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No. 729.-15 May 1858.-Enlarged Series, No. 7.

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SHORT ARTICLES.-The King not one of the Three Estates, 515. Quakers at Court, 515. Conduct of the Parliamentarian Army, 536. Queens Govern Better than Kings, 536, Cream; Mr. Reade, 554. Edwards on Toleration, 560. Mr. Ritchie's Electro-Dynamic Induction Machine, 560. Quaker Railing, 560,

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We had ready an article on the alliance between the governments of France and England, showing that "Gold may be bought too dear," It may not be too late for next week.

MR. CURTIS has just completed his history of dollars, and get the four Evangelists, to begin the Constitution of the United States. Seldom with. as we have the pleasure of knowing much more of a book, than reviews of it, we must force time enough to read this; hoping to find it written in the spirit and power of Daniel Webster, that Defender of the Faith, whom President This number contains some excellent stories Jackson delighted to honor; the glorious sub--and the two Review articles are suited to the ject of Healey's painting in Faneuil Hall. season. The criticisms upon the new American

The Rev. Thomas H. Stockton continues his Cyclopædia will be of use to the future volumes. issue of the Books of the New Testament, in sep-| Even the best folk, are better when well looked arate and convenient volumes. Send him two after.

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CONSTITUTION OF THE UNITED STATES.— History of the Origin, Formation, and Adoption of the Constitution of the United States; with notices of its principal Framers. By George Ticknor Curtis. In two volumes. Harper & Brothers, New York.

This important work is now completed, by the publication of the Second Volume. REVIVAL HYMNS.-Revival Hymns, by Henry Ward Beecher. Almost every Hymn in this collection has been taken from "The Plymouth Collection of Hymns and Tunes." Phillips & Sampson, Boston.

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1. Poems. does. 1851. 2. Festus:

From The North British Review.
By the late Thomas Lovell Bed-
London: William Pickering.

a Poem. By Philip James
Bailey. (Fifth Edition). London:
Pickering. 1852.

3. The Mystic. By Philip James Bailey. Pickering. 1855.

4. The Roman: a Dramatic Poem. By Sydney Yendys. London: Bentley.

1850.

5. Balder: Part the First. By the Author of "The Roman." (Second Edition.) London: Smith, Elder, and Co. 1854. 6. England in Time of War. By Sydney Dobell. London: Smith, Elder, and Co. 1856.

1855.

His creation, whether flaming on the walls of space, smiling in flowers from the green earth, or inscribed on the red leaves of the human heart. Hence it has been said, that the poet gives us apparent pictures of unapparent

natures.

There are two worlds in which human existence moves: the world of thought, and the world of feeling. The world of feeling is more or less common to all. The highest and the lowest can meet on this ground, and enter into this bond of human relationship. But it is different in the world of thought. Many cannot pass from the world of feeling into that of thought at will, and but few are fitted to translate their feeling into thought 7. Poems. By Alexander Smith. (Fifth-which is the spiritual apparition of feeling Edition.) London: David Bogue.and thus reproduce any past experience in 8. City Poems. such shape as shall give pleasure to the By Alexander Smith. Cambridge: Macmillan and Co. 1857. beholder in the contemplation thereof. This 9. Night and the Soul: a Dramatic Poem. is the work of the poet. He translates from By T. Stanyan Bigg. London: Groom- the world of feeling into that of thought, and bridge and Sons. 1854. thus enables us to realise in thought what we MOST disquisitions on poetry begin with an may have once experienced in feeling. And attempted definition of what poetry is, or a often, when these reproductions are made by rejection of all definitions that have been the greatest poets in their happiest moments, previously attempted; in either case the they seem quite familiar to us, because we result is generally unsatisfactory. A thou-have possessed them before in feeling, only sand hints have been given, each of which we were unable to translate them into shadow forth a portion of truth; and no one thought. When the poet has given us this definition can ever compass, and, as it were, crystallise an explanation into some sparkling epigram, any more than the meaning and mystery involved in the word Life could be thus briefly unriddled. Approximately, we can arrive at some understanding of the subject by watching the forces of poetry in operation. The poet is, or should be, more of a seer and translator of what God has already created, than a creator in the workshop of his own mind. The Medievals called the poet a "finder," rather than a creator. He is a seeker and a finder of the truth and beauty that lie in realities around him, rather than a producer of beauty out of the deeps of his own personality;-which beauty, as many imagine he confers on outer objects. And this has been the mental attitude of the greatest poets. They have sought for those things which are hidden from the mass of men by some dimness of sight, or film of familiarity; and, finding these, they become the translators to men of all this truth and loveliness, which is written in the hand-writ- For the time being, then, we shall look ing of the Creator everywhere throughout upon the poet as a translator of realities

new rendering of some old experience, it strikes us with the force of a greater reality than did that experience itself, when we were living it.

