46 POETS UNCONSCIOUS MEDIA OF INSPIRATION.

such philosophers and poets as surpass beyond comparison any who have appeared since the last national struggle for civil and religious liberty. The most unfailing herald, companion, and follower 5 of the awakening of a great people to work a beneficial change in opinion or institution, is poetry. At such periods there is an accumulation of the power of communicating and receiving intense and impassioned conceptions respecting man and na10 ture.

The persons in whom this power resides may often, as far as regards many portions of their nature, have little apparent correspondence with that spirit of good of which they are the ministers. But even whilst they deny and abjure, they are yet 15 compelled to serve the power which is seated on the throne of their own soul. It is impossible to read the compositions of the most celebrated writers of the present day without being startled Iwith the electric life which burns within their 20 words. They measure the circumference and sound the depths of human nature with a comprehensive and all-penetrating spirit, and they are themselves perhaps the most sincerely astonished at its manifestations; for it is less their spirit than the spirit 25 of the age. Poets are the hierophants of an unapprehended inspiration; the mirrors of the gigantic shadows which futurity casts upon the present; the words which express what they understand not; the trumpets which sing to battle and feel 30 not what they inspire; the influence which is moved not, but moves. Poets are the unacknowledged legislators of the world..

THE FOUR AGES OF POETRY.

BY THOMAS LOVE PEACOCK.

Qui inter hæc nutriuntur non magis sapere possunt, quam bene olere qui in culina habitant. -PETRONIUS.

POETRY, like the world, may be said to have four ages, but in a different order: the first age of poetry being the age of iron; the second of gold; the third of silver; and the fourth of brass.

The first, or iron age of poetry, is that in which rude bards 5 celebrate in rough numbers the exploits of ruder chiefs, in days when every man is a warrior, and when the great practical maxim of every form of society, "to keep what we have and to catch what we can," is not yet disguised under names of justice and forms of law, but is the naked motto of the 10 naked sword, which is the only judge and jury in every question of meum and tuum [mine and thine]. In these days, the only three trades flourishing (besides that of priest, which flourishes always) are those of king, thief, and beggar; the beggar being, for the most part, a king deject, and the thief 15 a king expectant. The first question asked of a stranger is, whether he is a beggar or a thief; 1 the stranger, in reply, usually assumes the first, and awaits a convenient opportunity to prove his claim to the second appellation.

1

The natural desire of every man to engross to himself as 20 much power and property as he can acquire by any of the means which might makes right, is accompanied by the no less natural desire of making known to as many people as possible the extent to which he has been a winner in this universal game. The successful warrior becomes a chief; the 25

1 See the Odyssey, passim, and Thucydides, I. 5. [Peacock's Note.]

successful chief becomes a king; his next want is an organ to disseminate the fame of his achievements and the extent of his possessions, and this organ he finds in a bard, who is always ready to celebrate the strength of his arm, being first 5 duly inspired by that of his liquor. This is the origin of poetry, which, like all other trades, takes its rise in the demand for the commodity, and flourishes in proportion to the extent of the market.

Poetry is thus in its origin panegyrical. The first rude Io songs of all nations appear to be a sort of brief historical notices, in a strain of tumid hyperbole, of the exploits and possessions of a few pre-eminent individuals. They tell us how many battles such an one has fought, how many helmets he has cleft, how many breastplates he has pierced, how many 15 widows he has made, how much land he has appropriated, how many houses he has demolished for other people, what a large one he has built for himself, how much gold he has stowed away in it, and how liberally and plentifully he pays, feeds, and intoxicates the divine and immortal bards, the 20 sons of Jupiter, but for whose everlasting songs the names of heroes would perish.

This is the first stage of poetry before the invention of written letters. The numerical modulation is at once useful as a help to memory, and pleasant to the ears of uncultured 25 men, who are easily caught by sound; and, from the exceeding flexibility of the yet unformed language, the poet does no violence to his ideas in subjecting them to the fetters of number. The savage, indeed, lisps in numbers, and all rude and uncivilized people express themselves in the manner 30 which we call poetical.

