all horror and darkness while they were present. But in the joy of convalescence, he recalled the very circumstances and sentiments which had been struggling and despairing pangs in his heart before, and winged them with words that flew up to heaven's gate in notes of gratitude and praise : —

"The writing of Hezekiah, King of Judah, when he had been sick, and was recovered from his sickness. I said in the cutting off of my days, I shall go to the gates of the grave; I am deprived of the residue of my years. I said, I shall not see the Lord, even the Lord, in the land of the living; I shall behold man no more, with the inhabitants of the world. Mine age is departed, and is removed from me as a shepherd's tent." * * * * * “I am oppressed; O Lord! undertake for me." **** "Behold, for peace I had great bitterness; but Thou hast, in love to my soul, delivered it from the pit of corruption; Thou hast cast all my sins behind thy back. The grave cannot praise Thee; Death cannot celebrate Thee." ***“The living, the living, he shall praise Thee, as I do at this day." -Isaiah, xxxviii. 9-19.

The main themes of poetry might be summed up in a few phrases, or expanded into an Index to a Cyclopedia. I shall particularise two only in this place.

War; the war of glory, in which ambition tramples down justice and humanity, to raise a single tomb for a favourite hero upon a Golgotha of nations — and war, the war of freedom, in which death is preferred to chains, and victory is the emancipation or

the security of millions. War, also, assumes a thousand vulgar and atrocious forms; but these two alone are poetical ones. War has been the chief burden of epic poetry in ages past, however perils and labours, sufferings and conflicts, by land and by water, may have been intermingled with battle and devastation, according to the subject which was to be dignified and adorned above the strain of history, by the embellishments of fiction, and the music of verse. But the poets who have succeeded in this highest and most difficult field, are those who selected their heroes, and their scenes of action, from the traditions rather than the chronicles of times long antecedent. The most splendid achievements of contemporaries can receive no additional lustre from being celebrated in heroic narrative. Truth repels the touch of fable as the contamination of falsehood, in cases where the matters of fact are so fully known, or so easily ascertained, that the common sense of mankind will receive nothing, unauthenticated in re- ference to them. Lucan fell with his hero in the battle of Pharsalia, and Sir Walter Scott himself was vanquished by his on the plain of Waterloo. The fight on the latter must for ever rank among the proudest examples of military ascendance; but, for a thousand years to come, it can hardly be seen (except by incidental glimpses, such as Lord Byron has caught of it in the Third Canto of "Childe Harold,") in an aspect fit for poetical aggrandisement. In lyric song, however, as in the "Hohenlinden" of Campbell, and Wolfe's "Burial of Sir John Moore," -the glories even of modern warfare may be set

forth in lays, which rival or eclipse all that antiquity has left of the kind.

But Love, in all ages, and among all people, has been the principal source of poetic inspiration. Love, the love of country, our native country; love, the love of home, our own home, its charities, endearments, relationships; love, the love which men ought to bear to their brethren, of every kindred, realm, and clime upon earth; love, the love of virtue, which elevates man to his true standard under heaven; and, with reverence be it spoken, love, the love of God, who is Love. I add once more, love, that love, which is the prime, perpetual, ever young and fresh, and unexhausted theme of bards in each successive generation, as though it had never been sung before; the love which Adam bare to Eve in Paradise; the love with which Eve compensated Adam in the wilderness, for the loss of that earthly Paradise, which he seems to have forfeited from excess of love to her. I cannot be wrong; I cannot be misunderstood, when I speak thus of that ineffable tenderness which includes whatever makes human love sweet, and lasting, and peculiar; the business of the heart, the subject of hope, fear, sorrow, rapture, despondency, despair, -each in turn, sometimes altogether; for so mysteriously mingled is the cup of affection, that the bitterest infusion will occasionally dash it with intenser deliciousness. All the vicissitudes of this love are pre-eminently poetical in every change of colour, form, and feeling which it undergoes, being intimately associated with all that is transporting or

afflictive, bright and pure, grand and terrible, peaceful, holy, and happy in mortal existence. On this theme, how gloriously soever they have often excelled, it must be confessed that poets have more grievously offended than on any other. Where they might have done most good they have done most evil. I forbear to expatiate here; suffice it to say, that taste and morals have been equally vitiated, and genius itself debased in proportion as it has thus been prostituted.

The Influence of Poetry.

Poetry possesses a paramount degree of influence, from the fact, that sentiments communicated in verse are identified with the very words through which they have been received, and which frequently, more than the character of the sentiments themselves, give force, perspicuity, and permanence to the latter. The language and its import being remembered together, the instruction conveyed is rendered more distinct and indelible. The discourses of the orator, with all their beauty of embellishment, ardour of diction, and cogency of argument, are recollected rather by their effect than in their reality: what he has conceived and expressed with transcendant ability, we call to mind in its general bearings only, and repeat to ourselves, or to others, by imperfect imitation, and in very incompetent verbiage. This, of necessity, must be far inferior, in emphasis and clearness, to the original composition, whether that were spontaneous or elaborate; and if such be the case with eloquence,

much more will it be so with history, philosophy, and prose literature at large, from which the narratives, speculations, and reasonings, can only be recalled in the abstract, however fascinating in perusal the style of the writer may be. Of these, the epitomised matter, moral, or lesson alone, remains in the mind, which, being blended with our stock of general knowledge, general principles, general motives, — thus remotely becomes influential on our conduct and our lives.

Poetry, on the other hand, takes root in the memory as well as in the understanding,-not in essence only, but in the very sounds and syllables that incorporate it. This every one can testify from experience, who, as a child, was taught the songs of Dr. Watts, as a youth, went through Homer and Horace, and, as a man, made acquaintance with the native and foreign literature of his own and past ages. Of all his reading, that which he remembers most perfectly, and remembers in the words of the originals, will be poetry; poetry in the fixed form of verse, from which it cannot be dissociated without losing half its beauty, and more than half its influence.

That influence is further and incalculably increased from the circumstance that it is the business of poetry to invest whatever it touches with the hues of imagination, and animate that which is susceptible with the warmth of passion; at the same time never to depart from truth; for if it does, it departs from nature, and its creations are monsters, as incongruous in themselves as they are revolting to good taste.