'Cato' is as cold as a statue, and correct enough to satisfy the most fastidious of critics. We ourselves prefer his Sir Roger de Coverley: but these things are matters of taste. With regard to Dr. Johnson's 'Irene,' we must say that it would reflect little or no credit upon any writer whatever; and that it detracts from, rather than adds to, his deservedly great reputation, is, we apprehend, universally allowed. The author, we be lieve, once adventured an opinion, that nothing which had deserved to live was forgotten. We wonder whether if he were alive, he would, (in the present state of his play) retain his old way of thinking. These general maxims are dreadfully perilous to poets' reputations, and should not be proclaimed but with due deliberation.

Moore and Lillo were writers of domestic tragedy, and with the exception perhaps of Heyword and Rowley, and we may add Southern, bear little resemblance to any of their predecessors. Theirs was a muse born without wings, but nursed amidst sin and misfortune, and fed with tears. They neither attempted to soar, nor to penetrate below the surface, but contented themselves with common calamities, every-day sorrows. Their plays are, like the Newgate Calendar, or a Coroner's inquisition, true but unpleasant. They give us an account of Mr. Beverley, who poisoned himself but the other day after his losses at hazard or rouge et noir; or they admit us into the condemned cell of a city apprentice, who has robbed his master. Their characters have all a London look; they frequent the city clubs, and breathe the air of traffic. These writers are as good as a newspaper-and no better. But

Tragedy was surely meant for other and higher things than to bring the gallows (even with its moral) upon the stage, or to reduce to dialogue the coroner's inquisition, or police reports. As in a picture, it is not always the truest imitator of nature who is the best painter; for an artist may make an unexceptionable map of the human face, and set down the features and furrows truly, and yet be unable to produce a grand work: so is the minute detail of facts, however melancholy, insufficient in itself for the purposes of good tragedy. The Muse's object is not to shock and terrify, or to show what may be better seen at the scaffold or in the hospital; but it is to please as well as move us, to elevate as well as to instruct.

1823.

ON ENGLISH POETRY.

We are not aware that any successful attempt has been made to explain the nature of Poetry, or to show by what general characteristics it is distinguished from prose. Most of the discussions upon this pleasant art have been introduced with reference to the merits of particular pieces, and avoid the general question altogether. Some are occupied in analyzing the structure of the story; some in canvassing the probability of the incidents, the truth of the characters, the purity of the diction, or the correctness of the metaphors; leaving the grand distinction between poetry and prose, as well as the component qualities of poetry itself, to the speculation of the reader. With the few who have taken a wider range, it has been usual to consider poetry merely as one of the fine arts, and to compare it accordingly with painting and music and sculpture : and as this forms, no doubt, a branch of the discussion on which we are about to enter, we may as well begin by saying a few words on this comparative view of it.

In so far, then, as Poetry may be considered as one of the fine arts, we apprehend that it is undoubtedly the first of them; since it combines nearly all the excel

lences of the other arts, with much that is peculiar to itself. It has the vivid beauty of painting, the prominence and simplicity of sculpture, and the touching cadences of music, while it outlasts them all. For Time, which presses on most things with so wasteful a force, seems to have no effect on the masterpieces of Poetry, but to render them holy. The Venus' of Apelles, and the grapes' of Zeuxis have vanished, and the music of Timotheus is gone; but the bowers of Circe still remain unfaded and the chained Prometheus' has outlived the 'Cupid' of Praxiteles and the 'brazen bull' of Perillus.

Poetry may not perhaps attain its end so perfectly as painting or sculpture; but that is because its end is so high, and its range so much extended. It deals with more varied and more remote objects, with abstract ideas and questions of intellect which are beyond the reach of the other arts. It may be considered as a moral science, operating both upon the passions and the reason, although it never, strictly speaking, addresses itself directly to the latter. It operates through the medium of words, which, however inferior, in certain cases, to colors or sounds, are far more generally available, and, in fact, perform what neither sounds nor colors can accomplish. It may indeed be truly said, that the highest object of painting and sculpture has been to translate into another language, and for the benefit of a different sense, what the imagination of the poet has already created. Almost all the treasures of Italy and Greece are copies, made by the chisel or the pencil, from elevated fable (which is poetry), or from Greek or

Hebrew verse. That they have their own peculiar hues and symmetry, does not disturb this opinion; for the original idea existed entire before, and that sprang from the imagination of the poet. Painting, in fact, as well as sculpture, is essentially a mimetic art: but poetry is not essentially, though it may be casually, imitative; and when it is so, it is imitative in a different manner, and in a less degree. As a mimetic art, it is, in one sense, inferior to the others; but it is not limited, like them to a moment of time; and it can display the characters, the manners, and, above all, the sentiments of mankind, in a way to which the others have no pretensions.

In regard to the difficult question, us to what Poetry is, it may be as well to begin by negatives; and to separate what may occasionally or accidentally aid its effect, from what is truly essential to its existence.

Poetry, then, is not necessarily eloquence, fiction, morality, description, philosophy, wit- nor even passion; although passion approaches nearest to it, when it spreads that haze before our eyes, which changes and magnifies objects from their actual and proasic size. Passion, in truth, often stimulates the imagination, and the imagination begets poetry; but it operates also upon other parts of the mind, and the result is simply pathos, indignation, — eloquence, or tears. Philosophy, again, is founded in reason, and is built up of facts and experiments, collected and massed regularly together. It is constituted entirely of realities, and is itself a thing no more to be questioned than an object that stands close before us, visible and tangible; it is always to be proved. But Poetry proceeds upon a principle utterly