THE age in which we live has been fruitful of poetical works; we may venture to say, that it has been fruitful of poets. There has been no period, we believe, of our literature, since the age of Elizabeth, that has been marked by such an overflow of poetry. For although, through the whole of the intervening time, we may observe that the vein of poetry has been prevalent in the English nation, (we do not now speak of our own before that incorporation of the literature of the two countries, which the last half century has witnessed,) although, on looking back, we recognise at every step familiar and honourable, and some illustrious names of the English Parnassus, yet we find at no time so many together of high distinction. And least of all do we find any number at one time; we find, indeed, few altogether to whom the language of Verse is the language of Imagination and Passion. At no other period was the whole literature of the land tinged, coloured, and vivified with poetry. It will be matter of curious speculation to those who shall write the later history of English literature, to trace out the causes, while they mark the periods of the different appearances which our Poetry has put on; and to explain how a people, adapted in their character for Poetry, and at all times loving it in all its shapes, should have departed frequently so far from

its genuine character, and from its impassioned spirit. In Milton, the Power of Poetry seemed to expire; not merely because no voice like his was heard, when his own voice had ceased; but because the very purposes of Poetry seemed to be changed; and the demesnes of verse to be subjected to other faculties, and the sceptre passed into unlineal hands. Milton, like his great predecessors, drew his Poetry from the depths of his own spirit brooding over Nature and Human Life. But for the race that succeeded, it seemed as if a veil had fallen between Nature and the Poet's eyes; as if that world, which by its visible glory feeds inspiration, had, like the City of Ad, been wrapped in darkness from the eyes of men, and they had known of it only in surviving traditions. Excepting Thomson alone, who is there among our Poets, in the space between that race which died in Milton, and the age of Poetry which has since sprung up almost with our own generation-who among them is there that seems to stand beholding the world of Nature and of Man, and chanting to men the voice of his visions, a strain that, like a bright reflection of lovely imagery, discloses to the minds of others the impressions that fall beautiful and numberless on his own? Even Collins, pure, sweet, and etherealthough his song in its rapture commerces with the skies, and though a

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wild and melancholy beauty from his own spirit passes upon all the forms of nature and of life that he touches -though there might seem to be, therefore, a perfect inspiration in his Poetry, yet does he not rather give to nature than receive from her? Does he speak under the strong constraint of a passion drawn from the living world, and though changed and exalted in the poet's mind, yet bearing with it, as it rushes out in his song, the imperishable elements from which it was composed? Or does it not rather seem to be the voice of a spirit which does not feed on the breath of this world, but has thinly veiled from human apprehension the thoughts and feelings of its own spiritual being, in imagery of that world which is known to men? And of that imagery how much is supplied to him from other Poets? We dare not say that nature was veiled from his sight; the feeling in which he speaks is so tender, native, and pure. He has caught from her hues and ethereal forms; but surely we may say, that he does not speak as a passionate lover of nature. He does not speak as one to whom nature, in all her aspects and moods, is health and life; whose soul by delighted verse is wedded to the world; but by the force of its own inherent creative power changes into new shapes, and brings forth into new existence, its own impressions from outward creation.

A generation of poets has appeared in our day, who have gone back to Nature; and have sought the elements of Poetry immediately in the world of Nature and of human life. Cowper was perhaps the first. The charm of his Poetry is a pure, innocent, lovely mind, delighting itself in pure, innocent and lovely Nature ;the freshness of the fields, the fragrance of the flowers, breathes in his verse. His own delight in simple, happy, rural life, is there; and we are delighted, as, with happy faces, and with endeared familiar love, we walk ed by his side, and shared with him in his pleasures. How shall we speak of Burns? Of him whose poetry, so full of himself, is almost one impassioned strain of delight in Nature, and in the life he drew from her breast? Of him, ploughman as he was, whose ennobling songs have fed with

thought, and lifted up with passion, the minds of the high-born and the learned? But of all the Poets who now occupy the places of eminence in the literature of the island, many and high in talents as they are, it may be said generally, that the great character of their Poetry is, that return to the great elementary sources of Poetry; to the world of Nature and human life. Wordsworth, searching deeply in his own spirit, the laws of passion, and lavishing eloquence to delineate nature with almost a lover's fondness; Scott, the painter of all he sees, and of all that his imagination has seen, who has brought back departed years, and clothed them in the shape and colours of real life; Southey, with wild and creative power, multiplying before our sight visions from unreal worlds, but making for them a dwelling-place of the beautiful and mighty scenes of our own, and ever touching their fanciful natures with pure and gentle feeling, springing up from the deep fountains of human loves; Campbell, who seemingly speaks but to embody ecstacy in words, touching, and but touching, the forms of nature and the passions of men, with a pencil of light; Moore, full of delight, and breathing in enchanting words and verse his own delight, through all ears and hearts; Byron, who-but suffice it for the present to say, that all these, and many other writers of genius, though of less fame, their contemporaries, have filled their Poetry with the passionate impressions which have been flung from the face and bosom of Nature upon their spirits, or have risen up to them in strong sympathy with the affections and passions of other men, or yet deeplier from their own. Though there may be much in the Poetry which this age has produced, which will be condemned as false to Nature; and more, far more, which must be censured and rejected, as violating the severe and high canons of Art-yet this must be admitted, we think, as a comprehensive description, as its great and honourable distinction, that it is full to overflowing of the love of the works of God.

The great difference between the Poetry of Milton and that of our own day, is the severe obedience to an intellectual law which governed his