the hazard of acquiring, and the probability of missing it. Few, therefore, even among those who are called poets, fix their hopes or aims quite so high as has been stated; and of those few, just so many appear for a while to have reached the meridian, as to induce more, in every age, to risk the glorious venture, in which, even to miscarry is to fall from the chariot of the sun.

Among those, who are in truth so magnificently endowed, that they seem to have been sent into the world to enlarge and enlighten the compass of human intellect, to adorn and exalt the sphere of human enjoyment; — among those who, like the youthful Samson, in the camp of Dan, feel the early movings of a mighty spirit within them indicating the superiority, and prompting them to the trial of their prowess, it is deeply to be lamented, that so many, like the same Samson, should spend their strength in dalliance, or waste it in unprofitable achievements, instead of employing it for the benefit,-may we not say, for the salvation, of their fellow-creatures? Genius is an awful trust, and when powers, like those of the Hebrew champion's, are abused, they frequently recoil, like his, in self-destruction upon their possessors' heads. Nothing can endure, even in this "naughty world," but virtue. To profit mankind a poet must please them; but unless he profits them, he will not please them long. Every age has its fashion of licentiousness, and will have its peculiar panders to vice, reckless of the profligacy of the ancients, and deaf to the songs of seducers, whose ribaldry has become as obsolete as the laced waistcoats, point-cravats,

and full-bottomed periwigs of Charles the Second's day. It would not, perhaps, be too hardy to affirm, that whatever may have been the case formerly, or whatever flagrant exceptions may be quoted, of modern date, there is now scarcely any alternative left between "an honest fame" and "none." No living writer can hope for immortality in its only enviable earthly sense, who does not occupy his talents on subjects worthy of them, and, at least, not disresputable to their Author, -the Father of lights! The follies, the sins, and the misfortunes of poets, have, indeed, been proverbial since the proudest days of Greece. I shall neither expatiate upon these, nor palliate them; but a word or two may be expedient.

In youth, when we first become enamoured of the works of the great poets, we naturally imagine those must themselves be the happiest of men, who can communicate such unknown and unimagined emotions of pleasure, as seem at once to create and to gratify a new sense within us; while, by the magic of undefineable art, they render the loveliest scenes of nature more lovely, make the most indifferent topics interesting, and from sorrow itself awaken a sympathy of joy unutterably sublime and soothing. He, who, in early years has never been so smitten with the love of sacred song, as to have wished, nay, to have dreamed, that he was a poet,—as Hesiod is said to have done, though few like him, awaking, have found their dream fulfilled, is a stranger to one of the purest, noblest, and most enduring sources of mortal blessedness. When, however, glowing with enthusiastic admiration, we turn from the writings to the lives of these

exalted beings, we find that they were not only liable to the same infirmities with ourselves, but that, with regard to many of them, those vehement passions, which they could kindle and quell at pleasure in the bosoms of others, ruled and raged with ungovernable fury in their own, hurrying them, amidst alternate penury and profusion, honour and abasement, through the vicissitudes of a miserable life, to a premature, deplorable, and sometimes a desperate death. On the other hand, among the more amiable of this ill-starred race, those finer sensibilities which warm the hearts of their readers with ineffable delight, were to the possessors slow and fatal fires, feeding upon their vitals, while they languished in solitude, and sank to the grave in obscurity, after bequeathing to posterity an inheritance, in the unrewarded products of their genius, to endure through many generations, and cast at once a glory and a shade on the era in which they flourished, as the phrase is,—in which they perished, as it ought to be.

On the whole, then, though it is a frigid and disheartening conclusion, it is well when a youth of ardent hope and splendid promise, who has been allured into the "primrose path of dalliance" with the muses, by the songs of their most favoured lovers, heard like the nightingale's, unseen; —it is well, when such an one, in due time, (and before being irrecoverably bewildered,) is alarmed and compelled to retreat by the affecting and humbling sight of those lovers, in the characters of men, frequently of low estate, neglected or contemned by the multitude, trampled down by the pride of wealth and power,

desponding martyrs of sloth, or suicidal slaves of intemperance. If ever there was an example of paramount genius, like the first created lion, bursting from the earth,

"Pawing to get free

His hinder parts ;"

MILTON.

then rampant, and bounding abroad, and "shakinghis brinded mane," in all the joy of new-found life;

if ever there was such an example, calculated to quicken souls as sordid as the clod, and make them start up from behind the plough into poets, the story of Robert Burns affords it. And if ever there was a warning of the degradation and destruction of talents of the highest order, calculated to scare the boldest and vainest adventurer from the fields of poesy, the story of Burns presents that terrific warning; — that flaming sword turning every way, to forbid entrance into that paradise of fancied bliss, but real woe, in which he rioted and fell. But as I propose to allude further to his career in the close of this paper, at present I hasten to notice (very imperfectly, indeed) the themes of poetry, and its influences.

The Themes of Poetry.

It is an affecting consideration, that more than half the interest of human life arises out of the sufferings of our fellow-creatures. The mind is not satisfied alone with the calm of intellectual enjoyments, nor the heart with tender and passionate emotions, nor the senses themselves with voluptuous indulgence.

The mind must be occasionally roused by powerful and mysterious events, in which the ways of Providence are so hidden, that the wisdom and goodness of God are liable to be questioned by ignorance or presumption, while faith and patience must be silent and adore:- the heart must sometimes be probed by sympathies so rending, that they only fall short of the actual agony to which they are allied; the senses cannot always resist the undefineable temptation to yield themselves to voluntary torture.

Among the crowds that follow a criminal to execution, is there one who goes, purely, for the pleasure of witnessing the violent death of a being like himself, sensible even under the gallows to the inconvenience of a shower of rain, and cowering under the clergyman's umbrella, to listen for the last word of the last prayer that shall ever be offered for him?-No;— some may be indifferent, and a few may be hardened, but not one can rejoice; while the multitude, who are melted with genuine compassion, nevertheless gaze from the earliest glimpse of his figure on the scaffold, to the latest convulsions of his frame, with feelings, in which the strange gratification of curiosity, too intense to be otherwise appeased, so tempers the horror of the spectacle, that it can not only be endured on the spot, but every circumstance of it recalled in cool memory, and invested with a character of romantic adventure.

Can any sorrow of affection exceed, in poignancy, the anguish and anxiety of a mother, watching the progress of consumption in the person of an only son, in whom her husband's image lives, though he is