conning, word by word, all the advertisements of the daily advertiser in a public-house on a rainy day, etc., etc."

These remarks are pointed and explicit as to how not to read novels, and the reader can very easily infer by the rule of contraries how to read them.

They also forcibly suggest the inquiries-" What is the method after which children read the majority of the books called tales and stories, which make up so large a share of juvenile and Sunday-school libraries? What is the average value of the great mass of 'juvenile' books which are prepared by the score every month to quicken the intellect and elevate the imaginations of the rising generation? Are not the most of these books eminently juvenile in the greenness and crudeness of their authors as well as of their work?"

CHAPTER XVI.

POETRY AND POETS.

WHAT is Poetry? We ask this question, because in order wisely to select the poetry which we read, as well as to read with intelligence and sympathy that which we select, we need to know what poetry is; so far at least as to be able to discriminate the real from the factitious and the counterfeit. But to answer our question we do not need to construct or defend an elaborate theory of poetry. Nor need we study and criticise the several theories which have been proposed, from Aristotle and Horace, down to Matthew Arnold and F. W. Newman. We may be satisfied to adhere to the definition of Lord Bacon, that poetry is a species of feigned history. Every description of poetry may with no great violence be brought under this comprehensive definition. Narrative poetry of every sort, from the stately epic of the ancients down to the familiar tale of the modern bard-from the Iliad to Aurora Leigh-will easily be classed as history. This feigned history must indeed also have a human interest. Every descriptive poem, even if it set forth some objective scene, supposes this human interest; even though it only concerns the single human being who is the looker-on, and out of whose experience have sprung the feelings with which he colors, and the ends for which he constructs the picture, of which nature furnishes the materials. Beneath every sonnet of Wordsworth, and every description of Browning, there lies a chapter of human history. The Lyric in every one of its varied forms, from the loftiest ode to the most trivial love-song, is the breaking

forth in verse-suited to song of the feelings of some human soul, under the circumstances of some real or supposed personal history; and these must be known or supplied by the reader, to enable him to understand and appreciate the ode or the song. The meditative and the moralizing, the didactic and the satirical, cease to be poetry and become prosaic and heavy, the moment that there falls out of either some form of human life, enacted or conceived.

Every drama is eminently a story-a story acted and not alone described; dramatica poesis ist veluti spectabilis— a story in which the parties are made to live again before the eyes of the reader or hearer, to speak their own thoughts and to pour forth their impassioned utterances, as they seem to be freshly excited by the deeds and words that are produced upon the pictured stage, or upon the written page which the imagination dresses up as a mimic theatre.

But not every feigned history is poetry, else every novel were a poem. Poetry is feigned history in verse. The feigned story whether it is narrated or suggested, must be told in verse; i. e., in measured and rhythmical language. We are accustomed to call verse an artificial structure; in contrast with prose, as more natural and obvious. If it has become artificial in our less excited and more critical modes of existence and action, it certainly was not so originally, in the earliest times, when the most literal truth was framed into a poem under the excitement of love and admiration, and was set forth with measure and cadence from the lips of sages and bards. Then the prophet, the lawgiver, and the historian were also poets. Admonitions to duty, and rules of living, and the records of the past, were all committed to some rude or measured form of verse, out of which now and then the flashing war-song would gleam as the lightning, or along which the pean would thunder in triumph. Whether this preference of verse in the earlier days is owing to the predominance of imagination and feel

ing, or to the greater convenience which verse affords to the memory when its effect depends not upon what is written for the eye, but upon what is heard by the ear, the fact is unquestioned, that the earliest compositions take the form of verse. We know also that to the individual man in the dawn of intelligence, verse is far more pleasing and easy to be retained than prose. The ditty with its readily recurring refrain, the song that suits the simplest air, are forms of composition which are most pleasing to infancy. Whether it be more natural in the earlier ages to compose in verse than in prose, we will not inquire. Whether with the poetical modes of conception which are natural at that period, in the forms of affluent imagery and elevated feeling, there springs up for man's use a fit medium of expression in “the gift of numerous verse," we need not ask. We are forced to confess that this gift is not universal when literary culture is refined and matured. As, in this condition, man finds it less easy to write in verse than in prose, so he reserves for this form of writing his choicest thoughts and his best emotions. The constraints of verse also compel a selection in the words employed and a special nicety in their arrangement and combinations. Hence he is insensibly led to require as fit for verse, sentiments that are rare-usually that are rare for their nobleness-and emotions that are uncommon for their elevation, strength, and purity. So far Matthew Arnold is in the right when he insists that there must be something of the grand style in every composition that is truly poetic. This leads the reader or critic almost instinctively to reject the trivial and the low, or even the familiar and the homely, as beneath the dignity of poetry. It was an exaggeration of this feeling that led so many of the poets of the last century to adopt a peculiar stilted and factitious poetic dialect as alone suited to the elevated uses of poetic writing. This diction became by its traditionary character not only empty of meaning, but

was followed by the double evil of repressing that freshness and individuality of language which are indispensable to poetic power and freedom, and of appearing as a substitute for thoughts and feelings which were in no sense poetic. Against this Thomson and Cowper entered their practical protest, by refusing to conform to the rule and example of their times, and Wordsworth set up the theory of poetic diction which gave so much offence and aroused so warm a controversy. Moreover, the oft-recurring pauses and turns. of verse do not admit protracted or complicated arguments, refined abstractions, or a philosophical terminology. Hence there grows up the sentiment and the demand that everything which is fit for verse should be simple in phrase, should be lively with imagery, and be readily followed by the common mind.

For this reason offence is taken at metaphysical discussions, protracted reflections, labored conversations, and even elaborate descriptions, as unsuited to poetry. Hence the reasonableness of those criticisms and complaints which are often unreasonably urged against Milton, Wordsworth, Tennyson, and the Brownings, that they are abstract, metaphysical, over-refined, and difficult to read.

Simplicity, however, is neither silliness nor commonplace; it does not exclude the extremest subtlety of thought nor the most delicate refinement of feeling, but its rule demands that the poetic diction should be direct, brief, and easily followed. In this way, out of the very exigencies which the use of verse prescribes, do we derive the usuallyaccepted characteristics of poetic thought and expression. These characteristics we often find abundant and conspicuous in prose-writing. In such cases we say truly, and with an intelligible meaning, this or that passage is highly poetic. We call Jeremy Taylor the Shakspeare of Divinity. We say that Milton in his prose writings surpasses himself as a poet. We are amazed at the bewildering