The madman. While the lover, all as frantic,
Sees Helen's beauty in a brow of Egypt.
The poet's eye, in a fine frenzy rolling,

creation; describes the surrounding universe in the colors which the passions throw over it, and depicts the mind in those modes of repose or agitation, of tenderness or sublime emotion, which manifest its thirst for a more powerful and

heaven;

And, as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen
Turns them to shape, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.
Such tricks hath strong imagination.'

But we are most happy to be supported in our views of the high claims of this art by such a man as Dr. Channing of America. In his admirable Remarks on the Character and Writings of John Milton he says, 'Of all God's gifts of intellect, he [Milton] esteemed poetical genius the most transcendant. He esteemed it in himself as a kind of inspiration, and wrote his great works with something of the conscious dignity of a prophet. We agree with Milton in his estimate of poetry. It seems to us the divinest of all arts; for it is the breathing or expression of that principle or sentiment which is deepest and sublimest in human nature; we mean of that thirst or aspiration to which no mind is wholly a stranger, for something purer and lovelier, something more powerful, lofty, and thrilling, than ordinary and real life affords. No doctrine is more common among Christians than that of man's immortality; but it is not so generally understood, that the germs or principles of his whole future being are now wrapped up in his soul, as the rudiments of the future plant in the seed. As a necessary result of this constitution, the soul, possessed and moved by these mighty though infant energies, is perpetually stretching beyond what is present and visible, struggling against the bounds of its earthly prison-house, and seeking relief and joy in imaginings of unseen and ideal being. This view of our nature, which has never been fully developed, and which goes further towards explaining the contradictions of human life than all others, carries us to the very foundation and sources of poetry. He who cannot interpret by his own consciousness what we now have said, wants the true key to works of genius. He has not penetrated those sacred recesses of the soul, where poetry is born and nourished, and inhales immortal vigor, and wings herself for her heavenward flight. In an intellectual nature, framed for progress and for higher modes of being, there must be creative energies, powers of original and ever growing thought; and poetry is the form in which these energies are chiefly manifested. It is the glorious prerogative of this art that it makes all things new' for the gratification of a divine instinct. It indeed finds its elements in what it actually sees and experiences, in the worlds of matter and mind; but it combines and blends these into new forms and according to new affinities; breaks down, if we may so say, the distinctions and bounds of nature; imparts to material objects life, and sentiment, and emotion, and invests the mind with the powers and splendors of the outward

prosaic character, the mind may seem lawless in these workings; but it observes higher laws than it transgresses, the laws of the immortal intellect; it is trying and developing its best faculties; and in the objects which it describes, or in the emotions which it awakens, anticipates those states of progressive power, splendor, beauty, and happiness, for which it was created.

We accordingly believe that poetry, far from injuring society, is one of the great instruments of its refinement and exaltation. It lifts the mind above ordinary life, gives it a respite from depressing cares, and awakens the consciousness of its affinity with what is pure and noble. In its legitimate and highest efforts it has the same tendency and aim with Christianity; that is, to spiritualise our nature. True, poetry has been made the instrument of vice, the pander of bad passions; but, when genius thus stoops, it dims its fires, and parts with much of its power; and, even when poetry is enslaved to licentiousness or misanthropy, she cannot wholly forget her true vocation. Strains of pure feeling, touches of tenderness, images of innocent happiness, sympathies with suffering virtue, bursts of scorn or indignation at the hollowness of the world, passages true to our moral nature, often escape in an immoral work, and show us how hard it is for a gifted spirit to divorce itself wholly from what is good. Poetry has a natural alliance with our best affections. It delights in the beauty and sublimity of the outward creation and of the soul. It indeed portrays with terrible energy the excesses of the passions; but they are passions which show a mighty nature, which are full of power, which command awe, and excite a deep though shuddering sympathy. Its great tendency and purpose is, to carry the mind beyond and above the beaten, dusty, weary walks of ordinary life; to lift it into a purer element, and to breathe into it more profound and generous emotion. It reveals to us the loveliness of nature, brings back the freshness of youthful feeling, revives the relish of simple pleasures, keeps unquenched the enthusiasm which warmed the spring-time of our being, refines youthful love, strengthens our interest in human nature by vivid delineations of its tenderest and loftiest feelings, spreads our sympathies over all classes of society, knits us by new ties with universal being, and through the brightness of its prophetic visions helps faith to lay hold on the future life.

