ther "Comus" nor "Paradise Lost" could have been written without it. Now, Keats belongs to a class of beings entirely different. His nature was essentially sensitive. Far from being independent of others, he held his life at the mercy of others. To murder him, was a cowardly murder, yet who can expect magnanimity from bullies? But, had he possessed a great nature, he would not have been murdered, though all the critics of his time had leagued against him. William Gifford kill John Milton-why he could not kill Leigh Hunt! There is danger in admitting a doctrine, which places the life of the noblest genius at the mercy of every liar and libeller that may lift his hoof against him. Keats died because he was weakbecause from the peculiar constitution or disease of his nature, he was unfitted to struggle with the calamities which beset actual life. "I feel the daises growing over me," he said on his death bed. If any epitaph were put above him, he requested that it should be-"Here lies one whose name was writ in water." This is very affecting, but it is the opposite of Miltonic. We never pity Milton. In his early poems, Keats appears as a kind of youthful Spenser, without Spenser's moral sense or judgment. His soul floats in a "sea of rich and ripe sensation." The odors, forms, sounds, and colors of nature, take him captive. There is little reaction of his mind or his sensations. He grows faint and languid with the excess of light and loveliness which stream into his soul. His individuality, without being merged in the objects of his thoughts, is narrowed and enfeebled. All that is mighty in nature and man, is too apt to be sicklied o'er" with fanciful sentimentalities. The gods are transformed into green girls, and the sublime and beautiful, turned to " favor and to prettiness." Every thing is luscious, sweet, dainty and debilitating, in his sense of love and beauty. There are few hymns and numberless ditties. There is no descent into his soul of that spirit of Beauty, that "awful loveliness," before whose presence the poet's sensations are stilled, and in whose celebration his language is adoration. In the place of this, there is an all absorbing relish and delicate perception of beauties-a kind of feeding on "nectared sweets"-a glow of delight in the abandonment of the soul to soft and delicious images, framed by fancy out of rich sen sations. It is rather reverie than inspiration. This bewildering sense of physical pleasure, was generally predominant in Keats. It was the source of the thousand affectations and puerilities which mar his poems, and it had a debilitating effect on his intellect. A keen sensitiveness of perception doubtless characterizes all great poets. Keats is supposed to have had more of this power, because he lacked other and equally important powers, or because it obtained over them such a mastery. No man ever possessed more fineness of sensibity to outward nature than Shelley, but it was developed in connection with a piercing intellect, which was never overcome with the mere deliciousness of things. He had altogether more depth of insight, nobler ideals, greater reach of thought and breadth of passion, a stronger hold upon existence, than Keats. The confounding of fine sensations with moral sense, the pleasurable with the right, is a great defect of Keats's poetry. If we compare him with Spenser, who possessed even a keener feeling of the physically delightful, and a richer imagination to mould it into dazzling shapes and fascinating images, we see that the richest descriptions of enchanting scenes and objects are heightened in their effect, by being disposed according to moral and spiritual laws. Had Spenser been deficient in moral sense, the Faery Queene" would have been made the most corrupting of all modern poems. In his later works, the imagination of Keats was somewhat released from the thraldom of sensation, and evinced more independent power The Eve of St. Agnes" is delicately beautiful, and perfect of its kind; but it is not poetry of the highest order. The sense of luxury is its predominant characteristic, and though full of exquisite fancies, it has no grand imaginations. "Hyperion" is altogether his noblest work, and contains passages of uncommon excellence. But through the whole of his poetry, we think there isseen, in a greater or less degree, the qualities we have previously indicated. In the classification of poets, we have to take the general rule and not the exceptions. That the poetry of Keats is full of beauties, that it evinces a most remarkable richness and sensitiveness of fancy, and suggestiveness of imagination, that it contains passages of a certain rough sublimity seemingly above its general tone, and that it occasionally makes the "sense of satisfaction ache with the unreachable delicacy of its epithets," is cheerfully acknowledged by every one, who reads poetry without having his fancy and imagination shut by prejudice; but that it evinces the force and fire, the depth, the grandeur, or the comprehensiveness, of a great nature, that