himself owned, whether he had not been | years to mathematics, learn more than the great Newton knew after half a century of study and meditation. But it is not thus with music, with painting, or with sculpture. Still less is it thus with poetry. The progress of refinement rarely supplies these arts 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 civilisa-with better objects of imitation. It may tion which surrounded him, or from the Tearning which he had acquired, and he looked back with something like regret to the ruder age of simple words and vivid impressions. We think that, as civilisation advances, poetry almost necessarily declines. Therefore, though we fervently admire those great works of imagination which have appeared in dark ages, we do not admire them the more because they have appeared in dark ages. On the contrary, we hold that the most wonderful and splendid proof of genius is a great poem produced in a civilised age. We cannot understand why those Who believe in that most 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 phænomenon 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 them. Even when a system has been formed, there is still something to add, to alter, or to reject. Every generation enjoys the use of a vast hoard bequeathed to it by antiquity, and transmits that hoard, augmented by fresh acquisitions, to future ages. In these pursuits, therefore, the first speculators lie under great disadvantages, and, even when they fail, are entitled to praise. Their pupils, with far inferior intellectual powers, speedily surpass them in actual attainments. Every girl who has read Mrs. Marcet's little dialogues on Political Economy could teach Montague or Walpole many lessons in finance. Any intelligent man may now, by resolutely applying himself for a few indeed improve the instruments which are necessary to the mechanical operations of the musician, the sculptor, and the painter. But language, the machine of the poet, is best fitted for his purpose in its rudest state. Nations, like individuals, first perceive, and then abstract. They advance from particular images to general terms. Hence the vocabulary of an enlightened society is philosophical, that of a half-civilised people is poetical. This change in the language of men is partly the cause and partly the effect of a corresponding change in the nature of their intellectual operations, of a change by which science gains and poetry loses. Generalisation is necessary to the advancement of knowledge; but particularity is indispensible to the creations of the imagination. In proportion as men know more and think more, they look less at individuals and more at classes. They therefore make better theories and worse poems. They give us vague phrases mstead of images, and personified qualities instead of men. They may be better able to analyse human nature than their predecessors. But analysis is not the business of the poet. His office is to portray, not to dissect. He may believe in a moral sense, like Shaftesbury; he may refer all human actions to self-interest, like Helvetius; or he may never think about the matter at all. His creed on such subjects will no more influence his poetry, properly so called, than the notions which a painter may have conceived respecting the lacrymal glands, or the circulation of the blood will affect the tears of his Niobe, or the blushes of his Aurora. If Shakespeare had written a book on the motives of human actions, it is by no means certain that it would have been a good one. It is extremely improbable that it would have contained half so much able rea soning on the subject as is to be found in | there are no wolves in England. Yet the Fable of the Bees. But could Man-in spite of her knowledge she believes ; deville have created an Iago? Well as she weeps; she trembles; she dares not he knew how to resolve characters into go into a dark room lest she should feel their elements, would he have been able the teeth of the monster at her throat. to combine those elements in such a Such is the despotism of the imaginamanner as to make up a man, a real, tion over uncultivated minds. living, individual man? Perhaps no person can be a poet, or can even enjoy poetry, without a certain unsoundness of mind, if any thing which gives so much pleasure ought to be called unsoundness. By poetry we mean not all writing in verse, nor even all good writing in verse. Our definition excludes many metrical compositions which, on other grounds, deserve the highest praise. By poetry we mean the art of employing words in such a manner as to produce an illusion on the imagination, the art of doing by means of words what the painter does by means of colours. Thus the greatest of poets has described it, in lines universally admired for the vigour and felicity of their diction, and still more valuable on account of the just notion which they convey of the art in which he excelled: "As the imagination bodies forth The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing A local habitation and a name." These are the fruits of the "fine frenzy" which he ascribes to the poet, -a fine frenzy doubtless, but still a frenzy. Truth, indeed, is essential to poetry; but it is the truth of madness. The reasonings are just; but the premises are false. After the first suppositions have been made, every thing ought to be consistent; but those first suppositions require a degree of credulity which almost amounts to a partial and temporary derangement 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, 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 filse, that wolves cannot speak, that 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, 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 poctry. Men will judge and compare; but they will not create. They will talk about the old pocts, 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 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 ancient