We are aware that it is objected to poetry, that it gives wrong views and excites false expectations of life, peoples the mind with shadows and illusions, and builds up imagination on the ruins of wisdom. That there is a wisdom against which poetry wars, the wisdom of the senses, which makes physical comfort and gratification the supreme good, and wealth the chief interest of life, we do not deny; nor do we deem it the least service which poetry

renders to mankind, that it redeems them from the thraldom of this earthborn prudence. But, passing over this topic, we would observe that the complaint against poetry as abounding in illusion and deception is in the main groundless. In many poems there is more of truth than in many histories and philosophic theories. The fictions of genius are often the vehicles of the sublimest verities, and its flashes often open new regions of thought, and throw new light on the mysteries of our being. In poetry the letter is falsehood, but the spirit is often profoundest wisdom. And, if truth thus dwells in the boldest fictions of the poet, much more may it be expected in his delineations of life; for the present life, which is the first stage of the immortal mind, abounds in the materials of poetry, and it is the high office of the bard to detect this divine element among the grosser labors and pleasures of our earthly being. The present life is not wholly prosaic, precise, tame, and finite. To the gifted eye it abounds in the poetic. The affections, which spread beyond ourselves and stretch far into futurity; the workings of mighty passions, which seem to arm the soul with an almost superhuman energy; the innocent and irrepressible joy of infancy; the bloom, and buoyancy, and dazzling hopes of youth; the throbbings of the heart, when it first wakes to love, and dreams of a happiness too vast for earth; woman, with her beauty, and grace, and gentleness, and fulness of feeling, and depth of affection, and her blushes of purity, and the tones and looks which only a mother's heart can inspire;-these are all poetical. It is not true that the poet paints a life which does not exist. He only extracts and concentrates, as it were, life's ethereal essence, arrests and condenses its volatile fragrance, brings together its scattered beauties, and prolongs its more refined but evanescent joys; and in this he does well; for it is good to feel that life is not wholly usurped by cares for subsistence, and physical gratifications, but admits, in measures which may be indefinitely enlarged, sentiments and delights worthy of a higher being. This power of poetry to refine our views of life and happiness is more and more needed as society advances. It is needed to withstand the encroachments of heartless and artificial manners, which make civilisation so tame and uninteresting. It is needed to counteract the tendency of physical science, which being now sought, not as formerly for intellectual gratification, but for multiplying bodily comforts, requires a new development of imagination, taste, and poetry, to preserve men from sinking into an earthly, material, epicurean life.-Our remarks in vindication of poetry have extended beyond our original design. They have had a higher aim than to assert the dignity of Milton as a poet, and that is, to endear and recommend this divine art to all who reverence and would cultivate and refine their nature.'

Of the oriental poetry we can here only remark that, while gems of the brightest genius abound in it to luxuriance, in the poetry of ancient Greece and Rome alone do they appear set and polished to perfection. There was a flexibility

in the language of the Greeks admirably adapted to give every fluctuation of thought and feeling its due expression, while the well ascertained and disciplined numbers of their syllables became real notes to this music of the soul.

Different names were given to these important combinations: the most useful were the spondee, composed of two long syllables; and the dactyl, of one long and two short syllables. These were solely employed in the construction of the hexameter verse, of which an imitation has been vainly attempted in English. Witness the last and not least attempt of our poets in this way, that of Mr. Southey in the Vision of Judgment: the movement of which has been well given in

Jack ascended the hill, and Jill he ascended it also, Down tumbled poor Jack, and Jill he came tumbling down after, Jack fractured his crown, but of Jill nothing more is recorded.

The pronunciation of the Greek and Latin languages is, indeed, almost as totally lost to us as that of the Hebrew; but such is the exquisite mechanism of their metre that their verses cannot be read without producing a rich and melodious intonation.