it displays powers, we will not say, like those of Milton,-but like those of either of the great poets of the nineteenth century, is a dogma to which neither the life nor the writings of Keats afford any adequate support. EBENEZER ELLIOTT, the Corn Law Rhymer, is one of the most characteristic of poets. The inspiration of his verse is a fiery hatred of injustice. Without possessing much creative power, he almost places him beside men of genius by the singular intensity and might of his sensibility. He understands very well the art of condensing passion. "Spread out the thunder," says Schiller, "into its single tones, and it becomes a lullaby for children; pour it forth together, in one quick peal, and the royal sound shall move the heavens." The great ambition of Elliott is to thunder. He is a brawny man of nature's own make, with more than the usual portion of the "ancient Adam” stirring within him; and he says "I do well to be angry." The mere sight of tyranny, bigotry, meanness, prompts his smiting invective. His poetry could hardly have been written by a man who was not physically strong. You can hear the ring of his anvil, and see the sparks fly off from his furnace, in reading his verse. He stoutly wrestles with the difficulties of utterance, and expresses himself by main force. His muscles seem made of iron. He has no fear and little mercy; and not only obeys the hot impulses of his sensibility, but takes a grim pleasure in piling fuel on the flame. He points the artillery of the devil against the devil's own legions. His element is a moral diabolism, compounded of wrath and conscience. When an abuse of government eats into his soul, he feels like Samson in the temple of the Philistines. There is wonderful energy in many of his vituperative Corn Law Lyrics. In those poems in which the price of bread does not intrude, we see the nature of the man, in a more orderly development; poems, which Mr. Griswold correctly describes as giving" simple, earnest and true echoes of the affections," and as breathing the spirit of "a kind of primitive life, unperverted, unhackneyed, and fresh as the dews on his own hawthorn." The spirit of his other style may be partially seen in the following passionate "Corn Law Hymn." CORN LAW HYMN. LORD! call thy pallid angel- No; wake not thou the giant Who drinks hot blood for wine; While he raves over waves Through Elliott's poems the vast mass of English wretchedness and misery has found eloquent and piercing utterance. He speaks what thousands feel. Never was there a more terrible offering of hatred, made by the squalor of a nation to its splendor-by the famine-wasted to the feast-fattened. When THOMAS BABINGTON MACAULAY appeared as a poet, it might have been expected that his muse would have been roughly treated by contemporary critics. As a critic, he had scattered numberless sarcasms, which could have appeared to their objects only in the light of gratuitous insults. No reviewer ever excelled him in adding to the torture of grave condemnation a sharper epigrammatic sting. The quick sagacity with which he detected faults was equaled only by his independence in lashing them-an independence, which, always free from the impulses of fear, was sometimes superior to those of benevolence. His scorn had been launched at many authors, whose connection with influential journals, gave them the means of anonymous retort. Yet we have seen no critiques of his Roman Lays, bearing the signs of malice or revenge. A few parodies and buffooneries, of the most harmless nature, were all that he had to bear. The merits of Macaulay's poetry are similar to his prose, except that his verse is characterised by more imagination. The same living energy, however, animates both. He is a man of the most extensive acquirements, and possessed with the power of representing his knowledge in magnificent pictures. One cause of his fascination, is the union in his nature of the most intense enthusiasm with a weighty practical intellect. He has a quick sympathy with whatever addresses the passions and the fancy, and a truly masculine mind. His style alternates between copiousness and condensation, and the transitions are contrived with consummate skill. He is the most brilliant and rapid of all contemporary writers. His poetry is an array of strong thoughts and glittering fancies bounding along on a rushing stream of feeling. It has almost the appearance of splendid impromptu composition. The " lay" of Virginia" contains some exquisite delineations of the affections, full of natural pathos and a certain serene beauty, somewhat different from Macaulay's usual martial tone. From Mr. Griswold's volume we select a piece, which has never been included in the editions of his writings. It shows not only a most minute knowledge of history, but an insight into the very spirit of the time to which it refers. The verse has a dashing, reckless, godless march, entirely in character with the feeling expressed. Prince Rupert's fiery dragoons would have sung it con amore. THE CAVALIER'S MARCH