observations and proverbs relative to human life, the effect of the rhyme or metre being merely to make them more pert and more easily remembered. Hudibras, for example, is a poem which supplies plenty of quotations of that kind for which there is a social demand, abounding, as it does, in satirical observations. Thus

'What makes all doctrines plain and clear?
About two hundred pounds a year.
And that which was proved true before,
Prove false again? Two hundred more.'

Those passages, again, which the majority of those who read poetry for themselves delight in, and which are frequently of too high a species of merit to become current, often owe the preference which they receive, not to their poeticalness but to their verbal force. Vehemence is a quality which almost all minds can appreciate; and hence the most impassioned and sonorous passages are those which readers most commonly mark in the margin. As, for instance, Othello's bursts of jealousy, or Milton's description of Demosthenes

"Whose resistless eloquence

Wielded at will the fierce democracy,

Shook the arsenal, and fulmined over Greece,
From Macedon to Artaxerxes' throne.'

Lastly, there is a very select class of readers who are more liable to be impressed by an original and profound remark than by anything else, and who value a poem as they would a treatise on political economy, for the amount of new thought which it contains. To this class of readers Shakespeare is almost the only tolerable poet. They gloat over such passages as the following, with the same rapture as over Bacon's Essays:

So, oft it chances in particular men,

That for some vicious mole of nature in them,
As, in their birth, (wherein they are not guilty,
Since nature cannot choose his origin,)
By their o'er-growth of some complexion
Oft breaking down the pales and forts of reason,
Or by some habit that too much o'erleavens
The form of plausive manners; that these men
Carrying, I say, the stamp of one defect,
Being nature's livery or fortune's star,
Their virtues else, (be they as pure as grace
As infinite as man may undergo,)

Shall in the general censure take corruption
From that particular fault."

It is only the few, then, and those possessed of the true poetical sensibility, who invariably single out for their own private enjoyment, passages which are purely and simply poetical. It is only poets themselves who relish perfectly the poetry of Spenser and Keats. There are cases, however, of men engaged in active pursuits finding great enjoyment in such luscious poetry. Thus Spenser was the favourite poet of Somers and Chatham; on the principle, perhaps, that one's relaxation should differ as much as possible from one's employment. And we must remark also that a certain degree of security against any passage becoming a general favourite, without its having, at least, a tincture of true poetry in it, is to be found in the wide diffusion of musical feeling, and in the extensive operation of the passion of love. It is owing to these two causes that no glaringly unpoetical passage can force itself into currency, and also that so many of the most exquisite poetical passages have become general favourites. Among the passages here referred to, as being indebted for their popularity to the two causes mentioned, we do not include songs. Songs have always thrilled the heart of the people. And we wish to prevent our readers from urging the popular liking for songs as a proof that we have been wrong in asserting that the majority of persons have a greater relish for other qualities than for poeticalness. The truth is, we are inclined to make a distinction between poetry and song; the function of the lyrist or songwriter seeming to us to be more nearly akin to that of the orator than to that of the poet. If the present were the proper place, we think we could establish this distinction, both by an analysis of the two kinds of composition, and by references to the history of literature, showing that the connexion has always been closer between the genius of song and the genius of oratory, than between the genius of song and poetical genius. Suffice it now to remark that the passages which we allude to, as having seized the popular approbation through the medium of the popular feeling for music, or of the sensibility of mankind to the mages of love, are not lyrical, but strictly poetical in their character. Thus the stanza of Coleridge's Ancient Mariner':—

It ceased; yet still the sails made on

A pleasant noise till noon

A noise like of a hidden brook

In the leafy month of June,
That to the sleeping woods all night
Singeth a quiet tune.'

Or that glorious passage in Shakespeare—

'How sweet the moonlight sleeps upon this bank!
Here will we sit, and let the sounds of music

Creep in our ears; soft stillness and the night
Become the touches of sweet harmony.
Sit, Jessica; look how the floor of heaven
Is thick inlaid with patines of bright gold!
There's not the smallest orb which thou behold'st
But in her motion like an angel sings,
Still quiring to the young-eyed cherubim;
Such harmony is in immortal souls;
But whilst this muddy vesture of decay

Doth grossly close us in, we cannot hear it.'

This is poetry in its element, like an essence distilled;' as different from poetry in its compound state;' and it is of such passages, or at least of passages belonging to the same species, that Mr. Hunt's collection consists. In the preliminary Essay Mr. Hunt attempts to define what pure poetry is; and the quotations which make up the rest of the volume are to be regarded as instances of examples of such pure poetry. It is time, now, to present our readers with Mr. Hunt's analysis of this subtle and ethereal fluid, called poetry.

