with a Scotch or Irish accent, and it will be perceived that the metre still remains, though the accent will be entirely varied. Accent, however, as well as quantity, is instrumental in generating the variety of English verse; and the true understanding of rhythm embraces their combined effect. Madame de Staël appears to forget that accent is not, like emphasis, obsequious to the sense and signification of the passage, or governed, as she expresses it, by the principal idea, but is fixed and permanent, and not under the controul of the speaker. Her phrase of "musical duration," gives that to quantity or metre alone which belongs to rhythm, which embraces the effect of both accent, pause, and quantity in combination, and derives its musical modulation principally from the elevation and depression of tone which marks the variations of accent. It is in the dactyl and spondee that the quantity of the ancient measure so much excels our own, nothing being found to express lofty sentiments and heroic action with so much grace and effect; in the ready combinations, however, of the iambic and trochaic the English language will be found to possess some advantages of structure over ancient as well as most modern languages, which it owes, perhaps, in some degree, to its richness in monosyllables.

To Klopstock German poetry is indebted for the banishment of the Alexandrine verse, and the substitution of the iambic verse without rhyme. The despotism of this measure seems, in Madame de Staël's opinion, to be one of the causes of the depressed state of French poetry. The truth perhaps may be, that neither the genius of the nation, nor the narrow courtly idiom of its language, are capable of a loftier pitch, or they would easily have burst their artificial fetters. There is on French literature the stamp of that low ambition which aims in all things to accomplish by artifice that which genius and virtue resolve to conquer by desert.

The succeeding chapters on German poetry, always making allowance for something of reverie and mystical profundity which enters into all the disquisitions of this writer where sentiment or soul is concerned, contain many admirable reflections. specimen of that metaphysical rhapsody in which she is so apt to indulge, we present the following passage.

As a

"De beaux vers ne sont pas de la poésie; l'inspiration dans les arts est une source inépuisable qui vivifie depuis la première parole jusqu'à la dernière: amour, patrie, croyance, tout doit être divinisé dans l'ode, c'est l'apothéose du sentiment: il faut, pour concevoir la vraie grandeur de la poésie lyrique, errer par la rêverie dans les régions éthérées, oublier le bruit de la terre en écoutant l'harmonie

céleste, et considérer l'univers entier comme un symbole des éinotions de l'ame.

“L'énigme de la destinée humaine n'est de rien pour la plupart des hommes; le poëte l'a toujours présente à l'imagination. L'idée de la mort, qui décourage les esprits vulgaires, rend le génie plus audacieux, et le mélange des beautés de la nature et des terreurs de la destruction excite je ne sais quel délire de bonheur et d'effroi, sans lequel l'on ne peut ni comprendre ni décrire le spectacle de ce monde. La poésie lyrique ne raconte rien, ne s'astreint en rien à la succession des temps, ni aux limites des lieux; elle plane sur les pays et sur les siècles; elle donne de la durée à ce moment sublime pendant lequel l'homme s'élève au-dessus des peines et des plaisirs de la vie. Il se sent au milieu des merveilles du monde comme un être à la fois créateur et créé, qui doit mourir et qui ne peut cesser d'être, et dont le cœur tremblant et fort en même temps s'enorgueillit en lui-même et se prosterne devant Dieu." (Vol. I. p. 278, 279.)

It is in this work of Madame de Staël that religion appears in the character of one of the fine arts. "The soul of poetry is the religious sentiment;" but what this religious sentiment is, or whence it is borrowed, it is difficult to discover. Homer, according to Madame de Staël, " was full of religion," and "the Bible is full of poetry." She guards us, however, against supposing her to mean that there are fictions in the Bible, or doctrines in Homer; the result seems to be, that religion is that enthusiasm which concentrates different sentiments in the same focus, the incense offered by earth to heaven; and which unites the one to the other.

