soning on the subject as is to be found in the Fable of the Bees. But could Mandeville have created an Iago? Well as he knew how to resolve characters into their elements, would he have been able to combine those elements in such a manner as to make up a man, a real, 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:

there are no wolves in England. Yet in spite of her knowledge 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, 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 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 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 knifo while he shouts his death-song. The power which the ancient bards of Wales and Germany exercised over their au"fineditors 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.

"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 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 suppo- Poetry produces an illusion on the sitions have been made, every thing eye of the mind, as a magic lantern ought to be consistent; but those first produces an illusion on the eye of the suppositions require a degree of credu- body. And, as the magic lantern acts lity which almost amounts to a partial best in a dark room, poetry effects its and temporary derangement of the in-purpose most completely in a dark age. tellect. Hence of all people children As the light of knowledge breaks in are the most imaginative. They aban-upon its exhibitions, as the outlines of don themselves without reserve to every certainty become more and more deillusion. Every image which is strongly finite and the shades of probability more presented to their mental eye produces and more distinct, the hues and lineaon them the effect of reality. No man, ments of the phantoms which the poet whatever his sensibility may be, is ever calls up grow fainter and fainter. We affected by Hamlet or Lear, as a little cannot unite the incompatible advangirl is affected by the story of poor Redtages of reality and deception, the clear Riding-hood. She knows that it is all discernment of truth and the exquisite false, that wolves cannot speak, that 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 the pursuits which are fashionable among his contemporaries; and that proficiency will in general be proportioned to the vigour and activity of his mind. And it is 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 labour, and long meditation, employed in this struggle against the spirit of the age, and employed, we will not say absolutely in vain, but with dubious success and feeble applause.

truly wonderful. Never before were
such marked originality and such ex-
quisite mimicry found together. In-
deed in all the Latin poems of Milton
the artificial manner indispensable to
such works is admirably preserved,
while, at the same time, his genius gives
to them a peculiar charm, an air of
nobleness and freedom, which distin-
guishes them from all other writings of
the same class. They remind us of the
amusements of those angelic warriors
who composed the cohort of Gabriel:
"About him exercised heroic games

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 Mil-
ton ungirds itself, without catching a
glimpse of the gorgeous and terrible
panoply which it is accustomed to wear.
The strength of his imagination tri-
umphed over every obstacle. So in-
tense and ardent was the fire of his
mind, that it not only was not suffo-
cated beneath the weight of fuel, but
penetrated the whole superincumbent
mass with its own heat and radiance.

If these reasonings be just, no poct has ever triumphed over greater difficulties 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 It is not our intention to attempt any by those who have never read them, thing like a complete examination of are wretched compositions. Cowley, the poetry of Milton. The public has with all his admirable wit and ingenuity, long been agreed as to the merit of the had little imagination: nor indeed do most remarkable passages, the incomwe think his classical diction compar-parable harmony of the numbers, and able to that of Milton. The authority the excellence of that style, which no of Johnson is against us on this point. rival has been able to equal, and no But Johnson had studied the bad parodist to degrade, which displays in writers of the middle ages till he had their highest perfection the idiomatic become utterly insensible to the Au-powers of the English tongue, and to gustan elegance, and was as ill qualified which every ancient and every modern to judge between two Latin styles as a language has contributed something of habitual drunkard to set up for a wine-grace, of energy, or of music. In the

taster.

Versification in a dead language is an exotic, a far-fetched, costly, sickly,

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.

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

than muster-rolls of names. They are not always more appropriate or more 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

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. Its ef-peated than those which are little more fect is produced, not so much by what it expresses, as by what it suggests; 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

In none of the works of Milton is his peculiar manner more happily displayed than in the Allegro and the Penseroso. It is impossible to conceive that the mechanism of language can be brought to a more exquisite degree of perfection. These poems differ from others, as atar of roses differs from ordinary rose water, the close packed essence from the thin diluted mixture. They are indeed not so much poems, as collections of hints, from each of which the reader is to make out a poem for himself. Every epithet is a text for a stanza.

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 ap-rescued princesses. propriate. His poetry acts like an incantation. Its merit lies less in its obvious meaning than in its occult power. There would seem, at first sight, to be no more in his words than in other words. But they are words of enchantment. No sooner are they pronounced, than the past is present and the distant near. New forms of beauty start at once into existence, and all the burial-places of the memory give up their dead. Change the structure of the sentence; substitute one synonyme for another, and the whole effect is destroyed. The spell loses its power; 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 resem As 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 emo-ers, perhaps beyond any powers. Intions.

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 pow

stead of correcting what was bad, he destroyed what was excellent. Не substituted crutches for stilts, bad sermons for good odes.

