13. Poems. By the Author of Paul Ferroll.' Including a New Edition of IX Poems by V. With former and recent Additions. 1856.

14. The Ballad of Babe Christabel, with other Lyrical Poems. By GERALD MASSEY. Fifth Edition. 1855.

POETRY is an infinite subject, and an infinite number of

clever things, true and false, have been said about it. It is the pleasure of a truth,' says Aristotle; It is the plea'sure of a lie,' says Bacon. We of course side with Aristotle, who gave the Muse the worthiest praise she has ever received, when he wrote, 'Poetry is more philosophical and more deserving of attention than history, for poetry speaks more of universals, but history of particulars.' Sir Philip Sydney, in his Defence of Poesy,' proves further that poetry is more philosophical than philosophy itself, and he does the Muse excellent service in relieving her and Plato from the current supposition that she was excluded from the Republic' on any abstract and general grounds of bad citizenship. The scope of poetry is, in fact, as broad and general as the casing air:' wherever there is interest properly human, there, too, may be poetry. There are, indeed, many things which seem, not only to be most at home, but absolutely to require to be expressed in prose; though, by the way, prose itself has, or should have, only a lower degree of rhythm. Thus, mere physical interests are best discoursed of in prose. But no sooner are the facts of science regarded in their widest reference to the universe and its source, than they may abandon the swaddling clothes of prose, and assume the singing robes of verse. Whatsoever stands immediately and obviously in relation to universal truth and permanent humanity, - be it action or suffering, thought or emotion, a psychological fact or a phenomenon of nature,—is perceived, by those who are able to appreciate that relation, to have within it a capability of being sung-a tendency, in short. to move harmonious numbers.' Thus Milton, concerning the poetic faculties, declares: These, wheresoever they be found, are the inspired gift of God, rarely bestowed; and are of power, besides the office of a pulpit, to allay the perturbations of mind, and set the affections to right tune; to celebrate in 'glorious and lofty hymns, the throne and equipage of God's almightiness; to sing victorious agonics of saints and martyrs. Whatsoever in religion is holy and sublime, in virtue amiable or grave, whatsoever hath passion or admiration, in all the changes of fortune from without, or the wily subtleties and ' reflexes of man's thought from within,- all these things, with a

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'solid and treatable smoothness, to point out and describe, 'teaching over the whole book of sanctity and virtue with such 'delight, that, whereas the paths of honesty appear now rugged, they will then appear to all men both easy and pleasant.' All the well-established and permanently significant results of intellectual and moral investigation are the poet's domain; though the paths to these results lie within the realms of prose. Poetry, so far as it relates to moral and intellectual truth, has the somewhat paradoxical recommendation of having to do mainly with truisms. The central thought about which the characters in each of Shakspeare's plays group themselves, is some merest truism of morality; and all the greatest poets seem to have been equally partial to commonplace themes, as well in incident as in moral; for these reasons, among others, that moral truth is usually important in proportion to its triteness; that the poet is doing his noblest work in resuscitating moral truths from the inert condition of truisms and conferring upon them a perennial bloom and power; and that a poem, unlike a novel, ought to contain no element of effect calculated to diminish or fail in its operation after repeated perusals. The poet more than justifies his adoption of truisms and stale legends by his mode of dealing with them he shows that, in such things, acknowledged and spoken of by all men, there are more and deeper meanings than may be fully expressed or comprehended by any man; 'some'what,' as Hooker says, which exceedeth the reach of sense; yea, somewhat above capacity of reason, somewhat divine and 'heavenly, which, with hidden exultation, reason rather sur'miseth than conceiveth.' The same great writer affirms that goodness doth not move by being, but by being apparent;' and all the highest poets have faithfully followed this high ministerial vocation of moving the hearts of men to love goodness by making it apparent.

It is difficult to take a lofty view of poetry, or any other art, without considering its relation to Christianity. With the Christian poet religion maintains her right position as the sole, but unobtrusive, source of all excellence and real loveliness, and does not show her unveiled countenance without reason. Art, though of universal appeal, is especially the gospel of the sceptical and ignorant, who, although unable to receive religious truth in its direct statement, may not be unaffected by the same truth shown livingly forth in clouds of glory and darkness, in mysteries of music, and in the various forms of symbolical nature.

