and puts him as completely in possession of all that is most nearly or remotely associated with the theme in discussion. In the instance before us, the poet does this with the fewest possible phrases; and yet with such brilliance and force of allusion, that the reader has only to follow, in any direction, the retrospective avenues opened on every hand.

66

After shedding the glory of sunshine on the waves and islands" of the river, the green luxuriance of the champaign, and the "gorgeous towers" of the metropolis, in three words, he lets in the daylight of past ages upon the scene. His "rich, historic ground," calls up the actions and actors of the mightiest events ever exhibited on that theatre; -the mountains of the Hun, the field of Aspern, the hills of Turkish story, are crowded with armies, flouted with banners, and shaken with the tramp of chivalry, and the march of phalanxed legions. They all "teem with visions of the past." Those who are acquainted with the circumstances of the siege of Vienna by the Turks, about the middle of the seventeenth century, and its deliverance by Sobiesky, king of Poland, will at once realise the Ottoman battlearray under the beleaguered walls; the despair within the city, where all hope but in heaven was cut off, and the churches were thronged with praying multitudes; the sudden appearance of the Poles, and their attack upon the infidels: the rage of conflict, man to man, horse to horse, swords against cimeters, cimeters against swords, one moment "flashing, glittering in the sun," the next crimsoned and reeking with blood; the shouts, the groans, the agonies, the transports of the strife; till the bar

barians, borne down by the irresistible impetuosity of their Christian assailants, fell heaps upon heaps, on "the field of glory," or fled "to the mountains of the Hun," while Danube, from "the Fountain of the Thorn," rolled purple to the deep, bearing along with his overcharged current the turbaned corpses of the invaders back into the bowels of their own land. That disastrous siege and triumphant rescue were celebrated by a contemporary poet (Filicaja) in three of the sublimest odes which Italy can boast; and which (with the exceptionof the Hohenlinden and the Battle of the Baltic, by our accomplished countryman whose stanzas I have been discussing), stand unrivalled by any war-songs with which I am quainted, whether among the few fragments of antiquity, or in the whole armoury of later ages.

Poetry and Sculpture.

Sculpture is the noblest, but the most limited of the manual fine arts; it produces the fewest, but the greatest effects; it approaches nearest to nature, and yet can present little beside models of her living forms, and those principally in repose. Plausible reasons are assigned for the latter spontaneous restriction of their art, with which practitioners in general are satisfied, from the extreme difficulty, and with most of them the absolute impossibility, of expressing lively action or vehement passion, otherwise than in their beginnings and their results. This is not the place to discuss the question; yet I know not how it can be doubted, that sculpture might

"Blest pair of Syrens, Voice and Verse!

Wed your divine sounds," &c.

So sang Milton. Instrumental accompaniments were afterwards invented to aid the influence of both; and when all three are combined in solemn league and covenant, nothing earthly so effectually presents to our "high-raised phantasy,"

"That undisturbed song of pure consent,

Aye sung around the sapphire-colour'd throne,
To Him that sits thereon:

*

Where the bright seraphim, in burning row,
Their loud, uplifted angel-trumpets blow;
And the cherubic hosts, in thousand quires,
Touch their celestial harps of golden wires."

But there is a limit beyond which poetry and music cannot go together; and it is remarkable, that from the point where they separate, poetry assumes a higher and more commanding, as well as versatile, character; while music becomes more complex, curious, and altogether artificial, incapable (except as an accompaniment to dancing) of being understood or appreciated by any except professors and amateurs. In this department, though very imperfectly intellectual or imaginative, to compose it requires great power of intellect, and great splendour, fertility, and promptitude of imagination. Handel, Haydn, Beethoven, Mozart, as inventors of imperishable strains, both vocal and instrumental, may be not unworthily ranked with the first order of poets. To be an accomplished performer, however, though it requires talent and tact of a peculiar kind, no

more implies the genius to compose music, than to be a consummate actor implies the ability to write tragedies. The mental exercise in each case is essentially as different as invention and imitation are. A skilful violinist may lead the oratorio of the Messiah as Handel himself could not have led it: Kemble could not have written the part of Hamlet, nor could Shakspeare have performed it as Kemble did.

It may be observed here, that the musical and the poetical ear are entirely distinct. Many musicians have disagreeably bad voices in conversation, and chatter in jig-time, or talk in staccato tones, unendurable to one who has a fine sense of the melody of speech. On the other hand, poets and declaimers have frequently had no ear at all for music. Pope had none; Garrick had none; yet in harmonious rhythmical composition, the poet to this hour is unexcelled nor was the actor less perfect in managing the cadences and intonations of a voice "as musical as is Apollo's lute," in the delivery of the most familiar, impassioned, or heroic speeches which the whole range of the British drama imposed, from King Lear to Abel Drugger.

It is a common complaint with ordinary composers, that poets do not write verses suitable for music. Though there is some truth in the statement, as refers to poets of the same class as such composers themselves are, yet it is the express business of those who set poetry at all, to adapt their notes to the pitch of it, whereby their own melodies will be proportionately exalted; not to require that the poet's lay should be brought down to their standard of adapt

ation, and the nobler art be degraded by condescending to the inferior. That the most exquisite strains of English verse may be fitted to strains of music worthy of them, we have examples abundant in the present day, from the songs of Robert Burns to the melodies of Thomas Moore. Yet something must be conceded occasionally on the part of the poets, though no more than may, at the same time, improve their lines as verse, while it renders them more obedient subjects for music. Dryden, in the preface to one of his operas, gives vent to his impatience at being necessitated to make his noble but reluctant numbers submit to be drilled and disciplined to the tactics of a French composer. After enumerating some of his miserable shifts, he says, "It is true, I have not often been put to this drudgery; but where I have, the words will sufficiently show, that I was then a slave to the composition, which I will never be again. It is my part to invent, and the musician's to humour that invention. I may be counselled, and will always follow my friend's advice where I find it reasonable, but I will never part with the power of the militia." -Introduction to Albion and Albanus.

Poetry and Painting.

Poetry is superior to painting; for poetry is progressive, painting stationary, in its capabilities of description. Poetry elevates the soul through every gradation of thought and feeling, producing its greatest effects at the last. Painting begins precisely where poetry breaks off, with the climax of the