am-a villain-yet, ere we meet again in death, learn to think forgivingly of thy son-Creontes."

Look to the king-he raves-I pray a chair.

MEDON. How big this lump is now-it swells my heart Almost to bursting; no, it is not so!

It is my madness, hath persuaded me

Of things unreal-'tis unnatural

Oh ye that hold your senses, speak to me!

Speak to me! tell me that I lie!

MEDON.

Patience! then it is too real.

Creontes, we are equal in our crimes;
Thy death to me is set, and Calipa's
Upon thy soul lies heavy (wandering) —

God pardon thee, my boy--look not so pale;
I do forgive thee; come, my boy! my boy!
No, no, not that way. Hush, what sound is that?—

Hush! hush!

DOCTOR.

[Dies.

Alas! he's gone. The cord is broke,

That linked him and his misery to earth;

Take up his corse, and lay him with his son,
Both in one grave, and that near Calipa.
So ends the race of Medon.

THOUGHTS FROM THE GERMAN.

THE past and the future both conceal themselves from us; but that wears the widow's veil, and this the maiden's.-JEAN PAUL. A character is a perfectly formed will.-NOVALIS.

The spirit of Poesy is the morning light that gives a voice to the statue of Memnon.-Novalis.

He who clothes an imperfect thought in dark language, is like the host who puts not his muddy beer into a transparent vessel.JEAN PAUL.

POETS AND POETRY.

O sacred Poesy, thou spirit of arts,
The soul of science and the queen of souls;
What profane violence, almost sacrilege,

Hath here been offered thy divinities!

BEN JONSON.

Angels and we, assisted by this art,

May sing together, though we dwell apart.
WALLER.

THE title of this paper, be it premised, is not inconsistent with a sincere respect and reverence for the lunatic asylums of our country; since, proper as it otherwise might seem, that one who dared to avow sympathy with Poets and Poetry should be restrained from intercourse with men of sense and understanding, still the incarceration in Bethlehem of the three letters that appropriate the following remarks, would cause but little personal inconvenience to their author, and still less concern. Nevertheless he is very willing to allow that, were he not sufficiently shielded by 'chaotic anonymosity,' he would be very careful before he threw away his character by a confession of friendship for anything poetical. The world, commonplace as it generally is, now and then indulges in a simile: thus, in the present case, its loosened fancy hath voted Poesy to be a wicked mermaid, and all who listen to her siren strains it resolves doomed to the dark whirlpool of neglect and poverty. The gluttonous world abhors mermaids, for it cannot boil their tails.

Goethe gives it as his opinion that 'modern poets water their ink.' The slighted world exclaimeth justly against this, Why do you water your ink? it rightly cries, Have we not provided you with gall, and gall, and ever gall, at every turning of your lives? Did we ever look on you or speak to you without bringing you some tribute of our gall?—and for the steel, though we have not exactly put it into your hands, when did we omit an opportunity of urging you to its employment? With a carving-knife or razor, what does it matter which, the black deed might have been quickly done. Truly, 'tis a marvel that suicide should be so rare among the poets;

this spirited pastime seems unknown amongst them. Probably it is because death, especially a death at all poetical, must come expensive. Pistols are extravagantly dear; even pills, say Morison's, are many pence a box; and fluid fatal potions cruelly are taxed. Jocasta, truly, is a precedent in favour of garters and a bed-post, but poets' beds seldom have any posts; Jocasta was a queen, and garters even are an article of superfluous luxury. No, no; starvation is the only death a needy poet can afford, and one that seldom fails to suggest itself. Shame on the heartless world that makes a jest of this! See the luxurious idler! If, in the birth of men, souls equally formed descend at random to dwell in bodies as they rise, his might as well have alighted in the hovel of the poor labourer hard by, and warmed some little lump of delf,' as have entered in the nobler house, and breathed into the little mug of 'porcelain.' However the manner of it was, accident of birth placed him above toil; his soul has lived for the body that it wears, and his body has existed only for its clothes and sensual pleasure. Never, perhaps, has he been conscious of the godlike nature of the soul within his clothes or his body, (there is little difference between the two; let him brush and polish as he will, both are dusty, both must soon wear out, though the one, perhaps,—and that only perhaps, sooner ;) never may this man have felt he had a soul, save when he has felt it awakened by the poet's spells; never has he been guilty of an idea, save perhaps one stray little lost one of another man's, that he has fathered as his own, and vigorously fondles. Yet he dares, in his vile, pampered ignorance, to profess scorn for the man before whose higher spirit he may have bowed daily in unconscious reverence; dares to think it merit that he can make jest of that superior being whose most idle thought is worth the trifler's life-time,-time! ay, and his eternity to boot!—his jest, because, forsooth! he cares not for the morrow, and had rather draw his spirit nearer to the glorious loveliness of Heaven, than labour that he may be proficient in the processes of gustation and deglutition, or have wherewith to decorate his clay; the lump of clay his soul, like those of other men, must carry to and fro on earth to mark where it may chance to stand. See, too, the thoughtless beauty! She hath yielded to the poet's sway the better half of all that stock of sighs and tears given her for the comfort of herself and of her fellowbeings; she believes his image to be more beautiful even than that one she thinks her mirror holds so fair; and, yet despite this precious sacrifice to his shrine, notwithstanding this more than flattering

