"A gifted spirit goes forth into the world, not merely to hold a mirror to it, but to throw a light upon it. Every one is not formed to read the inscriptions which are written, however clearly, on all the objects of creation. . . . . Genius walks forth arrayed in light, and throws forth its beams on every side. From whatever it touches, it drives away the shadow of obscurity. But its prime faculty lies in piercing and exposing the secret movements of the human heart: thus it knows best how to awaken sympathy, and to what point to direct its rays. It lives itself under the sunny blaze of truth; and, therefore, has written a guide how to pursue the mazes of wisdom, and to trace those mystical characters of the human soul, which, when its lamp is cast upon them, start out into visible signs. This is the spell which the muse inspires."...

"The object of the best poetry is to perform a much higher service than merely to please! It is its business to call into action the most sublime and most affecting powers of our intellect, for the purpose of conveying the noblest lessons of moral instruction."

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Poetry" [the sentence is aptly put into the mouth of Milton] "teaches by embodyment of abstract ideas."

We have thus arrayed the authority of illustrious minds, Bacon, Shakspeare, Spenser, Sydney, and Milton, with two deeply meditative writers of our own day, all with perfect harmony of opinion and feeling upholding the dignity and moral uses of poetry. Theirs was no timid faith in the reality of an endowment mightier than the understanding, and for which imagination, in its ordinary acceptation, is an inadequate term. This visionary faculty, which by its creative energy is foremost in the attainment of truth, may be unnamed as it is unexplained in the schools, but the common voice of man recognises its power, when with no feeling of profanity it calls it by the sacred name of inspiration.

In the passages which have been quoted, some expressions occur which lead our inquiry yet higher than the books of sages. When Lord Bacon speaks of "the world being inferior to the soul," and of poetry "submitting the shews of things to the desires of the mind," and when Sir E. Brydges tells us of "the mystical characters- the slumbering inscriptions of the human soul," in a word, when writers begin to theorize about the soul, ought we not to remember that there is another authority to be studied? We are too apt to go on speculating on the soul of man, and to forget that from the inspired history of it simpli

ence.

city of heart might perhaps gather more of truth than a wiser head could extract from the sophistications of mere earthly sciThe high philosophic meditations on poetry, which we have cited, have led us on until the mind, rising a little higher from the impulse thus received, finds itself arrested by a mystery in human nature, that needs a stronger and clearer light than man's philosophy can strike to dispel it. All that we humanly know is, that the creations of poetry in all ages have found in the breast of man something congenial, though in the world around us we may search in vain for the archetypes of those creations. Wordsworth boldly and plainly tells us of

"the gleam,

The light that never was, on sea or land,
The consecration, and the poet's dream,"

and yet it is undoubted, that all this is by our spiritual being recognised for its truth. To the poet's most enraptured strain, there issues from the recesses of man's heart, an echo-hollow the sound may be- but still an answer. We are aware that we are venturing to approach delicate ground, and that in the suburbs of vexed questions we must step cautiously. Philosophy can tell not one syllable respecting the history of the human soul it is revealed truth alone that explains the mystery of its mingled majesty and servitude—the secret of its aspirations so strangely blended with its frailties. It may appear grotesque to seek for illustrations of the principles of poetry from what is associated with knotty points of theology, but perhaps philosophy would often move with a firmer step if in humility it sought the guidance of revelation. Now it is not uncommon that isolated texts of scripture are looked on with the spirit of a Rabbinical superstition; and thence the state of man since the fall is fearfully exaggerated. The desperate wickedness of the heart is so magnified, that our first parents might be thought to have fallen from their high estate into the desperate condition of demoniacs. Let not our positions be perverted into any extenuation of the evil or the helplessness of our nature, of which there is abundant proof in the word of God, and in the self-condemning spirit in each mortal bosom. But in both there is also plain evidence that the sad punishment of the first of our race did not bring with it the annihilation of their original endowments. In the unqualified denunciations of human iniquity, is it not forgotten that the simple record of the Bible shows what does not accord with such doctrine? When without prejudice we read

that mournful narrative, what does it tell us was the first act what the first feeling of the man and the woman immediately after their disobedience? It manifested a nature, doubtless not of the original purity, and yet not of absolute wickedness. The first emotion was the sense of shame. Now shame is not the attribute of unqualified depravity:- it is the characteristic of a mingled nature. They met their Maker neither with the unblushing brow of evil, nor with the fearlessness of innocence. Not alone the consciousness of guilt would have driven them into the shady covert, but they were saddened and abashed by the remanent sense of their faded glory. We see no other conclusion than that the fall did not extinguish the power of the human soul to recognise in its imaginings something better than this mortal state. Is it not indeed every day experience that shame is a mixed sentiment, neutral to the regions of innocence and vice, and may we not infer that, when