Hence, we believe, has arisen one of the errors respecting the functions of the Imagination. We do not think that the poet adds to the reality, or transcends it in his translation of it, so much as that we ourselves are unaware of all that is contained in the reality, while we are passing through it in feeling. For this reason, while we are in a state of suffering, or enjoyment, we do not speculate upon it in thought; we live it in feeling. Indeed, the more perfect in feeling, the more unconscious are we in thought. But when, by the poet's aid, we come to relive this feeling in thought, every faculty we turn upon it is now alive with consciousness; and this secondary phase of joy or sorrow often appears more real than the first, because we obtain a conscious interpretation of much that we before experienced unconsciously.

which do already exist, and only a creator so far as he shapes an artistic body through which the life is operative; because, by looking upon him in this light we shall be able to see all the more clearly how poetry is colored by the age in which it is produced, and takes its tints from the various influences that surround it, quickening its life, fostering its strength, or stunting its growth. For not only is the poet a translator of the inner life of man, with its wonder world of thoughts and feelings-its unspeakable love and sorrow, its hopes and aspirations, temptations and lonely wrestlings, darings and doubts, grim passions and gentle affections, its smiles and tears-which, in their changeful lights or gloomy grandeur, play out the great drama of the human heart, but he also translates into his poetry and reflects for us the very spirit of his time. The poetry of every age and epoch comes to us with the likeness of that age or epoch stamped upon it, in features ranging from the heroic type of the noble Elizabethan time, to the sensual cast given by the Merry Monarch and his Circean Restoration. See how Chaucer gives us the inner life that men lived in his age, and clothes it with external history! With what crystal clearness his poetry, in its simple heart-home directness and passionate sincerity, homely strength and contentedness with a few pleasures-its gaiety and gravity, both as of childhood-its overflows of animal spirits its naïve way of getting at the truth, lying, as it does, nearer to nature-possessing perfect innocency of eye, and unperplexed in its frank expression,-with what crystal clearness, we say, his poetry images the freshness and sweetness of the morning time, and the lustihood of young life that was then filling England, and breaking into a new dawn of thought! In Chaucer's poetry we see the young unconscious strength of a people that would yet have a grand awakenment, and become conscious of its power and prowess in action, and that receptive condition of faith which was to embody the fresh spirit of freedom found in the purer truth of the Reformers, together with the conquering courage that would bear witness for it in the furnaceflames, and carry it in triumph over the world. In a time like that of Chaucer, when the life is simpler, and evolves itself in its happy, unconscious way-when there is not

so much knowledge of life as boundlesscapacity for living, and life itself is a going forth in the very spirit that conquers, and in which all greatest things have been done,then, the influences of the age which affect the poet, and color his poetry, will be of good help to him; they will strengthen him with their strength, and make his verse vital with their silent surge of new vigor and affluent life. It is the same in the Elizabethan age. Shakespeare walked every day among heroes and mighty men, and saw around him such magnificence of individual and national life— such constelated wit, lofty thought, and ma jesty, as have seldom been in this world in one country, and at the same time. He saw the very men who wrought the great deeds, bore the burthen of great events, and worked the grand deliverance for his own beloved land, when it was encompassed with perils, and made her tower again triumphantly over her enemies; and, high as she towered in her added strength and stature to look over the surrounding seas, she beheld no rival left upon them! The men that lived, and the life that was lived by a nation, and ran from its heart through arms and hands in tides of triumph,-these were translated by Shakes peare and his play-fellows into those wonderful dramas, which, from that little Globe Theatre, have gone forth and filled the great globe theatre of the world. And here, again, we shall find the influences of the age in which the Elizabethan poets lived and wrote, with its tug of war, and wrestle of stern passions; its quickening spirit of enterprise called forth by the dazzling dawn of that New World which rose upon it, and bade Old England become supreme master over the seas, that lay between them, offering itself as the prize of victory;-all these influences were mighty in helping to carry the poet out of himself and all conscious cankering thoughts about self,-which is the greatest thing to be done. For the poet is a medium; and the most perfect condition for conveying the truest image of things, is that in which self is lost in a larger life, and all the spiritual pores are open portals for this larger life of the aggregate humanity. The greatest poet must feel most as others feel-draw most upon the common human heritage. The Elizabethan time, with its buoyant life and outlet of action, was a happy and fruitful

