There was a time when a single poem, nay, a decent epigram, procured a niche for its writer in the temple of our poetry; but these times are gone by, inundated as we now are with verses of one particular level of merit, as flat as the waste of Cumberland, and equally unprofitable; so that the poet, ambitious of a high reputation in our letters, must make it upon something that is completely novel; and there, as Scott remarked, will rest the only chance for an extended reputation. peo When poetry was all but extinct among us, Cowper and Burns came forward to revive the drooping Muse, and show us, unmistakeably enough, that men and studies may decay, but Nature never dies. There is little reason to suppose that the great poet of the Excursion is likely to remain more than a few years among us; for though, thank God, in health and vigor, and as fond of poetry as ever, he has outlived by the period of an apprenticeship, the threescore years and ten, the Scriptural limitation of the life of man. When Wordsworth dies, there will be a new Session of the poets for the office of poet-laureate. To whom will the lord-chamberlain assign the laurel, honored and disgraced by a variety of wearers? To whom will the unshorn deity assign it? There may be a difference of opinion between the poet's God and the court lord-chamberlain; there have been differences heretofore, or else Shadwell and Tate, Eusden and Cibber, Whitehead and Pye, had never succeeded to the laurels of famous Ben Jonson and glorious John Dryden. Who are your young and our rising poets likely to become claimants, and to have their case considered by Phoebus Apollo in the new session he must summon before very long? "A session was held the other day, And Apollo himself was at it, they say; ་ Poetry has become an easy art, and ple have been taught to pump for poetry without a Gildon or a Bysshe to aid their labors. Wakley can laugh in the House of Commons at the poetry of Wordsworth, and treat the senators who surround him with a happy imitation of the great poet of his time. Verse has become an extempore kind of art, a thing to be assumed when wanted; and O'Connell can throw off at a heat a clever parody upon Dryden's famous epigram; as if, like Theodore Hook, he had served an apprenticeship to the art of happy imitation. That the bulk of the socalled poetry of the present day—" nonsense, well tuned and sweet stupidity"-is injurious to a proper estimation of the trueborn poets who still exist, there cannot be a doubt; that it is injurious, moreover, to the How Suckling would put them forward, advancement of poetry among us, is, I think, we must leave to the fancy of the reader. We can do equally the case. Poetry in the highest sense very little more than enumerof the word, was never better understood, ate the names of candidates likely to be though never, perhaps, less cultivated than present on the occasion. We can conceive it is now. Criticism has taken a high stand; their entry somewhat after the following and when the rage for rhyme has fairly ex- manner. A herald, followed by an attendhausted itself, nature will revive among us, ant with a tray of epics from Nineveh at and we shall have a new race of poets to twelve shillings to Orion at a farthing, and uphold, if not to eclipse, the glories of the the authors arranged pretty nearly as folold. There are many still among us to re-lows:-Atherstone first (as the favorite peat without any kind of braggart in their blood: Therefore, the wits of the town came thither, poet of Lord Jeffrey's later lubrications); Robert Montgomery, 2; Heraud, 3; Read, 4; Horne, 5; and Ben Disraeli, 6. To the epic portion of the candidates the dramatists will succeed, fresh from Sadler's Wells and the Surrey, and led by Talfourd and Bulwer, and followed by Mr. Marston, Mr. Trowton, Mr. Henry Taylor, Sir Coutts Lindsay, Mr. Sullivan and Mr. ing. His poems are, in some respects, an Spicer; Jerrold representing comedy, with-accession to our literature. He has the out a fellow to rival or support him. Then right stuff in him, and he may yet do more; will follow the ballad-writers; Macaulay by but unless it is better than what he has alhimself, and Smythe and Lord John Man-ready done, he had better withhold it. His ners walking like the Babes in the Wood admirers-and he will never be without together. To the trio will succeed Alfred" the few"-will always augur well of afterTennyson and Robert Browning, Monck-performances (though never realized) from ton Milnes, Charles Mackay, and Coventry what has gone before, and attribute to Patmore, followed by a galaxy of ladies for indolence and a pension what from fear and the gallery, led by Mrs. Norton and Miss inability he was unable to accomplish. Barret; with Camilla Toulmin, with a His detractors, on the other hand, will have bunch of flowers; Frances Brown, with a little to lay hold of; they may flatter themnumber of the Athenæum; Eliza Cook, selves