all our poets of much mark have betaken themselves to the subjective. We propose, ere coming to Mr. Bigg, first, inquiring into the causes of this; and, secondly, urging our young poets, by a few arguments, to intermix a larger amount of the objective with their poetry.

One cause of the propensity of our rising race of poets to the subjective, has undoubtedly been the force of example. The poets who are at present acting with most power on the young mind of the age, are intensely subjective, and some of them to the brink of morbidity. The influence wielded over the lovers of poetry by Homer, Scott, or Burns, is slender, compared to that which Wordsworth, Keats, Shelley, Coleridge, and the rest of the bardic brotherhood-the sons of Mist by Thunder-are exerting. The writings of the former are devoured like new novels, and then thrown aside. The writings of the latter are tasted slowly, and in drops-are studied are carried into solitude-are read by the sides of lonely rivers, or on silent mountain tops, and ultimately surround the young aspirants with an atmosphere which goes with them where they go, rests with them where they rest, and hovers over their pens when they write. To the charm of these poets, it adds mightily that they are said to be, and are, more or less heterodox in their creeds. This gives a peculiar gusto to their works, the reading of which becomes a sweet and secret sin, smacking of the taste of the "stolen waters" and the "pleasant bread." Thus are two luxuries-that of the indulgence of daring thought, and something resembling contraband desire-united in the perusal of our later subjective poets.

Secondly, we live in a period of deep thoughtfulness, and great intellectual doubt. Never were there so many thinking. Never was thought so much at sea. Never were there so many "searchings of heart." Our blessed Lord mentions, as one of the most striking signs of his second advent-" perplexity." "And there shall be signs in the sun, and in the moon, and in the stars; and upon the earth distress of nations, with perplexity-the sea and the waves roaring!" This sign is around us, even at the doors. The political and the moral, the intellectual and the religious worlds, are all equally perplexed and in darkness. It is a midnight, moaning, weltering

A

ocean, on which we are all embarked, and the day-star has not yet risen. Our poetical spirits are sharing, to a very large extent, in this perplexity; and this has led to incessant introspective views and pensive contemplations. After Byron, there rose a short-lived race of rhymsters, who pretended to scepticism and gloom, but whose real object was to produce a stimulating effect upon the minds of their readers; and who, like quack doctors, distributed drugs to others, of which they themselves never tasted a drop. It is very different now. real yearning uncertainty and thirst after more light, are now heard crying, if not shrieking, in many of our poets. All recent poems of mark, such as the "Life Drama," ," "Balder," "Festus," and "Night and the Soul,' are more or less filled with those thoughts that wander through eternity; those beatings of strong souls against the bars of their earthly prisonhouse; those profound questions uplifted to heaven" Whence evil? What the nature of man, and what his future destiny? What, who, and where is God ?" True poets must sympathise with the tendency of their times, and as that at present, is transitional, uncertain, and uneasy, their poetry must partake, in some measure, of that uncertainty and that unrest.

It has,

In connection with this, is the prevalent study of the transcendental philosophy by our poets. It was long imagined that poetry and philosophy were incompatible-that no poet could be a philosopher, and that no philosopher could be a poet. What God had often joined man put asunder. however, been for some time surmised that critics were in this wrong. The fact that Milton was thoroughly conversant with the philosophies of his day, and the example set by the German poets, and by the Lakers, who combined ardent poetic enthusiasm with diligent and deep study of metaphysics, have rectified opinion on this point, and sent our young poets to their Kants, their Fichtes, and their Hamiltons, as well as to their Shakspeares and their Goethes. From these and other causes, it has come about, that at an age when the gifted youth of the past were singing of their Helens or their Marys-apostrophising their spaniels and robin-red breasts, or describing the outward forms of sky and earth around their native village, their successors in the present are singing of the mysterious relations of nature to the human soul; are galloping

their Pegasus from galaxy to galaxy; and are now entering the heaven of heavens, and now listening to the sound of the surge of penal fire, breaking on the "murk and haggard rocks" of that "Other Place."

