or standing forth to defend the English people in favor, or in poverty and persecution—did he forget that the great business of his life was to give utterance to the promptings of imagination. Poetry was his imperial theme the controlling and harmonizing idea of his existence, and the aspirations of his inmost nature may be traced throughout all his writings, no matter how unpromising their topic. The art enters into his scheme of education, "not," as he protests, "the prosody of a verse among the rudiments of grammar; but that sublime art which teaches what are the laws of a true epic poem, what of a dramatic, what of a lyric, what decorum is, which is the grand master piece to observe. This would soon show what despicable creatures our common rhymers and play-writers be, and what religious, what glorious and magnificent use might be made of poetry, both in divine and human things." When Milton addresses the parliament, he is true to his fraternity, and cites, as an authority to that tribunal, the imaginative lore of "our sage and serious poet, Spenser, whom," he adds, "I dare be known to think a better teacher than Scotus or Aquinas." And when nearly thirty years before its consummation, the idea of his "adventurous song" broke the bonds of silence in anticipations that at some distant day he might "take up the harp and sing an elaborate song to generations" and when he spake of being "led by the genial power of nature to another task" than polemic theology, and of" the inward prompting that by labor and intense study, joined with the strong propensity of nature, he might perhaps leave something so written to after-times, as they should not willingly let die," all-not less than his immortal epic -show his deep conviction that the highest aim of the human mind is poetry—that the things of "highest hope and hardest attempting proposed by the mind in the spacious circuits of her musing" are to be wrought out by the imagination. This may conflict with the pride of the understanding and the conceit of pedantry, as it is the error of unimaginative intellects that the faculty in question is among the subordinate powers of the mind. In the spirit of Milton, it brought an intuitive sense of its majesty, which bursts forth in its own sublime vindicationprobably the most eloquent annunciation of the functions of the imagination ever uttered:

"These abilities, (by which the grandest poetry is produced,) wheresoever they be found, are the inspired gift of God, rarely bestowed, but yet to some (though most abuse) in every nation : and are of power, beside the office of a pulpit, to imbreed and 2

NO. VII.-VOL. IV.

cherish in a great people the seeds of virtue and public civility, to allay the perturbations of the mind, and set the affections in right tune; to celebrate in glorious and lofty hymns the throne and equipage of God's almightiness, and what he works, and what he suffers to be wrought with high providence in his church; to sing victorious agonies of martyrs and saints, the deeds and triumphs of pious nations, doing valiantly through faith against the enemies of Christ; to deplore the general relapses of kingdoms and states from justice and God's true worship. Lastly, whatsoever in religion is holy and sublime, in virtue amiable or grave, whatsoever hath passion or admiration in all the changes of that which is called fortune from without, or the wily subtleties and refluxes of man's thoughts from within; all these things with a solid and treatable smoothness to point out and describe." With such thoughts of the poet's of fice, Milton goes on in a prophetic mood to covenant for the production, after some years, of "a work not to be raised from the heat of youth, or the vapours of wine; like that which flows. at waste from the pen of some vulgar amourist, or the trencher fury of a rhyming parasite; not to be obtained by the invocation of dame memory and her syren daughters, but by devout prayer to that eternal spirit, who can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends out his seraphim with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases.”

Besides these authorities for the opinion that the highest poetry is a birth from the greatest intellectual energy, there are writers of our own day who have deemed its defence no unworthy task. The students of Coleridge's writings will recollect it as a favorite theme scattered among the fragments of his philosophy and criticism. Winning their way as the works of that gentle sage are, into many a thoughtful spirit, we shall content ourselves with one expression of the lofty estimate of poetic genius which he so faithfully cherished: "No man was ever yet a great poet without being at the same time a profound philosopher. For poetry is the blossom and the fragrance of all human knowledge, human thoughts, human passions, emotions, language." And how familiar is that other exquisite sentence growing, in which he tells us" poetry has been to me its own 'exceeding great reward;' it has soothed my afflictions; it has multiplied and refined my enjoyments; it has endeared solitude, and it has given me the habit of wishing to discover the good and the beautiful in all that meets and surrounds me."

Another writer, lately among the living, devoted much of his

efforts to the same cause· the discrimination of genuine poetry from that which claims kindred with it, with no better title than a tawdry rhetoric, or a technical and artificial polish. We allude to the late Sir Egerton Brydges, whose natural enthusiasm seems to have received an additional impetuosity from the disgust with which he regarded pretenders in poetry. He was as prodigal of his thoughts as of his fortune, and his opinions are to be gathered not only from his larger works, but from a multitude of prefaces to the volumes of old English literature, to the recovery of which he so largely contributed. We propose to quote from several of these, perhaps somewhat at the cost of coherency, some detached passages on poetic genius, for few writers have more earnestly repudiated that vulgar fallacy, that the work of imagination is to falsify, and that there is no distinction. between the poet's creations and the fictions of a silly novelist :

"True poetry is the illustration of truth, in its most sublime, most beautiful, or most affecting appearances, embodied to the mental eye! It is the gift and the duty of this inspired art not merely to represent the material form, but the internal movements, the sentiments which are associated with an image. This is the poet's creation: the spell that calls to life the materials with which he deals!.... Truth, eternal and grand truth, is the object; but it must be truth exhibited, not by reasoning, but by the lamp of imagination. . . . . The true poet seeks to exemplify moral truths by the rays of an inventive imagination. There is implanted in him a spiritual being, which adds to the material world another creation, invisible to vulgar eyes."

