In the mind of the poet this power reigns in all its splendour. Let but one idea be waked from without, and a thousand beautiful creations blaze around it, to which his pen may give form and utterance whenever he will exert the toil of perpetuating them in language.

There are many on whom these visions are lost, or considered only as the wanderings of the insanė. They value and can comprehend only palpable facts, and the dry deductions of cold reasoning. They affect to have no concern but with truth, by which they mean some material perception in the exact form and modulation in which it is palpable to the senses; or some axiom which is the result of a strict chain of legitimate deduction.

It was thus that an eminent mathematician could find no merit or amusement in Virgil, because he could perceive no proof in him. He brought to the poet's page no treasure of images which slept upon his senses, and only wanted the sound of a poet's voice to wake them into instant life and activity: he brought not a tremulous heart whose silent chords if slightly touched would long continue involuntarily the tones of sympathetic music. He brought only faculties abstract and dry, that furnished nothing on which the beams of genius could play; or must play without reflection and unfelt.

Why all these powers are given in such profi

sion to some, when they are dispensed so sparingly to others, it is not for human wisdom to determine. If they confer superior happiness, it is well known that they also open to a keener sense of sorrow. The forms of Grief, Pain, and Misfortune, are surrounded by attendant tribes, which appear numerous and terrific in proportion as the fancy is powerful.

A severe and philosophic cast of character, whose constant occupation it is to chastise and regulate its own ideas, it is desirable should exist in a portion of the cultivated classes of mankind. Of these it is the business to separate, and not to combine. They will admit of no comparisons that are not exact, no accidental coalitions of thought or imagery: but clearing their way, examining them one by one, and putting each into a classed arrangement, they produce an artificial shape of things, which destroys the spell of the muse, and makes poetry appear an idle and confused dream.

Enjoy, ye sages, your useful labours! it is right that we should know the fallacies of those delusions, which must not be indulged by all. Ideas not unfrequently spring up in the mind which it is necescessary to disjoin from those which give rise to

them.

But after all, is the poet always less acute in this service, when it becomes imperiously requisite, than the philosopher? When he tasks his judgment,

when he bids his fancy be still, the high and various faculties with which he is gifted, will enable him to perform this more dry and laborious duty with

success.

Yet, to confirm all the virtuous associations of the mind; to fix rather than tear away those enchanting hues which invest nature with additional beauty, is at least a more sublime, and not less useful service than the vaunted labours of the cold philosopher!

N° LXXVII.

"Non illa co'o calathisve Minervæ Fœmineas assueta manus; sed prælia virgo Dura pati." VIRG.

TO THE RUMINATOR.

SIR,

To a man who has spent a large portion of the early part of his days in the study of ancient, and of his more advanced life in that of modern history ; whose imagination is warmed with the heroes of classic literature, and with the splendid achievements to be found in the annals of the feudal times, it is a mortifying idea that so little of that which he has learnt, can be supposed to be true. The pain

ful reflection must often occur to him,

that he has

wasted his time and labour in turning over many a tedious volume, and has at last 'stored his memory with events which never took place, or filled his mind with reasonings upon that which had no existence. But though we may justly lament that such is the case, it by no means follows that such studies are useless or unimportant. "History," says Bolingbroke, from Dionysius of Halicarnassus, "is philosophy teaching by examples ;" and there

fore with respect to the conduct of private or public life, or even in a religious point of view, it may be of little consequence whether the circumstance, from which the moral is to be deduced, be founded in fact or not. For every event related as having actually occurred, must be possible at least, if not true, and therefore the reasonings upon it ought to have the same weight, as if the event had really taken place.

This reflection should serve to console us under the vexatious idea of having learnt so much which is probably not true, and of having, in most cases, no means of distinguishing truth from falsehood. In the present philosophic and enlightened æra, we venture boldly to pronounce many accounts of past transactions to be wholly unworthy of credit, although supported by the uniform weight of historic testimony; because, in some cases, that testimony is given by persons who had no means of ascertaining the facts, but from the vague uncer tainty of tradition; and in others, it is rendered doubtful either from the virulent spirit of party with which it is delivered, or else as being inconsistent with moral probability. The first of these observations applies more particularly to ancient history, as the latter does to modern.

The story which is related of Sir Walter Raleigh, as the reason which induced him to burn the second