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the characteristic of energetic simplicity, a characteristic which unites the two best qualities of language, strength and artlessness. The tinsel age (that of Charles II.) is characterized by meretricious superficiality. It is not easy to conjecture by what stretch of metaphor the epithet of golden age could be applied to the reign of our good Queen Anne;" its characteristic-elaborate elegance, certainly entitles it to no higher name than the Silver or rather the Plated age. Whether its impudence in calling itself the "Augustan," should not mark it as the Age of Brass, may be a question. Finally; Lord Byron has denominated the present, the Age of Bronze-but this is said in a general moral respect, not in a purely literary. If the characteristic of Sensuality be rightly assigned, the Age of Copper would be a more appropriate name, that being the metal which denotes astronomically the Queen of physical Pleasure.

Let me first explain the term I have used, and then adduce the proofs that it is rightly applied. Modern poetry is addressed almost exclusively to the senses: its subject-matter consists almost wholly of voluptuous pictures on which the eye of the imagination may gloat till it grows dim with the vicious exercise; of descriptions, of forms whose touch even in thought sets the libertine blood on fire, of odours and relishes which debauch the mental taste by their intensity, of sounds too grossly delicious for the ear of fancy to admit without becoming depraved. The feelings, the earthly desires, the animal passions, are alone and always the object of appeal; a modern author seldom deals in imagery which can be held as intellectual; we do not often meet in a work of the present age such lines as these,-where there is nothing of "sensuous pleasure an nexed to the images presented: (Macbeth reflecting upon the innocence of his intended victim)—

And pity, like a naked new-born babe Striding the blast, or heav'n's cherubim

horsed

Upon the sightless couriers of the air, Shall blow the horrid deed in every eye, That tears shall drown the wind :

or these: (the Lady in Comus speaking of her brothers)

They left me then, when the gray-hooded Even,

(Like a sad votarist in palmer's weeds,) Rose from the hindmost wheels of Phœbus* wain:

and still more infrequently with such as these, where ideas of sense are altogether excluded: (Macbeth regretting the effects of his crime)— i I have lived long enough: my way of life Is fall'n into the sear, the yellow leaf: And that which should accompany old age, As honour, love, obedience, troops of

friends,

I must not look to have; but in their stead, Curses, not loud, but deep, mouth-honour, breath,

Which the poor heart would fain deny,

and dare not.

In a word, modern poetry, as to its matter, is little more than a huge pile of luxurious descriptions; as to its language, little else than an immense and somewhat confused heap of glittering periods and richlyworded phrases, slippery without be ing very sweet, oppressing the ear without ever taking it prisoner. We seldom find the memory dwelling on the fall of a modern cadence, or the chambers of the brain re-echoing with the sound of a modern line. Reading a poem of the present day is like floating upon a river of tepid wine, where the fumes and vapours dull both the senses and the current scenery: in like manner we glide over a stream of modern eloquence, without almost thinking of what we are doing or where we are going; the mind is in such a state of poetical inebriation, that the imagery appears all confused to the eye, and the language altogether mystified to the ear, -the one is dazzling and the other is lubricous, but neither is impressive: they fleet with the moment.

If we examine the works of the most celebrated poets of the modern school, Byron, Moore, Cornwall, &c. we shall find ample proof that, generally speaking, the character of the thoughts and language to be found there, is such as I have assign, ed. The modern Muse is certainly endowed with an uncommonly flexible tongue: Hippocrene overflows

I do not mean to include such authors as Campbell, Rogers, Crabbe, &c.; they belong rather to the Silver Age of Poetry,

with a perennial discharge of waters, more luxurious than the bee of Athens ever sucked through the stem of the fountain-flowers. I award to

the writers of the present day this praise of splendid fluency, without any qualification: if Pactolus had one of them for his River-god, his sands would turn sooner to gold-dust, than if all the long-eared kings that the world ever worshipped had been drowned in his channel. Our poets are not bees laden with sweets, but jars cheek-full of liquid bullion; their lips drop not honey but gold, and of all these yellow-mouthed ewers, Byron is the richest :-a most prodigal stream of eloquence rolls perpetually off his tongue, but its lustre blinds the eye, its plenty chokes the ear, without enlightening or filling the mind as considered distinctly from the senses. One of the very finest specimens of modern poetry is the following from the Doge of Venice; and it is written in a glorious vein of eloquence, but the animal shows its cloven foot all through, the five organs of sensile pleasure alone are titillated, it is sensual, " morbidly' sensual, like all the poetry of the same magnificent and loquacious voluptuary, and, indeed, of the age:

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The music, and the banquet, and the wineThe garlands, the rose odours, and the

flowers

The sparkling eyes and flashing orna

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The sight of beauty as the parched pilgrim's

On Arab sands the false mirage, which offers

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No other record, &c.

