Or take a specimen of rich voluptuous blank verse:—

"I will be kind when next he brings me flowers
Pluck'd from the shining forehead of the morn,
Ere they have oped their rich cores to the bee;
His wild heart with a ringlet will I chain,
And o'er him I will lean me like a heaven,
And feed him with sweet looks and dew-soft words,
And beauty that might make a monarch pale,
And thrill him to the heart's core with a touch:
Smile him to Paradise at close of eve,

To hang upon my lips in silver dreams."

Or hear this sterner, loftier, more epical strain :

"A grim old king,

Whose blood leap'd madly when the trumpets bray'd,

To joyous battle 'mid a storin of steeds,
Won a rich kingdom on a battle-day;
But in the sunset he was ebbing fast,

Ring'd by his weeping lords. His left hand held
His white steed, to the belly plash'd with blood,
That seem'd to mourn him with its drooping head;
His right his broken brand; and in his ear
His old victorious banners flap the winds.
He call'd his faithful herald to his side---

'Go! tell the dead I come.' With a proud smile,

The warrior with a stab let out his soul,

Which fled, and shrick'd through all the other world-
'Ye dead! my master comes!' And there was pause
Till the great shade should enter."

Does not this description remind you of Homer's style? How rugged yet powerful its melody! We could quote many other passages, all corroborating our statement that Smith is naturally a master of music, and needs only a careful culture to complete the mastery. Since the appearance of the "Life Drama," he published a little chant in a Glasgow newspaper, entitled "Barbara," the copy of which we have mislaid, else we would have quoted it as a final triumphant proof of his musical power, as well as of his lyrical genius. It is one of the most touching little laments in the language. But here a question of greater moment occurs-Has this young poet, in addition to his exquisite imagery, his heart, and his music, a true and deep vein of thought, and does that thought, as all deep veins of reflection should do, run into religion? What

is his theory of things? Is he a Christian, or is he a mere philosophic speculator, or poetic visionary? Now here, we think, is the vital defect of the poem, the one thing which prevents us applying to it the epithet "great." Mr. Smith is, we believe, no infidel; and his poetry breathes, at times, an earnest spirit but his views on such subjects are extremely vague and unformed. He does not seem sufficiently impressed with the conviction that no poem ever has deserved the name of "great" when not impregnated with religion, and when not rising into worship. His creed seems too much that of Keats

Beauty is truth-truth beauty."

We repeat that he should look back to the past, and think what are the poems which have come down to us from it most deeply stamped with the approbation of mankind, and which appear most likely to see and glorify the ages of the future. Are they not those which have been penetrated and inspired by moral purpose, and warmed by religious feeling? We speak not of sectarian song, nor of the common generation of hymns and hymn writers, but we point to Dante's "Divina Comedia," to all Milton's Poems, to Spenser's "Faerie Queen," to Herbert's "Temple," to Young's "Night Thoughts," to Thomson's "Seasons," to some of the better strains of Pope and Johnson, to Cowper, to Wordsworth, Southey, and Coleridge. These, and not Keats, or Shelley, or Tennyson, or Byron, are our real kings of melody; they are our great, clear, healthy standards of song; they are all alike free from morbid weakness, moral pollution, and doubtful speculation; and the poet who would not merely shine the meteor of a moment, the stare of fools, and the temporary pet of the public, but would aspire to send his name down, in thunder and in music, through the echoing aisles of the future, and become a benevolent and beloved potentate over distant ages, and millions yet unborn, must tread in their footsteps, and seek after the hallowed sources of their inspiration.

This leads us, in the last place, to give our young poet a few sincere and friendly counsels. When he appeared first, he was, we know, and complained that he was, "deluged with advice." That deluge has now subsided, and we would desire,

in its subsidence, to try to collect the essence of the moral it has left, and to impress it on his serious attention.

We will not reiterate to him the commonplaces he must have heard, ad nauseam, about bearing his honors meekly, and not being dazzled and spoiled with success, &c. That success has, indeed, been unparalleled for at least thirty years. The last case at all in point was Pollok's "Course of Time," but this, if our readers will remember, did not become popular till after its author's premature death had surrounded, as it were, all its pages with a black border, and made it to be read as men read the record of the funeral of a king. But Smith "arose one morning, and found himself famous.' this sudden glare of fame on a head so young, were it not as strong as it is young, might have produced injurious effects, was a matter of some probability. But that danger, we think, is now past, and there are other dangers more to be dreaded, which may be on their way.

