truth; for they come up from the deep depths of the unmistaken soul; they are the result of a thorough study of the human heart. Hence, there is a sound philosophical character in true poetry. We speak not of mere versification, for this may be no more poetry than grammar is rhetoric; but of that verse which exalts our conceptions of truth, and fills our minds with sublime ideas, as it makes the appearances of things proportionate to the mind's desires, instead of compelling us to submit to the deductions of the historian or the philosopher, which leave us still longing for a higher dignity, a better order, and a more lovely variety than nature shows us since the momentous fall of man. Poetry! how it cheers the heart when it is sad; refreshes the mind when it is weary; infuses into it new life when it is dejected; wakes up all man's dormant energies, guides them to noble purposes; while it not only presents the teachings of virtue in the most pleasing manner to mankind, but even compels the soul, though it be reluctant, to feel and acknowledge the power of the sublime principles of virtue, philanthropy and truth.

Byron may infuse into the youthful bosom the elements of the vilest passions; he may cover up the baseness of his heart under his eloquent and glowing language, that it be not at once perceived by the ingenuous mind, and thus blight and destroy the fairest flowers which fall under his withering influence; Moore may wrap the silken drapery of his warm imagination around the weapon which lies concealed but till it is uncovered, to pierce the unsuspecting heart; there may be a thousand poetasters scattering, in the garb of poetry, the seeds of infamy and moral death—yet all this is but a feeble objection for men to urge against the earnest declaration that poetry, lofty and genuine, should be loved and cultivated by every one who has

'The vision and the faculty divine.'

The great poet is the world's great hero. Homer yet inspires men's
souls with lofty daring and generous impulses; he still speaks in all
the majesty of truth, and leads on to heroic action. Milton was
greater when giving to the world his Paradise Lost than even when
advocating the Liberty of the Press; and his charming numbers will
ever delight and animate with noble aspirations the lovers of truth in
fiction and of poetry, drawn with colors dipped in heaven.' In truth,
the poet, as his name imports, (oints,) is another creator; an origi-
nal man.
His is the magician's wand, and as he moves it, he binds
the soul fast, but with silken cords, and it gladly lingers to be delighted.
He perceives in all things; the leaf, the flower, the sunbeam; the
cooling and refreshing draught for the thirsty heart, as it pants for
the life-imparting streams of genuine song. A kindred spirit finds in
him his enjoyment, his life. And well; for when one is filled with
melancholy for some disappointment, that threatens to slowly wear
out his life; or when with a bosom full of joy he goes out to meet his
destiny of bliss, the poet's spirit comes forth, like the sun from dark-
ness to day, and with soft transition turns his harp to joy or wo.

VOL. XXXIV.

16

And thus the poet is a teacher, a prophet, a friend of gods and men.' He shows us the blooming flower of wisdom, and like a bird of song, hovers over the world, nestles on lofty heights, feeds on fair flowers and delicious fruits, and has all the year one spring of animation, happiness and joy.

We love the music of the human voice, but love as much the gentle, yet thrilling music of the poet's lyre. There are those who have no soul to feel the magic power of Poesy: they seem like icebergs under the freezing breath of the polar winter, rather than like the floating mountain as it dissolves away under the melting influence of the equinoctial sun. Such, see no beauty in the strains which entrance a heart of deeper sensibility; they plod on their toilsome way, grasping after gold-dust or the bauble power, which shall eat, as with a canker, at the very core of the heart, till every generous feeling is dislodged from the breast, and it is left to live, a cold, frozen, insensate thing!

It is not such who read with pleasure the antiquated though brilliant lines of Geoffrey Chaucer. He who shall study the poetry of this father of English verse, will not be a dull, dry, dead piece of humanity; but if he read with deep attention, he will feel that he is in the presence of a master spirit, who is striking every chord that vibrates in harmony with truth and nature in his soul.

