extent, the greater would be the securities for the maintenance of peace.' And again:- A war of material interests, or, more 'properly speaking, of material injuries—that is, a war of customhouses or fiscal forts, with their garrisons of revenue officers and 'servants, has long been declared and carried on between most European nations. This warfare of interests, or injuries, has not ceased with the wars of bloodshed; and if we may ever 'expect security against a recurrence of the calamities attendant on, and consequent to, the latter, it will be in destroying the elements of the former-in short, by the extension of free-trade between all nations.'* We earnestly commend these thoughts to the consideration of the Christian public of Great Britain. New securities for the maintenance of peace' are just now the world's great want. It is a painful reflection-circumstances have arisen, and may arise again, to render it an alarming and fearful one-that we have neglected to take such securities in our dealings with those two countries, our peaceful relations with which are of the first moment, both to our own national weal, and to the general interests of civilization and humanity. No nations of the earth offer us more inviting natural facilities to a commerce conservative of peace, than France and the United States; yet with none is our commerce more shackled and obstructed by artificial restrictions, with none have we more harassing and irritating diplomatic embroilments. That we still have trade enough with the United States to render war a tremendous calamity to them as to ourselves, is, in the present temper of a large portion of their people, our chief safeguard against being dragged into wholesale and organized fratricide about some miserable Oregon or Texas question, which, were that trade what it might be according to the obvious arrangements of nature and Providence, would immediately sink into insignificant harmlessness. We have societies for the Promotion of Permanent and Universal Peace: but the most efficient Peace Society were the wide brotherhood of nations, knit together in the beneficent reciprocities of wants mutually relieved by superfluities mutually exchanged. These are negotiators capable of conducting to a prompt and honourable_termination, the angriest diplomatic quarrel that ever menaced the peace of the world. *Macgregor's Commercial Statistics.' 563 ART. IX. Imagination and Fancy; or, Selections from the English Poets, illustrative of those first requisites of their Art; with Markings of the best Passages, Critical Notices of the Writers, and an Essay, in answer to the Question "What is Poetry?" By LEIGH HUNT. Second Edition. London, 1845. THIS elegant volume consists of an essay on the nature of poetry, extending to seventy pages, and a series of quotations from the greatest English poets, extending to nearly three hundred pages more. The poets from whom the quotations are made, are Spenser, Marlowe, Shakespeare, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Middleton, Decker and Webster, Milton, Coleridge, Shelley, and Keats. Each set of quotations is prefaced by a short critical notice of the poet or poets from whom they are taken; those passages or expressions to which Mr. Hunt wishes to call the special attention of the reader are printed in italics; and after most of the pieces quoted, there are placed a few notes, intended either to clear up the meaning where it is obscure, or to point out lurking beauties. From this description of the volume it will be evident, that it is something different from the ordinary collections of poetical extracts. The author's name would of itself be a sufficient guarantee on that point. A collection of extracts from the poets by Leigh Hunt must be something different from the collections compiled by the elocution-masters. Mr. Hunt assumed no more about himself than what any of his readers will be willing to grant, when he betrayed to the public the pretty conceit involved in his giving his well-known series of papers the name of The Indicator. In the interior of Africa, we are told, in the motto prefixed to those pleasant papers, there is a bird called the Cuculus Indicator, or Honey Bird, because it indicates to the honey-hunters where the nests of wild bees are 'to be found. It calls to the hunters with a cheerful cry, which they answer; and, on finding itself recognised, flies and hovers over a hollow tree containing the honey.' In those papers, therefore, the implication was, that the writer was to perform the part of the honey bird, hovering over human life, and indicating the spots where the honey would be found. Nor is the conceit less apt as a description of the present volume. We, the public, fond as we are of true poetry, have no time to go and search all the trees of so wide a forest, where so many trees are honeyless. Welcome, then, the cheerful cry of the honey bird hovering 6 overhead, who knows the forest so well, and who will guide us at once to the spots where the honey lies. Ay, but I can fancy a bird that would be more welcome still, some man with a multitude of affairs to attend to will say; and that would be any sort of a bird that would take all the trouble of collecting the honey upon himself, and not ask us to follow him into the wood at all -any sort of a bird that would bid us stay where we were, and he would fetch us the honey in a jar. But this volume is not merely a collection of poetical extracts by one who is himself a poet; it is a collection restricted in its range, and made with reference to a specific purpose. The idea of preparing such a book was suggested, Mr. Hunt tells us, 'by the approbation which the readers of a periodical work bestowed on some extracts from the poets commented and marked with italics, on a principle of co-perusal.' In this book, therefore, Mr. Hunt wishes it to be considered, that he is reading aloud to a party of friends. And, as the person who reads aloud to a family party is usually the person who selects what is to be read, so the volume before us is to be regarded as a collection of Mr. Hunt's own favourite passages from the poets. In thus restricting the range of his quotations to his own favourite