THE consideration of the "Poets and Poetry of the Nineteenth Century" involves more than a mere criticism of individual authors. No one can pay much attention to the theme without being led into inquiries concerning the nature and province of poetry, and the verbal difficulties which perplex the subject of iterary ethics. A few observations on some of the sophisms which make poetry synonymous with falsehood, and virtue with propriety, may not be uninteresting to our readers.

The common objection to poetry lies in the word "unreal." In most minds, real life is confounded with actual life. The ideal or the imaginary, is deemed to be, at the best, but a beautiful illusion. Reality is affirmed chiefly of those objects directly cognizable by the senses and the understanding. Now, it seems to us, that the mere fact that most minds perceive a higher existence than the life they actually lead, a life more in harmony with moral and natural laws, is an evidence that actual life is a most imperfect embodiment of real life. The difference between duty and conduct, law and its observance, nature and convention, about measures the difference between the real and the actual. No sophism can be more monstrous than that which represents actual life as sufficient for the wants and capacities of human nature. In all the great exigencies of existence, the actual glides away under our very feet, and the soul falls back instinctively upon what is real and permanent. The code of practical atheism, which condemns poetry as fantastical, strikes at the very root of morals and religion; and those prudent wordlings who adopt it, must have a very dim insight into the ethical significance of those words, which represent the world as "living in a vain show." Now poetry is the protest of genius against the unreal ity of actual life. It convicts convention of being false to the nature of things; and it does so by perceiving what is real and permanent in man and the universe. It "actualizes" real life to the imagination, in forms of grandeur and beauty

corresponding to the essential truth of things. Literature is the record of man's attempt to make actual to thought, a life which approached nearer to reality, than the boasted actual life of the world. If the term ideal meant something opposed to truth, then it should be abandoned to all the scorn and contempt which falsehood deserves. But the falsehood of life is not in idea so much as in practice; and the sin of the ideal consists, not in being itself a lie, but in giving the lie to common-place. If the phrase, realizing the ideal, were translated into the phrase, actualizing the real, much ambiguity might be avoided. The inspiration of all the hatred lavished on poetry, by the narrowminded and selfish, is the feeling that poetry convicts them of folly, falsehood and meanness.

Poetry then, is most emphatically, a "substantial world." Who shall estimate what vast stores of happiness and improvement the domain of imagination has revealed to us? There we see the might and the majesty, the beauty and the grace, the tenderness and the meekness of humanity, in their real forms. Let us think, for one moment of the new world of beings, which genius has created, and which poetry makes the denizens of all earnest hearts. Who shall say that he is without companions, to whose soul the marvellous beings of the poet's heart and fancy are constant visitants? In that wild variety of individual characters, which genius has framed out of the finest and greatest elements of human nature; do we not find companions as genial, friends as true, as those whose faces we see and whose hands we clasp? Are they not the brethren of our minds and hearts-seen by the soul if not by the eye? Do they not shed the hues of romance, and inspire the thoughts of power, amidst the most toilsome and common drudgery of existence? Faces may glad the eye of the artisan, in his unremitting labor, as warm, as kindling, and as beautiful, as ever beamed in palaces or shed lustre on courts. The aristocracy of convention may think him too

mean for notice, yet the song of Miriam may mingle with the clink of his hammer, and the sweetest embodiments of beauty and grace which the cunning of genius has shaped, may cluster around him in familiar intercourse! Who shall measure the happiness of the boy, when he is first introduced to the realities of Robinson Crusoe, and pores with trembling delight over the dear, dog-eared leaves? In reading works of imagination, worthy of the name, we do not treat them as fictions. The Vicar of Wakefield we love as a real being. Falstaff, with his rosy face and nimble wit, is a companion who reflects our whole joyousness of mood. We are with the fifth Henry in the trenches of Harfleur; with Balfour of Burley in his rock-ribbed prison: with RobRoy on his native heather. We stand on the parapet with the Jewess, and echo her defiance to the Knight Templar; we eagerly follow every step of Jeannie Deans, in that toilsome and dangerous journey to London, which has given to her name the immortality of the affections. We muse and moralize with Jacques; we play pranks with the delicate Ariel; we break a lance with the stout Sir Tristam; we smite with the first Richard, the " Paynim foe in Palestine." Touchstone has always a sharp jest in his very look to make our risibles tingle with delight. Falconbridge has ever at hand a phrase of scorn, which we can pitch at cowardice and hypocrisy; Macbeth has ever a solemn truth to thrill our souls with awe. We have friends for every mood, comforters for every sorrow; a glorious company of immortals, scattering their sweet influences on the worn and beaten paths of our daily life. Shapes "that haunt thought's wilderness" are around us in toil and suffering and joy; mitigating labor, soothing care, giving a keener relish to delight; touching the heroic string in our nature with a noble sentiment; kindling our hearts, lifting our imaginations, and hovering alike over the couch of health and the sick pillow, to bless and cheer, and animate, and console.