It is somewhat uncertain what species of poetry was first cultivated in Greece. Fables, as among the oriental nations, were compositions of great antiquity; the ode formed a part of religious worship; the pastoral must have been introduced in an age sufficiently refined to relish simplicity. The immortal poems of Homer were composed at an early epoch of Grecian literature, and, as is well known, transmitted by oral tradition to a more polished age. Of this extraordinary man so much has been said that it would appear difficult to say any thing which should not now be trivial or impertinent. We may observe that it is pretended the Iliad and Odyssey were composed at different eras, by various authors; and that these desultory tales were at length collocated and edited by some ingenious critic, who might possibly have been distinguished by the appellation of Homer. The novelty and extravagance of this hypothesis have perhaps obtained for it partisans among those professed sceptics and segregatists who can perceive no difference between vulgar errors and popular opinions, and whose ambition it is to recede as far as possible from the convictions of other men. It is generally admitted that the excellence in which the supposed Homer stands unrivalled is the energy of his conceptions, which gives to his personages, his scenes, and his descriptions a kind of real existence. With such felicity are his characters cast that no reader of feeling can be at a loss to conceive how Achilles would look, or Nestor speak, or Ulysses act, on any occasion. Let any unprejudiced man decide whether such exquisite harmony of design could have been the result of chance, or of each book having its separate Homer?

The name of Pindar has descended to us with honor; for of lyrical compositions the most popular was the heroic ode: but the poems which inspired in his compatriots the most ex

alted enthusiam are but imperfectly understood, and are almost incapable of translation. The public recitation of the ode was accompanied both by music and dancing: a circumstance to which its structure was obviously adapted. The two first stanzas, called the strophe and the antistrophe, were of equal length. In the first part the performers approached the altars; in the latter, the dance being inverted, they measured back their steps to their former place, where, whilst they sung the epode, they stood still. It appears that this form was peculiar to the heroic ode. There were other lyrical compositions of a different cast. Sappho's poems inspire only tender impassioned sentiment; those of Anacreon, whether amatory or convivial, are equally remote from the sublimity of Pindar, and the melting softness of Sappho. The fervid imagination of Pindar is compared by Horace to the impetuosity of a mountain torrent :

Monte decurrens velut amnis, imbres
Quem super notas aluere ripas,
Fervet, immensusque ruit profundo

Pindarus ore.

From the heroic ode the regular drama was derived. The invention of dialogue and action, as we have shown in the article already referred to, belongs to Eschylus; the original ode was preserved in the chorus, which constituted the popular part of the entertainment. Like the band of a modern orchestra, the chorus was composed of several persons who recited in a different manner from the other performers. We learn from Horace that their business was to deduce from the passing scene some lesson of morality, or to inculcate on the spectator some religious precept.

The rules of the ancient drama were suited to its institution. The unities of time and place were necessary in a performance to which the auxiliary resources of modern machinery were wanting, and from which all the illusions of the modern scene were precluded. The tragedies of Euripides and Sophocles were masterpieces in their kind, but would now probably be little relished even by scholars and scholastic enthusiasts.

Comedy, also, originally consisted of a chorus. The rudiments of the comic art may, perhaps, be detected in the satyrs, a sort of interlude first annexed to tragedies, in which the scene was rural, and the personages Satyrs, or sylvan deities. In the plays of Aristophanes living characters were introduced, and Socrates beheld himself ridiculed on the stage. This abuse a better taste corrected; and the comedies of Menander, or the new comedy (imitated by Terence), exhibited only interesting pictures of domestic life. The chorus at first appendant on comedy, was gradually changed into the prologue, a personage who carefully apprised the spectators of all they were to see.

Ennius, one of the elder Roman poets, first produced the satire, a species of miscellaneous poetry purely Roman, which was destined to receive perfection from Horace. With equal originality, Lucretius wrote his metaphysical poem, in which are developed the philosophical