with having frightened him into siwith Mr. Cayley's commendation; Miss lence, but their liking for his verses will Costello, with a Persian rose; and Mrs. warm as they grow older. He has nothOgilvy, with her quarto volume of minstrel-ing, however, to fear, if he writes nobly sy from the North. We can fancy Apol-from himself, and the Muse is willing and lo's confusion at the number; and should consenting. Great works— in some measure be inclined to abide by his opinion, should he give the laurel at the end, as Suckling has made him, to an alderman of London: "He openly declared that 't was the best sign At this all the wits were in such a maze, That for a good while they did nothing but gaze "Only," and how admirable the wit is : "Only the small poets clear'd up again, "O rare Sir John Suckling!" "A work t'outwear Seth's pillars, brick and stone, And (Holy Writ excepted) made to yield to none."-Dr. DONNE. appear too rarely to raise expectation that this or that person is likely to produce one. It is near 200 years since Milton began to prune his wings for the great epic of his age and nation; and what has our poetry produced since then in any way approaching what Milton accomplished? Much that is admirable, and much that will live as long as Milton himself, but nothing of the same stamp, for though Scott may affect to speak of Manfred as a poem wherein Byron "matched Milton upon his own ground," yet we all of us pretty well know otherwise; and that the Muse of Byron is as inferior to Paradise Lost, as the Farmer's Boy to The Seasons; or any of the great dramatists of the age of Shakspeare to Shakspeare himself. Is Alfred Tennyson a poet? His merits divide the critics. With some people he is every thing, with others he is little or nothing. Betwixt the extremes of admira- Before Mr. Tennyson tries the temper of tion and malice, it is hard to judge uprightly the public for a third time (which we hope of the living. The zeal of his friends is he will do, and before very many years 'go too excessive to be prudent, the indifference by), it behoves him to consider the strucof his enemies too studied to be sincere.ture of his verse and the pauses of his He is unquestionably a poet, in thought, numbers a little more maturely than he has language, and in numbers. But the New hitherto done. It behoves him, moreover, Timon tells us he is not a poet; Peel tells to rub off a few affectations of style, the us that he is, and gives him a pension of besetting sin of too many of his verses, 2001. a-year to raise him above the exigen- and too often mistaken, by the young escies of the world. But the satirist has pecially, for one of the marks of originality, dropped his condemnation from the third and not for what it is-one of its peculiariedition of his poem, and the pension still ties; and what is more, a very bad pecucontinues to be paid. Is it, therefore, de- liarity both in matter and in manner. Coleserved? We think it is, not from what Mr. ridge understood the deficiencies of Mr. Tennyson has as yet performed, but what Tennyson's Muse when he uttered the folhe has shown himself capable of perform-lowing capital criticism upon him : "I have not read through all Mr. Tenny- metaphysical subtlety, in which the other did son's poems, which have been sent to me; but not indulge, as may be seen by his verses enI think there are some things of a good deal of titled A Character,' those 'On the Confesbeauty in that I have seen. The misfortune sions of a Sensitive Mind,' and numerous is, that he has begun to write verses without others. He is also a great lover of a certain very well understanding what metre is. Even home kind of landscape, which he delights to if you write in a known and approved metre, paint with a minuteness that in The Moated the odds are, if you are not a metrist yourself, Grange' becomes affecting; and, in 'The Milthat you will not write harmonious verses; ler's Daughter,' would remind us of the Dutch but to deal in new metres without considering school, if it were not mixed up with the same what metre means and requires is preposter- deep feeling, varied with a pleasant joviality. ous. What I would, with many wishes of suc- Mr. Tennyson has yet given no such evidence cess, prescribe to Tennyson-indeed without of sustained and broad power as that of Hyit he can never be a poet in art-is to write for perion,' nor even of such gentler narrative as the next two or three years in none but one or the Eve of St. Agnes,' and the poem of 'Latwo well-known and strictly-defined metres; mia, and 'Isabella,' but the materials of the such as the heroic couplet, the octave stanza, noblest poetry are abundant in him.”* or the octo-syllabic measure of the Allegro and Penseroso. He would probably thus get imbued with a sensation, if not a sense, of metre without knowing it, just as Eton boys get to write such good Latin verses by conning Ovid and Tibullus. As it is, I can scarcely scan some of his verses.' 