poetical temple were burst open; the floor was desecrated by unholy feet; the gods of the popular idolatry were thrown down, and the carved work of the sanctuary was demolished with axe and hammer, and cast forth among the rubbish of by-gone ages. Such at least did the deed appear in the eyes of the worshippers, who looked on and trembled. Even Pope was not spared, even Addison was not safe; and as for the Pomfrets, the Akensides, and the Shenstones, of the former century, they were proclaimed to be little less than false prophets, who had taught delusion, and led the multitudes astray. And where was now the divinity of Phoebus and Jove; or who would have dared to invoke his Muse, or talk of the doves of Venus, and the darts of Cupid? The poetical crooks were broken; the sheep, that had bleated so tenderly in tuneful numbers, were sent to the shambles; the shepherdesses were confined to their milking-pails; and all the prettinesses of poetry, that had bedecked the woods, lawns, and meadows, vanished like a flimsy frost-work, in the hot blast that had passed over them. It was indeed a "Reign of Terror" that thus prepared the way for the coming of the new order of things; and, as in political revolutions, the recoil that was made was, at first, into the opposite extreme. Thus, instead of the tame, declamatory, moral drama, in which people made love, fought quarrels, and died according to the most perfect. rules of etiquette, the overstrained horrors of the unreformed German stage were introduced in all their native grisliness. Roses and lilies, that had been the established flowers of the preceding poets, were abandoned for such humble things as pebbles and weeds-even a daisy was thought to savour too much of the exploded school, and a fragment of sea-weed was a poetical treasure. And now also, as it had been hitherto the fashion to introduce only the illustrious into poetry, while the commons were consigned to prose, the innovators, who had abased the proud, exalted the lowly in their room; and the philosophising of pedlars, or the woes of children, were thought worthy of long poems and sounding hexameters. A new language of poetry also, in which the principles of rhythm and accentuation seemed to have become as novel and extravagant as the ideas they embodied, was carefully cultivated, and new modes of illustration were created with a profusion that kept

the public gaze in a perpetual whirl of astonishment. Nothing less than such a thorough up-turning was necessary, to clear the whole surface of its accumulated rubbish; and, truly, there was no lack either of zeal or violence. The tree that had grown so long under a perverted and unnatural bias, was now as strongly bent, and held down in the opposite direction, that it might recover its original straightness. Of this, indeed, the agents themselves were not fully aware; but careful on-lookers, who kept aloof from the excitement, could anticipate the result. A better season was to follow, in which confusion would cease, and the spirit of innovation would be compelled to pause for lack of something to overturn; and when a nobler creative spirit would emerge from this scene of havoc, to replenish the waste with the forms and beings of a higher and more attractive existence.

No name can be more fitly mentioned as first in the front rank of the poets of the new school, than that of Wordsworth; for to him the high reputation is due, of having been the first of the poets of this century to emancipate himself from the bondage of the classical school. And never was act of resistance to an established despotism characterised by greater decision and self-devotedness. Perceptions of the pure, the beautiful, and the sublime, were stirring within his heart, with which the poetry of the day had no sympathy: the changing melodies of a thousand emotions were murmuring upon his ear, to which the scanty compass of the patent harp could give no utterance. He had seen and felt, that external nature was something more than mere form and colour-something more than the mere platform upon which actors were to be introduced, to recite a speech or enact a tale. The warm and living soul that stirred within it, and with which Spenser, Shakspeare, and Milton, had held such high and endearing communion-this he well knew was the real spirit of the poetry of external objects, but which had been suffered to slumber so long within its cold recesses, undisturbed and uninvoked. He was also aware that the poetry of inner nature, or the heart, had equally fallen into abeyance, because poets had merely looked abroad, instead of turning their view inwards; and thus their descriptions had delineated external action merely, without reference to the feelings and principles in which

it originates. When Wordsworth, therefore, listened to the voice of nature, which utters a whispered oracle from each of its works, and studied the heart that was lodged within his own bosom, he had mastered that knowledge both of the physical and moral world, without which there can be no poet. His principle was thus adopted, his lesson was studied, and nothing was wanting but the rehearsal. And what was the reward of his devotedness, and his labours? He had merely gone back to the genuine Hippocrene of the great masters of antiquity, and their successors of modern ages in England; and his whole offence consisted in following the universally recognised rules of nature, instead of the conventional authorities that had so lately usurped their place. But his poetry was as startling as if he had announced some new and monstrous heresy, and the astonishment which it produced was mingled with no small portion of indignation. The deed was an act of rebellion against the whole tuneful tribe, as well as a general defiance to the kingdom of criticism-and therefore the poet lampooned, while the critic condemned him. It is worthy of remark, too, that the radical defects of his poetry, and those from which he was subjected to deserved censure and ridicule, arose from that very quality which best fitted him to be a reformer. As it was the first principle of his creed, that all nature was pervaded with the spirit of poesy, from the moth to the mammoth, and from the mustard-seed to the cedar of Lebanon, no object therefore was too insignificant for a stanza, and, in the true spirit of a sturdy, uncompromising innovator, he selected for his first themes those that were the most humble and unpromising. The thread-like streamlet that scarcely glimmered to the sun as it wound, almost unnoticed, through the tall flags which it nourished-an exiled shell still echoing the sound of its native ocean-a pebble rounded and polished by the brook-a leaf dancing in the sunshine-a waggon, lumbering and creaking along the dusty highway-even a meek ass grazing upon the common, and shaking its passive ears at the oaths and blows of the tormentors-these, and such as these, were the subjects to which he gave the preference, and by which he attempted. to illustrate his simple theory. Nor were even his heroes of a more ambitious character. Betty Foy and Peter Bell, the prattling of infants, and the stammering of idiots, usurped the

