleThat which she could not choose but see she saw And o'er her sunlit dimples and her smiles The ode with which the volume ends is very fine: but there is another piece which we regard as, on the whole, the most characteristic of Mr. Taylor's minor poems. Few poems are at once so true to nature, and to that art which nature owns. The metre is a rare one-that of Lycidas; and the long interwoven periods, with their rhymes recurring at wide intervals, like the chime of funeral-bells far off, are in harmony with the Where pride is, the poet affirms that free- elegiac strain :— dom cannot be, except in name :— "For Independence walks With staid Humility aye hand in hand, Whilst Pride in tremor stalks." Two Ways of Life is a dramatic scene, in which the descriptive and the meditative vein are blended with the personal; and the comparative merits of the life domestic and the life monastic are discussed-with as much impartiality as can be expected from two lovers. Ernesto is a love poem replete with power and pathos. It has no events, but the two characters it describes are finely discriminated: "In Remembrance of the Hon. Edward Ernest Villiers. I. "A grace though melancholy, manly too, Touch'd by the brightness of the golden dawn, And flowers and spangles of the dewy lawn. II. And even the stranger, though he saw not these, III. His life was private; safely led, aloof IV. But farther may we pass not; for the ground How much by thy unerring insight clear ART. V.-PINDAR AND HIS AGE. ALMOST the only fact of Pindar's personal history which is known on indisputable evidence, is that he was born during the Pythian Festival, for he tells us this himself; further, all the grammarians are agreed that this happened at Cynoscephala, a village of Boeotia, where the holy water of Dirce ran sparkling half round Thebes. Beyond this all is uncertain. The traditional stupidity of a succession of writers, who copied, amplified, abridged, distorted the obscure jottings of their predecessors, has provided posterity with a choice of three fathers for the Theban poet, Pagondas, Scopelinus, Daiphantus, and a couple of mothers, Myrto and Cleidice. Then we do not know whether his brother was called Erotion or Eritimis, and as the last seems the less probable of the two, one cannot depend on the statement of the versifier who mentions him, that he was a distinguished huntsman, wrestler, and pugilist. Again, the date of Pindar's birth and the du ration of his life are uncertain. The ancients are divided between 522 and 508 B.c. for the former, and eighty years and sixty-six for the latter; the moderns are naturally in favour of the more picturesque age, and this hypothesis is supported by the facts that it agrees best with the dates which it seems most convenient to assign to the various poems; and that Isth. vi. 40, where the poet looks forward to a calm old age, would be rather more appropriate to a man of sixty-eight than a man of fifty-four. The notices of Pindar's youth take us into a region of more interesting conjectures, if not of perfect certainty. We should really like to know how much instruction he received from Myrtis and Corinna, the poetesses of Boeotia, before he learnt to defeat them; and whether Myrtis took her defeat as philosophically as her rival, who pronounced that they were both to blame for contending with Pindar, as, after all, they were only women. It would be satisfactory to ascertain whether his vocation was in part determined by the fact that his family belonged to an hereditary guild of pipers; but we have no means of testing the statement of Thomas Magister, who informs us, with an air of superior knowledge, that Pindar's schoolmaster had been mistaken for his father. If the poet really took the place of Agathocles or Apollodorus at Athens, in training the cyclic chorus at the early age of sixteen, that would be an interesting proof that his practical skill in music was greater than is implied in an ancient story, to the effect that a rude fellow once asked him why he made songs when he could not sing, whereupon he answered that shipbuilders made rudders though they could not limits. He was employed to compose a steer. There is another problem, the solution of which would throw great light, not only upon Pindar's personal history, but on the whole course of Greek civilisation. It is certain that in Pindar's poetry we find traces of Orphic and Pythagorean ideas; did he learn these ideas by an Orphic or Pythagorean initiation, or by some less formal process? When he speaks of a mystical cycle of three lives to be traversed before the final deliverance, of the under world, whose sun rises at the setting of the sun of earth, of the vigil of the soul during the body's sleep, is he treading upon forbidden ground, hinting at what he had learnt under a pledge of secrecy, or is he only expressing the thoughts which had once been the common property of all who had an affinity for them, until certain hierophants had attempted to confine them to a privileged circle of communicants? We know that in the latter part of the last century secret societies were actually founded or reorganized to inculcate the notions about the perfectibility and sovereignty of mankind which were circulating in all the literature of the period. In the same way, the craving for purification, and the current preconceptions about the terms on which it was possible, preceded the organization of new mysteries to minister to new needs, the remodelling of ancient ceremonies to make them harmonize with younger life. An instance of this process may be found in the prosecution of Eschylus for divulging the mysteries, because one or two of his plays touched upon legends which were beginning to be reserved for initiated hearers. His defence was satisfactory and simple; he knew nothing, he said, of the special sanctity of those particular legends, as he had never been initiated; but the self-respect of Athenian jurors required that the defendant's brother should come into court to merit their personal compassion by exhibiting the stump of the hand hewn off as he grasped the ships in which the Persians were to fly from Marathon. At the age of twenty, Pindar was employed by the Aleuade of Thessaly, who claimed their descent from Perseus and Heracles, and were suspected of appealing to the memory of the former hero to gild their submission to the Persian king, to celebrate, in company with other poets, one of the vietories gained in the same day by Hippocrates, a young clansman who seems to have been a special favourite with the heads of the house. Gradually his popularity extended itself throughout Greece, and even beyond its Pæan even at Ceos, the country of his elder rival, Simonides; we have fragments of Scolia or catches composed for Alexander of Macedonia; and probably he had done similar work for Hiero before 477 B.C., when he composed Pytb. II., the first of four triumphal Odes for the Syracusan Court to inform that potentate of his success at the Theban Iolaia, and to warn him against the artifices of Simonides and Bacchylides, who were endeavouring to undermine their absent rival in a position which must have been already lucrative. To make good his position he visited Sicily in 475 B.C., not without reluctance, if we may believe that he was recommended to make the same use of his opportunities as Simonides, and replied that he liked to be his own master, which he could not be in a despot's house. He had formerly called his Cean rivals a couple of jackdaws, towards whom everything was fair when they chattered against the divine bird of Zeus; but personal acquaintance seems to have softened his animosity, for in Ol. 1., composed when he was sharing Hiero's hospitality with them, he is content to class himself with the men who sport round Hiero's friendly board, in songs which threw a new lustre upon the life of their host; and in his subsequent compositions there is nothing which can be proved to reflect upon them. Be this as it may, he had returned to continental Greece before 468 B.C., when he composed an ode to celebrate the victory of the prophet and warrior Agesias, whose mule-chariot had sustained the reputation of Sicily, which was supposed to excel in mules, while the horse-chariots of Cyrene stood highest. The same year Hiero gained his only Olympic chariot victory, but Pindar was not permitted by the fates, or not invited by his patron, to celebrate this crowning success, for which he had prayed four years before. Meanwhile other distinctions had not been wanting. Soon after the victories of Salamis and Platea he had ventured to contrast the glory of Athens and the misery of Thebes. His countrymen fined him for the supposed disloyalty; but the Athenians paid, or more than paid, the fine, and made him their honorary proxenus, an example which was followed by other States. Some of the ancients, not satisfied with this, pleased themselves with supposing that the statue of him at Athens was erected in his lifetime, and that the Lacedæmonians were compelled, by a metrical inscription, to respect his house during an imaginary sack of Thebes. His loyalty to his country does not seem to have been affected by her severity: the only |