Now, we are far from seeking to deny that this is, on the whole, what it should be, as well as what, inevitably, it must have been. It were as vain altogether to condemn, as at all to try to resist, the stream of an age-tendency. Nay, this state of things has some advantages, and teems with some promise. It proves that the minds of men are becoming more serious and thoughtful, when even our youths of genius are less poets than preachers. It shows that we are living in a more earnest period. It proves progress, since our very youth have passed points where the mature manhood of the past thought it prudent and necessary to halt. It suggests hope, that in a future age there may be still higher, quicker, and more certain and solid advancement. But, looking at the matter on the other side, the exclusively subjective cast of much of our best poetry has produced certain evils. In the first place, it has tended to overcast the renown of our great objective poets, particularly among the young. Homer, Scott, Campbell, and Burns, are still, indeed, popular, but not so much, we think, as they were, and are read rather for their mere interest, than for their artistic and poetic excellence. Relished by many they still are, as sweet morsels; but seldom, if at all, studied as models. Secondly, it, on the other hand, excludes our really good poets of the subjective school from many circles of readers, who, seeking for some objective interest in poems, and finding little or none, are tempted to close them in weariness, or fling them away in disgust. Thomson, Cowper, Byron, as well as Shakspeare and Milton, addressed themselves to all classes of minds, except the very lowest, and succeeded in fascinating all. Browning, and many besides, speak only to the higher minds, and verily they have their reward; their works are pronounced unintelligible and uninteresting by the majority of readers, and, while loudly praised, are little read. How different it had been, if these gifted men had wreathed their marvellous profusion of thought and imagery round some striking story, or made it subservient to some well-constructed plot! The "Paradise Lost" and the " Pilgrim's

Progress" are devoured by millions for their fable, who are altogether incapable of understanding their interior meaning, or perceiving their more recondite beauties. "Prometheus Unbound," and "Paracelsus," are read with pleasure by the more enthusiastic, but are caviare, not only to the general reader, but to many thousands who love poetry with a passion. Tennyson, on the other hand, with all his subtlety and refinement, seldom forgets to throw in such touches of nature, and little fragments of narrative, as secure a kindly reception for his poems, at once with the severest of critics and the least astute of schoolboys. Why should poets be read only by poets, or by philosophical critics? We think that every good poem should be constructed on the same model with a good sermon, in which the preacher, if a sensible man, takes care that there shall be at once milk for babes and strong meat for them that are of full age; or upon the model of that blessed book, the Bible, which contains often in the same chapter the grandest poetry and the simplest pathos; here, "words unutterable," which seem to have dropped from the very lips of the heavenly oracle, and there, little sentences, which appear made for the mouths of babes and sucklings; here, "deeps where an elephant may swim; and there, shallows where a lamb may wade!"

Thirdly, this systematic subjectivism is almost certain to produce systematic obscurity and methodical mysticism. If an original writer sit down to compose poetry, either without the thought of any audience, or with only that of a few superior minds in view, he almost inevitably falls into peculiarities of thought and idiosyncrasies of language, which suit only an esoteric class of readers, and will often baffle even them. If a poet only seek to "move himself," leaving it, as beneath him, to the "orator," to move others," the consequence will be fatal, not only to his popularity, but to his genuine power. He will move nobody but himself. Look again to Browning's poetry a wonderful thing it is, in many points and parts; but, as a whole, it is a book of puzzles-a vast enigma-a tissue of hopeless obscurity in thought, and of perplexed, barbarous, affected jargon in language. The same is true with much of Emerson's volume of poems. It is easy for these authors to accuse the reader of being dull in comprehension.

The reader thinks he has a greater right to retort the charge of dulness upon the author. Where fire is, it shines; where a star is, it beams: the differentia of light is to be seen. But the density of much of our modern poetry is "dark as was Chaos, ere the infant Sun was rolled together, or had tried his beams across the gulf profound." It is amusing to watch the foc lish faces put on by the admirers of this kind of rhymed riddles or blank-verse conundrums, when even they are unable to make out the meaning of some portentous passage, through which not a ray of light has been permitted to shine, and from which grammar and sense have been alike divorced; and to hear their mumbled apologies to the effect, "Depend on it, there are sunbeams in this cucumber, provided we were able to extract them!"

Another evil is the increase of a false, pretentious, and pseudo-philosophic style of criticism, which, by being constantly exercised upon mystic or super-subtle poetry, becomes altogether incapable of appreciating any other, and often finds subjective meanings, where the objective alone was intended by the poet. The great master of this art abroad is Ulrici, whose Midsummer Night's Dream" of Shakspeare passes with many for a piece of profound and unmatched analysis. Specimens of the class are rife at home, and we deplore the increase amongst us of a style of criticism, which seeks to illustrate the ignotum by the ignotius, as though midnight could add illumination to mist.

What, then, is it asked, do we propose that our poets should do? Should they, as Professor Blackie in his late Stirling speech seems to think, abandon subjective song altogether; and burning their Wordsworth and Shelley, betake themselves to ballad-poetry, Homer, Scott, and Macaulay's "Lays of Ancient Rome?" By no means. This is not a legitimate conclusion from what we have now said. There remains a more excellent way. The third and best style, combining the direct dealing, the definite plan, and the clear purpose, the interest and the simpler style of objective poetry, with the depth, the thoughtfulness, the catholicity, and the universal references of subjective, should be attempted by our rising bards. They need not be at a loss either for models or subjects. All Shakspeare may become their exemplar. Let them look especially