son;

larship and a rapt ambition in Milton; of courtliness in Waller, (who writes like an inspired gentleman-usher); of gallantry in Suckling; of wit and satire in Pope; of heartiness in Burns; of the "fat of the land" in Thomof a certain sequestered gentleness in Shenstone; and the poetry of prose itself in Dryden: not that he was a prosaic writer, but that what other people thought in prose, he could think in verse; and so made absolute poems of pamphlets and party-reasoning.

The first quality of a poet is imagination, or that faculty by which the subtlest idea is given us of the nature or condition of any one thing, by illustration from another, or by the inclusion of remote affinities: as when Shakspeare speaks of moonlight sleeping on a bank; or of nice customs curtseying to great kings (though the reader may, if he pleases, put this under the head of wit, or imagination in miniature); or where Milton speaks of towers bosom❜d in trees, or of motes that people the sun-beams; or compares Satan on the wing at a distance, to a fleet of ships hanging in the clouds; or where Mr. Shelley (for I avoid quoting from living writers, lest it should be thought invidious towards such as are not quoted) puts that stately, superior, and comprehensive image,

into the mouth of a speaker who is at once firm of soul, and yet anticipates a dreadful necessity,

"I see, as from a tower, the end of all:"

or lastly, where Mr. Keats tells us of the realmless eyes of old Saturn (as he sits musing after his dethronement); or of the two brothers and their murdered man, riding from Florence; that is to say, the man whom they were about to murder; or where, by one exquisite touch, he describes an important and affecting office of the god Mercury, and the effects of it upon the spectators in the lower world,-calling him "the star of Lethe;" by which we see that he was the only bright object which visited that dreary region. We behold him rising on its borders.

In proportion to the imagination, is the abstract poetical faculty in proportion to extent of sympathy, (for passion, which is everywhere in poetry, may be comparatively narrow and self-revolving,) is the power of universality in proportion to energy of temperament and variety of experience, is the power of embodying the conceptions in a greater or less amount of consistent and stirring action, whether narrative or dramatic. The greatest poets have the greatest amount of all these qualities conjoined: the next greatest are

those who unite the first two: the next, those whose imagination is exquisite as far as it goes, but is confined to certain spheres of contemplation: then come the poets, who have less imagination, but more action,— who are imaginative, as it were, in the mass, and with a certain vague enjoyment allied to the feelings of youth: then the purely artificial poets, or such as poetize in art rather than nature, or upon conventional beauty and propriety, as distinguished from beauty universal: and then follow the minor wits, the song-writers, burlesquers, &c. In every instance, the indispensable requisites are truth of feeling, freedom from superfluity, (that is, absence of forced or unfitting thoughts), and beauty of result; and in proportion as these requisites are comprehensive, profound, and active, the poet is great. But it is always to be borne in mind, that the writers in any of these classes, who take lasting hold of the world's attention, are justly accounted superior to such as afford less evidences of power in a higher class. The pretension is nothing; the performance every thing. A good apple is better than an insipid peach. A song of Burns is (literally) worth half the poets in the collections.

Suckling's Ballad on a Wedding is a small and unambitious, yet unmisgiving and happy production,

of no rank whatsoever considered with reference to the height of poetry; but so excellent of its kind for consistency, freshness, and relish, that it has survived hundreds of epithalamiums, and epics too; and will last as long as beauty has a lip, or gallantry frank

ness.

Shenstone's School-mistress is a poem of a very humble description in subject, style, and everything, except its humane and thoughtful sweetness: yet being founded in truth, and consistent, and desiring nothing but truth and consistency, it has survived in like manner. Compared with greater productions, it resembles the herbs which the author speaks of in its cottage-garden; but balm and mint have their flourishing, as well as the aloe; and like them, and its old heroine, it has secured its "grey renown," clean as her mob-cap, and laid up in lavender. Crashaw is a poet now scarcely known except to book-worms. Pope said of him, that his writing was "a mixture of tender gentle thoughts and suitable expressions, of forced and inextricable conceits, and of needless fillers-up to the rest."

Crashaw had a morbid enthusiasm, which sometimes helped him to an apprehensiveness and depth of expression, perhaps beyond the voluntary power of his great critic; yet Pope, by writing nothing out of what

the painters call "keeping," or unworthy of himself, is justly reckoned worth a hundred Crashaws. Random thoughts and fillings-up are a poet's felo de se.

Far am I, in making these remarks, from pretending to claim any part or parcel in the fellowship of names consecrated by time. I can truly say, that, except when I look upon some others that get into the collections, consecrated by no hands but the book-jobbers, I do not know (after I have written them) whether my verses deserve to live a dozen days longer. The confession may be thought strong or weak, as it happens; but such is the fact. I have witnessed so much selfdelusion in my time, and partaken of so much, and the older I grow, my veneration so increases for poetry not to be questioned, that all I can be sure of, is my admiration of genius in others. I cannot say how far I overvalue it, or even undervalue it, in myself. I am in the condition of a lover who is sure that he loves, and is therefore happy in the presence of the beloved object; but is uncertain how far he is worthy to be beloved. Perhaps the symptom is a bad one, and only better than that of a confident ignorance. Perhaps the many struggles of my life; the strange conflicting thoughts upon a thousand matters, into which I have been forced; the necessity of cultivating some modesty of self-knowledge, as a set-off to peremptoriness of