He chooses the most lofty subjects, without seeming to doubt his capacity to grapple with their mysteries. He plagiarizes from authors whose names he would not condescend to mention. He hardly realizes the existence of others, except so far as they are related to himself. In "Festus" he displays at times a certain "lust of power, a hunger and thirst after unrighteousness, a glow of imagination unhallowed save by its own energies," which well indicates the element of daring in which his nature moves. To most readers, the poem would appear a monstrous compound of blasphemy and licentiousness. Though evincing power, and variety of power, it excites the most wonder from its disregard of all the moral, religious, and artistical associations of others. Pantheism and fatalism, in their most objectionable forms, are inculcated as absolute truth. The two flaming ideas in his mind are God and Lucifer. One of his scenes occurs "Anywhere," and another "Everywhere." The merest commonplaces of antagonistical systems of philosophy and religion are all mingled together in the chaos of his theory. Occasionally all regard for the proprieties of the diabolic is eschewed. The devil falls violently in love in one place; and in another scolds the damned like a Billingsgate fish-woman. He reproves his friends for laziness, telling them that they do not earn enough to pay for the fire that burns them up. Human passions and human ideas Bailey continually blends with things superhuman and divine. Doctrines of the most monstrous import, and doctrines of the utmost purity and holiness, so follow each other, that the author evidently notices no discord in their connection. He can delineate the passion of love with great refinement, without seeming to distinguish it from the most unhallowed

lust. If he be not mad, it is certain that all the rest of the world are. То accept the poem of "Festus" as the product of a sane mind, would be to declare all other literature superficial, and P. J. lously gifted of created men.

Bailey the most miracu-
Its madness is not alto-

gether fine madness, but half comes from Parnassus and the rest from Bedlam. It is the madness of a mind unable accurately to distinguish the moral and intellectual differences of things.

The interest of the poem arises from its intensity of sensibility, its affluence of fancy, and occasional power of imagination. Numerous passages might be selected of the greatest beauty and majesty. The author's insight into particular truths is often very acute, and his command of expression seemingly despotic. He has no fear of startling his reader with a grotesque image, or a strange verbal combination, or downright bombast and buffoonery. So intense and lofty is his egotism, that he seems to think all minds will bend their tastes and their common sense to him. He ends his poem, at the age of twenty-three, with saying, "Take it, world." He swaggers and bullies his readers into panegyric. There is no instance in English literature of so much self-exaggeration on the part of any author untrammelled by a straitjacket. The poem indicates the last result of the "Satanic School," in the triumph of sensibility over reason. A German prince, whose taste was of the "classical" order, once said, that if he were the Almighty, and could have foreseen before creating the world that Schiller's "Robbers" would have been written in it, that alone would have prevented him from creating the world. What this gentleman would have said of Bailey's "Festus," it would task exaggeration itself to tell.

Amidst the chaos of this work, are passages of great grandeur and beauty. The intense seriousness of the author gives to the whole a character of sincerity, which redeems it from the charge of intentional irreverence or immorality. We quote a few of Mr. Griswold's extracts from the poem, in partial illustration of its spirit and power.

FESTUS DESCRIBES HIS FRIEND.

"He had no time to study, and no place;
All places and all times to him were one.

His soul was like the wind-harp, which he loved,
And sounded only when the spirit blew ;

Sometimes in feasts and follies, for he went

Life-like through all things; and his thoughts then rose
Like sparkles in the bright wine, brighter still;

Sometimes in dreams, and then the shining words
Would wake him in the dark before his face.

All things talked thoughts to him. The sea went mad
To show his meaning; and the awful sun
Thundered his thoughts into him; and at night

The stars would whisper theirs, the moon sigh hers;
He spake the world's one tongue; in earth and heaven
There is but one, it is the word of truth."

ANGELA.

"I loved her, for that she was beautiful,
And that to me she seemed to be all nature
And all varieties of things in one ;

Would set at night in clouds of tears, and rise
All light and laughter in the morning; fear

No petty customs nor appearances;

But think what others only dreamed about;

And say what others did but think; and do

What others would but say; and glory in

What others dared but do; - it was these which won me;

And that she never schooled within her breast

One thought or feeling, but gave holiday

To all; and that she told me all her woes

And wrongs and ills; and so she made them mine

In the communion of love; and we

Grew like each other, for we loved each other;
She, mild and generous as the sun in spring;
And I, like earth, all budding out with love.
The beautiful are never desolate ;

For some one always loves them - God or man.
If man abandons, God himself takes them.
And thus it was. She whom I once loved died."

A LETTER.

"When he hath had

A letter from his lady dear, he blessed
The paper that her hand had travelled over
And her eye looked on, and would think he saw
Gleams of that light she lavished from her eyes,
Wandering amid the words of love she'd traced
Like glow-worms among beds of flowers. He seemed
To bear with being but because she loved him;
She was the sheath wherein his soul had rest,
As hath a sword from war.

THE END OF LIFE.

"We live in deeds, not years; in thoughts, not breaths; In feelings, not in figures on a dial.

We should count time by heart-throbs. He most lives,
Who thinks most; feels the noblest; acts the best;
And he whose heart beats quickest lives the longest ;
Lives in one hour more than in years do some
Whose fat blood sleeps as it slips along their veins.
Life is but a means unto an end; that end,
Beginning, mean, and end to all things - God.
The dead have all the glory of the world."

We might easily fill up this number of our review by continuing our observation on individual poets in Mr. Griswold's volume. In what we have said, we have not aimed at any thorough criticism on the poets we have

separately considered, but we have merely thrown off such observations on their life and poetical character as were suggested by their present relation to the public, and to current codes of criticism. Of course, in so large a tract of thought and imagination, variegated by so many individualities of character, there is room for the exercise of different opinions. We are sorry if ours have been tainted with an oracular tone. The estimate formed of a poet is generally determined by the point of view from which he is surveyed. In the survey of a considerable number, there is danger that we may not shift our position with a change in the objects to be seen. Every original poet should doubtless be judged by the laws which inhere in his own writings, and not by laws evolved from other and different writings. But it is difficult to decide at exactly what point a poet becomes a law unto himself; and difficult, also, to estimate the exact value of his originality, and consequently his relative position among men of genius, after it is decided. The poetic faculty is exceedingly elastic, and all its manifestations in individuals cannot be included in a general criticism. In poems of moderate merit, we are occasionally struck with fine imaginations, which seem to give the lie to the charge of mediocrity. After a critic has most painfully elaborated his opinion of an author, any tyro can quote lines or passages which seem to conflict with it. From the extreme sensitiveness of the imagination, a poet of small original capacity sometimes catches the tone of the great authors he has read, and by blending it with what individuality of thought and feeling there is in him, often contrives to puzzle reviewers and delude readers. In a literature like that of the present century, in which sensibility and per