The characteristic differences between the classic and the romantic poetry, between that which is transplanted, and that which is indigenous, that which lays us under the despotism of foreign rules, and that which flourishes under the influence of our religion and our institutions, that which is confined to the cultivated classes alone, and that which affects and interests the mass, are conveyed in very accurate and sensible terms. As soon as the Germans began to tune their language to poetry, they turned their attention wholly to these indigenous resources which are inexhaustible; because being contained in their history, their traditions, their habits, and their institutions, they are susceptible of endless diversification. The trunk is yet young from which their first poetical thoughts and emotions sprang, and still continues to send forth living shoots of sentiment and imagery. It is the peculiar advantage of materials so derived to be for ever susceptible of accession and improvement, while imitations of the classic model remove from the contemplation that ideal excellence to which the aspirations of genius are always ascending.

The opinions of Madame de Staël on the poetical productions of Wieland, Klopstock, Goëthe, Schiller, and Bürger, are full of that enthusiasm which is so much the theme of her admiration in others; they make a display of considerable energy of thought and eloquence; they afford also very pleasing proofs of a disposition to praise rather than to censure. The canvass, however, is so charged with superlatives, that the varieties of shade have given place to one tone of colour, and the effect has, in consequence, become tedious and fatiguing. Of criticising criticism there would be no end: we shall therefore trouble our readers with very few observations on this part of the work.

Of the sacred poem of Klopstock we entertain sentiments which may be peculiar to ourselves. The transcendant subject of man's redemption seems to us to have so inshrined itself in the simplicity of the Gospel, as not to be capable of a removal without an immediate desecration. The testimony which has revealed it was the only narrative fit to record it; and any representation of it for the sake of that pleasure, which all critics agree must be the primary end of all poetry, is so abhorrent from its character and purpose, and so affronting to its dignity, as to shock the feelings of the sincerely pious. We may put it thus: the reader must either believe, or deny, or doubt the Gospel history. If he believes, then the transaction comes so home to himself, that it is impossible for him to bring to the subject the dispositions adapted to the impressions of poetry. It is no longer a feeling of sympathy with the sufferings, or hopes, or fears of others that actuates him; of that sympathy which is the only medium through which epic or tragic composition ought to work its way to the soul. It is the mimicry of his own hopes, fears, and agitations, in a matter of the deepest personal concern. Events which are still operative, and involve the future fate of the reader, can hardly be to him a subject for poetry: if he denies the Gospel history, then the whole subject as to him bottoms in an imposture, and cannot present to his mind the smallest interest': if he doubts the Gospel history, then, as far as his doubt partakes of belief, the event is too personal for poetic effect: as far as it inclines towards denial, the subject sinks in dignity and importance.

The meek and humble condition in which our Saviour visited the earth accords but ill with the views of the poet. If some acts of his life were of a splendid character, as the display of his omnipotence in the interdiction of the storm; yet the scene of humiliation which it pleased him to pass through, the press of human misery which encompassed his walks,-not misery upon the great scale, but individual wretchedness in its squalidest forms,

the meek and holy plainness of his manners, the spiritual nakedness of his thoughts, and the direct opposition of his principles to all to which the world has given the stamp of heroism, have made it impossible to represent him as he was, without abandoning the principal sources of excitation on which poetry depends; while to represent him otherwise than he was, involves the breach of a truth too solemn to be tampered with for the sake of the pleasur able ends of poetry.

When we contemplate this gracious scheme of God through the medium of scriptural prophecy, meanness is changed into might, and the low estate upon earth of the Saviour of the world adds wonderfully to the splendour of the result; but to disclose this result inspiration alone is adequate, and only those who have been allowed to draw the curtain of the sanctuary were equal to the celestial task,

Of religious poetry in general we think no less favourably than Madame de Staël; and perhaps she will agree with us that there is a holy and reverend limit which piety forbids the muse to transgress; if she employs fiction, or ventures to describe with exact, ness, she is in equal danger. All our celebrations of the acts or attributes of God and his Son should have a character of infinity; splendid and awful generalities should usher in the pomp of their perfections; and the sublimity of the poet should consist rather in what he leaves to be felt and imagined, than in what he relates or describes. Above all it is important, and Madame de Staël will not disdain the remark, to distinguish between religious poetry and a poetical religion,

The taste of Winckelmann, and the critical excellence of Les sing, are lightly and interestingly touched by Madame de Staël; with the latter of which celebrated Germans we are the more disposed to be pleased on account of his preference of the English to French literature. On the merits of Goethe, whose principal work, the Sorrows of Werter, has happily passed the meridian of its celebrity, she expatiates with such an affectionate warmth, that, whether just or not, we will not violate the repose which his reputation has thus found by any rude remarks.