We often speak of the superiority of our condition over that of our ancestors. And it is not strange, that men should at this day believe they are gifted with broader intellects, and have a deeper insight into the relations they sustain to the world of matter and of mind, than they who lived when the shadows of superstition and ignorance veiled the vision and settled down heavy on the heart. Yet we love to contemplate the progress of social life; the advances of science; and the transitions of our race from barbarism to refinement, from darkness up to day. And it is not in vain that we thus cast our eyes along down the history of man, for by this we learn the customs, manners, monuments, opinions and practices of antiquity; and as we contrast them with those of our own day, our imagination is gratified by the sight of human nature exhibited in such various and wonderful forms, and we go forth among men, conscious of our exalted dignity, though grateful that our lot has been cast in a more enlightened age, We are thus led to feel that our own acquisitions are but slight, and to encourage that culture of the mind and heart which is so necessary to the existence and practice of social virtue, and the advancement of the human race in their slow and toilsome pilgrimage toward truth. England, in Chaucer's day, had not lost all that ferocity of the national manners which ever characterizes a people untamed by the arts of refinement; and the more polished courts of Europe, even then retained in their ceremonies a mixture of the barbarous, which we may always see at periods, when nations are so much civilized as to have lost their original simplicity, and yet have acquired no just conceptions of the requirements of pro

CARLYLE'S GOETHE.

priety. The age of Edward I., and even that of Edward III., was
a martial age.
War was followed as an art; even trade was in a
great degree neglected; and literature pursued mostly by scholastic
divines. If the time of Socrates was the period when the sophists
swayed Greece, the twelfth and thirteenth centuries were surely the
age when sophistry reigned supreme in England. Light had burst
forth even from the cloister to guide men on in life, but its beams
were too few and feeble to dissipate the darkness which for centuries
had hung over the popular mind. Its gleam could not cause even
the absurd speculations of the followers of Peter Lombard and the
famous Abelard, to vanish. The ambition of the scholar, no less in
England than on the Continent, was to be skilled in the theology of
the schools, and in the speculative philosophy which the masters in
metaphysical inquiry taught to be the only pursuit worthy the intellect
of man.

Science not founded on truth will never give to nations that polish and elegance of manners, which must be acquired before they stand forth claiming to be models of excellence. Religion, corrupted by superstition, cannot build up a structure towering in real majesty; for its base is laid with unsound materials, and its turrets shake with every assailing blast of knowledge and religious truth.

The tournaments of princes might form magnificent assemblies, while they enforced the noblest sentiments of heroism and honor, but they could give at most but an imperfect conception of genuine courtesy and decorum. The feudal establishments even then, continued to encourage deeds of martial bravery; and chivalry, in a measure made sacred by religion, presented that curious picture of manners, in which the love of a Gon and of the ladies were reconciled, the saint and the hero were blended, and charity and revenge, zeal and gallantry, devotion and valor, were united.' Yet, even chivalry did much in those rude times to assist the growth of refinement, the progress of civilization, the formation of elegant manners, and the cultivation of a taste for the beauties of poetry. The head was becoming informed; the heart beginning to feel the power of the poet's inspiration. Imagination was awakened, the sensibilities to the lovely in art were heightened by the uncouth though fanciful lines of the early fathers of English and Scottish song. The star of learning was then rising, and served to send into the minds of the multitude some convictions of the great fact, that light, even something of the divine, might dissipate the clouds that had shrouded them so long, as in one unbroken midnight. They see it in the East, and welcome it, as if another 'Star of Bethlehem!' Patriotism, not that villanous desire for the eminence of country, which forgets that all excellence consists in following right and virtue, but that burning desire for the intellectual and moral elevation of the whole people, which is felt only where lofty views of justice and benevolence prevail, was inspiring all with anxious wishes to develop the capacities of the people's intellect and soul. Many a poet, filled with a Burns' heartiness, often wished that he,

FOR poor auld' England's 'sake,
Some useful plan or book could make,
Or sing a song at least.'

Such was the character of the times, which we too often consider so far back in the darkness of the past, that they are unworthy of our thought, though they in reality furnish, if we attend to their teachings, some of the most pleasing themes of meditation; for here we learn simplicity and gallantry, as well as see the long road over which men have travelled in order to reach the position which it is fancied we occupy in advance of the uncultivated nations of the earth. If such were the feelings and the pursuits of the earlier occupants of the soil of Albion, a little reflection must satisfy us that their poetry, if inspired by genius, would yet be simple though wild, devoted to the praises of heroes and lovers, instead of the nobler themes which Milton, and Cowper, and Young, chose to give them immortality. Nature was their model, for few could read Homer, Virgil or Horace; and indeed, this model was the best.