That

Mr. Smith should neither, on the one hand, rest under his laurels, nor, on the other, be too eager to snatch at more. Let him deeply ponder on the subject of his second poem, and let him carefully elaborate its execution. Let him mercilessly shear away all those small mannerisms of style of which he has been accused. Let him burn his Tennyson and his Keats; he has read them now long enough, and further perusal were not profitable. He has lately had the opportunity of extending his sphere of survey; he has seen the finest scenery in Scotland and South Britain; he has mingled with much of its most distinguished literary society, and is now the secretary to an illustrious university, and in the metropolis of his native land. Let him select a topic for his new poem which will permit him to avail himself of these new advantages, and let him pour into it every drop of the new blood and every ray of the new light he has recently acquired. We rejoice to learn that he is no improvisatore in composition; that he loves to write slowly; that he enjoys the labor of the file; that almost every line in his "Life Drama" was written several times-rejoice in this, because it assures us that his next work shall be no hasty effusion, hatched up by the heat of success, but that it shall be a calm and determined trial of his general and artistic strength. His styles and manners are, as

our extracts have proved, manifold, and he might attain mastery in all. But we would earnestly ask him to give us more of that stern Homeric grandeur we find in his picture, quoted above, of the dying king:

"That strain I heard was of a higher mood."

We close this "deluge of advice," if he will call it so, by other three distinct counsels :-First, let him advance to nobler models than those he seems hitherto, almost exclusively, to have studied. We have been told that he has commenced a careful reading of Goethe, which may be of considerable benefit to him in the art of expression, as Goethe's style is generally supposed to be nearly faultless. But let him not rest there, since there are far loftier and far safer ridges on the Parnassian hill. We name, as the models to which he ought to give his days and his nights, Homer, Dante, Milton, Shakspeare's sterner tragedies, and, above all, the poetry of the Bible. That he has read all these, we doubt not. What we wish him to do, is to study them; to roll their raptures, and to catch their fire; to make them his song in the house of his pilgrimage; and at their reverend and time-honored altars not only to kindle the fire of his own genius, but to consume, as chaff, whatever puerilities may have hitherto contributed to lessen the brightness of the flame.

In other words,

Secondly, he must become less sensuous. he must put off the youth, and put on the man. He must think and sing less about "ringlets," and "waists," and "passion-panting breasts," &c., &c. All such things we pardon in him now, but shall be less disposed to forgive after a few years have passed over his head. A boy Anacreon may be borne with, but a middle-aged or old Anacreon is a nuisance, especially when he might have been something far higher. For the sake of poetry, let him proceed to veil the statue of the Venus, and to uncover those of the Apollo, the Mars, and the Jupiter.

Our last counsel is the most momentous. He has himself painted in glowing colors his ideal of the poet as one who shall consecrate poetry to God, and to its own high uses." Let him proceed with stern and firm step to fill up his own ideal, and accomplish his own prophecy. Let him be the

great sublime he draws. Of this he may be certain, that the poet of the coming time must be a believer in the future as well as a worshipper of the past. He may not be a sectarian, but he must be a Christian. We do not want him to write religious poetry in the style of Watts or Montgomery, or any one else; but we want him to devote his fine powers more than he has hitherto done to the promulgation of high spiritual truth; if not, we foresee that one or two of his competitors in the poetic race, whom he has meantime outstripped, may overtake him, and come into the goal amid a deeper gush of applause and of thankfulness, from that large class who now look upon poetry as a serious thing, and are disposed to consult it as a subordinate oracle of the Most High. But we will not anticipate, far less despair. The vaticination of our hearts tells us that, apart altogether from comparative awards and successes, there are noble fields before Alexander Smith, and that his own words shall not fail of fulfilment.

"I will go forth 'mong men, not mail'd in scorn,
But in the armor of a pure intent;

Great duties are before ine, and great songs.
And, whether crown'd or crownless, when I fall,

It matters not, so as God's work is done.
I've learned to prize the quiet light'ning deed,
Not the applauding thunder at its heels,
Which mon call Fame."

NO. III.-J. STANYAN BIGG.*

THERE are, every tyro in criticism knows, three great schools or varieties in Poetry-the objective, the subjective, and the combination of the two. The best specimens of the first class are to be found in Homer's " Iliad" and "Odyssey," in Burns's poems, and in Scott's rhymed romances; of the second, in the poetry of Lucretius, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Keats, Shelley, and some of the Germans; and of the combination of the two, in Shakspeare, Milton, Schiller, and Byron. Of late, almost

"Night and the Soul" a Dramatic Poem.