The second of these volumes is almost wholly taken up with the subject of the German drama. As the handmaid to the genius of that country, in this difficult and important branch of poetry, she has displayed a very deep acquaintance with the subject; and if we find it often impossible to agree with her in sentiment, it is because, and we feel regret in making the confession, we have a great deal less sentiment, or perhaps less of what Madame de Staël would call soul, than is necessary to exalt us to a level with the true Ger

anan taste. Some observations in her introductory chapter convey very distinct notions of the differences, with their causes, between the French and the German theatre.

"Il est singulier qu'entre ces deux peuples les Français soient celui qui exige la gravité la plus soutenue dans le ton de la tragé die; mais c'est précisément parceque les Français sont plus accessibles à la plaisanterie qu'ils ne veulent pas y donner lieu, tandis que rien ne dérange l'imperturbable sérieux des Allemands: c'est toujours dans son ensemble qu'ils jugent une pièce de théâtre, et ils attendant, pour la blâmer comme pour l'applaudir, qu'elle soit finie. Les impressions des Français sont plus promptes; et c'est en vain qu'on les préviendroit qu'une scène comique est destinée à faire ressortir une situation tragique, ils se moqueroient de l'une sans attendre l'autre; chaque detail doit être pour eux aussi intéressant que le tout ils ne font pas crédit d'un moment au plaisir qu'ils attendent des beaux-arts.

“La différence du théâtre français et du théâtre allemand peut s'expliquer par celle du caractère des deux nations; mais il se joint à ces différences naturelles des oppositions systématiques dont il importe de connoître la cause. Ce que j'ai déjà dit sur la poésie classique et romantique s'applique aussi aux pièces de théâtre. Les tragédies puisées dans la mythologie sont d'une toute autre nature que les tragédies historiques; les sujets tirés de la fable étoient si connus, l'intérêt qu'ils inspiroient étoit si universel, qu'il suffisoit de les indiquer pour frapper d'avance l'imagination. Ce qu'il y a d'éminemment poétique dans les tragédies grecques, intervention des dieux et l'action de la fatalité, rend leur marche beaucoup plus facile; le détail des motifs, le développement des caractères, la diversité des faits, deviennent moins nécessaires quand l'évènement est expliqué par une puissance sur-naturelle; le miracle abrège tout. Aussi l'action de la tragédie, chez les Grecs, estelle d'une étonnante simplicité; la plupart des évènements sont prévus et même annoncés dès le commencement: c'est une cérémonie religieuse qu'une tragédie grecque. Le spectacle se donnoit en l'honneur des dieux, et des hymnes interrompus par des dialogues et des récits peignoient tantôt les dieux cléments, tantôt les dieux terribles, mais toujours le destin planant sur la vie de l'homme. Lorsque ces mêmes sujets ont été transportés au théâtre français, nos grands poëtes leur ont donné plus de variété; ils ont multiplié les incidents, ménagé les surprises, et reserré le nœud. Il falloit en effet suppléer de quelque manière à l'intérêt national et religieux que les Grecs prenoient à ces pièces et que nous n'éprouvions pas; toutefois non contents d'animer les pièces grecques nous avons prêté aux personnages nos mœurs et nos sentiments, la politique et la galanterie modernes ; et c'est pour cela qu'un si grand nombre d'étrangers ne conçoivent pas l'admiration que nos chefs-d'œuvre nous inspirent. En effet, quand on les entend dans une autre langue, quand ils sont dépouillés de la beauté magique du style, on est surpris du peu d'émotion qu'ils