bards of Wales and Germany exercised over their auditors seems to modern readers almost miraculous. Such feelings are very rare in a civilised community, and most rare among those who participate most in its improvements. They 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 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 phantoms 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 lite- | imitation of that which elsewhere may rary society, aspires to be a great poet, be found in healthful and spontaneous must first become a little child. He perfection. The soils on which this must take to pieces the whole web of rarity flourishes are in general as ill his mind. He must unlearn much of suited to the production of vigorous that knowledge which has perhaps con- native poetry as the flower-pots of a stituted hitherto his chief title to supe- hot-house to the growth of oaks. That riority. His very talents will be a the author of the Paradise Lost should hindrance to him. His difficulties will have written the Epistle to Manso was be proportioned to his proficiency in truly wonderful. Never before were the pursuits which are fashionable such marked originality and such examong his contemporaries; and that quisite mimicry found together. Inproficiency will in general be propor- deed in all the Latin poems of Milton tioned to the vigour and activity of his the_artificial manner indispensable to mind. And it is well if, after all his such works is admirably preserved, sacrifices and exertions, his works do while, at the same time, his genius gives not resemble a lisping man or a modern to them a peculiar charm, an air of ruin. We have seen in our own time nobleness and freedom, which distingreat talents, intense labour, and long guishes them from all other writings of meditation, employed in this struggle the same class. They remind us of the against the spirit of the age, and em- amusements of those angelic warriors ployed, we will not say absolutely in who composed the cohort of Gabriel: vain, but with dubious success and "About him exercised heroic games feeble applause. The unarmed youth of heaven. But o'er their heads Celestial armoury, shield, helm, and spear Hung high, with diamond flaming and with gold." We cannot look upon the sportive exercises for which the genius of Milton ungirds itself, without catching a glimpse of the gorgeous and terrible panoply which it is accustomed to wear. The strength of his imagination triumphed over every obstacle. So intense and ardent was the fire of his mind, that it not only was not suffocated beneath the weight of fuel, but penetrated the whole superincumbent mass with its own heat and radiance. If these reasonings be just, no poet has ever triumphed over greater diffe culties than Milton, 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 information 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, 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 diction compar-parable harmony of the numbers, and able to that of Milton. The authority 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 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, It is not our intention to attempt any thing like a complete examination of the poetry of Milton. The public has long been agreed as to the merit of the most remarkable passages, the incom the excellence of that style, which no rival has been able to equal, and no parodist to degrade, which displays in their highest perfection the idiomatic powers of the English tongue, and to which every ancient and every modern language has contributed something of grace, of energy, or of music. In the vast field of criticism on which we are entering, innumerable reapers have already put their sickles. Yet the har vest is so abundant that the negligent | radise Lost, is a remarkable instance of search of a straggling gleaner may be this. rewarded with a sheaf. The most striking characteristic of the poetry of Milton is the extreme remoteness of the associations by means of which it acts on the reader. In support of these observations we may remark, that scarcely any passages in the poems of Milton are more generally known or more frequently re fect is produced, not so much bated than those which are little more than muster-rolls of names. They are melodious than other names. But they are charmed names. Every one of them is the first link in a long chain of associated ideas. Like the dwelling it expresses, as by what it suggests; not always more appropriate or more not so much by the ideas which it directly conveys, as by other ideas which are connected with them. He electrifies the mind through conductors. The most unimaginative man must un-place of our infancy revisited in manderstand the Iliad. Homer gives him no choice, and requires from him no exertion, but takes the whole upon himself, and sets the images in so clear a light, that it is impossible to be blind to them. The works of Milton cannot be comprehended or enjoyed, unless the mind of the reader co-operate with that of the writer. He does not paint a finished picture, or play for a mere passive listener. He sketches, and leaves others to fill up the outline. He strikes the key-note, and expects his hearer to make out the melody. hood, like the song of our country heard in a strange land, they produce upon us an effect wholly independent of their intrinsic value. One transports us back to a remote period of history. Another places us among the novel scenes and manners of a distant region. A third evokes all the dear classical recollections of childhood, the schoolroom, the dog-eared Virgil, the holiday, and the prize. A fourth brings before us the splendid phantoms of chivalrous romance, the trophied lists, the embroidered housings, the quaint devices, the haunted forests, the enchanted gardens, the achievements of enamoured knights, and the smiles of rescued princesses. We often hear of the magical influence of poetry. The