The scenery by which he is surrounded, and the superstitions which are the creed of his age, form the poet's mind. Rocks, mountains, seas, unsubdued forests, unnavigable rivers, surround him with forms of power and mystery, which 35 ignorance and fear have peopled with spirits, under multifarious names of gods, goddesses, nymphs, genii, and dæmons. Of all these personages marvelous tales are in existence: the nymphs are not indifferent to handsome young men, and the gentlemen-genii are much troubled and very troublesome

with a propensity to be rude to pretty maidens; the bard, therefore, finds no difficulty in tracing the genealogy of his chief to any of the deities in his neighborhood with whom the said chief may be desirous of claiming relationship.

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In this pursuit, as in all others, some, of course, will attain 5 a very marked pre-eminence; and these will be held in high honor, like Demodocus in the Odyssey, and will be consequently inflated with boundless vanity, like Thamyris in the Iliad. Poets are as yet the only historians and chroniclers of their time, and the sole depositories of all the knowledge of their age; and though this knowledge is rather a crude congeries of traditional fantasies than a collection of useful truths, yet, such as it is, they have it to themselves. They are observing and thinking, while others are robbing and fighting; and though their object be nothing more than to 15 secure a share of the spoil, yet they accomplish this end by intellectual, not by physical power; their success excites emulation to the attainment of intellectual eminence; thus they sharpen their own wits and awaken those of others, at the same time that they gratify vanity and amuse curiosity. 20 A skilful display of the little knowledge they have gains them credit for the possession of much more which they have not. Their familiarity with the secret history of gods and genii obtains for them, without much difficulty, the reputation of inspiration; thus they are not only historians, but theolo- 25 gians, moralists, and legislators; delivering their oracles ex cathedra [from the chair of authority], and being indeed often themselves (as Orpheus and Amphion) regarded as portions and emanations of divinity; building cities with a song, and leading brutes with a symphony -- which are only metaphors 30 for the faculty of leading multitudes by the nose.

The golden age of poetry finds its materials in the age of iron. This age begins when poetry begins to be retrospective; when something like a more extended system of civil polity is established; when personal strength and courage 35 avail less to the aggrandizing of their possessor, and to the making and marring of kings and kingdoms, and are checked by organized bodies, social institutions, and hereditary successions. Men also live more in the light of truth and within

5 stances

the interchange of observation, and thus perceive that the agency of gods and genii is not so frequent among themselves as, to judge from the songs and legends of the past time, it was among their ancestors. From these two circum- really diminished personal power, and apparently diminished familiarity with gods and genii— they very easily and naturally deduce two conclusions: Ist, That men are degenerated, and 2nd, That they are less in favor with the gods. The people of the petty states and colonies, which 10 have now acquired stability and form, which owed the origin and first prosperity to the talents and courage of a single chief, magnify their founder through the mists of distance and tradition, and perceive him achieving wonders with a god or goddess always at his elbow. They find his name 15 and his exploits thus magnified and accompanied in their traditionary songs, which are their only memorials. All that is said of him is in this character. There is nothing to contradict it. The man and his exploits and his tutelary deities are mixed and blended in one invariable association. The 20 marvelous, too, is very much like a snowball: it grows as it rolls downward, till the little nucleus of truth, which began its descent from the summit, is hidden in the accumulation of superinduced hyperbole.

When tradition, thus adorned and exaggerated, has sur25 rounded the founders of families and states with so much adventitious power and magnificence, there is no praise which a living poet can, without fear of being kicked for clumsy flattery, address to a living chief, that will not still leave the impression that the latter is not so great a man as 30 his ancestors. The man must, in this case, be praised through his ancestors. Their greatness must be established, and he must be shown to be their worthy descendant. the people of a state are interested in the founder of their state. All states that have harmonized into a common form 35 of society are interested in their respective founders. AN men are interested in their ancestors. All men love to look back into the days that are past. In these circumstances traditional national poetry is reconstructed, and brought, like chaos, into order and form. The interest is more universal;

All