place of sages haranguing out of Cato and Seneca, and heroes raging in Ercles' vein. A roar of laughter was the poet's meed-but still he persevered. Whether he had carefully calculated the effect or not, it was necessary in the first instance to astound the world, that it might be provoked to inquire, and tempted to listen: this was certainly accomplished, and it was now his part to arm himself with a martyr's endurance, and continue his thankless labours, that the world might understand, and be convinced. This he did; and the opposition, at first so loud and high, gradually began to diminish. While all were obliged to confess that his poetical talents, independently of his impracticable themes, were of the highest quality, some began to suspect that in his theory of poetry he might after all. be in the right. His first notes had been pitched upon the lowest key, and the ears of his hearers had been grated—but as he proceeded, the music rose, and embraced every tone in the ascending scale of poetical harmony. In this manner he exhibited, according to the variety of his subjects, at one time the strength, the terseness, and didactic clearness, which reminded us of Dryden; at another, an echo of the grandeur of Milton; and again, at another, something of the metaphysical analysis, and delineation of character, which formed the glory of our matchless Shakspeare. And could cavil continue against such a poet, or applause be withheld? Censure was gradually extinguished in admiration, or silenced by shame. And as the world seldom repents, and revokes its condemnation, by halves, not only the excellencies of Wordsworth were fully acknowledged, but even his blemishes were exalted into beauties; and the nursery rhymes and waggon lyrics, in which he had experimented perhaps too liberally, were thought to contain a depth of meaning which he had purposely hid beneath the surface, that none but profound thinkers and pains-taking inquirers might have the pleasure of the discovery.

While Wordsworth was adopting the lowliest themes as the subjects of poetical description, another poet was labouring in the same field, but in a very different spirit. This was Crabbe, the Morland of modern poetry, whose chief ambition was to paint things as they really existed, and describe them as they appeared to the eye, and who seems, like Dryden, to have selected heroic verse for his purpose, because it was "fittest

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for his theme, and nearest prose." Crabbe even out-did Wordsworth in his predilection for humble life and trivial objects; but it was not from a similar desire to extract from them any subtle, metaphysical essence, or to aggrandize them with life and beauty. From the commencement of his career, he had resolved to become the laureate of the poor, and the recorder of their sorrows and sufferings; and therefore he shows no sympathy with beauty and grandeur, or any other quality that was foreign to his purpose. Let the fairest landscape open to his eye, and he only thinks of the poor reaper who is toiling there at the rate of a shilling a day, or the old ditcher broken down with rheumatism, and fainting upon his spade. The beautiful column of smoke ascends in the bright sunshine, and undulates in the light breeze, like a gently stirred plume; but the eye of Crabbe traces it to the miserable, mud-built cottage, while his heart revels by anticipation in the squalor with which it is tenanted. To him the valley of Tempe itself is nothing, compared with the charms of a dirty, narrow, crooked street, composed of ricketty hovels; and all the nymphs and fauns that ever poetry created are worthless in his eyes, compared with a brood of ragged children discharged from the village school, the workhouse, or the factory. And what a dismal, heart-rending sketch would he have given us, if his theme had been "The Deserted Village!" The muse of Goldsmith could enter an humble alehouse; but it was only to select agreeable objects, and enhance them with the associations they alled up-the nicely sanded floor, the well-polished furniture, the carefully preserved prints upon the wall, and the innocent festivities of the rustics to which all these had been subservient. But Crabbe, in a similar situation, sees nothing except the tables defiled with beer and tobacco, the chairs overturned and broken, and the floor littered with prostrate drunkards. The house of Goldsmith's country clergyman is a home of happiness and hospitality; but in the hands of Crabbe, a rural divine, with only forty pounds a year, would have been any thing but "passing rich." The poet would rather have dwelt upon his thread-bare coat, his scanty dinners, his miserable make-shifts, and his feverish struggles to obtain a better living. And where would have been the "ruined spendthrift," the "long-remembered beggar," and the "broken soldier?" Crabbe