11* This is criticism in full accordance with the kindlier sympathies of our own nature; but much of the weight and value of it must depend on the rank the reader is willing to assign to Mr. Keats. It is, however, intended as a very high encomium: Mr. Hunt appropriating a place in our poetry to Keats which I am afraid he will find very few willing to concede to him. This is something more than a clever criticism on the Muse of Mr. Tennyson; it is a most admirable piece of advice, and deserves to be remembered. Tennyson, Our poetry is in a very sorry kind of and Browning, and Miss Barrett, should plight if it has to depend upon Tennyson act upon it forthwith; they would improve and Browning for the hereditary honors their numbers very materially by such an of its existence. exercise of their ears. Coleridge's own poetry is a lasting exemplification of the rhythmical charms of English verse. He never offends you-he always pleases : The Examiner will tell us "No!" The Athenæum will do the same; papers remarkable for the vigor of their articles, the excellence of their occasional criticism, and the general asperity of their manner. A page out of every ten in Herrick's "Hesperides" is more certain of an hereafter than any one dramatic romance or lyric in all the " Bells and Pomegranates" of Mr. Browning. Not but what Mr. Browning is a poet. He is unquestionably a poet; but his subject has not unfrequently to bear the weight of sentiments which spring not naturally from it, and his numbers at times are overlaid with affectation, the common conceit of men who affect to tell common things in an un common manner. He clogs his verses, "Alfred Tennyson," writes Mr. Hunt," is of the school of Keats; that is to say, it is difficult not to see that Keats has been a great deal in his thoughts; and that he delights in the same brooding over his sensations, and the moreover, with too many consonants and same melodious enjoyment of their expression. too many monosyllables, and carries the In his desire to communicate this music he sense too frequently in a very ungraceful goes so far as to accent the final syllables in manner from one line to the other. Here his participles passive, as pleached, crown- is a passage from the seventh number of his éd, purple-spiked, &c., with visible printer's Bells and Pomegranates," which it really marks, which subjects him but erroneously to a charge of pedantry; though it is a nicety is a torture to read :— not complimentary to the reader, and of which he may as well get rid. Much, however, as he reminds us of Keats, his genius is his own. He would have written poetry, had his precursor written none; and he has also a vein of "But to-day not a boat reached Salerno, Came our friends, with whose help in the vine- Grape harvest began: * Book of Gems, p. 274. In the vat half-way up in our house-side, Like blood the juice spins, While your brother all bare-legged is dancing To keep the grapes under: For still when he seems all but master, From girls who keep coming and going And eyes shut against the rain's driving, And where, on its bed Of the orchard's black mould, the love-apple All the young ones are kneeling and filling Tempted out by the first rainy weather,- As to-night will be proved to my sorrow, We shall feast our grape-gleaners-two dozen, In slippery strings, And gourds fried in great purple slices, Meantime, see the grape-bunch they've brought you! The rain-water slips O'er the heavy blue bloom on each globe Still follows with fretful persistence- This half of a curd-white smooth cheese-ball, Like an onion's each smoother and whiter! From the thin green glass flask, with its stopper, And end with the prickly-pear's red flesh, The stony black seeds on your pearl teeth Hark! the quick pelt of the olives Which, thick in one's track, Tempt the stranger to pick up and bite them, And how their old twisted trunks shudder! The medlars let fall Their hard fruit; the brittle great fig-trees For here comes the whole of the tempest! Back again to my side or my shoulder, This may be poetry, but it is poetry in the raw material; for the numbers are those of a scrannel pipe, and such as Cadmus alone could pronounce when in the state of a serpent. This which follows is the mere twaddle of a Cockney at Calais or Cologne : "Home-Thoughts from Abroad. "Oh, to be in England, Now that April's there, And who wakes in England And though the fields are rough with hoary dew, This is very inferior to Ambrose Philips, who acquired the distinction of Namby Pamby for similar verse, e. g. his "Lines to Cuzzoni," which Charles Lamb had got by heart. Here is something infinitely better, and by a living poet, one of the props our poetry depends on, and a member of parliament withal-Mr. Richard Monckton Milnes: "The Violet Girl. "When fancy will continually rehearse Home yestern eve I wearily returned, But sad experience in one moment earned, Passing the