expression in general means nothing: but, applied to the writings of Milton, it is most appropriate. His poetry acts like an in- In none of the works of Milton is his cantation. Its merit lies less in its ob- peculiar manner more happily displayed vious meaning than in its occult power. than in the Allegro and the Penseroso. There would seem, at first sight, to be It is impossible to conceive that the no more in his words than in other mechanism of language can be brought words. But they are words of en- to a more exquisite degree of perfecchantment. No sooner are they pro- tion. These poems differ from others, nounced, than the past is present and as atar of roses differs from ordinary the distant near. New forms of beauty rose water, the close packed essence start at once into existence, and all the from the thin diluted mixture. They burial places of the memory give up are indeed not so much poems, as coltheir dead. Change the structure of lections of hints, from each of which the sentence; substitute one synonyme | the reader is to make out a poem for for another, and the whole effect is de- himself. Every epithet is a text for a stroyed. The spell loses its power; stanza. and he who should then hope to conjure with it would find himself as much mistaken as Cassim in the Arabian tale, when he stood crying, "Open Wheat," "Open Barley," to the door which obeyed no sound but "Open Sesame." The miserable failure of Dryden in his attempt to translate into his own diction some parts of the Pa The Comus and the Samson Agonistes are works which, though of very different merit, offer some marked points of resemblance. Both are lyric poems in the form of plays. There are perhaps no two kinds of composition so essentially dissimilar as the drama and the ode. The business of the dramatist is to keep himself out of sight, and to let nothing appear but his characters. | diction, bears a considerable resemAs soon as he attracts notice to his blance to some of his dramas. Conpersonal feelings, the illusion is broken. sidered as plays, his works are absurd; The effect is as unpleasant as that which is produced on the stage by the voice of a prompter or the entrance of a scene-shifter. Hence it was, that the tragedies of Byron were his least successful performances. They resemble those pasteboard pictures invented by the friend of children, Mr. Newbery, in which a single moveable head goes round twenty different bodies, so that the same face looks out upon us successively, from the uniform of a hussar, tne furs of a judge, and the rags of a beggar. In all the characters, patriots and tyrants, haters and lovers, the frown and sneer of Harold were discernible in an instant. But this species of egotism, though fatal to the drama, is the inspiration of the ode. It is the part of the lyric poet to abandon himself, without reserve, to his own emotions. considered as choruses, they are above all praise. If, for instance, we examine the address of Clytemnestra to Agamemnon on his return, or the description of the seven Argive chiefs, by the principles of dramatic writing, we shall instantly condemn them as monstrous. But if we forget the characters, and think only of the poetry, we shall admit that it has never been surpassed in energy and magnificence. Sophocles made the Greek drama as dramatic as was consistent with its original form. His portraits of men have a sort of similarity; but it is the similarity not of a painting, but of a bas-relief. It suggests a resemblance; but it does not produce an illusion. Euripides attempted to carry the reform further. But it was a task far beyond his powers, perhaps beyond any powers. Instead of correcting what was bad, he destroyed what was excellent. substituted crutches for stilts, bad sermons for good odes. He Between these hostile elements many great men have endeavoured to effect an amalgamation, but never with complete success. The Greek Drama, on Milton, it is well known, admired the model of which the Samson was Euripides highly, much more highly written, sprang from the Ode. The than, in our opinion, Euripides dedialogue was ingrafted on the chorus, served. Indeed the caresses which and naturally partook of its character. this partiality leads our countryman to The genius of the greatest of the Athe-bestow on "sad Electra's poet," somenian dramatists co-operated with the times remind us of the beautiful Queen circumstances under which tragedy of Fairy-land kissing the long ears of made its first appearance. Eschylus Bottom. At all events, there can be was, head and heart, a lyric poet. In no doubt that this veneration for the his time, the Greeks had far more in- Athenian, whether just or not, was intercourse with the East than in the days jurious to the Samson Agonistes. Had of Homer; and they had not yet ac- Milton taken Eschylus for his model, quired that immense superiority in war, he would have given himself up to the in science, and in the arts, which, in lyric inspiration, and poured out prothe following generation, led them to fusely all the treasures of his mind, treat the Asiatics with contempt. From without bestowing a thought on those the narrative of Herodotus it should dramatic proprieties which the nature seem that they still looked up, with the of the work rendered it impossible to veneration of disciples, to Egypt and preserve. In the attempt to reconcile Assyria. At this period, accordingly, things in their own nature inconsistent it was natural that the literature of he has failed, as every one else must Greece should be tinctured with the have failed. We cannot identify ourOriental style. And that style, we selves with the characters, as in a think, is discernible in the works of good play. We cannot identify our Pindar and Æschylus. The latter often selves with the poet, as in a good ode. reminds us of the Hebrew writers. The The conflicting ingredients, like an book of Job, indeed, in conduct and acid and an alkali mixed, neutralise |