We must premise, however, that the value of the collection of extracts as a collection of genuine poetical passages, is quite independent of the value of the preliminary Essay. The instances cited may be true, while the definition extracted from them may be false. The passages which Mr. Hunt quotes as examples of what genuine poetry is, are pretty sure to be good and sound instances; but there is not so great a certainty that his formal definition of poetry will be unexceptionable. For the soundness of the instances we rely upon Mr. Hunt's delicacy of poetical feeling; but for a true definition we can rely only on the power of scientific analysis. In thus declaring the collection of extracts to have a value independent of that of the Essay, we of course take it for granted that Mr. Hunt derived his definition from his instances, and did not choose his instances to suit his definition; in which case, if the definition were incorrect, the instances also would be vicious. But no one can doubt that the instances were familiar to Mr. Hunt before the definition was formed. Perhaps the most likely method for arriving at a good definition of what genuine poetry is, would be to hand over Mr. Hunt's collection of passages to a professed analyst. However, here is the result of Mr. Hunt's own analysis:

Poetry, strictly and artistically so called, that is to say, considered not merely as a poetical feeling, which is more or less shared by all the world, but as the operation of that feeling, such as we see it in the poet's book, is the utterance of a passion for truth, beauty, and power, embodying and illustrating its conceptions by imagination and fancy,

and modulating its language on the principle of variety in uniformity. Its means are whatever the universe contains; and its ends, pleasure and exaltation. Poetry stands between nature and convention, keeping alive among us the enjoyment of the external and spiritual world; it has constituted the most enduring fame of nations; and, next to love and beauty, which are its parents, is the greatest proof to man of the pleasure to be found in all things, and of the probable riches of infinitude.

'Poetry is a passion, because it seeks the deepest impressions; and because it must undergo, in order to convey them.

It is a passion for truth, because without truth the impression would be false or defective.

It is a passion for beauty, because its object is to exalt and refine by means of pleasure, and because beauty is nothing but the loveliest form of pleasure.

It is a passion for power, because power is impression triumphant, whether over the poet as desired by himself, or over the reader as affected by the poet.

It embodies and illustrates its impressions by imagination, or images of the objects of which it treats and other images brought in to throw light on those objects, in order that it may enjoy and impart the feeling of their truth in its utmost conviction and affluence.

'It illustrates them by fancy, which is a lighter play of the imagination, or the feeling of analogy coming short of seriousness; in order that it may laugh with what it loves, and show how it can decorate it with fairy ornament.

'It modulates what it utters, because, on running the whole round of beauty, it must needs include beauty of sound; and because, in the height of its enjoyment, it must show the perfection of its triumph, and make difficulty itself become part of its facility and joy.

And lastly, poetry shapes this modulation into uniformity for its outline and variety for its parts, because it thus realizes the last idea of beauty itself, which includes the charm of diversity within the flowing round of habit and ease.'

This piece of writing may be taken as an instance of a poet out of his element. For a poet is not necessarily better qualified to define his own art than he is to define chemistry. The formal arrangement of the paragraphs, however, shows that Mr. Hunt was studying scientific precision. Nevertheless, the definition appears to us to partake somewhat too much of the nature of the thing defined. With the advantage of having transcribed the extract, we cannot say that we find its meaning distinct to our apprehension. All the terms employed seem to have a sort of penumbra round them; let us refer, for instance, to the end of the first and the whole of the last paragraph. Mr. Hunt's manner, too, of using the conjunction because, exhibits what we have heard called a peculiar largeness of reasoning.' It must be con

fessed, however, that Mr. Hunt has not succeeded so ill as persons usually do when they work at their neighbour's trade. As if a tailor, entering a carpenter's workshop, were to amuse himself by trying to plane the edge of a piece of wood, and were actually to handle the tool in such a workmanlike manner as to draw a word of encouragement from the carpenter himself, and show that though a tailor irrevocably now, yet with practice he might have been a tolerable carpenter; so Mr. Hunt has succeeded in producing a definition of poetry, which, if not so good as a professed analyst would have given, is yet far from being bad. The objection to it is not that it is inaccurate, but that it is indistinct; and even this indistinctness is cleared away by the detailed illustration of which the rest of the Essay consists.

Although we protest against the senseless rule which expects a critic to do what he finds fault with his author for not doing, we may state, that to us the most satisfactory definition of the poet's art is that which lays most stress upon the requisite of imagination. As scientific genius (in a writer) is the power of explaining; and as oratorical or lyrical genius is the power of agitating or exciting; so we would define poetical genius to be the power of realizing. This phrase, power of realizing,' includes all that it is possible to desire included, the appearances of material objects, the pictures and events of history, the thoughts and emotions of men, the wildest phantasies of human dreams. The simplest case of the exercise of poetical genius in this sense would be the description of scenery, costume, &c., by a traveller. A much higher and more complex case of poetical genius is that of the writer of history or of fiction, who has to realize, not pictures merely, but thoughts and feelings. The power of realizing the past, which is one of the requisites in an historian, is exactly poetical genius, and that of a very exalted kind. And so also in metrical composition, from the simplest descriptive ballad up to the drama, or the poem which dares to fetch its subjects from a world beyond our own. While recognising poetical genius as the characteristic requisite of these various kinds of writers, it is but proper, however, to apply the name of poet, in a special manner, to him who assists his genius by the power of music. We thus use the word poet both as the name of one of the three great classes into which writers may be divided, and also as the name of a particular variety of that class, namely, the poets who write in verse.

There is one part of Mr. Hunt's definition which we like extremely. It is his calling poetry the utterance of a passion.' 'It is a passion,' he says, 'because it seeks the deepest impressions, and because it must undergo in order to convey them;'