The world of beings we have been considering, we deem a real world. Poetry is that sublime discontent with the imperfection of actual life, arising from the vision of something better and nobler, of which actual life is still speculatively capable. This discontent is the source of the poetical, whether displayed in action or thought. It is the inspiration

of reform. Poets have thus been finely called the "unacknowledged legislators of the world." The passionate or persuasive utterance of great thoughts brings them home to the affections. Embodied in shapes of beauty, they imperceptibly mould the minds by whom they are perceived. The ideal of yesterday becomes the fact of to-day. True progress consists in a continual actualization of realities. Poetry, in its theoretical aspect, refers to truth, and to truth alone. But poets, living in actual life, must, to some extent, partake of its imperfections. Their perceptions of the real must be affected by the influences of their time, and by individual passions and prejudices. "The gift of genuine insight," is possessed by none in perfection. To none is the whole domain of reality open. Thus we do not call Shakspeare an universal poet, but the most universal of all poets. Poetry, in the form in which it appears in literature, may be practically defined, as a record, left by the greatest natures of any age, of their aspirations after a truth and reality above their age. It represents, to some extent, the "motion toiling in the gloom❞—

"The spirit of the years to come,

Yearning to mix itself with life." The real elements in the life of any people, the most interesting and valuable portions of their history, everything in them not shifting and empirical, may be said to constitute their poetry. When Sir Philip Sidney ordered the cup of water, intended to slake his own dying thirst, to be passed to the wounded soldier by his side, he made his most important contribution to the poetry of his nation.

If our notion of what constitutes the real be tenable, then the whole question of literary morality is easily settled. The test of poetry is truth to the nature of things, and if right and wrong were in the nature of things, a correct representation of a reality cannot be immoral. With the practical life of a poet we have nothing to do; but one thing is certain, that he must possess an acute, intellectual perception at least, of the essential difference, in the very nature of things, between good and evil, to represent the objects of his thought correctly; and just in proportion as his moral sense is blunted, just in proportion as the low standard of conduct in actual life follows his delineations of real life, in exactly that proportion will his representation be false

and unpoetical. The numberless names of characters, which disfigure bad plays and novels, are instances of this fact. It is impossible to represent life and character, without a vivid insight into their relations to right and wrong. The empirical delineations of actual life, very common both in verse and prose, every one feels to be superficial. Time inexorably devours the offspring of convention, because they have no truth grounded in reality. If a poet so represents crime and weakness, as to make his readers weak and criminal, criticism as well as morality must call his representation false. In this respect, taste and morals use the same test. The most marvellously endowed mind cannot alter the nature of things. To create is simply to perceive a truth or a possible combination, which has always existed, but has never before been discovered. The poet whose nature is out of harmony with reality, can but delineate unreal mockeries; for God's law is above man's genius.

This fact brings us to the consideration of two classes of poets, which, for the sake of definition, may be termed the intense and the comprehensive; those who combine according to subjective laws and those who combine according to objective laws. In the first, the individuality of the poet, roused into morbid energy by the pressure of actual life on his sensibility, overmasters his mind, and lends to the objects which he perceives the color of his own passions and prejudices. He often has an insight, singularly keen, into some realities, and a blindness with regard to others. He is a fanatic for the validity of his own perceptions of truth, no matter how much they may be warped by his peculiarities of character; for the intensity with which they affect himself, makes him believe them as true with re

spect to the race as to him. The poet, on the contrary, whose glance is comprehensive, who, in combining and representing objects, regards their laws and relations, whose mind reflects with the same accuracy what is higher and lower than itself: who has no desire to mould nature and man into his own likeness, but has a genial feeling for all orders and degrees of existence, who strives to attain that general truth which includes all individual varieties-he only is worthy the praise of universality. Now we do not pretend to intimate that we ever observe in poets the perfection of either of these two classes. The egotist

speaks often for the race, as well as for himself; and the claim of any poet to universality can be but relative. But we think, that, for the purposes of definition, we sufficiently distinguish between the two, by giving what seems to be the theory of each.

