place of sages haranguing out of Cato and Seneca, and heroes raging in Ercles' vein. A roar of laughter was the poet's meed-but still he persevered. Whether he had carefully calculated the effect or not, it was necessary in the first instance to astound the world, that it might be provoked to inquire, and tempted to listen: this was certainly accomplished, and it was now his part to arm himself with a martyr's endurance, and continue his thankless labours, that the world might understand, and be convinced. This he did; and the opposition, at first so loud and high, gradually began to diminish. While all were obliged to confess that his poetical talents, independently of his impracticable themes, were of the highest quality, some began to suspect that in his theory of poetry he might after all be in the right. His first notes had been pitched upon the lowest key, and the ears of his hearers had been grated—but as he proceeded, the music rose, and embraced every tone in the ascending scale of poetical harmony. In this manner he exhibited, according to the variety of his subjects, at one time the strength, the terseness, and didactic clearness, which reminded us of Dryden; at another, an echo of the grandeur of Milton; and again, at another, something of the metaphysical analysis, and delineation of character, which formed the glory of our matchless Shakspeare. And could cavil continue against such a poet, or applause be withheld? Censure was gradually extinguished in admiration, or silenced by shame. And as the world seldom repents, and revokes its condemnation, by halves, not only the excellencies of Wordsworth were fully acknowledged, but even his blemishes were exalted into beauties; and the nursery rhymes and waggon lyrics, in which he had experimented perhaps too liberally, were thought to contain a depth of meaning which he had purposely hid beneath the surface, that none but profound thinkers and pains-taking inquirers might have the pleasure of the discovery.

While Wordsworth was adopting the lowliest themes as the subjects of poetical description, another poet was labouring in the same field, but in a very different spirit. This was Crabbe, the Morland of modern poetry, whose chief ambition was to paint things as they really existed, and describe them as they appeared to the eye, and who seems, like Dryden, to have selected heroic verse for his purpose, because it was "fittest

C

for his theme, and nearest prose." Crabbe even out-did Wordsworth in his predilection for humble life and trivial objects; but it was not from a similar desire to extract from them any subtle, metaphysical essence, or to aggrandize them with life and beauty. From the commencement of his career, he had resolved to become the laureate of the poor, and the recorder of their sorrows and sufferings; and therefore he shows no sympathy with beauty and grandeur, or any other quality that was foreign to his purpose. Let the fairest landscape open to his eye, and he only thinks of the poor reaper who is toiling there at the rate of a shilling a day, or the old ditcher broken down with rheumatism, and fainting upon his spade. The beautiful column of smoke ascends in the bright sunshine, and undulates in the light breeze, like a gently stirred plume; but the eye of Crabbe traces it to the miserable, mud-built cottage, while his heart revels by anticipation in the squalor with which it is tenanted. To him the valley of Tempe itself is nothing, compared with the charms of a dirty, narrow, crooked street, composed of ricketty hovels; and all the nymphs and fauns that ever poetry created are worthless in his eyes, compared with a brood of ragged children discharged from the village school, the workhouse, or the factory. And what a dismal, heart-rending sketch would he have given us, if his theme had been "The Deserted Village!" The muse of Goldsmith could enter an humble alehouse; but it was only to select agreeable objects, and enhance them with the associations they called up the nicely sanded floor, the well-polished furniture, the carefully preserved prints upon the wall, and the innocent festivities of the rustics to which all these had been subservient. But Crabbe, in a similar situation, sees nothing except the tables defiled with beer and tobacco, the chairs overturned and broken, and the floor littered with prostrate drunkards. The house of Goldsmith's country clergyman is a home of happiness and hospitality; but in the hands of Crabbe, a rural divine, with only forty pounds a year, would have been any thing but "passing rich." The poet would rather have dwelt upon his thread-bare coat, his scanty dinners, his miserable make-shifts, and his feverish struggles to obtain a better living. And where would have been the "ruined spendthrift,” the "long-remembered beggar," and the "broken soldier?" Crabbe

would have quoted the statute against vagrants, and sent them to the stocks or the tread-mill. With him, guilt has no apology, poverty no charm, and suffering no mitigation: the loathesomeness, the paltriness, and the degradation, with which they are imbued, he describes with a force and fidelity in which nothing is softened or omitted. And then, too, his language, embodying as it does such prosaic subjects, is necessarily little more than rhymed prose; for any style of a more exalted description would have been not only inadequate, but absolutely ludicrous, like the caricature of Miltonic verse in the Splendid Shilling of Philips. And in all this, Crabbe was not only a daring innovator, but an acknowledged poet of very high order. He devoted himself to scenes, characters, and feelings, which had hitherto been fastidiously rejected; and he showed that poverty, wretchedness, and toil, had also their poetry, as well as pomp, and prosperity, and power. For the labours and sufferings of the poor at large, he did, in sad and sober earnest, what Gay accomplished for a segment of the same society in a spirit of merriment and caricature, when he described the loves and amusements of ploughmen and milk-maids. And the result was similar in both instances. The Eclogues of Gay became popular from their truthfulness, notwithstanding the lowly character of their subjects; and the delineations of Crabbe have obtained a still higher popularity, because to the same fidelity of description were added the charms of a wider variety and a more sincere and fervent enthusiasm.