Such language as the above may be taken as the characteristic livery which modern poetry delights to wear; the spare form of its real substance is perpetually clothed in the same rich and redundant, warm and southerly phrase. Whilst reading it we almost think we are gasping in the sultry beams of the lower latitudes, where the scenery is all bloom and blaze; where every wind is laden, till the back of the sightless courier bends with the weight of odours and perfume; where the lazy, soft-footed waters creep along their channels, as if they feared to wake the reed that nods till it almost tumbles into the stream; and where the air itself is but a kind of invisible tunic of fur, which we can never put off to breathe freshly and freely like a roe on the top of our own barren mountains. I do not mean to say, either that our ancient writers never fell into this Southern method, or that our present writers never deviate from it. Some of the wealthiest pictures, in point of imagery and expression, are to be met with in Milton and Shakspeare (especially the former, whose breath was than that of his predecessor); whilst somewhat less rude and wholesome our living poets, and chiefly Byron, sometimes expatiate beyond the mere bounds of sense, and become specu

A lucid lake to his eluded thirst,
Are gone :-Around me are the stars and lative poets. Moore also, whose

waters

eloquence is a kind of poetical shower

immersed in the shadowy forests of the hill, or buried in the dusky and perilous vales which intersect it ;never pull their wreaths off the pinnacle, but cull posies in swarms off the sunniest and gentlest declivities, where they can pluck as they lie between sleep and awake on their lush beds of roses and litters of rank grass, as soft and luxurious as pallets of swans'-down or flimsy coccoon. Byron is almost the only vagrant, and that only by starts, from the modern walk. One spirit seems to per→ vade the whole class of living poets,the spirit of effeminacy: the same groveling (I must call it) propension to the soft and beautiful in preference to the strenuous and sublime, the same proneness to wallow in the imaginary luxuries of sense, the same gluttonous love of everything that can excite the sensual palate of the mind,

bath, falling diamonds, and spars, and spangles, upon occasion refreshes us with a simple flow of national or even moral sentiment. The passionate soul of Cornwall, where woman is concerned, not unfrequently turns the drops which gush unbidden from the sensual eye, into pure and genuine tears. But, upon the whole, the taste and manner, not only of these nobler birds of Song, but of all our "small poets," all the finches of the modern grove, whether cock or hen, fledged or featherless, are decidedly effeminate and sensual. The bleak and rocky crowns of Parnassus never kiss the sole of a modern slipper: where the moss is velvet, and the plats of herbage silky and spongy; where Nature patches her green floor-cloth with a Turkey grass-carpet,-there do our modern poets amble, with their eyes boring the zenith, till they sink over the shoes in the oozy turf, or are drowned (to make bold with the metaphor) in a flood of waving flowers. They never scale the cliff, or are to be seen balancing on the ridge of a precipice; they are seldom

constitute the moving principle of the School of Modern Poetry. Hence, taking itself as its own evidence, its characteristic has been rightly, not violently, truly, not satirically, assigned; that is to say-Sensuality.

THE TEMPLARS' DIALOGUES ON POLITICAL ECONOMY.

DIALOGUE THE SECOND.

Reductio ad Absurdum.

This Dialogue, which seems necessary for the elucidation of the principle advanced in Dialogue I.: did not reach us sufficiently early to be placed in immediate connection with it, we have therefore thought it advisable to print it here rather than to keep it for another month.]

Phil. X., I see, is not yet come: I hope he does not mean to break his appointment; for I have a design upon him. I have been considering his argument against the possibility of any change in price arising out of a change in the value of labor, and I have detected a flaw in it which he can never get over. I have him, Sir, I have him as fast as ever spider had a fly.

Phad. Don't think it, my dear lad you are a dextrous retiarius ; but a gladiator who is armed with Ricardian weapons will cut your net to pieces. He is too strong in his

cause, as I am well satisfied from what passed yesterday. He'll slaughter you: to use the racy expression of a friend of mine in describing the redundant power with which Molyneux the black disposed of a certain Bristol youth, he'll slaughter you "with ease and affluence." But here he comes.--Well, X., you're just come in time. Philebus says that he'll slaughter you with ease and affluence;" and all things considered I am inclined to think he will.

Phil. Phædrus does not report the matter quite accurately: however it is true that I believe myself to have

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detected a fatal error in your argument of yesterday on the case of the hat and it is this:-When the value of labor rose by 25 per cent, you contended that this rise would be paid out of Profits. Now up to a certain limit this may be possible: beyond that it is impossible. For the price of the hat was supposed to be 188.; and the price of the labor being assumed originally at 12s.-leaving 6s. for profits, it is very possible that a rise in wages of no more than 3s. may be paid out of these profits. But, as this advance in wages increases, it comes nearer and nearer to that point at which it will be im possible for profits to pay it for let the advance once reach the whole 68. and all motive for producing hats will be extinguished: and let it advance to 7s., there will in that case be no fund at all left out of which the seventh shilling can be paid, even if the capitalist were disposed to relinquish all his profits. Now seriously you will hardly maintain that the hat could not rise to the price of 19s. -or of any higher sum?

X. Recollect Philebus what it is that I maintain: assuredly the hat may rise to the price of 19s. or of any higher sum, but not as a consequence of the cause you assign. Taking your case, I do maintain that it is impossible the hat should exceed or even reach 18s. When I say 18s. however, you must recollect that the particular sum of 12s. for labor and 6s. for profits were taken only for the sake of illustration: translating the sense of the proposition into universal forms, what I assert is that the rise in the value of the labor can go no further than the amount of Profits will allow it: Profits swallowed up, there will remain no fund out of which an increase of wages can be paid, and the production of hats will cease.

