it is always the mother of mighty works as well as of great thoughts. In men of genius the same tireless activity, the same forceful habit, are often found; nothing daunts them; nothing subdues them; they make all things tributary to self-expression. There is an element of inspiration in all great work which is never wholly at command; with the greatest as with humbler men, it ebbs and flows. "I am always at work," said a great artist, "and when an inspiration comes I am ready to make the most of it." Inspiration rarely leaves such a man long unvisited.

We know that all minor writers are not good writers, and doubtless many of them will outlive every line they have written; but it is a fact that many of the songs and ballads which have enshrined themselves in the hearts of the people, and that are likely to live with the language in which they are written, have emanated from our minor singers.

Even in these days there is some risk that minor writers may be under-rated. Because their excellence is not that of the more imposing contemporaries, their merits are in danger of being overlooked. Lamb did for literature an important service when he discovered the beauties hidden away in the neglected pages of Shakespeare's contemporaries, and, says a writer on the subject of minor poetry, we are indebted to various hard-working societies, and to scholarly and laborious editors for a substantial increase of intellectual store. The great works of genius are the prominent peaks of the range, along which there are varieties of the type that individually provoke and amply repay special and close examination."

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The impression made on one after a perusal of the simple productions of our poets is, in effect, as was once said of Coleridge, that the words seem common words enough, but in the order of them, in the choice,

variety, and position of the vowel sounds they become magical. "The most decrepit vocable in the language throws away its crutches to dance and sing at their piping." Of course we have found rhyming sparrows who mistook their weak chirpings for song. Many men and women in our time do write verses that are admirable alike for feeling and expression, for sentiment, if not for creative power. And if we call these writers "minor poets," we are perhaps doing no injustice to them, nor to the art they practise. And this lessens the difficulty of the critic, who is often in sore straits to decide whether there is genuine poetry before him, or whether it is the production of a mere versifier. Take courage, therefore, ye humble ones, for hear what was lately said for your encouragement "It is the curse of greatness in poetry to be forgotten, or, at all events, not to be much remembered, while the songs of the veriest pedlar, weaver, cobbler, or barber are sung in the streets, in rooms-and-kitchens, in workshops, in palaces, and in the remotest isles and huts of the Empire. They will, in fact, persist in being immortal, in spite of the critical gravediggers. This is the heavenly consolation and reward of poetic humility. Out of the mouths of tramps, beggars, spinners, weavers, and ploughmen is poetic wisdom perfected. It is Nature's doing."

Indeed, the majority of our writers have supplied us with productions which show that they feel that the great tendency of poetry is to form an alliance with our best affections, and that its purpose is to carry the mind above and beyond the beaten, dusty, weary walks of ordinary life; to lift it into a purer element, and to breathe into it more profound and generous emotion. As Dr Channing puts itPoetry reveals to us the loveliness of nature, brings back the freshness of early feeling, revives the relish

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of simple pleasures, keeps unquenched the enthusiasm which warmed the spring-time of our being, refines youthful love, strengthens our interest in human nature by vivid delineations of its tenderest and loftiest feelings, spreads our sympathies over all classes of society, knits us by new ties with universal being, and through the brightness of its prophetic visions helps faith to lay hold on the future life.”

Like James Hogg, the Ettrick Shepherd, who ascribes a separate vitality to his compositions, the productions of some appear to carry them on. He was wont to wonder, even more than others did, at his own work. "Aye, ye're a learned man," he sometimes said to Christopher, "there's nae doot aboot that, wi' yer Virgils, and Homers, and Dantes, and Petrarchs. But aiblins ye mind yon fragment upon the sclate that ye despised the ither mornin'; eh, man, sinsyne, it's ettling to turn oot the very best thing I ever composed, an' that's no saying little, ye ken."

It has been truly said that our sweetest song birds never soar high. The mavis, the blackbird, the lintie, and other songsters who trill out their sweet notes in our woods and groves all keep near the ground, and their song is short and unsustained. The skylark is not a sweet singer-he is a brilliant artist that dazzles you with his power and abandon rather than feeds your heart with the soft, dreamy music which soothes and fills it with joy.

We often hear the poet described by the metaphysician as a man of genius, as possessing a lofty, a powerful, or lively imagination, and by numerous other fanciful epithets; yet, after all, the class of persons who acquire the truest insight into the capabilities and the spiritual workings of the poet are his ordinary readers, who, themselves endowed with healthy intellectual and moral constitutions, are in

reality deeply touched by his glowing thought. Their views are not enchained in the meshes of any subtle impracticable theories. They see in him one whose intellectual glance stretches farther and penetrates deeper than their own. Indeed, it is a singular fact in the history of literature that it is the popular mind of a country which forms the truest and most lasting. criticism on its poetical productions. Long before the critics of the last and the beginning of the present century had stamped their approval on the works of Burns, his songs were sung with enthusiasm in every cottage and lordly home in Scotland. They had fanned the flame of love and friendship in thousands of hearts, and cheered the drooping spirits of many a wayfaring Scotsman in distant lands long before the conventional critic had described their true merits.

The poet does not arise among his countrymen to represent any new form of sentiment, but, on the contrary, to impress them more deeply with the true nature of that which has existed and exists around him.

It is often asserted that the tastes of the Scottish people are not at all artistic, and that their commercial interests have received a more careful training than the finer parts of their nature. In the opinion of some this may be the case, and the root of the matter seemed to have been touched recently by Lord Balfour of Burleigh when he pointed out that the long centuries of almost continual anarchy, the striving of the greater and lesser barons among themselves and against the throne, and the terrible poverty and semi-slavery of the great mass of the people were enough to account for the neglect of art. "There was," he adds, "a more potent cause-one which it would have been hazardous to put forward not so many years ago, but one which, in these more enlightened days, can be at least whispered. That the pre

Reformation Church of Scotland was artistic in the mediæval sense is testified by numerous ecclesiastical edifices-most of them, unfortunately, in ruinsthroughout our country. Even in the rudest times these were held in respect, and without a doubt their fine proportions and beautiful details would have a civilizing effect in the minds of a rude peasantry and of the turbulent barons. But the Reformation came. It swept away abuses, and in the course of time a better state of things was instituted; but in its immediate train disaster followed. Pull down the nests, and the rooks will fly away' was the watchword. In too many cases the 'nests,' the only artistic monuments of which Scotland could boast, were ruthlessly pulled down, and the rooks' were banished. Surely the obnoxious birds could have been banished without so much destruction. The revulsion of feeling against the previous state of things was so great that to be an artist—a painter of pictures-was to be a vagabond; to be an actor, an emissary of the Evil One; to be a poet, an idler from whom a terrible account would be required at the latter day. The finer work of which mankind is capable was tabooed; bran and muscle were in every instance placed above brain."No doubt the indignant and virulent invectives of the muse had a powerful influence in bringing the abettors of tyranny and the mummeries of superstition into contempt, and paved the way for the happy change which followed the ever-memorable Reformation. Before then the lyre sounded "the noise of the warrior, and garments rolled in blood." Silence and solitude reposed sweetly together, undisturbed save by the howl of the faithful dog, who had escaped the carnage, or the expiring groans of the trusty menial, who had received his death wound in the defence of his master, and was just expiring in his blood. The Reformers, however,