mote, to passing events, or discussions of national importance, is seized upon with a furious vehemence, and made the oracle of opinion. Nay, this is often done without any wish or purpose in the author; and applications are made, and allusions fastened upon him by his hearers, which never entered into his imagination. In a recent instance (at the representation of the Vepres Siciliennes of M. Delavigne), a single phrase, which the author solemnly protested to have been purely casual, was in this manner interpreted into a political insinuation, and at once raised him and his play to a height of glory which they could never otherwise have reached. It is not often, however, that the authors are thus innocent of the factions into the service of which their writings are pressed :-on the contrary, it is to this ready and perilous course of popularity that the greater part of them direct the whole of their talents. Sharing, as he generally does, in no common degree, in the violent heats and exasperations by which their country is now unhappily divided, the Poet naturally takes a more exaggerated, or, it may be, a more exalted view of them. A passion for independence, love of country, and hatred of foreign influence, are the consequent topics of his verses. Politics, in short, have now usurped the place once occupied by Love, and, like that tender passion, appear en première ligne,—though with infinitely more hazard of leading to pernicious effects. It is right that patriotic principles should be inculcated from the stage; but when the theatre is made a forum for the display of national antipathies, it is degraded from its most noble purposes. Yet such appears its chief use at present. "To improve our virtuous sensibility"-Blair's happy definition of the object of tragedy is no longer the aim of the French stage. The old system and the old pieces are, comparatively speaking, thrown aside. Subjects chosen from ancient history are now altogether abandoned :* and the example of their best authors is in this respect disregarded. Corneille and Racine both rejected their national history; and even Voltaire cannot be said to have written a national tragedy; for though French names are to be found in Adelaïde du Guesclin and Zaire, all beyond them is fabulous. La Harpe and Ducis follow the ancient models; and it was left to a far inferior person to make the first experiment of the style which has now superseded every other. The incoherent and complicated plots and inelegant style of Dubelloy, were pardoned for the sake of the patriotic feeling excited by The Siege of Calais and Gaston de Bayard. The progress of discontent opened the way still wider for the advancement of this national style; and the name * Sylla and Regulus, two recent tragedies, may seem exceptions to this rule. But even these pieces come, in some measure, within it; for their object-at least the audience will have it so-is merely to represent the late Emperor under two remarkable aspects-his abdication and his banishment. In Sylla, Talma carries the resemblance even to his wig! and the effect is prodigi ous! It is a fact, scarcely credible, that the government ordered this performer, after the first night's representation, to abstain from the action of carrying his hands behind his back, an occasional habit of the late Emperor! A more rational, or at least less ludicrous consideration, induced the censors to suppress the following passages in the part of Sylla :: "C'était trop peu pour moi des lauriers de la guerre, Je voulais une gloire et plus rare et plus chère: "J'ai gouverné le monde à mes ordres soumis, of country, so full of inspiration at all times, but most in the days of contention for national rights, was once more destined to exercise its magical influence in France. It is not, however, our intention to discuss either the dramatic or the political merits of the tragedies to which we have alluded, but rather to give our readers a general notion of the present state of Poetry among our neighbours-abstracted as far as possible both from the peculiarities of their dramatic system, and the perturbations of their political dissensions. Upon this principle, we have selected the three works named at the head of this article as the representatives of the different modifications of that genus to which they all belong. It might not, perhaps, be altogether fanciful to consider them also as epitomes of the three great political sects, into which France is now divided; and which, at this moment, extend their influence, and give their tone and colouring to every branch of literature and science. The Aristocratical, the Constitutional, the Republican, have their followers alike in metaphysics and morals, medicine and mechanics, philosophy and poetry. The pervading spirit of all is party spirit; and the common object, political purpose. The fierceness of opinion on the relative merits of the candidates for literary fame, in whatever walk they may choose, is only equalled by its obstinacy; and it is but in the three cases of extraordinary merit which we have selected, that merit has been universally felt and acknowledged. All parties allow the clevation of Delamartine, the energy of Delavigne, the gaiety and wit of Beranger. The first may be considered as the poetical representative of the high aristocracy-the churchand-state class-the throne-and-altar set-the Ultras in fact. The second is looked on as the oracle of independence-the champion of nationality— the bard of the Liberals;—and the third is by every one regarded as the poet of the People. In all these nominations the first is the only one which is perhaps arbitrary and gratuitous on the part of the public. For certainly we can discover nothing in M. Delamartine's writings in sympathy with the exaggerated tone of the party that has identified him with themselves. But his rivals in popularity bear the impress, in every line, of the fitness of their respective allotments. * * Having given these brilliant exceptions to a general sentence of