But we would suggest, there is something more than this in the constitution of poetry, which perhaps may be gathered from the etymological meaning of the word poet. Poetry, or rather that which gives rise to poetry, is a universal existence, probably the only existence which pervades all human nature, preserving a uniform character. The poet is one who makes, who builds or constructs, a palpable form of the deep, secret sentiments, which to the majority of others are impalpable, unutterable things. To the poet is given peculiarly the power of seizing, arresting, contemplating, and embodying in a definite form, these secret deep-laid feelings. He brings them out, and with the symbols of thought constructs for them an appropriate image; whence the power by which this is effected is termed imagination. Many of these secret feelings, though not of an opposite character, cannot claim to be classed with either the highest, purest, or loveliest; still they are of such a nature that none or few but a poet can give them utterance. It frequently happens, in perusing poetry, that the reader finds a thought or sentiment clothed in appropriate words, which causes him to exclaim with delight,-ah! I have often felt that, but never could find words to express it!

The whole of this lecture is highly interesting: not only is the subject handled in a masterly manner, but in every page throughout the book, we feel that the author is himself a poet. He briefly, but beautifully shows, that truth is the only test of real poetry, and exemplifies the irresistible force of truth by a very interesting anecdote of two Mongol-Tartar chiefs. The poetical in sight and sound are the subjects of the two next subdivisions, and are treated of in a most elevated style. Then follows "The poetical of place and circumstance," which is exhibited in a comparison of the different sensations excited in differently circumstanced persons by the sight of the same place. The scene fixed upon is a collection of miserable dirty fishing huts, on the sea coast; the feelings contrasted are those of the inhabitants and the crew of a vessel, at the moment when, after a long and tedious voyage, the topman first shouts the joyful cry "Land!" the whole containing a fine exemplification of real life. We recollect hearing from Mr. Hazlitt an anecdote, in which the poetry of place was finely exhibited, and which, therefore, may be appropriately introduced here. That gentleman had been reading some time in a chair, under one of the trees in Hyde Park, when he heard two persons approaching. At first he could not see them, but by their voices and words he judged them to be females. Some expressions which reached his ears induced him to turn round and view their persons. Very shortly, one of them, embracing a tree, exclaimed in an affectionate and melancholy tone, "This is the tree where Jack and I parted." That tree was to her invested with a poetical sacredness; an injury to that would have been a wound to her soul. Had she been a poet, her feelings at that moment would have given rise to a plen

tiful stream of words that burned with the fire of pure and constant love.

The objects which Mr. Montgomery fixes on as instances of the poetical, in the "aspects of visible nature," are the stars.

"Ye stars, which are the poetry of heaven."

"This is one of those rapturous apostrophes of the author of Childe Harold, which occasionally burst, in fine frenzy, from the impassioned poet, like oracles from the lips of the Pythoness." The lecturer then proceeds to show how the stars are the poetry of nature; but in so exquisite and beautiful a manner, that we cannot attempt to condense. The question, how are the stars the poetry of nature, is thus elegantly answered:

Not certainly on account of their visible splendour; for the gas lamps in a single street of this metropolis, outshine the whole hemisphere on the clearest winter evening: nor on account of their beautiful configurations; for the devices chalked on the floor of a fashionable ball-room, to the mere animal eye, would be more captivating. It is from causes having affinity to mind, not matter; to truth, not semblance; that the stars may indeed be called the poetry of heaven. The heavenly bodies alone appear to us the identical luminaries, in size, lustre, movement, and relative position, which they appeared to Adam and Eve in Paradise, when

"At their shady lodge arrived, both stood,
Both turned, and under open sky adored

The God that made both sky, air, earth, and heaven,
Which they beheld; the moon's resplendent globe,
And starry pole."-Paradise Lost, Book IV.