corner of a populous street, I mark'd a girl whose wont it was to stand, With pallid cheek, torn gown, and naked feet, And bunches of fresh violets in each hand. There her small commerce in the chill March She plied with accents miserably mild; Beauty and pleasure to the sense of man, Hope-bearing memories and inspiring glee, The sordid wants of base humanity. Think after all this lapse of hungry hours, Rest on your woodland banks and wither there, Ye are no longer Nature's gracious gift, The veil that hides our vilest mortal sore." Si sic omnia dixisset! This is poetry in all languages; it is like mercury, never to be lost or killed. There is a passage in one of Lady Mary Wortley Montague's letters to her daughter which still continues to excite a smile on the lips of every reader, "The study of English poetry is a more important part of a woman's education than it is generally supposed. Many a young damsel has been ruined by a fine copy of verses. which she would have laughed at if she had known it had been stolen from Mr. Waller. I remember, when I was a girl, I saved one of my companions from destruction, who communicated to me an epistle she was quite charmed with. As she had naturally a good taste, she observed the lines were not so mend the study of our early English poets to English ladies on some other ground than the chance detection of a lover pleading his passion in the poetry of another under pretence of its being his own. Not that we have any particular predilection for "romancical ladies," as the dear old Duchess of Newcastle calls them, or girls with their heads stuffed full of passionate passages; but we should like to see a more prevalent taste for what is good, for poetry that is really excellent; aud this we feel assured is only to be effected by a careful consideration of our elder poets, who have always abundance of meaning in them. It is no use telling young ladies that Mr. Bunn's poetry is not poetry, but only something that looks very like it, and reads very unlike it. The words run sweetly to the piano; there is a kind of pretty meaning in what they convey, and the music is pleasing. What more would you want? Why every thing. But then, as we once heard a young lady remark with great good additional relish to what she said), these sense and candor (and her beauty gave an smooth as Prior's or Pope's, but had more unmeaning songs are so much easier to thought and spirit than any of theirs. She sing. Your fine old songs, so full of poetwas wonderfully delighted with such a dem- ry and feeling, require a similar feeling onstration of her lover's sense and passion, in the singer, and young ladies are too freand not a little pleased with her own charms that had force enough to inspire such elegan cies. In this triumph 1 showed her that they were taken from Randolph's poems, and the unfortunate transcriber was dismissed with the scorn he deserved."* quently only sentimental, and not equal to the task of doing justice to passionate poetry conveyed in music equally passionate, and where they can do justice to it they refuse because it is not fashionable to be passionate, and it really disturbs and disorders one to be so, and in mixed society, "above all." The reason assigned for the study of English poetry by English ladies, is truly characteristic of Lady Mary and of the feIt cannot be concealed that we have male mind. A lady is to read through never been so well off for lady-poets as we every volume of verse, and remember what are at present. Only run the eye over Mr. she reads, to see that her lover writes his Dyce's octavo volume of Specimens of Britown valentine. Ye gods, should one swear ish Poetesses, and compare the numerical exto the truth of a song! If a woman will cellencies of the past with the numerous marry a poet, she had better go through productions of the present day! A few the course of study Lady Mary recom- specimens of the elder poetesses-such as mends. Not that she is safe to secure a the "Nocturnal Reverie," and "The poet to herself after a very long life of Atheist and the Acorn," both by the study. How few read Randolph, and yet he is a very fine poet. Lady Mary might have taken a copy of verses from Randolph to every female writer of the day, and passed them off for the production of a young, a handsome, and a rising writer, and no one would have set her right, or detected the imposition that was passed upon her. We are afraid we must recom * Letters by Lord Wharncliffe, 2d edit. iii. 44. Countess of Winchelsea, it would be very difficult to surpass, or even, perhaps, to equal; but in the general qualifications for poetry, both natural and acquired, the ladies, since Charlotte Smith, far surpass their female predecessors. Mrs. Norton is said to be the Byron of our modern poetesses. "She has very much of that intense personal passion," says the Quarterly Reviewer, "by which Byron's poetry is distinguished from the larger grasp and |