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ter genius presided over the birth. This circumstance also (irrespective of other contingencies) gives the few indestructible compositions of those master-spirits of elder times, an importance in a moral and intellectual point of view, which no other literary works of their own, and still less those of rivals (who may have otherwise been their equals or superiors) can claim. In these they have built monuments upon rocks above the high-water mark of time, which the flood of years (amidst perpetual vicissitudes, perpetually advancing,) shall never overwhelm.

Poetic Aspirations and Pursuits.

Rare, however, as attainment to the highest honours in literature may be, there is no reason to believe that the compositions of any poet equal in rank to those unapproachable ancients, and those insurpassable moderns, already named, have been lost in the wreck of time past. Every civilised age produces its poets of the second order, who necessarily attract most of the admiration of their contemporaries, without injustice to those of the same standard, who preceded them, and whose fame, having passed the full, by an irreversible law of nature wanes till it becomes extinct, never to be renewed. Yet, since the peerage of Parnassus is not limited by the constitution of the commonwealth, and the chance of two hundred thousand millions to one, though fearful odds, does not imply absolute impossibility of any new aspirant reaching that dignity; moreover, as there has been one Homer, Pindar, Virgil, Horace,

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&c. in that number of human beings, there may be another, and who knows but I am he? So reasons every young poet, in whose breast has been once fairly kindled that spark which flames up, though the fuel be but stubble, for immortality. No feeling, no passion of our nature is so easily and exquisitely quickened, so deeply and intensely cherished, so late and reluctantly abandoned. It is sometimes awakened on the mother's knee,

"I lisp'd in numbers, for the numbers came.”

POPE.

It is only foregone at the brink of the grave, where, as the lover to his mistress, the poet to his muse, exclaims with his last breath,

"Te teneam moriens, deficiente manu."

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TIBULLUS.

Dying I'll hold thee with a failing hand." Might it not be inferred, however, that the desire of establishing an indestructible name, by the incalculable uncertainty of success, would be so repressed in all, that none, even among those who were gifted with the requisite powers, would ever achieve it from defect of adequate exertion? To this it may be answered, that hope is always bold, energetic, and persevering, in proportion to the conceived magnitude of its object; and the difficulties which dishearten him who calculates, only urge him who presumes to more resolute and indefatigable pursuit. Hence, it is the number only, not the ardour, of selfconfident candidates for posthumous fame, which is lessened by the unimaginable disparity between

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,

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