As the poetry of humble life was not only reckoned low, but prosaic and unnatural, some years had to elapse before it acquired the attention it had so justly merited. While the writings of Wordsworth and Crabbe, therefore, were contending with critical obloquy, and making a progress that was almost unnoticed, the arena was comparatively unoccupied. But a poet entered upon the scene who had no such opposition to surmount. This was Sir Walter Scott, who rushed into the unclaimed territory like one of his own border warriors, and whose appearance created as strong a sensation as if he had entered into a modern contest arrayed in the panoply of the middle ages. He selected military glory for his theme,—a theme at all times too dear to the human heart, but more especially at this period, when a gigantic struggle was going on

in which the fate of Europe was emperilled.

This was of

itself enough to have ensured him popularity, had he even laboured in the beaten track. But a still sounder policy directed him in the choice of those subjects by which the ruling principle of his poetry was to be illustrated. He equally eschewed the worn-out slings, darts, and faulchions, of the old classical warfare, and the guns, drums, and " villainous saltpetre," of the modern school-and when men might have wondered what period, or what region, remained for him, he selected a sort of neutral ground still comparatively untrodden, and which he could occupy and people at pleasure. The fierce national wars between England and Scotland were neither too antiquated for the sympathies of the present generation, nor too recent to awaken former animosities; they abounded with heroes and stirring events that were admirably suited for the purposes of a martial poet; and they, as yet, remained unsung, except in those rude ballads which had long ceased to possess a public interest. Here then Scott took his stand, and "sounded his warrison"—and it was no wonder that the harpings of his more gentle contemporaries were drowned in the loud blasts of his war-trumpet. The whole land re-echoed, and every heart leaped into double life at such inspiring music, enhanced as it was by the boldness and originality of its character. Under the mastery of the poet, the chiefs of departed ages became something more than mere poetical impersonations; their arms, their dress, even their features, were so vividly and minutely described, that they were living men of flesh and blood: we heard their measured tread, and the rustling of their robes, as they paced the hall; and we saw the very sparks that flashed from their horses' hoofs, as they spurred to the encounter. The choice of the poet also in the articles of time and place, gave him the command of a rich variety, by which he could change the scene at pleasure, and produce a fresh interest with every change. Thus, the fierce border outlaw succeeded the equally fierce, but more haughty and high-minded baron; the clans of the Gael variegated, with their tartans, the sombre monotonous ranks of the Saxons; and the pastoral and woodland landscape of the Lowlands, was alternated with the wilder and grander scenery of the Highlands. But the feverish excitement which such poetry produced could

not be lasting, and the period of re-action came when men could calmly inquire wherefore they had been so moved and delighted. And what was the result? They found that they had been allured into a semi-barbarous state of society with whose principles and modes of life they had unwittingly fraternized. The grim baronial tower and its donjon, the haughty lord and his slavish retinue, the ferocity, the nakedness, and the abjectness, of the feudal ages, had constituted the framework of that state of existence with which they had been so highly enchanted. The phosphoric brilliancy of a chivalrous fancy had been flung over the scene, so that nakedness itself had been clothed with splendour, and men whose sole occupation was plunder and massacre, had been exalted into heroes and patriots. With the feelings of men who discover that they have not only been duped, but made ridiculous, society discovered that they had been deifying that mere brute courage which is common to the animal man at large, and which the brute-like savages of an American forest were capable of appreciating as fondly, and lauding as highly, as themselves. And this unwonted fit of sober calculation was marvellously aided by the peculiar state of the political season under which it occurred. Our country was upon the close of the war, and was retiring from the strife, crowned indeed with victory, but bleeding, breathless, and exhausted, while the terrible accountbook which was now opened to her loathing view, persuaded her that military renown was not only the most profitless, but the most expensive, of all luxuries. When not only the merciless test of philosophical analysis, but the churlish spirit of political economy, was thus brought to bear upon such martial poetry, the advanced spirit, as well as the vanity and selflove of the age, was wounded by the remembrances of its former ascendancy, and the popularity of Sir Walter as a poet decreased as suddenly as it had risen. The bard of feudalism appeared as if he had been suddenly surrounded by a new and uncongenial race of beings; and he felt, that he had indeed. become the "Last Minstrel," and that the age of chivalry was gone for ever.

But although society was convinced of the delusion under which it had laboured, it was not yet ripe for the abandonment if its literary follies; and, therefore, when Scott's extraordi