other direction, which comes from elevated ideals of character in ourselves and in others. If our conceptions of character be correct as to their principles or elements, they cannot be too elevated or noble in the scale after which they are adjusted. They should be human and practical and ethical and Christian, but they cannot be too unselfish or aspiring. The sordid, the mean, and the prosaic; the selfish, the trickish, and the bullying; the uncultivated, the sensual, and the vile, are already so rampant and unblushing in our religion, our politics, our literature, and our society, that there is little danger from excess in literature in the direction of the nobly romantic and the ideal. Whatever fiction can contribute to quicken and elevate the imagination, so far as its ideals and estimates of character are concerned, is only actual and positive gain to the sum of good influences; and it is a gain of a kind which cannot easily be spared.

It is not a trivial advantage of the novel reading of our day that it suggests elevated and quickening topics for conversation. This advantage is not a trivial one, when we reflect that conversation too readily degenerates into gossiping personalities or unmeaning twaddle about the weather, or the last insignificant occurrence that happens. to interest any person present. For young persons especially it is of no little service to have topics at hand that are fruitful of thought, that awaken a warm interest and call out positive opinions. The last new novel is suggestive in all these directions. It stimulates to the analysis of its characters and the criticism of its plot, and calls out likings and dislikings, which the holders of either are forward to assert and defend. These opinions, and the reasons by which they are defended, invariably turn upon the observations of actual life, characters and manner which the parties may have made, and in this way stimulate to activity of thought and independence of judgment. Even if

the novel is second-rate, the incidents unnatural, and the characters extravagant, the effect of discussing these is usually good. Novel-reading is a powerful educating influence in whatever aspect it is regarded, and though it may often educate to evil, its power to stimulate from barrenness and frivolity should never be overlooked.

Having already answered the two questions, what novels we should read, and why, it may not be amiss to inquire how we should read them. What we have already said upon the general topic of how we ought to read all books, will apply with pre-eminent propriety to the reading of novels, because there is no description of reading in which there is greater exposure to the worst of habits. Coleridge has pungently enough described these habits: "As to the devotees of circulating libraries, I dare not compliment their pass-time, or rather kill-time, with the name of reading. Call it rather a sort of beggarly day-dreaming, during which the mind of the dreamer furnishes for itself nothing but laziness and a little mawkish sensibility, while the whole matériel and imagery of the dose is supplied ab extra by a sort of mental camera obscura mannfactured at the printing-office, which pro tempore fixes, reflects, and transmits the moving phantasms of one's own delirium, so as to people the barrenness of an hundred other brains afflicted with the same trance or suspension of all common sense and all definite purpose. We should, therefore, transfer this species of amusement. from the genus reading to that comprehensive class characterized by the power of contrary, yet coexisting, propensities of human nature, namely, indulgence of sloth and hatred of vacancy. In addition to novels and tales of chivalry in prose or rhyme (by which last I mean neither rhythm nor metre) this genus comprises as its species, gaming, swinging or swaying on a chain or gate, spitting over a bridge, smoking, snuff-taking, tête-à-tête quarrels after dinner between husband and wife,

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