Th' angelic guards ascended, mute and sad,

man's primeval character had indeed undergone a wretched change that the gifts of his nature were enfeebled, corrupted, and disorganized, but not wholly forfeited? The soul had become a revolted colony of God. The tree from which the fruit was plucked was not the tree of the knowledge of evil alone. The glory of the heart was darkened, but not utterly quenched. Why, then, may we not believe that in every era of humanity, poetry has been addressing its aspirations to that portion of the human heart which God's word tells us survived? Nay, more, when the hapless pair stood trembling before the offended Deity, his voice poured into their hearts the breath of hope. In our wordy controversies, no heed is taken of the mercy that the promise was announced before the sentence, and the spirit was not too desolate for hope to enter. Thus we find, beside the remaining faculties of the soul, another element which poetry has never ceased to appeal to. Now when philosophers, like Bacon, speak of "the desires of the mind dissatisfied with the shews of things," because "the world is inferior to the soul," the history of those from whom all humanity has been transmitted, explains the mystery. Our fallen nature, utterly forlorn in working its own redemption, lost not the capacity of some fitful aspirations for its native brightness; fearful as was the penalty, it did not destroy the sense of former glory, and even in the darkness of the first wrath, the light of hope was kindled by the divine promise, as if to animate the scattered faculties of humanity. In

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the obscurity of paganism, what was the high poetry of the ancients but the struggling of those surviving powers for something more adequate than a sensual faith to fill the caverns of the heart? When the knowledge of the Godhead, too vast for the fallen mind, was dispersed into the fantasies of polytheism — when a thousand deities were enshrined in gorgeous temples and in the household — when men were bowing down before images, or worshipping the sun, or fire, or whatever they might chance to turn to in all these perverted creeds there was cherished the instinct of the insufficiency of this mere mortal life. Let it be meditated on, that the most sublime aspirations, approaching nearest to the sphere of Truth, were the efforts of poetic genius. It was neither reason nor the lore of philosophic schools, but the creative faculty of imagination that wrestled, most strenuously with paganism. The moral wisdom of ancient heathendom was in its great poems. On the pages of the chief Greek poets may be traced the consciousness of our mingled nature, as felt by them, showing that they partly realized the condition of the soul-its weakness and its strength - its celestial attributes soiled with some, to them unknown, earthly taint. It was the poets by whom some light was shed on those "faded and mystical characters on the human soul." How first inscribed, and how obscured, was a mystery to be broken only by the narrative on the first pages of the bible. The soarings of Pindar, in many instances, illustrate this view of heathen poetry. The famous simile of "the dream of a shadow" is not closed without adding that a ray given from the gods can send reality and splendor. The fine opening of the sixth Nemean ode, has, to our feelings, something deeply touching in its mingled humility and ambition-the flutterings of hope and the despondency of mere humanity-its "voices of two different natures." It awakens a christian commiseration, and we long to share with the poet the light of our faith. We remember no pagan language more clearly manifesting the sense of a human nature created in the image of God and in his likeness, but corrupted and deranged:

Ἐν ἀνδρῶν, ἕν θεῶν γένος· ἐκ
Μιᾶς δὲ πνέομεν

Ματρὸς ἀμφότεροι
Διείργει δὲ πᾶσα κεκριμένα,

Δύναμις ὣς τό μὲν ουδέν,

Ὁ δὲ χάλκεος ἀσφαλὲς αἰεὶ ἔδος

One is the race of Gods and men;

And from one mother are we both descended:
But for the power; there the main difference lies:
These a mere nothing, born at once and ended;
For them, an indestructive mansion

We have entered into a somewhat elaborate disquisition on the subject of poetic art, because in venturing to class a living bard in the rank of Spenser, and Shakspeare, and Milton, we deemed it appropriate to show the scope of all poetry of a high order. We have sought to establish that poetic genius is not that fickle and lawless power it is often supposed to be-that imagination is sovereign among the faculties of the mind-and further, that the high aims of poetry, and its welcome to the heart, are in accordance with what the only authentic history teaches us of the history and constitution of the human soul, without which information the aspirations of poetry make a mystery in our nature that no philosophy can unriddle. From the same volume it might be shown to those who would place the imagination in vassalage to the understanding, that inspired patriotism, and prayer and praise and thanksgiving, took the voice of song,—and that prophecy and even the Redeemer's lessons are glowing with the fervor of the visionary faculty. This is indeed the proudest attribute of imagination, that when the wisdom of God comes down to earth to speak to man through inspired lips, it is addressed chiefly to that faculty, and when human imagination is faithful to its nature, it rises to claim its kindred with the skies. The highest order must be, as it always has been, moral. Earth-born and earthly it may be, but at the same time it must be ethereal. If it creep upon the ground, it is weak and perishable-if it strive to soar for ever to the sky, it becomes vain and fantastic. It must be at once lowly and aspiring, like Wordsworth's sky-lark,

Type of the wise, who soar, but never roam;

True to the kindred points of Heaven and Home!