The force of outward circumstances often drives a poet into a narrow and intense individualism, even when his mind is sufficiently capacious for comprehension. The poets and poetry of the nineteenth century are pertinent examples. The time was especially calculated to inflame the passions, and give undue prominence to particular realities. Viewing objects through the medium of personal feeling, and disturbing the natural relations of things in order to accommodate them to the demands of sensibility, the poetry of that period, with the exception of Scott's, has more of the appearance of impassioned declamation on man and nature, than correct representation of man and nature. Exaggeration of particular vices or virtues is its general characteristic. The realities which pressed most forcibly on individual minds are uttered with intense earnestness of expression, and continual glimpses are given of lofty truths; but the calm survey of the whole domain of thought and imagination, the fine sagacity which disposes things according to their natural order, are generally wanting. The poetry is often marked by an eloquent intolerance, a beautiful fanaticism, a most sublime wilfulness of vision. It is lightning, not sunlight. The reader is swept along with the poet on a tide of impetuous passion, which admits of no let or hindrance from objective laws. No one can deny that it is great poetry, and while under its fascination, we deem it to be the greatest; for it is full of those thoughts which

"Seize upon the mind, arrest, and search, And shake it; bow the tall soul as by wind, Rush over it, as rivers over reeds, Which quaver in the current; turn us cold And pale, and voiceless ;-leaving in the brain

A rocking and a ringing!"

In these remarks we refer only to the general characteristics of the poetry of the period, with reference to the intensity of feeling which penetrates it. We have already alluded to the agency of external causes in giving it this character. Many of the poets were subjected to a perse

cution peculiar to the nineteenth century; that which racks the soul and spares the body. Their self-consciousness was the result, in a great degree, of personal suffering or untoward circumstances. Much of their time was spent in warring with the actual life of their period, and exposing its abuses. As far as they did this, they were met by the bitterest and most malignant opposition. The faults of their poetry, considered critically, were the faults superinduced upon their minds by looking at great wrongs through the medium of a fiery sensibility to justice and truth. The direction of their genius was determined by their position; their intensity of passion was the grating of generous impulses against selfish power. If their philosophy lacked comprehension, it was not deficient in loftiness. They have embodied some of the most subtil realities which the mind can perceive, in forms of imperishable grandeur and loveliness; and that portion of truth they were peculiarly calculated to perceive, they expressed with commanding eloquence, and applied with inflexible

courage.

When it is considered that our era in cludes not only their intense feeling and lofty imagination, but also the comprehension of Scott, few will deny that in all the essential qualities of a great literature, the period is the most glorious in English letters, with the exception of the reign of Elizabeth. The four prominent exponents of this literature we conceive to be Wordsworth, Byron, Shelley, and Scott. In this number we shall not have space to do even superficial justice to the two former. Shelley and Scott, however, will be sufficient to serve as illustrations of the subject.

The life of PERCY BYSSHE SHELLEY presents a notable example of the effects of social persecution on a nature peculiarly fitted to bring us "news from the empyrean." This mode of murder was tried upon Shelley; but his spirit was strong, as well as sensitive, and opposed weapons of ethereal temper to the brutality of his adversaries. His writings, however, give evidence of the injurious influence of the conflict upon the direction of his powers. Possessing one of the most richly-gifted minds ever fitted by Providence to adorn and bless the world, and a heart whose sympathies comprehended all nature and mankind in the broad sphere of its love, he was still the most unpopular poet of his time

although he indicated, perhaps, more than any other, the cadences of its imaginative literature, and expressed with more fullness, precision and beauty, the subtil spirituality of its tone of thought. His character and his writings were elaborately misrepresented. Persons infinitely inferior to him, we will not say in genius, but in honesty, in benevolence, in virtue, in the practice of those duties of love and self-sacrifice which religion enjoins, still contrived to experience for him a mingled feeling of pity and aversion, unexampled even in the annals of the Pharisees. The same sympathizing apologists for the infirmities of genius, who shed tears and manufac tured palliatives for Burns and Byron, fell back on the rigor and ice of their morality when they mentioned the name of Shelley. His adversaries were often in ludicrous moral contrast to himself. Venal politicians, fattening on public plunder, represented themselves as shocked by his theories of government. Roués were apprehensive that his refined notions of marriage would encourage libertinism. Smooth, practical atheists preached morality and religion to him from quarterly reviews, and defamed him with an arrogant stupidity, and a sneaking injustice, unparalleled in the effronteries and fooleries of criticism. That pure and pious poet, Thomas Moore, conceived it incumbent on himself to warn his immaculate friend, Lord Byron, from being led astray by Shelley's principles-a most useless monition! Poetasters and rhyme-stringers without number were published, puffed, patronized paid, and forgotten, during the period when the "Revolt of Islam" and "Prometheus Unbound" were only known by garbled extracts which gleamed amid the dull malice of unscrupulous reviews, Men who could not write a single sentence unstained with malignity, selfishness, or some other deadly sin, gravely rebuked him for infidelity, and volunteered their advice as to the manner by which he might become a bad Christian and a good hypocrite. But Shelley happened to be an honest man as well as a poet, and was better contented with proseription, however severe, than with infamy, however splendid. This was a peculiarity of his disposition which made his conduct so enigmatical to the majority of his enemies.