Still the poetry of one century was not the poetry of the succeeding, for this, like the character of the times and the nature of the seasons, exhibited the same changes of feature and form, the same alternate states of sterility and fruitfulness. In the reign of Edward II., the versifiers were distinguished by a division into two classes, the lay-minstrel and the ecclesiastical, who in general made choice of very different subjects. The former, displayed their poetic talents in satire and love-songs; the latter, in lives of the saints, or in versifying chronicles; while chivalric tales and romantic narratives were considered the common property of both. The one class, from their provincial situation, Mr. Ellis thinks, retained more of the Saxon phraseology, and resisted the influx of French innovations, while their competitors, the lay-minstrels, if they did not sing translations from the French, at least took their models from their language. From this it would seem, that England then had her rhapsodists, if she had no Homer to furnish them with verses; minstrels whose names and memory have vanished. But they could not expect immortal remembrance without producing immortal works; and so they sleep forgot ten. Men must labor, if they would live forever in the hearts of a grateful posterity. Toil for a day is not enough; it is life-work, directed to great and ennobling ends, which gives earthly immortality. Call this a bubble if you will; a fancied life in others' breath ;' it still is not unworthy of the greatest saint in Christendom. It is the direction in which man's energies are turned, the purpose of the heart; which gives character to his acts; and he who would take from the heart of man this innate longing for applause, would rob him of what GOD implanted there, in the depths of his spirit, for a wise and honorable object; the full development of all the powers and faculties of his immortal nature. Though what the bard of Chios says, be true, that,

'No mortal man can shun that fate on earth
Which Father Jove assigned him at his birth ;'

it is no less true that man is the arbiter of his own destiny. If this short digression may be pardoned, we will return to our particular subject, and speak of the two principal schools of modern poetry : the romantic and the natural. În these earlier times when some love

of song was felt, but when no distinct ideas of what constitutes true poetry existed, the romantic school flourished. Tales, indeed, are but the offspring of an uncultivated age; hence, they prevailed in these primeval days of English history. Even systems of divinity were filled with parables and apologues, and God was worshipped in rehearsing the legends of the saints. Romantic fiction found materials with which to build up its castles in the air, in the chronicle of Geoffrey of Monmouth, the history of Charlemagne and the twelve peers of France, the history of Troy, and the Gesta Romanorum. And not only did the vast Gothic fabric of romance' have its foundations in these works, but a thousand structures have been erected on them by Gower, Chaucer, Spenser and Shakspeare; some just showing their summits above the smoking ruins of Time, and others towering in unsurpassed majesty, the wonders of the world.

Such was the state of England's literature when CHAUCER came forth, like another rainbow, the covenant sign that a flood of darkness never should again drown the world, and sweep away the very vestiges of science, literature and art. We shall pass to a consideration of a portion of his writings in another and concluding number.

'OLD art thou grown,' the women say,
'Thy strength and beauty fade away:
Look in this glass, ANACREON! see
Thy head from hairs, not wrinkles, free.'
'Well, be it so. I little care

If time has thinned or bleached my hair:
It more imports, that unsubdued,
My spirit is with age renewed;
That still as death draws daily near,
The joys of life grow doubly dear;
My love of pleasure more intense,
As narrowed by each failing sense:
If I've but left one source of bliss,
More reason I should husband this;
If but one hour of life remain,
Why cloud that little hour with pain?'

Yes, Teian bard! if thou canst cast
Approving smile o'er all the past;
And, in thy long career, canst see
A cheerful life, from envy free;
Which love could win, and wine subdue,
Yet leave thee still to virtue true:
Not virtue, such as patriots feel,
Or martyrs of heroic zeal;

But social virtues, such as move
To mild good nature, kindness, love.
If these are thine, and thou hast still
The generous heart, the manly will;

Approaching fate thou need'st not fear,
Nor tremble, though grim death be near.
The gods provide in realms below,
For such, pure nectar, love's warm glow,
And strains of music, such as ring,
ANACREON! from no mortal string.
Though thine on earth no rival know,
Thy songs shall there more sweetly flow,
Mid groves, with grateful shades imbrowned
Thy brows, rose-wreathed with myrtles
crowned.

But ah! in poison of the bowl,

If thou too long hast steeped thy soul;
Till genius quenched, and virtue fled,
Thy nobler nature all is dead:
By base, degrading vice possessed,
If selfish passions ruled thy breast,
And thou hast changed-O! vile! unjust!
Love's generous flame for fires of lust;
Then dark shall be thy lonely age:
Condemned, through life vain war to wage
With cares, regrets, with servile fears,
Lewd lossel! in the vale of years;
Slow winding down the dreary road,
To gloomy FLUTO's dark abode :
There long to dwell, till penal fires
Purge from thy soul earth's low desires;
The dross of vice, each sordid stain,
Till pure the spirit mounts again.