PRINCE'S POEMS.

By signs too numerous to be counted, yet some of them made fruitful by specification, the Spirit of the Age announces that she is slowly, toilsomely, but surely, working that revolution, whose mighty deluge rolling back, shall leave a new aspect smiling on earth to greet the 'most ancient heavens.' The wave rolls forward slowly, and may be as long in retreating, but when it has retired into the eternal deep, it will leave behind it a refreshed world, in which there may still be many low and mean men, but no lower classes; for it will be understood that it is the glory of a man to labour, and that all kinds of labour have their poetry, and that there is really no more a lower and higher among the world of men with their various spheres, than in the world of stars. All kinds of labour are equally honorable, if the mind of the labourer be only open so to understand them. But as

It is this that has made the difference of high and low, that certain occupations were supposed to have a better influence in liberalizing and refining the higher faculties than others. Now, the tables are turning. The inferences and impressions to be gained from the pursuits that have ranked highest are, for the present, exhausted. They have been written about, prated about, till they have had their day, and need to lie in the shadow and recruit their energies through silence. The mind of the time has detected the

truth that as there is nothing, the least, effected in this universe, which does not somehow represent the whole, which it is again the whole scope and effort of human Intelligence to do, no deed, no pursuit can fail, if the mind be 'divinely intended' upon it, to communicate divine knowledge. Thus it is seen that all a man needs for his education is to take whatsoever lies in his way to do, and do it with his might, and think about it with his might, too; for "He turns his craft to small advantage,

Who knows not what to light it brings."

And, as a mark of this diffusion of the true, the poetic, the philosophic education, we greet the emergence more and more of poets from the working classes-men who not only have poet hearts and eyes, but use them to write and print verses.

Beranger, the man of the people, is the greatest poet, and, in fact, the greatest literary genius of modern France. In other nations if "the lower classes" have not such an one to boast, they at least have many buds and shoots of new talent. Not to speak of the patronized ploughboys and detected merits, they have now an order, constantly increasing, able to live by the day labor of that good right hand which wields the pen at night; with aims, thoughts, feelings of their own, neither borrowing from nor aspiring to the region of the Rich and Great. Elliott, Nicol, Prince, and Thom find enough in the hedge-rows that border their everyday path; they need not steal an entrance to padlocked flowergardens, nor orchards guarded by man-traps and spring-guns. Of three of these it may be said, they

"Were cradled into Poesy by Wrong,

And learnt in Suffering what they taught in Song."

But of the fourth-Prince, we mean-though he indeed suffered enough of the severest hardships of work-day life, the extreme hardships of life when work could not be got, yet he was no flint that needed such hard blows to strike out the fire, but an easily

bubbling naphtha-spring that would have burned much the same, through whatever soil it had reached the open air.

He was born of the poorest laboring people, taught to read and write imperfectly only by means of the Sunday Schools, discouraged in any taste for books by his father lest his time, if any portion were that way bestowed, should not suffice to win his bread,— with no friends of the mind, in youthful years, except a volume of Byron, and an old German who loved to tell stories of his native land ;-married at nineteen, in the hope of mingling some solace with his cup; plunged by the birth of children into deeper want, going forth to foreign lands a beggar in search of employment, returning to his own country to be received as a pauper, having won nothing but mental treasure which no man wished to buy; he found his wife and children in the workhouse, and took them thence home to lie with him on straw in an unfurnished garret. Thus passed the first half of the span allotted on earth to one made in God's image. And during those years Prince constantly wrote into verse how such things struck him. But we cannot say that his human experiences were deep; for all these things, that would have tortured other men, only pained him superficially. Into the soul of Elliott, the iron has entered; the lightest song of Beranger echoes to a melancholy sense of the defects of this world with its Tantalus destinies, a melancholy which touches it at times with celestial pathos. But life has made but little impression on Prince. Endowed by Nature with great purity of instincts, a healthy vigor of feeling more than of thought, he sees, and expresses in all his works, the happiness natural to Man. He sees him growing, gently, gradually, with no more of struggle and labour than is wanted to develope his manly strength, learning his best self from the precious teachings of domestic affections, fully and intelligently the son, the lover, the husband, the father. He sees him walking amid the infinite fair shows of Nature, kingly, yet companionable, too. He sees him offering to

his God no sacrifice of blood and tears, whether others' or his own, but the incense of a grateful and obedient heart, ever ready for love and good works.

It is this childishness, rather this virginity of soul, that makes Prince's poems remarkable. He has no high poetic power, not even a marked individuality of expression. There are no lines, verses, or images that strike by themselves; neither human nor external nature are described so as to make the mind of the poet foster-father to its subject. The poems are only easy expression of the common mood of a healthy mind and tender heart, which needs to vent itself in words and metres. Every body should be able to write as good verse,-every body has the same simple, substantial things to put into it. On such a general basis the high constructive faculty, the imagination, might rear her palaces, unafraid of ruin from war or time.

This being the case with Prince, we shall not make detailed remarks upon his poems, but merely substantiate what we have said by some extracts.

1st. We give the description of his Journey and Return. This, to us, presents a delightful picture; the man is so sufficient to himself and his own improvement; so unconquerably sweet and happy.

2d. The poem 'Land and Sea,' as giving a true presentment of the riches of this poor man.

3d. A poem to his Child, showing how a pure and refined sense of the beauty and value of these relations, often unknown in palaces, may make a temple of an unfurnished garret.

4th. In an extract from A Vision of the Future,' a presentation of the life fit for man, as seen by a 'reed-maker for weavers ;' such as we doubt Mrs. Norton's Child of the Islands would not have vigor and purity of mental sense even to sympathize with, when conceived, far less to conceive.

These extracts speak for themselves; they show the stream of

the poet's mind to be as clear as if it had flowed over the sands of Pactolus. But most waters show the color of the soil through which they had to force their passage; this is the case with Elliott, and with Thom, of whose writings we shall soon give some notice.

Prince is an unique, as we sometimes find a noble Bayard, born of a worldly statesman-a sweet shepherdess or nun, of a heartless woman of fashion. Such characters are the direct gift of Heaven, and symbolize nothing in what is now called Society.

THE CHILD OF THE ISLANDS: By the Hon. Mrs. NORTON. London: Chapman and Hull. 1845.

HOURS WITH THE MUSES: By JOHN CRITCHLEY PRINCE. Second Edition. London. Simpkin, Marshall & Co. 1841.

THE Hon. Mrs. Norton and Prince, "a reed-maker for weavers," meet upon a common theme-the existing miseries and possible relief of that most wretched body, England's poor: most wretched of the world's sufferers in being worse mocked by pretensions of freedom and glory, most wretched in having minds more awakened to feel their wretchedness.

Mrs. Norton and Prince meet on the same ground, but in strongly contrasted garb and expression, as might be expected from the opposite quarters from which they come. this truly noble motto:

"Knowledge and Truth and Virtue were his theme,

And lofty hopes of Liberty divine.”—Shelley.

Prince takes

Mrs. Norton prefaces a poem on a subject of such sorrowful earnestness, and in which she calls the future sovereign of a groaning land to thought upon his duties, with this weak wish couched in the verse of Moore: