spoken of in two senses. In the specific or technical sense, by Poetry we mean the expression in words, most appropriately metrical words, of the truths of imagination and feeling. But in the generic and larger sense, Poetry is the expression of imaginative truth in any form, provided only that it be symbolic, suggestive, and indirect. Hence we said that there is a Poetry of sculpture, architecture, painting; and hence all nature is poetical, because it is the form in which the eternal Feeling has clothed itself with infinite suggestiveness and hence Lord Byron calls the stars "the Poetry of heaven"; and tells us that to him "high mountains were a feeling"; and that mountain and wood and sky spake

"A mutual language, clearer than the tone

Of his land's tongue, which he would oft forsake

For Nature's pages, glassed by sunbeams on the lake.”

And hence Wordsworth tells us that Liberty has two voices : "One is of the sea,

And one is of the mountains."

And hence a greater than either has said that the Heavensspeak, and that "There is neither speech nor language where their voices are not heard." And hence, too, Woman has been called the Poetry of life, because her presence in this lower world expresses for us, as well as calls out, those infinite feelings of purity, tenderness, and devotion, whose real existence is in our own bosoms. And hence, again, there is a Poetry in music: not in that in which sound imitates sound, as when the roaring of the sea, or the pattering of the rain, or church bells, or bugles, or the groans of the dying are produced, for in such cases there is only a mimicry, more or less ingenious; but that in which we can

almost fancy that there is something analogous to the inner history of the human heart—an expression of resolve or moral victory, or aspiration, or other feelings far more shadowy, infinite, and intangible or that in which the feelings of a nation have found for themselves an indirect and almost unconscious utterance, as it is said of the Irish melody, that through it, long centuries of depression have breathed themselves out in cadences of a wild, low wail.

We divided poets into two orders: those in whom the vision and the faculty divine of imagination exist; and those in whom the plastic power of shaping predominates; -the men of poetic inspiration, and the men of poetic taste. In the first order I placed Tennyson; in the second, Pope.

Considerable discussion, I am told, has been excited among the men of this Institution by both these positions,some warmly defending them, and others as warmly impugning. For myself, it is an abundant reward to find that Working Men can be interested in such questions ;—that they can debate the question whether Pope was a poet, and be induced to read Tennyson. For the true aim of every one who aspires to be a teacher is, or ought to be, not to impart his own opinions, but to kindle other minds. I care very little, comparatively, whether you adopt my views or not; but I do care much to know that I can be the humble instrument, in this or higher matters, of leading any man to stir up the power within him, and to form a creed and faith which are in a living way, and not on mere authority, his own.

However, I will explain to you on what grounds I made these two assertions. And, first, as respects Pope-if any one approved of what I said, under the impression that I denied to Pope the name of poet, I must disclaim his approbation: I did not say so. Pope is a true poet: in his

own order he stands amongst the foremost; only that order is the second, not the first. In the mastery of his materials, which are words, in the plastic power of expression, he is scarcely surpassed. His melody-I do not say his harmony, which is a much higher thing-is unquestionable. There is no writer from whom so many of those sparkling, epigrammatic sentences, which are the staple commodities of quotation, are introduced into conversation: none who can be read with more pleasure, and even profit. He has always a masculine fancy; more rarely, imagination. But you look in vain for the truths which come from a large heart and a seeing eye; in vain for the "thoughts that breathe and the words that burn"; in vain for those flashes of truth, which, like the lightning in a dark night, make all luminous, open out unsuspected glories of tree and sky and building, interpret us to ourselves, and "body forth the shapes of things unknown": truths which are almost prophetic. Who has not read his Essay on Man, again and again? And yet it is but the philosophy of Bolingbroke, melodiously expressed in rhyme whereas the office of Poetry is not to make us think accurately, but feel truly. And his Rape of the Lock, which seems to me the one of all his works that most deserves the name of Poetry, the nearest approach to a creation of the fancy, describes aristocratic society, which is uniform, polished, artificial, and out of which a mightier master of the art than Pope could scarcely have struck the notes of true passion. Moreover, its machinery, the Rosicrucian fancies of sylphs and gnomes, is but machinery, lifeless. If you compare Shakspere's Ariel or Puck, things alive, preternatural, and yet how natural! with these automatons, you will feel the difference between a living creation and cleverly moved puppet work. Throughout you have thought, not imagination: intellect, not intuition.

:

I read you last time Pope's estimate of his own art; now, contrast it with the conceptions formed of Poetry by men whom I would place in the first order.

First, let Burns speak. The spirit of Scottish poesy has appeared to him, and given him his commission. She says

"I saw thee seek the sounding shore,
Delighted with the dashing roar :
Or when the North his fleecy store

Drove thro' the sky,-

I saw grim Nature's visage hoar

Struck thy young eye.

"Or when the deep, green mantled earth
Warm cherish'd ev'ry flow'ret's birth,
And joy and music pouring forth
In ev'ry grove,-

I saw thee eye the gen'ral mirth

With boundless love."

Observe that exquisite account of the true poetic or creative power, which comes from love, the power of sympathy with the happiness of all kinds of being "I saw thee eye the general mirth with boundless love!"

Wordsworth shall speak next. I select his Sonnet to Haydon. You remember poor Haydon's tragic end. He died by his own hand, disappointed because the world had not appreciated nor understood his paintings. It had been well for Haydon had he taken to heart the lesson of these lines, pregnant with manly strength for every one, poet or teacher, who is striving to express deep truths for which the men of his generation are not prepared.

And remark, merely by the way, in this sonnet, Wordsworth's corroboration of the view I have placed before you, that Poetry is a something to which words are the accidental, not by any means the essential form.

'High is our calling, friend! Creative Art,
(Whether the instrument of words she use,
Or pencil pregnant with ethereal hues,)
Demands the service of a mind and heart,
Though sensitive, yet, in their weakest part,
Heroically fashioned-to infuse

Faith in the whispers of the lonely Muse,
While the whole world seems adverse to desert.
And, oh! when Nature sinks, as oft she may,
Through long-lived pressure of obscure distress,
Still to be strenuous for the bright reward,
And in the soul admit of no decay,
Brook no continuance of weak-mindedness-

Great is the glory, for the strife is hard!"

We will next listen to the account given us by Milton, of the conditions under which Poetry is possible,—lofty and majestic, as we should expect from him :

"This is not to be obtained but by devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit that can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends his seraphim with the hallowed fire of his altar to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases. To this must be added industrious and select reading, steady observation, and insight into all seemly and generous acts and affairs."

Tennyson shall close this brief list, with what he thinks the poet's calling :

"The poet in a golden clime was born,

With golden stars above;

Dower'd with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn,

The love of love."

That is,―The Prophet of Truth receives for his dower the scorn of men in whose breasts scorn dwells; hatred from men who hate; while his reward is in the gratitude and affection of men who seek the truth which they love, more eagerly than the faults which their acuteness can blame.