Uncultured Taste.

Who loves to wander o'er romantic plains,
Will likewise love the bard's descriptive strains;
Who loves to listen to the feathered throng,
Enraptur'd hears the poet raise his song.

*

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*That mind possesses the seeds of taste, and frequently of immitative genius, which is powerfully impressed by the diversified appearances of nature which is soothed, delighted, and aroused, by the valley, the lawn, the wilderness, the mountain, the rivulet, and the ocean; which listens with correspondent emotions to the whisper of the breeze, and to the howling of the midnight storm. The sense of beauty and of grandeur is peculiar to man. The herd in common with him sensually enjoy the seasons as they roll. They repose upon the bank and beneath the shade of the tree; they receive their nourishment from the pasture and the stream; but man only perceives the images of beauty and sublimity in the skies and in the objects which surround him.

The pastoral is generally the most delightful species of poetry to youthful genius. Smitten with the love of nature, her poetical enthusiast dwells unwearied on the pages of those who have depicted her charms; he roves with delight through the divine Georgics,--through Milton's descriptive scenes,---through the Seasons of Thomson and the Task of Cowper: He adopts the language of the bard of the Castle of Indolence.

I care not Fortune what you me deny;

You cannot rob me of free Nature's grace,
You cannot shut the windows of the sky,
Thro' which Aurora shews her brightening face;
You cannot bar my constant feet to trace

The woods and lawns by living stream at eve.

Genius the Gift of Heaven.

Judgment to all in every state is given, But Genius is the rarest boon of heaven.

The world's small limits can but few contain, [reign; Who more than worlds, hold in their boundless Only an age can give a giant birth,

Then more than earthquakes shake the solid earth.

Taste is confin'd to rules, it moves in chains, Genius those fetters and those rules disdains; * 200

The "Farmer's Boy" is a fine exhibition of untutored genius. It discovers the powerful influence which the scenes of nature have upon the feeling bosom. The descriptions which it contains are accurate, but they are inferior to those of Burns in a glowing and exciting warmth. ---Cowper, in the fourth book of his Task, beautifully describes the sensations of his early days, when he began to feel the inspiration of the Muse :--

My very dreams were rural; rural too
The first-born efforts of my youthful muse,
Sporting and jingling her poetic bells:
Ere yet the ear was mistress of their powers

No Bard could please me but whose lyre was tun'd
To nature's Praises. Heroes and their feats

Fatigu'd me, never weary of the pipe

Of Tityrus, assembling as he sung,

The rustic throng beneath his favourite beech.

Then Milton had indeed a poet's charms :

New to my taste his Paradise surpass'd
The struggling efforts of my boyish tongue
To speak its excellence.

* If we examine the greatest works of genius that have

Its Impetuosity.

No bands can hold her when she upward springs,
No storm can stay the thunder of her wings,
O'er fields of blood she takes her wandering flight,
And calls from Death the shrieking ghosts of Night.
When Homer wrote no critic's laws confin'd,
The outstretch'd genius of his soaring mind;
He look'd on Nature, Nature's voice obey'd,
And snatch'd that glory which can never fade;

appeared in the world, we will find that they were all writ-
ten without attention to the rules or directions of any critic.
Milton, though he had Aristotle's writings full in his re-
membrance, nobly despised them. To impose laws upon
Genius, is like hoppling an Arabian courser. After Aris-
totle wrote his Rhetorick and Poetics, no second Homer,
no second Sophocles appeared. The greatest works of
Rome were written before the art of poetry existed.---
"Imitation (says Dr. Young) is inferiority co nfessed
emulation is superiority contested or denied; imitation is
servile, emulation generous; that fetters, this fires; that
may give a name, this a name immortal. This made Athens
to succeeding ages the rule of Taste, and the standard of
perfection. Her men of genius struck fire against each
other;
and kindled by conflict into glories which no time
can extinguish. We thank Eschuylus for Sophocles and
Parrhasius for Zeuxis; Emulation for both. That bids us
fly the general fault of imitators; bids us not be struck
by the loud report of former fame, as with a knell which
damps the spirits, but as with a trumpet which inspires
ardour to rival the renowned."

The Genius of Shakespear.

The subtle stagyrite then weav'd his rules,
And form'd a race of imitating fools.

210

Hark! from the heath I hear some footstep dread, Which beats the earth with hollow sounding tread; Hark! from the tomb a voice of terror breaks, The air breathes cold, the ground beneath me shakes,

A ghost appears, the moon withdraws her beams, And all the thickets sound with frightful screams; The critic's voice is now as hush'd as death,

His eyes are fix'd, we scarcely hear his breath; Great Shakespear* now commands the midnight hour,

And o'er the soul extends his dreadful power. 220

name.

*So much has been said and written concerning this wonderful man, that no one can add to his praises, and no one without arrogance can attempt to detract from them. In the list of Genius, Shakespeare is, perhaps, the brightest His superiority of invention gives him his superiority of genius. His limited education allowed him little opportunity of being acquainted with the writers of Greece and of Rome. His soul was kindled by no borrowed fire. He was visited by no beams but those of the sun of Nature. In the smaller accomplishments of the poet, he is often times deficient; but the richness of his description, his propriety of sentiment, his accuracy and variation of characters, and above all that inventive power which calls an ideal world into existence, mark the great original.

Richard---Macbeth--- Hamlet.

When in the tempest rais'd by Prosper's hand
He waves o'er Nature his commanding wand;
When on the field of Bosworth, Richard lay,
And horrors shudder'd at approaching day,
The ghosts of York hung o'er his trembling bed
And breath'd their vengeance on their murderer's
head;

When Ariel sings and moves amid the air,

When Banquo rises to the vacant chair;

When Hamlet's ghost, the bell then beating one,*

Stalks pale and sullen by his warlike son.

230

Then gloom and terror throw their mantle round,
And every power lies still in awe profound.

Where Auracauna nurs'd her warlike race,
Wild as the tempest, fleeting in the chace,
Ercilla pour'd his bold and wandering strain,
The pride of Genius and the boast of Spain.
When rest succeeded to the toils of war,
And in the sky appear'd the evening star,

*Horatio....Well, sit we, down,

And let us hear Bernardo speak of this.
Bernardo....Last night of all,

When yon same star that's westward from the pole,
Had made his course to illume that part of heaven
Where now it burns, Marcellus, and myself,

The bell then beating one--

Marcellus....Peace, break thee off, look where it comes again.

HAMLET.