reasonings are just; but the premises are false. After the first suppositions have been made, everything ought to be consistent; but those first suppositions require a degree of credulity which almost amounts to a partial and temporary derangement 5 of the intellect. Hence of all people children are the most imaginative. They abandon themselves without reserve to every illusion. Every image which is strongly presented to their mental eye produces on them the effect of reality. No man, 10 whatever his sensibility may be, is ever affected by Hamlet or Lear, as a little girl is affected by the story of poor Red Riding-hood. She knows that it is all false, that wolves cannot speak, that there are no wolves in England. Yet in spite of her knowl- 15 edge she believes; she weeps; she trembles; she dares not go into a dark room lest she should feel the teeth of the monster at her throat. Such is the despotism of the imagination over uncultivated minds.

In a rude state of society men are children with a greater variety of ideas. It is therefore in such a state of society that we may expect to find the poetical temperament in its highest perfection. In an enlightened age there will be much intelligence, 25 much science, much philosophy, abundance of just classification and subtle analysis, abundance of wit and eloquence, abundance of verses, and even of good ones; but little poetry. Men will judge and compare; but they will not create. They will 30

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talk about the old poets, and comment on them, and to a certain degree enjoy them. But they will scarcely be able to conceive the effect which

poetry produced on their ruder ancestors, the 5 agony, the ecstasy, the plenitude of belief. The

Greek Rhapsodists, according to Plato, could scarce recite Homer without falling into convulsions. The Mohawk hardly feels the scalping-knife while

he shouts his death-song. The power which the 10 ancient bards of Wales and Germany exercised

over their auditors seems to modern readers almost miraculous. Such feelings are very rare in a civilized community, and most rare among those who

participate most in its improvements. They 15 linger longest among the peasantry.

Poetry produces an illusion on the eye of the mind, as a magic lantern produces an illusion on the

eye of the body. And, as the magic lantern acts best in a dark room, poetry effects its purpose 20 most completely in a dark age. As the light of

knowledge breaks in upon its exhibitions, as the outlines of certainty become more and more definite, and the shades of probability more and more

distinct, the hues and lineaments of the phan25 toms which the poet calls up grow fainter and

fainter. We cannot unite the incompatible advantages of reality and deception, the clear discernment of truth and the exquisite enjoyment of fiction.

He who, in an enlightened and literary society,

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aspires to be a great poet, must first become a little child. He must take to pieces the whole web of his mind. He must unlearn much of that knowledge which has perhaps constituted hitherto his chief title to superiority. His very talents will 5 be a hindrance to him. His difficulties will be proportioned to his proficiency in the pursuits which are fashionable among his contemporaries; and that proficiency will in general be proportioned to the vigor and activity of his mind. And it is 10 well if, after all his sacrifices and exertions, his works do not resemble a lisping man or a modern ruin. We have seen in our own time great talents, intense labor, and long meditation, employed in this struggle against the spirit of 15 the age, and employed, we will not say absolutely in vain, but with dubious success and feeble applause.

If these reasonings be just, no poet has ever triumphed over greater difficulties than Milton. 20 He received a learned education: he was a profound and elegant classical scholar; he had studied all the mysteries of Rabbinical literature; he was intimately acquainted with every language of modern Europe from which either pleasure or infor- 25 mation was then to be derived. He was perhaps the only great poet of later times who has been distinguished by the excellence of his Latin verse. The genius of Petrarch was scarcely of the first order; and his poems in the ancient language, 30 though much praised by those who have never read them, are wretched compositions. Cowley, with all his admirable wit and ingenuity, had little

imagination; nor indeed do we think his classical 5 diction comparable to that of Milton. The author

ity of Johnson is against us on this point. But Johnson had studied the bad writers of the middle ages till he had become utterly insensible to the

Augustan elegance, and was as ill qualified to 10 judge between two Latin styles as a habitual drunkard to set up for a wine-taster.

Versification in a dead language is an exotic, a far-fetched, costly, sickly imitation of that which

elsewhere may be found in healthful and sponta15 neous perfection. The soils on which this rarity

. flourishes are in general as ill-suited to the production of vigorous native poetry as the flowerpots of a hot-house to the growth of oaks. That

the author of the Paradise Lost should have 20 written the Epistle to Manso was truly wonderful.

Never before were such marked originality and such exquisite mimicry found together. Indeed, in all the Latin poems of Milton the artificial manner

indispensable to such works is admirably preserved, 25 while, at the same time, his genius gives to them a

peculiar charm, an air of nobleness and freedom, which distinguishes them from all other writings of the same class. They remind us of the amuse

ments of those angelic warriors who composed the 30 cohort of Gabriel :

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stances than Milton. He doubted, as he has himself owned, whether he had not been born “an age too late.” For this notion Johnson has thought fit to make him the butt of much clumsy ridicule. The poet, we believe, understood the nature of his art better than the critic. He knew that his poetical genius derived no advantage from the civilization which surrounded him, or from the learning which he had acquired; and he looked back with something like regret to the ruder age of simple 10 words and vivid impressions.

We think that, as civilization advances, poetry almost necessarily declines. Therefore, though we fervently admire those great works of imagination which have appeared in dark ages, we do not 15 admire them the more because they have appeared

On the contrary, we hold that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilized age. We cannot understand why those who believe in that most 20 orthodox article of literary faith, that the earliest poets are generally the best, should wonder at the rule as if it were the exception. Surely the uniformity of the phenomenon indicates a corresponding uniformity in the cause.

The fact is, that common observers reason from the progress of the experimental sciences to that of the imitative arts. The improvement of the former is gradual and slow. Ages are spent in collecting materials, ages more in separating and combining 80

in dark ages.

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