fect. Blank verse, where the meaning or out-of-door doings. And finally, Milton terminates, and the emphasis falls upon has been guilty of a low Euripidean aposthe last syllable through a long series of tasy. He has taken to a relaxed form of lines, leaves a feeling as if it were emascu- the later Greek Tragedy. He has adopted lated rhyme, a marred and tune ess at- (nefas dictu! we hardly like to mention tempt at measure, like Quasimodo's in the it) in the chorus songs the measure called "Hunchback of Notre Dame:" the poet monstrophe or apolelymenon, without reshould pretty often lift us lightly over the gard had to strophe, antistrophe, or epode; fence of the last syllable, and put us sweetly and thus has he forfeited the peculiar baon into the next line. It is this which dis- lance of mass against mass, the distinctcriminates the blank verse of our few ness and symmetry, which constitute the great masters, Milton, Shakspeare, Cow- vital force of the Greek Tragic forms. per, and Wordsworth, from that of Tennyson, Thomson, and others. Between the two managements of the measure there is a difference analogous to that between a straight Dutch canal and a stream meandering in wavy bands of silver or between the walk of a clumping hob-nailed dairy-maid and that of a graceful lady, who seems to sway, while she obeys, the modulations of the measure to which she moves. Shakspeare, in many of his happiest and most elevated passages has a beautiful knack of carrying on the thought from line to line, so that not only does each line satisfy the most rigorous exactions of the ear, but we have a number of intervolved rings of harmony. Each joint of the passage, when it is cut, quivers with melody. The alliteration is carried on from one line to the next, and wonderfully assists the effect. Here are a few specimens out of many which we have marked:

In Merope, Mr. Matthew Arnold has ridden a hobby to death. He has written a preface in which he asserts Greek Tragedy to be the most perfect satisfaction of the most urgent demands of the human spirit. It gives variety and concentration, and we know not what. In England, Milton and Samson Agonistes are a bright spot. But alas! the story of Samson, although respectable enough in its way, has none of the perfect Greek mystery, complication, foreboding, and gloom. Moreover, in the Hebrew tale we can not have Greck manners, or chorus-dancing,

Now, if Mr. Arnold must come to closer quarters with the Greek poetical forms, why should he not carry out his purpose, as he originally intended by a translation of some play of Sophocles or Æschylus ? When the dog-days are come-when not an ice is called for at Juppers, and no eggs are poured upon under-graduate locks at Spider's; when reading parties are in the Highlands or the Alps, in Connemara or Kamtschatka; when poetical masters are meditating sacred poems, and poetical freshmen Newdigates; let the successor of Lowth and Milman and Keble breathe the classic air which has been so long saturated with an infusion of Greek. Let him take the Agamemnon, or the Antigone. Let him have the theater prepared. Let him make him an orthodox orchestra, in the center an altar of Bacchus; and let fifteen "fast men" dance round it. We will be bound to say that a lyric burst, expressive of the feelings of these gentlemen, will express those of the world in reference to such a tragedy as the present, with force and exactness, if not with elegance.

Nor content with pointing out the laws of Greek poetry in general, and of Greek tragedy in particular, as a useful counteraction to certain morbid tendencies of the day, Mr. Arnold makes them exclusive. Thus an able and thoughtful man writing upon the theory of poetry, has little else to give us than an abbreviated analysis of Aristotle's Poetics, of Schlegel, and some papers in Donaldson.

Why should he insist upon thrusting the silver cup of Grecian form into the sack's mouth of English literature? He forgets all the circumstances which made Greek tragedy to Greeks what it can never be to us. Our associations with the theater are of a peculiar, and, unhappily, of rather a degrading nature. We think of pits and boxes; of the gaudy wretches in the saloon; of heats, gas-light, andnoise; of rumbling carriages, oysters, and kid