They appear to us the same as they did to Noah and his family, when they descended from the ark into the silence of an unpeopled world; and as they did to the builders of Babel, when the latter projected a tower whose top should reach heaven. [By the bye, we do not know whether La Place would agree to this.] Once more-and oh! how touching is the thought -the stars, the unchanging stars, appear to us with the same placid magnificence as they were seen by the Redeemer of the world, when, having sent the multitude away, he went up into a mountain apart to pray; and when evening was come he was there alone," and "continued all night in prayer to God."-Matt. xiv. 23.-Luke vi. 12.

Cold mountains and the midnight air
Witness'd the fervour of his prayer ;
The desert his temptation knew,

His conflict and his victory too."-Watts.

The stars, then, have been the points where all that ever lived have met; the great, the small, the evil, and the good; the prince, the warrior, statesman, sage; the high, the low, the rich, the poor; the bond, and the free; Jew, Greek, Scythian, and Barbarian. Every man that has looked up from the earth to the firmament, has met every other man among the stars, for all have seen them alike, which can be said of no other images in the visiVOL. II. (1833) No. II.

ble universe! Hence, by a sympathy neither affected nor overstrained, we can at pleasure bring our spirits into nearer contact with any being that has existed, illustrious or obscure, in any age or country, by fixing our eyes-to name no other—on the evening or the morning star, which that individual must have beheld a hundred and a hundred times,

"In that same place of heaven where now it shines,"

and with the very aspect which the beautiful planet wears to us, and with which it will continue to smile over the couch of dying or the cradle of reviving day.

The Poetical in Childhood and in Old Age, is forcibly depicted in an appeal to experience. The ideal of both ages is well described. "When I am a man, is the poetry of childhood." "When I was a child, is the poetry of age." The lecture concludes with a laudatory mention of Rogers and Campbell, as poets whose writings illustrate the poetical of these two periods.

"The Form of Poetry" is the subject of the third lecture. Mr. Montgomery maintains verse to be the characteristic distinction of poetry from prose:

Poetry, to be complete, must be a verse; and all the wit of man cannot supply a more convenient definition. Every thing else which may be insisted on as essential to good poetry, is not peculiar to it, but may, with due discretion and happy effect, be incorporated in prose. Poetry cannot be separated from verse, without becoming prose; nor can prose assume the form of verse, without ceasing to be prose altogether.

He denies that the French language will allow "thoughts that breathe" to vent themselves in "words that burn." Ossian's poems are rather unceremoniously treated; the terms applied to them are Macpherson's rhapsodies-a Babylonish dialect-heterogeneous body -cacophonous rhythm-ill-jointed clauses-dislocated feet-prodigious birth of a distempered brain-halting, dancing, lumbering, grating, nondescript paragraphs; all of which we believe to be very true, and, supposing him to have been a lover of truth, they would doubtless, could he read them, be very agreeable to Mr. Macpherson. The Greek and Latin Prosody" are touched upon, and the difficulties stated under which we lie, with respect to pronunciation, and our consequent inability to fully appreciate the beauties of classical poetry. The moderns are compared, in this respect, to a blind man, and the verbal criticism of the Bentleys and Porsons, to his fine touch. Ignorance of the ancient pronunciation is to us what the loss of sight is to the blind man: we want another sense, and no explanation will supply the deficiency. The combination of almost an infinity of changes, with "accordance, strength, flexibility and sweetness," was a perfection which modern minds have no power of comprehending, and " modern languages, in their best estate, have few capabilities of rivalling." It has appeared to us, that

in particular reference to this point, the modern German may probably bear some resemblance to the Greek and Latin of ancient days, though the principles of quantity influencing the one and the other, are totally different. In Voss's translation of Horace, the measure of the original is preserved throughout, and, from the nature of the German prosody, the reader is compelled to enunciate the metre. Now, though unable to discover the key to the true pronunciation, we cannot admit the supposition, that the quantity or accent varied according as the word was used in poetry or prose. We have no intention to uphold or defend the quantitarian pronunciation; to our ears it is very discordant: nor do we attribute harmony and rhythm to the reading by accent, though we give that the preference. But neither is this the place for examining the question of accent and quantity, nor have we time to enter into the discussion: we merely throw out a hint, to be dwelt on or not, as the reader deem fit. To return.

