Surpassing, as these instances would seem almost to do, the fabled enchantment of Orpheus, we are not left to them, and like ancient sources, alone, for proof of the high distinction ever held by the poet and his art. The golden age of every country, since the revival of letters, has been signalized by the light that poetry has shed upon it, and by the honours rendered to the inspired men who may be regarded as its stars. Italy, Spain, France, England, as the new morning of mind dawned upon them, successively beheld their mighty geniuses springing upon their paths, with a power which they delighted to reverence, and a brilliancy that could not fail to captivate. The history of literature, in all these lands, proves, to satisfaction, the talent which this class of men possessed of infusing their own into the public sentiment, as well as of fixing the public eye on themselves: it is enough, also, to convince us of the fact, that such men held important place on the scale of society, and that they are calculated to exert an influence on the growing character of their country.

But, while we perceive a singular power to have been sustained by the poets of high accomplishment in all ages, it is evident that, in modern times, the same power is either greatly modified, or holds a more quiet sway over the minds of the people. The principle of the power is the same. It is the power of an ardent, bold, creative nature, over spirits that cannot follow its march, but still bow to the dominion that has attended it. It is the power of a high-reaching, imaginative intellect over a passive one, yielded to the beautiful illusion that is thrown around it. It is the power of genius-penetrating to that subtle portion of the soul, which alone can claim sympathy, how remote soever it may be, with the master spirit that spells itbreathing upon it the breath of a new life, and calling it to the love of high deeds and splendid virtues, of which, before, it had but dull conception, or drowsy remembrance. Such is the power of poetry. Such is the gift of the poet: and to such power and such gifts has the world ever paid its admiration, where there have been poets to sing, or men to listen.

In the progress of things, the unity of this power has passed away. Its distinctiveness has been lost in the crowding interests of life; but its agency, though more secret and diffused, is still felt, with a vigour, indestructible as ever, and almost as wonderful, when we consider the vast sphere in which it is called to operate. In the simplicity of the early, and the comparative moral inaction of the middle ages, it was a necessary consequence of the state of the times, that the poet should hold a more discernible elevation, and that the exercise of his power should be more direct, and consequently more effectual, upon the mass of mankind. As society advanced, he also, as the depositary of

this power, lost his original superiority among men. They turned from him, to the sublime and uplifting things which he had eloquently revealed-no longer to dream over, but to study, and pant after, and pursue them; until, by a gradation, the most natural in the world, the poet descended to diffuse among his fellows those beautiful and kindly influences, that, in olden times, he had dispensed as favours from a superior to his followers. Then, it may be said, poetry was leagued with superstitious dread. Now, it goes hand and hand with the charities of life. It was then a thing to wonder and tremble at; heard in terrible distinctness, as a revelation, amid the forests and sacred groves of the gods. Now, it makes a part of the music of the world. It enters into our dwellings, and our hearts: it mingles with our social duties, and ennobles-purifies-endears our spirits and our memories. Then, the poet was honoured, as almost a deity, and his numbers listened to as the breathings of prophecy, or with the chastened delight of hearts bowed continually to threatening and commanding genius. Now, he is honoured, where he should be, as a man; and his works come abroad to animate us to our duties, or to cheer us in solitude; to charm us by their power, or to woo us by their beauty. Then, he was like a monarch on his throne, lording it over the kingdom of unawakened intellect. Now, he is but a gifted brother of the great family, bearing indeed the same brow of inspiration, and the same wand of genius; but he mingles with the busy throng, and, with his harp upon his shoulders, scatters his music to his fellows, as he passes onward in the common pilgrimage.

As the mode in which the poetic influence was accustomed to operate has changed with the changes of time and things, so has the popularity of the poet found new sources in the altered inclinations and feelings of his readers. Hence no modern writer may be said to bear at once and incontestably the palm of superiority, or is, like one of the ancient masters, placed, as it were by acclamation, upon the pinnacle of poetic renown. Though his genius may entitle him to high rank, yet the conflicting struggles of the thousand aspirants round him, and the collisions of as many different tastes and favouritisms, render his right for a season questionable, and his fame less brilliant. This is a natural consequence where there are so many to share in the splendid rivalry.

It is evident that there are schools of poetry. We have heard some of them talked of, till their names have come to be familiar words. And these schools have actually engendered a party spirit in poetry-so that we find something like clanism meeting us even on the pathway of Parnassus. If Wordsworth, and Leigh Hunt, and Coleridge, may be said to constitute the head of the Lake school, Pope was as certainly the head of the philo

sophical, or metaphysical. We know not, in short, that Byron would be unaptly termed, by the sentimental, or sickly, the leader of the demoniac order. Certain it is, that each of these writers is distinguished by something peculiar to himself, and each one has his partisans. We know not, again, that this can be helped; nor, on the whole, that it is fair subject of complaint. As a general rule, every man has a right to his taste, and a consequent privilege of praising him who best suits it. Still there is something to be regretted even in this. There is, after all, hardly as much latitude allowable in relation to governing principles, in the republic of letters, as in the body politic. It is desirable to have such things as style and taste more fixed, and amenable to a standard, than it is to have faith in matters of government squared by any particular creed. With regard to the poetical schools, this evil of partisanship—a partisanship which is carried to laboured articles, and even to the enlistment of journals in favour of their different leaders-is decidedly destructive. It has made, and it still makes, mannerists of writers, and, as far as this goes, it is fatal to the fine spirit of poetry.

