and it is no part of our purpose to represent Mr. Wordsworth as an impeccable poet; but a poet who writes for posterity, though he will bestow infinite labour upon perspicuity, will not sacrifice to it the depth and comprehensiveness which, whilst it is indispensable to the truthfulness of his conceptions, may be often irreconcilable with absolute distinctness of expression. Those writers who never go further into a subject than is compatible with making what they say indisputably clear to man, woman, and child, may be the lights of this age, but they will not illuminate another.

MR. DE VERE'S POEMS.*

WE have heard from the eldest of our living poets the remark that there is in the poetry of the young a charm of youthfulness which, however far it may be from compensating for youth's imperfections, is still not to be met with in the poetical products of the maturer mind. It may be added that there is also a knowledge to be derived from the poetry of a rising generation which other poetry cannot yield. We know from the general cast and character of it what spirit is abroad amongst our literary and meditative youth—amongst the many who, though not gifted with any poetical utterance of their own, are nevertheless one in spirit with

* A Critical Notice of "The Waldenses, or the Fall of Rora, a Lyrical Sketch, with other Poems, by Aubrey De Vere." Republished from No. 143, of the 'Quarterly Review,' being that for the month of May, 1843.

those who are. And this is an important class to be acquainted with for those who would look a little before them and anticipate the flower and the fruit which this bud of poetry may seem to promise-the influence over literature and society likely to be exercised by the spirit which dictates this poetry when it shall have passed on to maturity.

Those who have thought it worth while to observe the nascent poetical spirit of the last few years will have perceived that it is very different from that which ruled the poetical youth of twenty years ago. At that period there was not only a want of moral and spiritual truth in our juvenile poetry, but also an absence of moral and spiritual doctrine, whether true or false. There seemed to be no consciousness on the part of the aspirant that either his reader or himself were to have any share in the higher interests or the deeper nature of man. Superficial beauty and sentimental passion filled up the circle of his aims: the Thalassian Venus did not, according to the apologue, bring him to the

Uranian; and invoking the former deity only, she heard him according to her kind she gave him his desire and sent a leanness into his soul withal.' These effeminacies, if not altogether extinct, have at all events ceased to be the prevailing characteristic. The sorry sensibilities of twenty years ago have given place to higher moods and worthier endeavours

For now 'tis stale to sigh, to weep and groan,

So woe hath wearied woe, moan tired moan.'*

Middle age has overtaken the aspirants who had nothing to show us but the complexion of youth; and from the juvenile poets who are succeeding to them, perhaps the last thing that we should look for is the merely erotic effusion, the love-elegy, or

serenate which the starved lover sings

To his proud fair, best quitted with disdain.'† Nevertheless, these rising poets have faults enough of their own; amongst which we should say that the most prevalent are obscurity, subtlety, and forced thinking. The poetry in Mr. De Vere's volume bears

* Shakspeare's Sonnets.

+ Milton.

upon the face of it the evidence of having been produced at different periods of youthful life. Against none of it do we bring the charge of forced thinking, for there is apparent throughout an easy and spontaneous activity of thought: some of it, however, appears to us to be chargeable with obscurity and subtlety, and the abundance of the author's resources has often betrayed him into a crowding and compressing of thoughts, insomuch that those which are worthy to stand conspicuously will often want room and development. We find this fault with not a few of the miscellaneous poems, the product, as we conceive, of a period of youthful genius when all manner of thoughts find a place in the mind, but when the great and small have not yet adjusted themselves according to their due proportions. Others of the miscellaneous poems belong apparently to a later period, when this adjustment has taken place; whilst the 'Lyrical Sketch,' which occupies the first ninety-two pages of the volume, or about one-third of the whole,