opinion of her powers, mark with what pretty horror she will shrink from the source of her delight, because the pure stream runneth in a rough and stony channel! Ay, though in stately hall, or silly ball-room, she had styled him day by day her favourite, her love, she will but join the rest when they laugh at the poor poet. Nay, let her laugh, let them all laugh, let them laugh on; despite his tattered foolscap, the poor poet is the winner still.

Here let us pause. Having started from Bedlam, it is not to be wondered at that the course we have been running hitherto hath savoured a little of the insane. No matter; for we cherish hope that common sense may follow. A man who wanders forth from Bedlam into existence may meet with wisdom in his travels; whoso sets out as a fellow-traveller with the world, and the world's muchbruised donkey-common sense, is very liable to end his days in Bedlam. So, then, we cherish hope; and lest we be led astray into another sinuous path of cogitation, rush into the very centre of the broad road, in medias res: (a common-sense, world-admitted bit of Latin, promising well, and shadowing forth to the kind reader, whom we have so long kept in the dark, a little ray before the dawn of reason.)

Seriously, then, the ideas cherished concerning poetry by the present generation are so mutable and eccentric, so like the manycoloured garments of the fool, that we think it a benefit to our fellow-creatures, to provide some sober, uniform garb to the wearer of these thoughts of motley, or at least to recommend to his use the wearing of one colour, and to say all we can in favour of the hue which seems to us most pleasant.

"Do you like poetry?" and "I do not like poetry," are questions and affirmations that we meet with hourly in the present day; savage and barbaric as such sentences might seem, referred to Poesy in its true form, it is too late to marvel at them now. A period of true poetry hath lately over-past; Byron, Southey, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Scott, have rendered up their harvest fifty-fold, and the rich crop hath weakened our poor soil. So much riches in one mass have produced the usual reaction, and for the prodigal wealth of their predecessors, poets of the present day must suffer. With poetry, the taste has fallen. Rhymes, rhymes, and rhymes, are forced now upon readers; loves and doves, truth and ruth, roses and posies, hold the mantle now, and are cried up as living poesy ; what wonder, then, that men can ask, "Do you like poetry?" or say, "I do not like it."

Of the recent age of splendour, Byron was the star most likely to be worshipped; the rest (excepting Scott) were suns but to the few. The imitation of this poet has given rise to the whole modern style, miscalled the sentimental or the milk and water. To the term sentimental we object, as erroneously applied, for we shall presently show that the sentimental is the highest and most noble form of poetry. To the term milk and water we will subscribe, on the saving clause being allowed that its supporters borrow their milk, and only find the water.

What is poetry? That it is not rhyme, theoretically all allow; but practically, scarce one seems willing to admit. To define it would be useless, for no one cares to remember definitions. We may perhaps entitle it a form of thought; not, be it borne in mind, a form of phraseology. There may be, and there often is, more poetry in the rude and dissonant phrases of the red Indian, than in the polished lines of the most cultivated pseudo-poet. In prose or verse, poetry is still the same. It is essentially ideal, but its ideal is of beauty only; and as all that we have of real beauty breathes essentially of the mystery of heaven, we may call poetry a form of thought based on the heavenly ideal; this will distinguish it from wit, to which it is, in many minds, inseparably allied—a form of thought based on the earthly ideal. The mind, at work on both, ennobles a circumstance in one by comparison with thoughts from heaven, enlivens it in the other by comparison with analogous ideas of earth. Thus love, which, as a passion common to all men, is generally preferred as a foundation of that which shall appeal to all, may give origin to poetry or wit. Viewed as a mysterious feeling, beyond doubt the nearest to a heavenly one that man can feel, it becomes poetry; viewed as an earthly appetite, it becomes immediately the food for wit.

Schiller justly divides poetry-poetry, that is, in itself-poetry as a form of thought-into the naive and the sentimental. These may be well illustrated by the preceding definition. The naive is the poetry of an untutored innocence, the sentimental is the poetry of thought. The naive expresses immediately, and as if in ignorance of every earthly debasement, the direct impressions excited by the view of nature or of heavenly objects. The sentimental poet may range either over things of heaven or of earth, raising, however, the latter by viewing them in heavenly light. The sentimental poet, as the very derivation of the name implies, thinks over the subject of his muse, ennobles every subject by the hidden