systems of his age; but it was not till the era of Augustus that the bards of Latium established any equality with those of Greece. It was then that Horace, not satisfied with having transplanted all the Greek lyric beauties in his odes, opened a rich vein of satiric poetry; and Virgil, having equalled Theocritus, aspired to emulate Homer. In the Æneid it may be acknowledged that he sometimes fell short of his master. His characters possess not the same features, durability, and grandeur : nor are his scenes equally animated and dramatic. To atone for these defects, he unites every charm that gives interest to narrative or enchantment to description; occasionally he rises to the sublime, but the beautiful is his natural element; he can excite terror, but he is more prone to inspire tenderness and pity. In the delicate touches of nature and pathos, he seems to have grown enamoured of his subject, and to have lingered affectionately on the endearing scenes and charities of domestic life. In the Georgics, Virgil has left a model of didactic composition, ennobled by a strain of pure philosophical sentiment. Ovid, whose talents were not less versatile than those of his contemporaries, adorned the fables of mythology with description, and illustrated in his epistles almost every romantic story of antiquity. The style of his elegies is not unlike that of his epistles: he paints to the eye, but he has often too much wit and fancy to touch the heart. Tibullus has, perhaps, exceeded every other elegiac writer in simplicity and tenderness. Lucan and Statius were also epic poets, but they are seldom quoted, and not often read. Lucan possessed a genius of an exalted order; but his subject was peculiarly unfortunate, and his beauties are now neglected because they are found in scenes repulsive to the imagination, and uncongenial with the feelings. Among the last of the Roman poets appeared Juvenal and Persius, of whom the former was one of the most original writers she had produced. He professes to exhibit a picture of his times; and there is in his manner an undissembled fervor that well atones for his occasional ruggedness.

We have only room to glance at the origin of modern poetry. The barbarous nations who subdued Rome, though ignorant of the polite arts, were not insensible to the charms of poetry. Their bards were no less venerated than their priests; and whatever instruction they received, whatever knowledge they possessed, was communicated in metre. In the age of Charlemagne the minstrels of Provence, or, as they were called, the troubadours, introduced the metrical tales or ballads, which, from the dialect in which they were written, acquired the name of romances. Their poems were all composed in rhyme; but whether this practice was borrowed from the Arabs or the Goths is uncertain. The Italian language, which of all the corrupt dialects introduced by the barbarians assimilated most with the Roman, soon acquired a tincture of elegance. In the middle ages Dante wrote; Ariosto followed; and Petrarch, the enthusiastical votary of classical genius, appeared among the first founders of modern literature. The passion for allegory, so long the characteristic of the Italian

school, was by Chaucer rendered as prevalent in England as it had previously been on the continent. During several ages, Italy continued to be the Poets' Land of Europe; and in that interval was produced the Jerusalem Delivered, a poem not unworthy of a Roman bard, or an Augustan age.

We may here remark that we owe to the Italian Masque the Comus of Milton; which however, as has been well observed, is as far superior to the Faithful Shepherdess, as the Faithful Shepherdess is to the Aminta, or the Aminta to the Pastor Fido. It was well for Milton that he had here no Euripides to mislead him. He understood and loved the literature of modern Italy. But he did not feel for it the same veneration which he entertained for the remains of Athenian and Roman poetry, consecrated by so many lofty and endearing recollections. The faults, moreover, of his Italian predecessors, were of a kind to which his mind had a deadly antipathy. He could stoop to a plain style, sometimes even to a bald style; but false brilliancy was his utter aversion.' The above writer (Edinburgh Review, August 1825) has run a parallel between Dante in the Divine Comedy and Milton's Paradise Lost, which we are sure our readers will thank us for transcribing here.

The poetry of Milton differs from that of Dante as the hieroglyphics of Egypt differed from the picture-writing of Mexico. The images which Dante employs speak for themselves:they stand simply for what they are. Those of Milton have a signification which is often discernible only to the initiated. Their value depends less on what they directly represent, than on what they remotely suggest. However strange, however grotesque, may be the appearance which Dante undertakes to describe, he never shrinks from describing it. He gives us the shape, the color, the sound, the smell, the taste; he counts the numbers; he measures the size. His similes are the illustrations of a traveller. Enlike those of other poets, and especially of Milton, they are introduced in a plain businesslike manner, not for the sake of any beauty in the objects from which they are drawn, not for the sake of any ornament which they may impart to the poem, but simply in order to make the meaning of the writer as clear to the reader as it is to himself. The ruins of the precipice which led from the sixth to the seventh circle of hell were like those of the rock which fell into the Adige on the south of Trent. The cataract of Phlegethon was like that of Aqua Cheta at the monastery of St. Benedict. The place where the heretics were confined in burning tombs resembled the vast cemetery of Arles! Now, let us compare with the exact details of Dante the dim intimations of Milton. We will cite a few examples. The English poet has never thought of taking the measure of Satan. He gives us merely a vague idea of vast bulk. In one passage the fiend lies stretched out huge in length, floating many a rood, equal in size to the earthborn enemies of Jove, or to the sea-morster which the mariner mistakes for an island. When he addresses himself to battle against the guardian angels, he stands like Teneriffe or Atlas; his