passages, Mr. Hunt, however, conceives that he is at the same time fulfilling an important scientific end. One of the objects of the book, we are told in the preface, is To show what sort of poetry is to be considered as poetry of the most poetical kind, or such as exhibits the imagination and fancy in a state of predominance, undisputed by interests of another sort. Poetry, therefore, is not here in its compound state, great or otherwise (except incidentally in the essay); but in its element, like an essence distilled. All the greatest poetry includes that essence, but the essence does not present itself in exclusive combination with the greatest form of poetry.' In this extract we see an important distinction recognised, but not very well expressed. That poetry and metre are not the same thing is a distinction as old as criticism itself, and as widely known at the present day as it is practically disregarded; but that poetry is something different from the metrical expression even of great thoughts; that there may be quoted from our best poets, from Shakespeare, or Milton, or Byron, hundreds of passages which are grand and spirit-stirring, without being strictly poetical; that the passage in a poem most pregnant with mind and meaning, most agitating in its effects, and most decisive in its testimony to the genius of the author, may yet have less of the essence of poetry in it than many inferior passages; this is a truth not generally known, and which, therefore, one is pleased to find stated with even a moderate degree of clearness. It may be worth while to illustrate this subject. a little. Writers may be conveniently distinguished into three classes; scientific expositors; orators, or moralists, and poets, or artists. A writer is to be referred to one or other of these three classes, according as he makes it his principal business to expound doctrines, to stimulate to action, or to do something which we can only describe yet by saying that it is different from either. But there are few compositions in which the functions of at least two of the classes are nct blended. In stimulating men to a specific course of action, the orator or preacher cannot always take for granted the truths upon which he proceeds, but is frequently obliged to interrupt himself, and expound some doctrine on the spot, just as if he were teaching it to a class; and, on the other hand, there are very few men who can expound any doctrine in moral or social science, without opening the vista of its applications, and growing angry at the thought of abuses still existing which the dissemination of it would have swept away. All this is either familiar or easy to be admitted, but it is not so generally remembered that a similar intermingling of different kinds of writing may take place in verse; and that it is quite possible to accomplish as great a variety of things in verse as in prose. It is true, the great majority of compositions in verse exhibit a certain common character. The difficulty of versification has acted as a sort of fence or railing to prevent the access of the crowd; all the ordinary business of literature is transacted in the outer circle of prose, and when a writer takes the trouble to go within the railing, it is expected that his business is of the peculiar kind usually transacted there. Laborious persons have indeed written treatises on grammar and geometry in verse; but it is not the less true, that it is only a certain highly-prized variety of mental product which people are in the habit of throwing into the metrical form. Still, notwithstanding that the objects of metrical composition are thus to a certain degree circumscribed, no entire composition of the kind, and scarcely any entire passage of any length, could be selected, in which it would not be found that the poet had mingled several distinct varieties of writing, combining the functions of the expositor and the moralist with that which is peculiarly his own. Take, for instance, the following passage from Shakespeare's Troilus and Cressida,' in which Nestor is represented as addressing the Grecian chiefs: In the reproof of chance Lies the true proof of men. The sea being smooth, How many shallow bauble boats dare sail But let the ruffian Boreas once enrage The strong-ribbed bark through liquid mountains cut, Like Perseus' horse. Where's then the saucy boat, Makes flexible the knees of knotted oaks And flies fled under shade, why then the thing of courage, And with an accent, tuned to self-same key, Returns to chiding fortune.' This passage, exhibiting as it does thought and eloquence in overpowering conjunction with the poetical element, is a specimen of what Mr. Hunt means by 'poetry in its compound state,' as distinct from poetry in its essence; and accordingly it is not one of those which he has admitted into his collection. It will be seen now that a passage may be admired for merits distinct from its poeticalness; and that it is possible for the inferior of two passages to be the more poetical. It is but an extension of the same remark to say, that the inferior of two writers, both of whom have chosen to write in verse, may be the more poetical. One writer of verse may have more of the strictly poetical element in his genius than another, and yet be in all other respects a mere weakling in comparison; not nearly so able a man, not capable of producing nearly so great an effect. In reading poetry, people are apt to take it for granted that the passages which elicit their applause owe this effect to their poeticalness; or, rather, they do not recognise the possibility of a writer of verse displaying a genius of a different kind from the genius of a poet. Yet we are inclined to suspect that the passages which impress the majority of readers are rarely those in which the poetical element predominates. The passages, for instance, which are in current use as quotations, gracing public speeches and doing duty in private conversation, appear to us to owe their currency generally to their point. In fact, those passages from the poets will be most current for which there exists a social demand'; and the kind of passages for which such a demand exists are those which contain |