may

After a few pages on "Modern Metres and Forms of Verse," the author descants upon the "Spenserian Stanza and the Sonnet,” and exhibits their peculiar beauties and difficulties, but in a manner much more brief than we had expected from the lips or pen of so able a master; both his hearers and readers would willingly have been detained by a complete development, or, at least, a more particular enumeration of the charms of Spenser. One expectation, by no means insignificant in power, which prompts attention to the lectures, oral or written, of such men as Mr. Montgomery, is the hope, that their zeal and knowledge, their desire to enrich the public mind, and improve the general taste, will revive the fame of forgotten excellence, and raise contemporary merit from undeserved obscurity, to its legitimate rank in the public esteem. In this respect we are a little disappointed. Allusion is subsequently made to the "Shepherd's Calender," the only selection from which is faulty; no mention, however, is made of Spencer's other minor poems, not even of the exquisitely tender and beautiful "Teares of the Muses," which contains passages unsurpassed by any in his great work, the "Faerie Queene." One imitation of this is noticed, and but one, "The Castle of Indolence:" the notoriety of the "Minstrel" may be a sufficient reason for its omission. Having remarked upon this neglect on the part of Mr. Montgomery, we should, in a higher degree, be guilty of an imperfect discharge of the functions of our office, if we suffer to pass unobserved here a poem of great merit, which did not appear till after the period of Mr. Montgomery's lectures, and which has not yet reached a second edition; a sufficient cause for our supposing that that gentleman may not have seen it. "The Solitary," though not so complete a poem as "The Minstrel," is far more truly Spenserian in

*The Solitary," a poem, in three parts. London Effingham Wilson, Royal Exchange.

:

By Charles Whitehead.

1831.

originality of thought and imagery. Many passages might be indicated which are equally new and beautiful. Mr. Whitehead is no imitator; he possesses, though not so strong of wing, a kindred genius with the writer of the "Faerie Queene." Every one knows that Spenser abounds in personifications, particularly of the times and seasons of the year: we will justify our praise of Mr. Whitehead by the citation of one of his efforts in this way, in addition to which is an exquisitely beautiful pourtrayal of the heart-soothing effect of the return of spring, which all have felt, and many have attempted to describe :

For when old Winter sinks into his shroud,

And Spring, led thither by the merry hours,
Pillows his head upon a rosy cloud,

And fills his icy-fringed hand with flow'rs,
And bears him to his grave with gentlest show'rs,
Heart-gnawing care doth stay his eager tooth,
Nor longer his unblest repast devours,
And Peace comes forth again, like gentle Ruth,
Gleaning whate'er he left from the full sheaves of youth.

And with unclouded azure like her own,
The anxious soul is for awhile belied,
When Summer puts her gorgeous raiment on,
Sun-wrought, and walks the earth in loveliest pride;
A mimic summer to the breast doth glide,
To renovate the heart, though dead and cold,
Cold as the death-sweat of a parricide,
O'er whom is flung th' unconsecrated mould,
For whom no pray'r is read—no passing bell is toll'd!
Canto i. Stanzas 16, 17.

There are other, and perhaps even more beautiful personifications of the several seasons, in different parts of the poem, such as the forty-sixth and two following stanzas of the first canto, to which we with confidence refer the reader.

The fourth lecture discusses the several subjects comprehended under the general title of "The Diction of Poetry:" the first of which is Alliterative English Verse. Some specimens are given, but none of a perfect kind. To supply this deficiency, we may be permitted to introduce a line, which we believe to be the most complete instance of alliteration the language affords. It occurs in a short poem, written by a lady, on her return from a visit to a friend, whose name was Lee:

Let lovely lilacs line Lee's lonely lane.

Here every syllable begins with the same letter; and the liquid flow of its sounds renders it particularly harmonious. No importance can be attached to the omission; but we certainly expected