TO LONDON. To horse to horse! brave cavaliers! Strike, strike your tents! snatch up your spears! And ho for London town! The imperial harlot, doom'd a prey Sends up the voice of her dismay The Strand resounds with maidens' shricks, And tears in iron eyes; And, pale with fasting and with fright, Hath summon'd forth to prayer and fight Down, down with all their train-band pikes, Down with their mud-built wall. Brave lads, to tell us where, Their lean divines, of solemn brow, Shall edify the people; Till the tired hangman, in despair, We'll hang, above his own Guildhall, Though Pym should speak to order. To cheat our martial law; Shall crackle in the fire. The colonel's canting muster-roll, The chaplain's dog-ear'd Bible. We'll tread a measure round the blaze The beauties of the friars: Then smiles in every face shall shine, Bring forth, bring forth the oldest wine, And crown the largest bowl. And as with nod and laugh ye sip The goblet's rich carnation, Whose bursting bubbles seem to tip The wink of invitation; Drink to those names,-those glorious names, Those names no time shall sever,Drink, in a draught as deep as Thames, Our church and king for ever! The poetry of the nineteenth century boasts more eminent women among its vo 1845.] taries, than that of any other age. Among We have no space to do justice to called "Recollections," and the dedica- But probably the greatest female poet, that England has ever produced, and one of the most unreadable, is ELIZABETH B. BARRETT. In the works of no woman have we ever observed so much grandeur of imagination, though often disguised in an elaborately infelicitous style. She has a large heart and a large brain; but many of her thoughts are hooded eagles. That a woman of such varied acquirements, of so much delicacy of sentiment and depth of feeling, of so much holiness and elevation of thought, possessing, too, an imagination of such shaping power and piercing vision, should not consent always to write English, should often consent to manufacture a barbarous jargon compounded of all languages, is a public calamity. "The Cry of the Human" to her, is, "Be more intelligible." The scholar who was in the custom of "unbending himself over the lighter mathematics," might find an agreeable recreation in Miss Barrett's abstruse windings of thought, and terrible phalanxes of Greek and GerA number of her man expressions. poems are absolutely good for nothing, from their harshness and obscurity of language. Her mind has taken its tone and character from the study of the Hebrew Prophets, Eschylus and Milton; and she is more familiar with them than with the world. Vast and vague imaginations, excited by such high communion, float duskily before her mind, and and she mutters mysteriously of their majestic presence; but she does not always run them into intelligible form. We could understand this, if she displayed any lack, on other occasions, of high imagination; but her frequent inexpressiveness is a voluntary offering on the altar of obscurity. "We understand a fury in the words, but not the words." In one of her sonnets, "The Soul's Ex. I strive and struggle to deliver right And inly answering all the senses round With octaves of a mystic depth and height, And utter all myself into the air- Before that dread apocalypse of soul. Miss Barrett's genius, though subjective in its general character, is of considerable range. She is especially powerful in dealing with the affections. Her religious poetry is characterised by a most intense and solemn reverence for divine things, and often swells into magnificent bursts of rapture and adoration. Her feeling for humanity is deep and tender, and she has a warm sympathy with its wants and immunities. Her sonnets, though of various degrees of merit, and some of them crabbed in their versification, have generally a rough grandeur which is very imposing. The Drama of Exile," though teeming with faults, has noble traits of intellect and passion, which no faults can conceal. Many of her minor pieces show a most delicate perception of beauty and sentiment, expressed with much simplicity and melody of style. Mr. Griswold's selections are not made from her last publication, and therefore do not contain some of her best poems. We cull a few extracts in illustration of her powers: the Drama of Exile was fully commented upon, with extracts of great power, in our first number. EARTH. How beautiful is earth! my starry thoughts Look down on it from their unearthly sphere, And sing symphonious-Beautiful is earth! The lights and shadows of her myriad hills; pany; And throws him on the grass, though halfafraid, First glancing round, lest tempests should be nigh; And lays close to the ground his ruddy lips, And shapes their beauty into sound, and calls On all the petal'd flowers that sit beneath Sad idlesse, and betake them up to him. A thought did come, And press from out my soul the heathen Mine eyes were purged. Straightway did dream. I bind Round me the garment of my strength, and heard Nature's death-shrieking-the hereafter |