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 was, head and heart, a lyric poet. In his time, the Greeks had far more intercourse with the East than in the days of Homer; and they had not yet acquired that immense superiority in war, in science, and in the arts, which, in the following generation, led them to treat the Asiatics with contempt. From the narrative of Herodotus it should seem that they still looked up, with the veneration of disciples, to Egypt and Assyria. At this period, accordingly, it was natural that the literature of Greece should be tinctured with the Oriental style. And that style, we think, is discernible in the works of Pindar and Æschylus. The latter often reminds us of the Hebrew writers. The book of Job, indeed, in conduct and

Bottom. At all events, there can be no doubt that this veneration for the Athenian, whether just or not, was injurious to the Samson Agonistes. Had Milton taken Eschylus for his model, he would have given himself up to the lyric inspiration, and poured out profusely all the treasures of his mind, without bestowing a thought on those dramatic proprieties which the nature of the work rendered it impossible to preserve. In the attempt to reconcile things in their own nature inconsistent he has failed, as every one else must have failed. We cannot identify ourselves with the characters, as in a good play. We cannot identify ourselves with the poet, as in a good ode. The conflicting ingredients, like an acid and an alkali mixed, neutralise

each other. We are by no means in- | dialogue, however, impose a constraint

sensible to the merits of this celebrated piece, to the severe dignity of the style, the graceful and pathetic solemnity of the opening speech, or the wild and barbaric melody which gives so striking an effect to the choral passages. But we think it, we confess, the least successful effort of the genius of Milton.

upon the writer, and break the illusion of the reader. The finest passages are those which are lyric in form as well as in spirit. "I should much commend," says the excellent Sir Henry Wotton in a letter to Milton, "the tragical part if the lyrical did not ravish me with a certain Dorique delicacy in your songs and odes, whereunto, I must plainly confess to you, I have seen yet nothing parallel in our language." The criticism was just. It is when Milton escapes from the shackles of the dialogue, when he is discharged from the labour of uniting two incongruous styles, when he is at liberty to indulge his choral raptures without reserve, that he rises even above himself. Then, like his own good Genius bursting from the earthly form and weeds of Thyrsis, he stands forth in celestial freedom and beauty; he seems to cry exultingly,

The Comus is framed on the model of the Italian Masque, as the Samson is framed on the model of the Greek Tragedy. It is certainly the noblest performance of the kind which exists in any language. It is as far superior to the Faithful Shepherdess as the Faithful Shepherdess is to the Aminta, or the Aminta to the Pastor Fido. It was well for Milton that he had here no Euripides to mislead him. He understood and loved the literature of modern Italy. But he did not feel for it the same veneration which he entertained for the remains of Athenian and Roman poetry, consecrated by so many lofty and endearing recollections. The faults, moreover, of his Italian predecessors were of a kind to to which his mind had a deadly anti-clouds, to bathe in the Elysian dew of the pathy. He could stoop to a plain style, sometimes even to a bald style; but false brilliancy was his utter aversion. His muse had no objection to a russet attire; but she turned with disgust from the finery of Guarini, as tawdry and as paltry as the rags of a chimney-sweeper on May-day. Whatever ornaments she wears are of massive gold, not only dazzling to the sight, but capable of standing the severest test of the crucible.

"Now my task is smoothly done,
I can fly or I can run,"

skim the earth, to soar above the

rainbow, and to inhale the balmy smells of nard and cassia, which the musky winds of the zephyr scatter through the cedared alleys of the Hesperides.

There are several of the minor poems of Milton on which we would willingly make a few remarks. Still more willingly would we enter into a detailed examination of that admirable poem, the Paradise Regained, which, strangely enough, is scarcely ever mentioned except as an instance of the Milton attended in the Comus to the blindness of the parental affection distinction which he afterwards neg- which men of letters bear towards the lected in the Samson. He made his offspring of their intellects. That MilMasque what it ought to be, essentially ton was mistaken in preferring this lyrical, and dramatic only in sem- work, excellent as it is, to the Parablance. He has not attempted a fruit-dise Lost, we readily admit. But we less struggle against a defect inherent in the nature of that species of composition; and he has therefore succeeded, wherever success was not impossible. The speeches must be read as majestic soliloquies; and he who so reads them will be enraptured with their eloquence, their sublimity, and their music. The interruptions of the

are sure that the superiority of the Paradise Lost to the Paradise Regained is not more decided, than the superiority of the Paradise Regained to every poem which has since made its appearance. Our limits, however, prevent us from discussing the point at length. We hasten on to that extraordinary production which the general