stature reaches the sky. Contrast with these descriptions the lines in which Dante has described the gigantic spectre of Nimrod. His face seemed to me as long and as broad as the ball of St. Peter's at Rome; and his other limbs were in proportion; so that the bank, which concealed him from the waist downwards, nevertheless showed so much of him, that three tall Germans would in vain have attempted to reach to his hair.' We are sensible that we do no justice to the admirable style of the Florentine poet. But Mr. Cary's translation is not at hand; and our version, however rude, is sufficient to illustrate our meaning.

'Once more, compare the lazar-house in the eleventh book of the Paradise Lost with the last ward of Malebolge in Dante. Milton avoids the loathsome details, and takes refuge in indis-, tinct but solemn and tremendous imagery,despair hurrying from couch to couch to mock the wretches with his attendance, death shaking his dart over them, but, in spite of supplications, delaying to strike. What says Dante? There was such a moan there, as there would be if all the sick who, between July and September, are in the hospitals of Valdichiana, and of the Tuscan swamps, and of Sardinia, were in one pit together; and such a stench was issuing forth as is wont to issue from decayed limbs.'

'We will not take upon ourselves the invidious office of settling precedency between two such writers. Each in his own department is incomparable; and each, we may remark, has, wisely or fortunately, taken a subject adapted to exhibit his peculiar talent to the greatest advantage. The Divine Comedy is a personal narrative. Dante is the eye-witness and ear-witness of that which he relates. He is the very man who has heard the tormented spirits crying out for the second death, who has read the dusky characters on the portal within which there is no hope, who has hidden his face from the terrors of the Gorgon, who has fled from the hooks and the seething pitch of Barbariccia and Diaghignazzo. His own hands have grasped the shaggy sides of Lucifer. His own feet have climbed the mountain of expiation. His own brow has been marked by the purifying angel. The rea der would throw aside such a tale in incredulous disgust, unless it were told with the strongest air of veracity, with a sobriety even in its horrors, with the greatest precision and multiplicy in its details. The narrative of Milton in this respect differs from that of Dante, as the adventures of Amadis differ from those of Gulliver. author of Amadis would have made his book ridiculous if he had introduced those minute particulars which give such a charm to the work of Swift, the nautical observations, the affected delicacy about names, the official documents transcribed at full length, and all the unmeaning gossip and scandal of the court, springing out of nothing, and tending to nothing. We are not shocked at being told that a man who lived, nobody knows when, saw many very strange sights, and we can easily abandon ourselves to the illusion of the romance. But when Lemuel Gulliver, surgeon, now actually resident at Rotherhithe, tells us of pygmies and giants, flying

The

islands and philosophising horses, nothing but such circumstantial touches could produce for a single moment a deception on the imagination. Of all the poets who have introduced into their works the agency of supernatural beings, Milton has succeeded best. Here Dante decidedly yields to him: and, as this is a point on which many rash and ill-considered judgments have been pronounced, we feel inclined to dwell on it a little longer. The most fatal error which a poet can possibly commit, in the management of his machinery, is that of attempting to philosophise too much. Milton has been often censured for ascribing to spirits many functions of which spirits must be incapable. But these objections, though sanctioned by eminent names, originate, we venture to say, in profound ignorance of the art of poetry.'

