with

exactness the nature of song-writing, and the various distinctions of which. it is susceptible, together with the specific excellence of each, I find it therefore necessary to go far back into the origin of poetry in general, and to recur to those first principles existing in the human mind, which alone can give a firm foundation to our deductions.

The original poetry of all nations must have been very much confined to the description of external objects, and the narration of events. This is a necessary Consequence of the barrenness of infant language with regard to abstract ideas, and is confirmed by the remains of antiquity which have reached us. Among a fierce and warlike people constantly engaged in enterprises of arms, poetry was solely employed in rehearsing the valo

rous

deeds of their heroes; and the

horrid pictures of war and desolation were enlivened by the kindred imagery of whatever nature afforded of the awful, terrific and stupendous. In happier

regions, where the mild inhabitants were suited to the softness and luxury of the climate, the business of poetry was to paint the surrounding profusion of beautiful objects, the pleasing incidents of a pastoral life, the tender cares and ravishing delights of love. This passion found as apt a comparison with the beautiful scenes of nature, as war and destruction could do with its glooms and horrors.

Ossian and Theocritus will afford complete instances of the first poetry in its two different branches. Mingling storms, roaring torrents, swelling oceans, lightning and thunder, paint the dreadful battle pieces of the Caledonian ; while the murmuring brook, the green meadow, the bleating flock, the simple shepherd and his artless fair, deck out the rural landscape of the Grecian. Thus heroic and pastoral poetry are at first formed, consisting chiefly of description and imagery. The passion of military glory in the one, and of love in the other, would indeed add sentiment to the picture, but

even these sentiments must be expressed by a reference to external objects. The lover who had sought for natural comparisons to paint the charms of his mistress, must seek for others to express the emotions of his mind. He must burn with desire, and freeze with disdain; rage with the ocean, and sigh with the zephyr; hope must enlighten him with its rays, and despair darken him with its gloom. The effects which the passions produce upon the body, would also prove a happy source of the description of emotions. Thus, the fluttering pulse, the changing colour, the feverish glow, the failing heart, and the confused senses, being natural and invariable symptoms of the passion of love, would soon be observed by the poet, and successfully used to heighten his description. Hitherto all is simple and natural, and poetry, so far from being the art of fiction, is the faithful copyist of external objects and real emotions. But the mind of man cannot long be confined within prescribed limits; there is an internal eye

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constantly stretching its view beyond the bounds of natural vision, and something new, something greater, more beautiful, more excellent, is required to gratify its noble longing. This eye of the mind is the imagination-it peoples the world with new beings, it embodies abstract ideas, it suggests unexpected resemblances, it creates first, and then presides over its creation with absolute sway. Not less accurately and philosophically, than poetically, has our great Shakspeare described this faculty in the following lines.

The Poet's eye in a fine phrenzy rolling

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven,
And as imagination bodies forth

The form of things unknown, the Poet's pen
Turns them to shape, and gives to aery nothing
A local habitation and a name.

The most essential differences in poetical composition may be referred to the circumstance of its turning upon nature or fiction, and on this will depend its fitness or unfitness to produce peculiar effects.

In general, whatever is designed to move the passions, cannot be too natural and simple. It is also evident, that when the professed design of the poet is to paint the beauties of nature and the rural land-scape of pastoral life, he must give as great an air of reality as possible to his piece, since a bad imitation necessarily produces disgust. On the other hand, when the aim is to elevate and surprise, to gratify a love of novelty, and the pleasing luxury of indulging the fancy, all the powers of fiction must be set at work, and the imagination employed without control to create new images, and discover uncommon resemblances and connections. To pursue our instance taken from the passion of love; the poet who wishes rather to please and surprise than to move, will ransack heaven and earth for objects of brilliant and unusual comparison with every circumstance relating to the passion itself or its object. He will not value sentiment as the real offspring of an emotion, but as susceptible of ingenious turns,

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