Be the theme of the poet magnificent or humble, be it his purpose to justify the ways of God to man, or to publish the

praises of the small celandine,' it is certain that, in order to sing, he must first feel. Poetry is truth or fact of properly human import and general intelligibility verbally expressed so as to affect the feelings. This rough definition includes much writing which is not in verse, but none that is not, in some degree, metrical and musical. To this it must be added, that what is poetry to one person or period is not necessarily so to another. In art, people can feel, in any particular direction, only so far as the power and activity of simple perception exceed, for the time being, the power and activity of the conscious understanding in the same direction. Beauty of various kinds, appreciable by totally uneducated persons, may be quite inappreciable, or unfelt, by persons accustomed, as whole classes in these days are, to the unceasing exercise of the analytic faculty. But, by a more mature and substantial culture, this faculty, though fully developed, is rendered capable of seasonable repose; and, where this is the case, the beauty, perceived or felt by children and ignorant persons, blossoms anew.

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Of the interest which people feel, or profess to feel, in poetry, or any other art, it is melancholy to find how little is artistic and sincere, how much attributable to a vulgar vanity of connoisseurship. To this vanity, infecting classes which a few years ago were comparatively unsophisticated, we must attribute the strange phenomenon of poetic reputation, and even popularity, attaching to a set of writers whose chief characteristics, violence and incongruity, have fixed upon them the appropriate designation of the spasmodic school,' and whose verses do little else than incessantly contradict the right definition of poetry, and, indeed, every other definition which asserts any relation of poetry to the realities of nature and of sane humanity. To certain merits, which it would be unjust to deny to the leaders of this school, Mr. Bailey, Mr. Alexander Smith, and the gentleman calling himself by the singular inversion of Sydney Yendys, but whose name now appears to be Sydney Dobell, we shall presently do justice; in the mean time, we will take a hasty glance at the most prominent general features of the school which, in spite of certain rough blows already dealt against it, still appears to number disciples and admirers.

In the opinion of these writers, a poet is nothing if not striking. Accordingly every line they put forth is, or at least is intended to be, a fine thing, though some of the dramas of this school are twenty thousand lines long. The consequence is, that the poems' of these writers are, to what we and the world hitherto have regarded as true poems, pretty much what 'christmas trees' are to forest trees. Sugar-plums, quick

silvered globes, oranges, gimcracks, and lighted candles are not more incongruous ornaments to the stunted fir tree which they decorate for the nonce at a Christmas party than the tinsel thoughts and images which illustrate the subjects chosen by these poets. Probably nothing will convince these writers of their mistake; but for the sake of their readers, who may not be beyond the reach of remonstrance, we submit that there is an indefinable congruity and propriety in the most far-fetched imagery of true poetic feeling which nothing but true feeling can produce. The imagery in true poetry is always felt to be simply illustrative, and never attracts attention on its own account. If we call an image or a thought in a genuine poem 'striking,' the chances are that we have discovered it to be so only after having voluntarily regarded it in isolation from its context. In the whole of Shakspeare's plays we shall scarcely find one striking thing' in the sense in which almost all our living verse-writers aspire to be sayers of such things. The contrary notion, which widely prevails, is mainly owing to the evil influence of a remarkable school of critics who, in the early years of this century, made it their chief delight to dwell with altogether disproportionate emphasis of praise upon the mere niceties of verbal expression in our ancient poets. The unearthing of that great sayer of fine things,' Fletcher, and the immoderate praise bestowed upon him and other members of the early spasmodic school' of English dramatists, we are disposed to regard as having been great misfortunes for modern English poetry. The ultimate result is now seen, on the one hand, in such criticisms as those of Mr. George Gilfillan, and, on the other, in such poems as Festus,' and A Life-Drama.' In all such writings we find literally nothing but an aimless and incoherent succession of striking things,' many bad, some good, but all elaborately and by malice prepense striking.' Hence, to a reader of old-fashioned mental habits, one who has been accustomed to expect and require purpose, unity, and vital sequence in all kinds of intellectual products, and, in return, to give habitually that attention which such qualities demand for their appreciation, the writings in question are absolutely unreadable. The current of meaning or emotion, if meaning and emotion can be predicated of such productions, is never the same for ten lines or three sentences together; and the conscientious endeavour to follow the general action or idea, and at the same time to attend to all the collateral incoherences, is, without exaggeration, the most distressing operation to which we have ever been under the necessity of submitting our understanding.

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