In Spain, though poetry was early cultivated, it was but with little attention to classical taste. In France it did not emerge from barbarism till the reign of Francis I., and arrived perhaps at its ultimate point of perfection in the era of Louis XIV. La Fontaine and Boileau, Corneille and Racine, had then lived, and produced works destined to immortalise their names. Unfortutunately for French poets, criticism was then almost coeval with poetry; and a pedantic attention to rules was permitted to repress the native energies of genius. We have traced in our article DRAMA the origin of the modern drama, in the mysteries; a sort of religious farce, imported from the east. To the mysteries succeeded allegorical plays, called moralities: these produced the mask, which became the favourite amusement of the court in the time of Charles I., and is only redeemed from opprobium and oblivion by Milton's Comus. Gondibert, written by lord Sackville, was the first tragedy represented on an English stage.

Till the commencement of the eighteenth century, the German language was almost a stranger to poetry. Klopstock introduced into it hexameter verse, in which the mechanism of classical numbers is rather perceived than felt. From that era, Germany has been more productive of books than all the rest of Europe; and, during this period, many writers have arisen of real and original genius: but the literary commerce of the country is chiefly supported by translation.

With regard to the art of poetry, as it has been taught by rules, we are of opinion with Sir William Temple, The utmost that can be achieved, or I think pretended, by any rules in the art of poetry is but to hinder some men from being very bad poets; but not to make any man a very good one.' See, however, our article VERSIFICATION for something on this head.

The public taste of this country has, upon the whole, within the last half century, been simplified, purified, and invigorated. Men have begun to be weaned from the perusasion that poetry is something necessarily striking and dazzling, and epigrammatic, and antithetical: squared and balanced by rule and measure; and made up of established periphrases, conventional phrases, and traditional metaphors; forming altogether a sort of poetic cypher; a symbolical

diction as unlike as possible to the language immemorially spoken by men and women and children. They have begun to give up the expectation that every word and line in poetry must be essentially different from prose; to perceive that to call a line flat or lagging is sometimes the dictate of an inflexible and prejudiced ear, not knowing or not considering that poetry has its reliefs as well as painting. They have begun to admit that poetry, like prose, must have her moods of relation; her easy moments; her bye-passages and resting-places: to discover, in short, that poetry is not a being of mere artifice, moving in buckram and sparkling with embroidery; but that, like the mountain shepherdess, she searches the woods and the meadows for her fairest and freshest ornaments, assumes all the changing colors, and follows all the vagrant varieties of primitive nature: Mille habet ornatus; mille decenter habet.'

We conclude with a passage which ably groupes the characters of our chief modern poets.

Waller is the first writer who made prose sound agreeably in rhyme. He was in truth an indifferent poet, possessing little genius as an author, or principle as a man, and obtained a name chiefly by reducing verse to the level of the meanest capacity.' But, in fact, the first name of that period which is really great is that of Dryden. Dryden was at the head of his line. As a bitter, biting satirist, as a writer of sensible, masculine, sounding verse, there is no one who goes beyond him. But as a poet he was of a different order from those who illuminated the reigns of Elizabeth and James; and he occupied, in our opinions, a decidedly lower step. He was a writer of shrewd sarcasm and of excellent good sense, but he was deficient in imagination, in pathos, and in nature. He was more artificial, generally speaking, than his predecessors; and he ought to have been more natural, for he resorted far more to common phraseology and existing people. Nevertheless, it is not too much to say that he failed signally in tragedy, and that he did not excel in narrative or in tender serious poetry many of inferior reputation who have preceded and followed him. But in the war of verse he was in his element. He fought well and effectually; he gave blow back for blow, and knew the weak side of his foes, and launched his sounding anathemas against their characters and persons. His Absalom and Achitophel,' and Mac-Flecnoe' are each capital, are each excellent satires, though the palm must assuredly be awarded to the former poem. "The Hind and the Panther' also is a fine thing in its way; but it differs little in point of style from such of his productions as were merely satirical.

'Contemporary with Dryden was Lee, a powerful irregular writer, whose stormy verses shook the stage from its propriety, and Shadwell, the Young Ascanius' of Mac-Flecnoe, who swore

That he to death true Dullness would maintain; And in his father's right and realm's defence, Ne'er to have peace with wit, nor truce with sense.

Then came Sedley and Dorset, and John Phillips (the author of the Splendid Shilling), and Rowe, and Parnell (who wrote the Hermit),