condemnation, we must say, in conclusion, that modern French poetry is at a low ebb. Almost all its existing professors give their whole attention to tragedy. Seeking subjects in the ancient annals of their country, they address themselves to political passions, rather than to the heart. Bursts of pompous patriotism, and violent tirades against foreign influence, form the grand staple of their verse. The audience receives this with rapture-but seldom has recourse to its handkerchiefs. Fierce clappings and terrible huzzas are the only fashionable acknowledgments of the author's powers, who, in place of sympathy and tears, draws forth angry invectives and patriotic frowns. The public and the poet thus communicate reciprocal gratification, and inflict reciprocal ill. The one fosters the angry spirit of the times, the other nurtures a vital injury to poetic excellence. Taste becomes vitiated, talent misapplied, a diseased and morbid appetite calls for stimulants of the most pernicious kind; and the hand that administers them falls powerless for every nobler use. But though French poetry must be pronounced in this dangerous and degraded state, there is, as we have seen, * The extracts are omitted. no dearth of that sprit from which its highest flames may yet burst forth. The very errors we deplore, prove the existence of enthusiasm, vigorous feeling, and high sentiment. These are among the best attributes of poetry: and, if turned to right account, might still redeem that of France from much of its present debasement. THE PRESENT STATE OF POETRY IN ENGLAND. We have been rather in an odd state for some years, we think, both as to Poets and Poetry. Since the death of Lord Byron, there has been no king in Israel and none of his former competitors now seem inclined to push their pretensions to the vacant throne. Scott, and Moore, and Southey appear to have nearly renounced verse, and finally taken service with the Muses of prose:-Crabbe, and Coleridge, and Wordsworth, we fear, are burnt out-and Campbell and Rogers repose under their laurels, and, contented each with his own elegant little domain, seem but little disposed either to extend its boundaries, or to add new provinces to their rule. Yet we cannot say, either that this indifference may be accounted for by the impoverished state of the kingdom whose sovereignty is thus in abeyance, or that the interregnum has as yet given rise to any notable disorders. On the contrary, we do not remember a time when it would have been a prouder distinction to be at the head of English poetry, or when the power which every man has to do what is good in his own eyes, seemed less in danger of being abused. Three poets of great promise have indeed been lost," in the morn and liquid dew of their youth"-in Kirke White, in Keats, and in Pollok; and a powerful, though more uncertain, genius extinguished, less prematurely, in Shelley. Yet there still survive writers of great talents and attraction. The elegance, the tenderness, the feminine sweetness of Felicia Hemans-the classical copiousness of Millman-the facility and graceful fancy of Hunt, though defrauded of half its praise by carelessness and presumption-and, besides many others, the glowing pencil and gorgeous profusion of the author more immediately before us. There is no want, then, of poetry among us at the present day; nor even of very good and agreeable poetry. But there are no miracles of the art -nothing that mark its descent from "the highest heaven of invention❞— nothing visibly destined to inherit immortality. Speaking very generally, we would say, that our poets never showed better or less narrow taste, or a juster relish of what is truly excellent in the models that lie before them, and yet have seldom been more deficient in the powers of creative genius; or rather, perhaps, that with an unexampled command over the raw malerials of poetry, and true sense of their value, they have rarely been so much wanting in the skill to work them up to advantage-in the power of attaching human interests to sparkling fancies, making splendid descriptions subservient to intelligible purposes, or fixing the fine and fugitive spirit of poetry in some tangible texture of exalted reason or sympathetic emotion. The improvement in all departments is no doubt immense, since the days when Hoole and Hayley were thought great poets. But it is not quite clear to us, that the fervid and florid Romeos of the present day may not be The Fall of Nineveh ; a Poem. By Edwin Atherstone.-Vol. xlviii. p. 47. September, 1828. gathered, in no very long course of years, to the capacious tomb of these same ancient Capulets. They are but shadows, we fear, that have no independent or substantial existence; and, though reflected from grand and beautiful originals, have but little chance to maintain their place in the eyes of the many generations by whom those originals will yet be worshipped-but who will probably prefer, each in their turn, shadows of their own creating. The present age, we think, has an hundred times more poetry, and more true taste for poetry, than that which immediately preceded it,-and of which, reckoning its duration from the extinction of the last of Queen Anne's wits down to about thirty odd years ago, we take leave to say that it was, beyond all dispute, the most unpoetical age in the annals of this or any other considerable nation. Nothing, indeed, can be conceived more dreary and sterile than the aspect of our national poetry from the time of Pope and Thomson, down to that of Burns and Cowper, with the exception of a few cold and scattered lights-Gray, Goldsmith, Warton, Mason, and Johnson-men of sense and eloquence occasionally exercising themselves in poetry out of scholar-like ambition, but not poets in any genuine sense of the word-the whole horizon was dark, silent, and blank; or only presented objects upon which it is now impossible to look seriously without shame. These were the happy days of Pye and Whitehead of Hoole and of Hayley; and then, throughout the admiring