time for poetry, and reacted on the poet in | Robert Burns strode in among the crowd of fresh forces of life that influenced him in the self-enthroned, who sat trying to conjure many invisible ways.

Milton, again, has most assuredly gathered up the great-hearted efforts and solemn strength, the wasted bravery and the fiery fervor, of the Puritans, and treasured them for their earthly immortality in his Paradise Lost. How like is that work to the endeavors of the purged and purified heart, that has had its earthly tabernacles overthrown, and all its human efforts baffled, trying to build for itself a dwelling-place in the heavens, a house not made with hands, far above the shocks and storms of change, in which the soul can rest serenely, although the head lie down upon a prison pillow, or the tyrant's bloody block!

up the spirit of beauty, by repeating the words of the grand magicians who had passed away, and carried the secret of their enchantment with them, and passed right through them, scattering their fluttering artificialities and sparkling shallownesses on his way back to unsophisticated Nature. With one or two wistful looks at Pope and Shenstone, he turned to the old ballads, with their sinewy strength, smiting tenderness, lilting music, and flashes of feeling. And Cowper, in England, went back all he could to the primal simplicities of Nature, for he had an out-ofdoors heart; and when shut in-doors from the garden, and fettered there so often by sickness, he would still feel his way back to the woods and fields, and the common human heart, which he touched with so natural a knack that it would be thought a rare feat of genius, had he not done it so easily.

The play-wrights of the Restoration, too, translate certain influences of their time into their poetry; with what result we all know. Let us hope, however, for the honor of humanity, that no true poet can be the puppet and plaything of such outward circumstances, and that poetry indignantly scorned her wooers in verse, and took refuge with the great divines, who were also great poets, only they had not the musical faculty dominant, or else they despised the tricks of verse, because of the antic apes they saw around them. Still, there can be no doubt but that, in the absence of virtuous public life for poets to translate into their poetry, there will be found poetasters, who will translate courtly vices, and make a fashion of royal depravity; just as the courtiers of James the First went about, and stood in his presence as knock-man. And a comparatively new influence kneed as they could, because their monarch was also knock-kneed, and thus art followed

nature.

We cannot tell how far the life of courts or of nations influence the poet himself; but it is noticeable that, in the following century -the Augustan age, which is one of the meanest and least natural in English history -the poetry of the time not only sharply defines its mean features, but it would also seem to show that the poet himself strove to reflect its manners and externals, its sharp selfishness, spite, and scandal, its envy and jealousies, barren artificiality, and utter want of generous heart and noble life.

In briefly noticing how the poet translates nistorical influences into poetry, we have now arrived at the great rebellion in poetry when

Then came William Wordsworth, who said, Let us go back to Chaucer, sit down beside him and his darling daisy, and learn of him what wealth of meaning there is in the things that lie about our feet; what strength and savor there is in simple speech; and how the poet may rise, Antæus-like, invincible in strength, so long as he keeps his footing on the common earth. It will do poetry good, said Wordsworth, to take it back, so that it may breathe in new life from the native air of its childhood. Here, then, was a special appeal made to external nature, as a means of getting fresh food for the inner life of

emanates from this appeal, which mingles largely with all subsequent poetry. Wordsworth becomes the great translator of this influence into his poetry; and after the first flush of the red-rising dawn of the French Revolution, which dazzled his young eyes also, has deepened into blood, he seeks to bring himself and his readers more and more under this influence, and to get further and further away from the sound of the strife, and the smoke of the conflict; because, instead of the Goddess Liberty coming with healing to the nations, he sees a wild Virago dancing round a guillotine, to the sound of the Carmagnole, in wet, red shoes; and he shrinks away, and seeks to dwell apart with a nature that is more beneficent and beautiful, in her grandeur of storm, or blessing of calm. And

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