colors of the sea, or the shadows of the | ing contemplation of nature, which is so hill. There are deep purple shadows on essentially modern, and as we would add, the mountain-tops of thought which rise, so essentially Christian. Humboldt, in range after range, before the eyes of suc- one of the finest passages of the Cosmos, cessive ages; into these the soul of the has traced this peculiarity of the modern poet may dive, and feed itself with beauty mind to the Christian fathers. With all forever. If the poet will only draw out- respect to those great and good men, we lines we soon get tired, for the outlines would trace it higher. It is our firm behave been drawn a thousand times al- lief that the germ of every thing beautiful ready. But the lights and shadows, the in modern culture and modern thought colors and the pencilings, are fresh and may be traced to the character of our eternal as the successions of morning and Lord. The mould in which the most evening, for they flow from inexhaustible complete, merely, human character is cast, fountains of beauty in the moral and in- must be narrow and limited; all that istellectual nature of man. The nuptials of sues from the mould is tinged, as it were, the universe and the human mind, pro- with its individuality. But there is a phesied by Bacon and sung by Words- comprehensive breadth and universality worth, are, as it were, new every morning. in the character of Christ. It is true that In the recoil from the spasmodic, and what the same character may present different we may venture to call the botanico-psycho- shades as it is drawn by one delineator or logical school of poets, Professor Arnold another. The Socrates of Plato is a noand another Professor, Mr. Aytoun, have bler picture than the Socrates of Xenofallen into the other extreme. Here is phon. But the subtle and evanescent shades the war scene, for instance, of the latter which distinguish one mind from another gentleman, which the Times' critic held are comparatively soon exhausted. In up to the admiration of the world as free our Lord there is, as it were, a concentrafrom the psychologicism and insane love tion of all possible forms of mental and of nature which characterize the spasmo- moral beauty, which arose from His being dic school and quite above Wordsworth not a man, but the man. Now this gentle and Tennyson: yearning love of nature is first to be found in him. His frequenting the garden; his love of the mountain, and the lake; his illustrations from the rising sun, from the "leaping" water, from birds and corn, are cases in point. The minute student of the Scripture will find other illustrations. Is there mere fancy in the beautiful thought of Bengel, that the blind man was led out into the country in order that his eyes might open first on God's lovely creation of trees and fields, rather than on man's broken handiwork, the town? There is a minute and picturesque accuracy in the answer to the Pharisees and Sadducees, "the sky is red and lowering" -"the face of the sky." In that passage and so forth. Now, these lines are clever, where the Saviour points to the lilies of smooth, and graceful; but why on earth the field, each word is a picture. What should they have been written at all? loving regard is there even in the “one." They contain neither nova nor novè dicta. If the robed monarch were not so gloriThey are humdrum enough for the battle ous as one, how much less so than a whole of the cabbage-garden. They touch no wreath. There seems to be some reason chord of the heart or soul. These vio- for thinking with an eminent commentalently anti-spasmodic poets must become tor, that the starry sky was above him, mere imitators, whether the cast of imita- and that he looked up to it when he said, tion be Scottish, as in Aytoun, or Home-"In my Father's house are many manric and Sophoclean, as in Arnold.

"By heaven! it was a glorious sight

When the sun started from the sea,
And in the vivid morning light
The long blue waves were rolling free!
But little time I had to gaze
Upon the ocean's kindling face.
I stood upon the topmost tower:
From wood and shaw, and brake, and bower,
I heard the trumpet's blithesome sound-
I heard the talk of drum;

And bearing for the castle mound,
I saw the squadron come.

Each Baron, sheathed from head to heel
In glorious panoply of steel,
Rode stalwartly before his band,
The bravest yeomen of the land—”

sions."

But Mr. Arnold seems bent on eschew. On the whole, then, we hould say, that ing, in the second place, that sweet yearn. the two great peculiarities of modern poe

try are, directly or indirectly, a reflex of Christianity. The minute, tender, watchful regard of nature, in especial, came direct from the great Head of renewed humanity; it was first exhibited by Him who spake of the majestic heavens and the little flower, with the intimate acquaintance and the loving admiration of one who knew them, because he had made them. And to ignore these peculiarities is to go back to heathenism.

ear, and unrivaled power of rhythm, sometimes betray him into a style in which he plays with words, like a child with feathers: he takes us with surprising_turns, with tricks and quirks of rhyme. Hence, such expressions as that about the snow

"The pearly parachute

Of the wond'ring air."

And as for flowers, he smothers his altar We are happy, however, to say, that under China flower-pots. He tells us of while Mr. Arnold's first series almost omits May, roses, daisies, violets, apple-blos Christianity, while Sophocles, Epictetus, soms, pearly clusters of pear-bloom, and and Emerson seem to be his "props," so forth, until we wish them pitched the second series contains one of the sweet--not into flower-pots. We have no obest and holiest hymns we know. We can jection to the fragrant things in moderaquote but a few lines.

The defect of the two elements to which we have alluded is coldness: the redundance of the first, conceit; of the second, garish embroidery. Truth compels us to say, that Mr. MacCarthy's rich fancy sometimes degenerates into the last. The first of his Under-glimpses, "The Arraying of May," has something too much of the jeweler, upholsterer, and abigail. Fancy is a very delicate thing; a touch too much disenchants a fairy to a lady's maid. Hence, Mr. MacCarthy's musical

tion: far from it. We have always loved
the flowery couch on which ox-eyed Juno
lay. How soft and sweet the blossoms
lie in the awful hands of the grand old
fellow's giant hexameters! Virgil's Ama-
recus is dear to us, though we know not
what the mischief it is, and hope we nev
er shall. And when Shakspeare makes
Perdita strew them upon a corpse, we
water them with tears. Ben Jonson gives
us all flowers in his "Pan's Anniversary,"
and then he is done with them:

"The primrose, the spring's own spouse;
Bright day's eyes, and the lips of cows;
The garden star, the queen of May,
The rose to crown the holiday-

Rain roses still:

Bring corn, flax, tulips, and Adonis' flower,
Flower-gentle, and the fair-haired hyacinth,
Bring gladdest myrtle,
With spikenard weaved, and marjorum be-
tween;

And starred with yellow-golds and meadows'

green

The breath thereof Panchaia may envy,
The colors China, and the light the sky."

But when they are stuffed into our nose,
and rammed into our pockets, and make
a heavy, sickly smell on our writing-table
-why, we are but men, and we get a little
savage or so. We commend to Tennyson,
with his "pimpernels," and so forth, and
to all our botanical and nursery-garden
poets, this sentence of Dr. Johnson: "The
heat of Milton's mind might be said to
sublimate his learning, to throw off into
his work the spirit of science, unmingled
with its grosser parts." Flowery ladies
and gentlemen, apply this to your botany.
And finally, to conclude all that we can
find it in our heart to say in this tone to
Mr. MacCarthy, we would point out to