land, resounded the mighty names of Jerningham and Jago, of Edwards, of Murphy, of Moore, and of others whom we cannot but feel it is a baseness to remember. The first man who broke "the numbing spell" was Cowper-(for Burns was not generally known till long after)—and though less highly gifted than several who came after him, this great praise should always be remembered in his epitaph. He is entitled, in our estimation, to a still greater praise; and that is, to the praise of absolute and entire originality. Whatever he added to the resources of English poetry, was drawn directly from the fountains of his own genius, or the stores of his own observation. He was a copyist of no style-a restorer of no style; and did not, like the eminent men who succeeded him, merely recall the age to the treasures it had almost forgotten, open up anew a vein that had been long buried in rubbish, or revive a strain which had already delighted the ears of a more aspiring generation. That this, however, was the case with the poets who immediately followed, cannot, we think, be reasonably doubted; and the mere statement of the fact seems to us sufficiently to explain the present state of our poetry -its strength and its weakness-its good taste and its deficient power-its resemblance to works that can never die, and its own obvious liability to the accidents of mortality. It has advanced beyond the preceding age, simply by going back to one still older; and has put its poverty to shame, only by unlocking the hoards of a remoter ancestor. It has reformed merely by restoring; and innovated by a systematic recurrence to the models of antiquity. Scott went back as far as to the Romances of Chivalry; and the poets of the lakes to the humbler and more pathetic simplicity of our early ballads; and both, and all who have since adventured in poetry, have drawn, without measure or disguise, from the living springs of Shakspeare and Spenser, and the other immortal writers who adorned the glorious era of Elizabeth and James. * We ought, perhaps, to have made an exception for Akenside, who, though often weak and pedantic, has passages of powerful poetry-and for Collins, a great master of fine and delicate dietion, though poor in thought and matter. But we will make none for Churchill or Shenstone. It is impossible to value more highly than we do the benefits of this restoration. It is a great thing to have rendered the public once more familiar with these mighty geniuses-and, if we must be copyists, there is nothing certainly that deserves so well to be copied. The consequence, accordingly, has been, that, even in our least inspired writers, we can again reckon upon freedom and variety of style, some sparks of fancy, some traits of nature, and some echo, however feeble, of that sweet melody of rhythm and of diction, which must linger for ever in every ear which has once drank in the music of Shakspeare; while in authors of greater vigour, we are sure to meet also with gorgeous descriptions and splendid imagery, tender sentiments expressed in simple words, and vehement passions pouring themselves out in fearless and eloquent declamation. But, with all this, it is but too true that we have still a feeling that we are glorying but in secondhand finery and counterfeit inspiration; and that the poets of the present day, though they have not only Taste enough to admire, but skill also to imitate, the great masters of an earlier generation, have not inherited the Genius that could have enabled them either to have written as they wrote, or even to have come up, without their example, to the level of their own imitations. The heroes of our modern poetry, indeed, are little better, as we take it, than the heroes of the modern theatres-attired, no doubt, in the exact costume of the persons they represent, and wielding their gorgeous antique arms with an exact imitation of heroic movements and deportments-nay, even evincing in their tones and gestures, a full sense of inward nobleness and dignity-and yet palpably unfit to engage in any feat of actual prowess, and incapable, in their own persons, even of conceiving what they have been so well taught to personate. We feel, in short, that our modern poetry is substantially derivative, and, as geologists say of our present earth, of secondary formation-made up of the debris of a former world, and composed, in its loftiest and most solid parts, of the fragments of things far more lofty and solid. The consequence, accordingly, is, that we have abundance of admirable descriptions, ingenious similitudes, and elaborate imitations-but little invention, little direct or overwhelming passion, and little natural simplicity. On the contrary, every thing almost now resolves into description-descriptions not only of actions and external objects, but of characters and emotions, and the signs and accompaniments of emotion,-and all given at full length, ostentatious, elaborate, and highly finished, even in their counterfeit carelessness and disorder; but no sudden unconscious bursts, either of nature or of passion-no casual flashes of fancy,-no slight passing intimations of deep but latent emotions,-no rash darings of untutored genius, soaring proudly up into the infinite unknown! The chief fault, however, is the want of subject and of matter-the absence of real persons, intelligible interests, and conceivable incidents, to which all this splendid apparatus of rhetoric and fancy may attach itself, and thus get a purpose and a meaning, which it never can possess without them. To satisfy a rational being, even in his most sensitive mood, we require not only a just representation of passion in the abstract, but also that it shall be embodied in some individual person whom we can understand and sympathise with-and cannot long be persuaded to admire splendid images and ingenious allusions which bear upon no comprehensible object, and seem to be introduced for no other purpose than to be admired. Without going the full length of the mathematician, who could see no |