... "We have nature before us, but not nature associated and embodied with intellectual and moral impressions and feelings. We require the aid of the great poet to do this for us. . . . We want only things as they are, but in their fairest, best, and most affecting shapes and tints. We want to have the ideal associations, which come mistily upon us, rendered more distinct and impressive. We want to have the slumbering inscriptions of the soul wakened and made legible. Whatever does this, gives us the charm and the use of poetry. . . . . There are millions of associations of the moral and spiritual with the material world, which are constantly flitting in a more or less clear and luminous state across the human brain. These it is the business of poetical genius to detect, and bring into distinct and visible form to embody them in elegant and vigorous language, and to add the harmony of rhythm."

"A gifted spirit goes forth into the world, not merely to hold a mirror to it, but to throw a light upon it. Every one is not formed to read the inscriptions which are written, however clearly, on all the objects of creation. . . . . Genius walks forth arrayed in light, and throws forth its beams on every side. From whatever it touches, it drives away the shadow of obscurity. But its prime faculty lies in piercing and exposing the secret movements of the human heart: thus it knows best how to awaken sympathy, and to what point to direct its rays. It lives itself under the sunny blaze of truth; and, therefore, has written a guide how to pursue the mazes of wisdom, and to trace those mystical characters of the human soul, which, when its lamp is cast upon them, start out into visible signs. This is the spell which the muse inspires."....

.."The object of the best poetry is to perform a much higher service than merely to please! It is its business to call into action the most sublime and most affecting powers of our intellect, for the purpose of conveying the noblest lessons of moral instruction."

....

"Poetry" [the sentence is aptly put into the mouth of Milton] "teaches by embodyment of abstract ideas."

We have thus arrayed the authority of illustrious minds, Bacon, Shakspeare, Spenser, Sydney, and Milton, with two deeply meditative writers of our own day, all with perfect harmony of opinion and feeling upholding the dignity and moral uses of poetry. Theirs was no timid faith in the reality of an endowment mightier than the understanding, and for which imagination, in its ordinary acceptation, is an inadequate term. This visionary faculty, which by its creative energy is foremost in the attainment of truth, may be unnamed as it is unexplained in the schools, but the common voice of man recognises its power, when with no feeling of profanity it calls it by the sacred name of inspiration.

In the passages which have been quoted, some expressions occur which lead our inquiry yet higher than the books of sages. When Lord Bacon speaks of "the world being inferior to the soul," and of poetry "submitting the shews of things to the desires of the mind," and when Sir E. Brydges tells us of "the mystical characters- the slumbering inscriptions of the human soul," in a word, when writers begin to theorize about the soul, ought we not to remember that there is another authority to be studied? We are too apt to go on speculating on the soul of man, and to forget that from the inspired history of it simpli

city of heart might perhaps gather more of truth than a wiser
head could extract from the sophistications of mere earthly sci-
ence. The high philosophic meditations on poetry, which we
have cited, have led us on until the mind, rising a little higher
from the impulse thus received, finds itself arrested by a myste-
ry in human nature, that needs a stronger and clearer light than
man's philosophy can strike to dispel it. All that we humanly
know is, that the creations of poetry in all ages have found in
the breast of man something congenial, though in the world
around us we may search in vain for the archetypes of those
creations. Wordsworth boldly and plainly tells us of
"the gleam,

The light that never was, on sea or land,
The consecration, and the poet's dream,"

and yet it is undoubted, that all this is by our spiritual being recognised for its truth. To the poet's most enraptured strain, there issues from the recesses of man's heart, an echo-hollow the sound may be- but still an answer. We are aware that we are venturing to approach delicate ground, and that in the suburbs of vexed questions we must step cautiously. Philosophy can tell not one syllable respecting the history of the human soul it is revealed truth alone that explains the mystery of its mingled majesty and servitude- the secret of its aspirations so strangely blended with its frailties. It may appear grotesque to seek for illustrations of the principles of poetry from what is associated with knotty points of theology, but perhaps philosophy would often move with a firmer step if in humility it sought the guidance of revelation. Now it is not uncommon that isolated texts of scripture are looked on with the spirit of a Rabbinical superstition; and thence the state of man since the fall is fearfully exaggerated. The desperate wickedness of the heart is so magnified, that our first parents might be thought to have fallen from their high estate into the desperate condition of demoniacs. Let not our positions be perverted into any extenuation of the evil or the helplessness of our nature, of which there is abundant proof in the word of God, and in the self-condemning spirit in each mortal bosom. But in both there is also plain evidence that the sad punishment of the first of our race did not bring with it the annihilation of their original endowments. In the unqualified denunciations of human iniquity, is it not forgotten that the simple record of the Bible shows what does not accord with such doctrine? When without prejudice we read