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Phil. This is the sense in which I understood you: and in this sense I wish that you would convince me that the hat could not under the circumstances supposed advance to 19s. or 20s.

X. Perhaps in our conversation on Wages, you will see this more irresistibly; you yourself will then shrink from affirming the possibility of such an advance as from an obvious absurdity: meantime here is a short de

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X. And if in money, of necessity in every thing else: because otherwise, if the hat were worth more money only but more of nothing besides, that would simply imply that money had fallen in value in which case undoubtedly the hat might rise in any proportion that money fell; but then without gaining any increased value, which is essential to your ar gument.

Phil. Certainly: if in money, then in every thing else.

X. Therefore for instance in gloves: having previously been worth 4 pair of buckskin gloves, the hat will now be worth 4 pair + y? Phil. It will.

X. But, Philebus, either the rise in wages is universal or it is not universal. If not universal, it must be a case of accidental rise from mere scarcity of hands: which is the case of a rise in market value; and that is not the case of Mr. Ricardo, who is laying down the laws of natural value. It is therefore universal: but, if universal, the gloves from the same cause will have risen from the value of x to x + y.

Hence therefore the price of the hat, estimated in gloves, is = x + y. And again the price of the gloves, estimated in hats, is = x + y. In other words Hy=x. H+y=x. That is to say, H-y=H+y. Phæd. Which, I suppose, is an absurdity and in fact it turns out, Philebus, that he has slaughtered you with ease and affluence."

:

X. And this absurdity must be eluded by him who undertakes to show that a rise in the wages of labor can be transferred to the value of its product.

THE DRAMA.

COVENT GARDEN THEATRE.

Pride shall have a Fall! UNDER the above discreet and highly moral title, a very successful piece has been produced, which is likely to amuse the public several evenings during the season:-It is called "a Comedy in five acts, with songs;"-but we should feel extremely grateful to any kind person who would point out a single scene which should justify its claim to the title of comedy. It has many broad, bustling scenes of extravagance and humour-do they make the piece a comedy? It has long passages of carefully wrought and pleasing blank verse; but is comedy a thing of verse? It has songs, glees, and familiar old puns,-all agreeable enough in themselves, but not sufficient to justify the prologue's promise of "a true British comedy!" or the epilogue's beseeching cant:

By the high splendours of our ancient day; By those we 've seen, and wept to see, decay!

By our-by mankind's Sheridan !-whose tomb

Is scarcely closed!—

-But no-no thoughts of gloom; Again comes Comedy! so long untried! Give her your smiles!

The newspapers have been puffing, as strongly and steadily, as though the trade wind of criticism had set in; and the consequence has been, that crowds have besieged the boxes and the pit, and, being amused with violent effects,- extravagant charac ters and situations, and broad dialogue, new and second hand,-go home satisfied at having been satisfied, and persuading themselves that they have patronised the revival of comedy. The truth is, the present piece is as great an outrage upon the legitimate drama as Timour the Tartar, or the Cataract, or Frankenstein. It is poor in horses, water, and ghosts, but it has its vices vices, which are only vices when set up as singular dramatic virtues.

Having thus spoken, our readers may think we have no very favourable opinion of "Pride shall have a Fall." But looking at it as an agreeable mixture for a night's amuse

ment, we look upon it as a very light and happy production. There is a little too much of Joe Miller-a worthy character in all modern dramas,-but still discreetly to be treated. The dialogue, however, is ever changing, though not ever new ;and the characters are brisk enough to admit of some extremely lively acting.-Indeed the author is much indebted to Mr. Jones, and the rest of the stud.

The plot, which we are assured is not from France, is not very clear. It appears rather to be five distinct portions of plot-for each act might be played without its neighbour. Four Hussars walk about in red trowsers and mustachios, and very pleasantly keep the five acts connected; for, without their costume, and "muffs and meerschaums we might soon forget that we were travelling through one comedy.

All the performers did their duty, and more than their duty. Mr. Connor was Irish and chaste,-two very rare co-qualities in an Emeraldislander. Yates too was humorous and moderate, and really surprised us with some very clever acting. He is the puppy Hussar from curl to boot, from mustachios to fingertip! Mr. Farren, in Count Ventoso, vented his humours upon the Countess Davenport with great effect; and the Countess wheeled about like a baggage-waggon, train and all! Miss Paton sang to the utmost.

To Jones, however, must all praise be given. He worked up a rattlebrained spirit of Palermo to the highest pitch of vivacity. Those who have not heard him deliver the following address to the prisoners, can have no idea of effective oratory. Nothing in Covent Garden was ever mouthed more to the purpose.

Cor. Out of the orator's way! Muffs and meerschaums!

(The Prisoners lift Torrento on a bench, laughing and clamouring.) Tor. (Haranguing.)-Are we to suffer ourselves to be molested in our domestic circle; in the loveliness of our private lives; in our otium cum dignitate? Gentlemen of the jail! (Cheering.Is not our residence here for our country's - good?

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