The mode of judging Shelley adopted by his contemporaries, and followed by

many similar spirits in our own day, seems to us radically unjust and foolish. It gives a fictitious influence to everything considered noxious in his poetry, and subverts its own end by the unscrupulous eagerness with which it seizes on bad means. It is therefore not entitled to the praise of judicious falsehood and politic bigotry. The critic who would educe a moral from his writings and conduct, must not begin with substituting horror for analysis. The most favorable view can be taken of his character, without compromising a single principle of morality and eligion. While this is the case, we see no reason why, in the cause of morality and religion, we should echo stale invectives at conscientious error, and join the hoarse roar of calumny and falsehood over his tomb.

In these remarks we do not intend to deny that Shelley had faults. The magnitude of his genius and virtues should not cover these from view. But we believe that for every act of his life, which his conscience did not in its most refined perceptions of duty approve, he experienced an intensity of remorse which few are conscientious enough to appreciate. His education, and the unfortunate influences to which he was subjected, account for the defects in his view of life, and the heretical opinions which mastered his understanding. His position was such that he was impelled, by what may be called his Christian virtues, into what must be called his errors. His selfdenial, his benevolence, his moral courage, his finest affections, his deepest convictions of duty, were so addressed as to force him into opposition to establish opinions relating to government and religion. The sorrowful interest with which we follow the events of his life, arises from this feeling that he was, to a remarkable degree, the victim and prey of circumstances. He was made to see and feel the abuses of things before he understood their uses. In the most emphatic sense of the word, he was a poet. This title, we fear, is too often considered to designate merely a maker of verses; to point out a person who can express thought and emotion with the usual variety of pause, swell and cadence; and who often contrives to write one thing and live another. Not in this sense was Shelley a poet. ways terribly in earnest. and thought, he felt and

He was alWhat he felt thought with

such intensity as to make his life identical with his verse. He was a hero in the epic life of the 19th century. Ideas, abstractions, which pass like flakes of snow into other minds, fell upon his heart like sparks of fire.

"He was no tongue-hero, no fine virtue prattler."

He did not speak from his lungs, but from his soul. And, sooner than betray one honest conviction of his intellect, sooner than award "mouth-honor" to what he hated as cruelty and oppression, he was willing to have his genius derided and his name defamed.

We have said that Shelley was poetical in what he lived as well as in what he wrote. Those realities which his soul did grasp, it held with invincible courage. Hymns to "Intellectual Beauty" came from his actions as well as his pen. He was endowed by nature with an intellect of great depth and exquisite fineness; an imagination marvellously gifted with the power to give shape and hue to the most shadowy abstractions, which his soaring mind clutched on the vanishing points of human intelligence; a fancy quick to discern the most remote analogies, brilliant, excursive, aerial, affluent in graceful and delicate images; and a sensibility acutely alive to the most fleeting shades of joy and pain, warm, full and unselfish in its love, deep-toned and mighty in its indignation. This fiery spiritual essence was enclosed in a frame sensitive enough to be its fit embodiment. Both in mind and body Shelley was so constituted as to require, in his culture, the utmost discrimination and the most loving care. He received the exact opposite of these. The balance of his mind was early overthrown. He had boyish doubts about religion, which he himself could not consider permanent, for his opinions at college vascillated between D'Holbach, Hume and Plato. These doubts were met, first with contempt, then with anathemas, then with expulsion and disgrace. The consequences may be seen in that wilderness of eloquent contradictions-"Queen Mab." His more mature opinions were visited with proscription, and he was robbed of his children. In every case truth was so presented to him that he could not accept it without moral degradation. A mere lie of the lip, recommended to him by his preceptor, would have saved him from expulsion from Oxford; a mere out