taste and genius, as the seat of gloom and desolation.

Whatever tends

to elevate or enlarge the human mind, whatever inspires it with that internal pride and joy, which have been remarked as the true characteristics of the sublime, is poetry, in the genuine sense of the word, whether it be in verse or prose, whether it occur in an epic or an historical writer. We leave it to any one, competent to judge, to say whether there be any description of a battle in the Eneid, that has more of the liber spiritus of poetry in it, than that of the combat of the Horatii and Curiatii in Livy.

(1) Metaphysical investigations, respecting rights and duties, seem to us to have this error in them, to which, as to a salient point, all the mischiefs, that have flowed from them, may be traced. They make rights, and, of course, duties, antecedent to society, of which they seem to us to be the legitimate offspring. According as we approximate to the state of nature, we find the human character more and more depressed, under that most galling of all tyrannies, the law of force. Women and children, as being the weakest, occupy the lowest stage, in the graduated scale of slavery. Grown to manhood, the child, in his turn, become the father of a family, becomes a tyrant likewise, immitior eò, quia toleraverat. It is idle, by way of mitigation, to call this paternal government; it is only telling us, in other words, that the number of despots is without bounds, or bounded only by the limits of

population. Nor does the reciprocity of parental and filial affections tend much to alleviate the yoke. Most travellers agree that, amongst savage tribes, they have but little operation, the father, in the frenzy of passion, often destroying, without pity, or subsequent remorse, his unresisting and unoffending infant. Children are considered as property, and not the most valuable kind of property, with which the father, because he is stronger than the mother, may do as he chuses. This is so true, that most governments, in their first rudiments, that is, just emerging from a state of nature, have, at the beginning, left to fathers, what they deemed to be their natural right, the power of putting their offspring to death. If it be urged that this is not the state of nature, to which the metapyhsical writers refer, we ask them where does the state of nature, to which they do refer, exist? And if it exists no where, except in their own conception, how can they deduce real rights from an imaginary situation? How can rights be natural, if man was never in a state of nature? Not only rights and duties, but all the finer affections of the heart, seem to us to be the offspring of society; why else are they called the social affections?

(m) It is the boast of SCIENCE, as applied to astronomical purposes, that it throws open more magnificent scenes, than the most copious and excursive imagination can give birth to. This is true; but, for that very reason, we think that Poetry has but very little to do with the subject. Ornari res ipsa negat, contenta doceri. The very idea of the

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infinitude of space makes man and his petty concerns shrink into insignificance. Now the object of Poetry is to exalt them. For this purpose, it represents the whole system of nature as connected with the affairs of man, by the ties of sympathy and subserviency, and adopts, in its utmost latitude, although in a different sense from that, in which the philosopher receives it, the Chaldean maxim, συμπαθῆ εἶναι τα ἄνω τοις καίω. If it be urged that the discoveries of the astronomer give us the highest notion of the powers of the human intellect, and, consequently, have a tendency to exalt our idea of man, we admit the fact; but we must observe that this happens by a sort of reflex operation of the mind, producing astonishment that so minute, so weak, so insignificant a creature can grasp such mighty objects. It is man, considered as a physical and moral agent, that Poetry selects as the object of its cares; and in this point of view, it is pretty obvious that an ACHILLES, impiger, iracundus, inexorabilis, acer, is a much nobler subject for poetry, than an Aristotle, a Bacon, a Newton, or a Locke. We shall go a little farther, and assert, that the philosophy, however just, that inculcates a contempt for worldly grandeur, is not suited to the purposes of poetry. Virgil, indeed, addresses his hero in this

tone:

Aude, hospes, temnere opes, et te quoque dignum

Finge Deo, rebusque veni non asper egenis.

But while he entertains and charms us with the rural kingdom of Evander, he never loses sight of the descendants of ENEAS, Romanos

rerum Dominos, gentemque togatam. Indeed, perhaps, the chief pleasure, which we derive from the description, arises from a knowledge that the village of Evander occupies the future site of ROME, whose lofty walls, gilded palaces, and awful Capitol, are artfully kept within the view of the reader, forming a sublime contrast with the scene immediately before him.

These cursory remarks induce us to entertain a doubt respecting the truth of that canon of criticism, which LONGINUS has advanced with authority, and which implies that nothing can be truly sublime, the contempt of which would be sublime. To come directly into contact with the Greek literateur, he has himself chosen, as a splendid instance of the true sublime, Homer's description of a tempest, wherein "the wind-wrought billow bursts upon the rapid bark, covered with foam, and the dire blast of the storm whistles in the shrouds, while the sailors, terror-struck at the near approach of death, tremble." Now, if Homer had introduced, as Fenelon has done, in the midst of the group of terror-struck sailors, the figure of Mentor, despising the danger, and calm and unruffled during all the rage of the storm, we apprehend that Longinus would admit the sublimity of the idea, without detracting from that of the foregoing description.

But to return to the subject, from which we have in some measure digressed; Nature, as exhibited by SCIENCE, has too much of mechanism about her, to answer the purposes of poetry. She has none of the affections necessary towards the attainment of its ends. The celes

tial bodies float through the vast pacific of the firmament, unaffected by the tides, and winds, and storms of human life. A hero may perish, and a sparrow may fall, with precisely the same effect upon the great system of things, by which the philosopher sees himself surrounded. This is very true; but at the same time nothing can be less poetical. Valde differt ab hoc Sol ille Virgilianus. -Ille etiam extincto miser

atus est CÆSARE Romam," &c.

(n) His Lordship has been pronounced the first Poet of the age, including, of course, amongst the poets of the age, Cowper, Burns, Crabbe, Darwin, &c. But the Rhapsodist may be supposed to have gone too far, in asserting that the admirers of Lord Byron prefer him to Homer. We cannot help thinking, however, that the great majority of his unqualified admirers do; because, when you bring the question, with them, from generals to particulars, you will find that their admiration of the Greek Poet is not sincere, but the tribute rather of deference to the judgment of ages, than of sensibility, or conviction.

If

you sift them, as to their reasons for admiring Lord Byron, you will find them to be, for the most part, such as must prevent them from even liking Homer. Theirs is, emphatically, a new school of Poetry; and they admit it. Now, it is not, by any means, paradoxical to assert, that the embracing of what is understood by a new school, especially if it be with enthusiasm, implies something more than a mere preference