It has been said, as though by way of excuse for its most unpardonable irregularities, that genius always has its characteristics. It may be so: but they are always essentially the same, where high and holy enthusiasm animates the votary. As to poetry, we believe that the glorious art receives no additional dignity, either from the noisy blazonry of the merits of some who profess it, and whose claim to genius consists only in their peculiarities, or from consenting to submit itself to any of the working-day methods of gaining popularity. It strikes us, that far from conforming itself to the demands of a diseased taste, or the unhealthy fancies of society, poetry has but one eminent object before it and that is to make men better by the divine spirit which it breathes around them. We believe that mere trickery of phrase, gilded imagery, and prettinesses of thought, constitute no vital portion of poetry; and we are unwilling to think that that verse is destined to live, which, at best, is a mere attempt at originality, or a mass of laboured simplicity, according to the worst signification of the word. We wish to see that kind of metrical composition alone recognised as poetry, which is such in the true sense of the term; that is constituted such by the combination of great thought with harmony of numbers; and whose music derives its greatest attractiveness from the sentiment. This we hold to be the true criterion; and by this standard we should point to him as the true Roscius of his art, who, in the best strains, best sings the deathless charms of virtue and honour; who stamps, in golden lines, upon his age those sublime lessons of moral power, that, of old, sometimes lured the great to glory, and the good to heaven; who comes upon the world in

the swift coinage of thoughts that shall die only with time, be cause they bear about them, and in them, the vitality of truth. High place, it is true, has been attained by intellectual energy, where the moral principle had no visible ascendancy in the individual. But it is false and inconclusive logic, to argue from the height that has been reached by certain powers, the impossibility of gaining one still above, by the help of additional ones. The true reasoning is the reverse. Shakspeare is an exception. to the remark that will apply here. Though of a spirit that made no pretension, certainly, to unction, still the wonderful lessons which his poetry embalms come home to our sympathies and our consciences with the effect of so many saintly homilies. His truths search us like sermons pregnant with holiness. But Shakspeare is an anomaly. Who can speak in this strain of Burns or Byron? And yet who does not see what mighty things, above all that either has effected for the world, would have been accomplished by Burns and Byron, had the moral taken precedence of the intellectual principle in their poetry! No one can deny, that, with the same mental energy at work, and under the precedence referred to, there certainly would have been nothing to diminish it: in both cases, the poet would have been so much greater as the man had been better. The triumph had been contemporaneous and parallel. But we pass to another. consideration.

Simplicity, when under the direction of good taste, is undoubtedly a virtue of good poetry. But we hold it not to be the cardinal one to which some would elevate it. There are others certainly before it. As an ingredient, it has its value; but when the higher properties of the composition are made subservient to it, there is great danger of failure. Manliness and power should never wait upon simplicity. As it is, indeed, it is a fault, and, we conceive, a childish one, among some of the poetic brotherhood on this side the water. Cowper, on the other, may be said to have set the example of the plain, domestic poetry of modern days. But, since his time, the mania, that in him was delightful, has spread, gathering sad symptoms, till it has passed from the character of simple-hearted, to that of simple-headed; until, indeed, in some instances, it has degenerated from pure simplicity, to something worse than weakness-to folly, and almost to grossness. Now this is the joint effect of a proneness to imitate English standards of a mistaken notion in the writers themselves, and of public opinion; that is, so far as criticism may be said to express it. It would be idle, we think, to go gravely to work to prove the inclination, with ten out of twelve of our native poets, to conform themselves to some British copy, whenever they give themselves to verse. It is, and has long been, matter of common knowledge and common

complaint. We mean to be understood that the imitation has been of what will one day be, if they are not now, decried as the very worst faults of the originals. Of high and commanding models we cannot have too much imitation, if imitation it may be called, that is but a sympathetic expression of strong mind in strong language. In the great features of power, all great writers will have a resemblance; and so far as this is concerned, it is no imitation. It is coincidence.

Our own poets, in some instances, have mistaken the spirit of simplicity altogether; or, if they have not mistaken it, they have, like some of their prototypes, suffered themselves to commit divers poetical felonies, under the name. We too frequently meet extreme quaintness, or a train of thought teeming with improbable devices, or bad conclusions; but the writer tells us this is simplicity. Again, we are struck with the degree of quietness that marks his style-perchance it may be sleepiness; there seems to be a continual aim at suppression of thought, as though it were unrefined to give it play-as some men hold it so to be natural and hearty in society; but the author tells us again, this is simplicity. Still again we fall in company with a writer who travels perpetually in a mist; who loses himself and his readers in his own metaphysical labyrinth, and who torments us with a display of what Mr. Pollock calls merely the "tops of thoughts ;" and here our only consolation is that every thing about us is simplicity.

To these causes need scarcely be added the tone of cricitism, to account for the present character of a great portion of our poetry. Writers have been reviewed into a refinement and polish that has ended frequently in an absolute frittering of their thoughts, and a total loss of that better energy of which they are capable. They write, as though they were writing with restraint, for a drawing-room, and not with freedom, for a world. But we shall recur to this consideration directly. Meanwhile, it is observable that this very condition of our poetry is as much a consequence of the increase of readers and intelligence-with the variety of taste incident thereto-as it is of a change of times and people. These may be added as remoter causes, to those already referred to. This change, we would add, is greater than we, who have gone along with it, are apt to perceive. A more material one has not accompanied human improvement than that which literature has undergone from one period to another; and in no one department of literature has it been more effectual or more striking than in poetry-the poetry of our own day. View writing at large, and instead of the mystical and laboured style that ran through the best productions of earlier times, and which, moreover, was so accordant with the comparative seclusion and silence of letters, we now hear both the