would have quoted the statute against vagrants, and sent them to the stocks or the tread-mill. With him, guilt has no apology, poverty no charm, and suffering no mitigation: the loathesomeness, the paltriness, and the degradation, with which they are imbued, he describes with a force and fidelity in which nothing is softened or omitted. And then, too, his language, embodying as it does such prosaic subjects, is necessarily little more than rhymed prose; for any style of a more exalted description would have been not only inadequate, but absolutely ludicrous, like the caricature of Miltonic verse in the Splendid Shilling of Philips. And in all this, Crabbe was not only a daring innovator, but an acknowledged poet of very high order. He devoted himself to scenes, characters, and feelings, which had hitherto been fastidiously rejected; and he showed that poverty, wretchedness, and toil, had also their poetry, as well as pomp, and prosperity, and power. For the labours and sufferings of the poor at large, he did, in sad and sober earnest, what Gay accomplished for a segment of the same society in a spirit of merriment and caricature, when he described the loves and amusements of ploughmen and milk-maids. And the result was similar in both instances. The Eclogues of Gay became popular from their truthfulness, notwithstanding the lowly character of their subjects; and the delineations of Crabbe have obtained a still higher popularity, because to the same fidelity of description were added the charms of a wider variety and a more sincere and fervent enthusiasm.

As the poetry of humble life was not only reckoned low, but prosaic and unnatural, some years had to elapse before it acquired the attention it had so justly merited. While the writings of Wordsworth and Crabbe, therefore, were contending with critical obloquy, and making a progress that was almost unnoticed, the arena was comparatively unoccupied. But a poet entered upon the scene who had no such opposition to surmount. This was Sir Walter Scott, who rushed into the unclaimed territory like one of his own border warriors, and whose appearance created as strong a sensation as if he had entered into a modern contest arrayed in the panoply of the middle ages. He selected military glory for his theme,-a theme at all times too dear to the human heart, but more especially at this period, when a gigantic struggle was going on c 2

in which the fate of Europe was emperilled. This was of itself enough to have ensured him popularity, had he even laboured in the beaten track. But a still sounder policy directed him in the choice of those subjects by which the ruling principle of his poetry was to be illustrated. He equally eschewed the worn-out slings, darts, and faulchions, of the old classical warfare, and the guns, drums, and " villainous saltpetre," of the modern school—and when men might have wondered what period, or what region, remained for him, he selected a sort of neutral ground still comparatively untrodden, and which he could occupy and people at pleasure. The fierce national wars between England and Scotland were neither too antiquated for the sympathies of the present generation, nor too recent to awaken former animosities; they abounded with heroes and stirring events that were admirably suited for the purposes of a martial poet; and they, as yet, remained unsung, except in those rude ballads which had long ceased to possess a public interest. Here then Scott took his stand, and "sounded his warrison"—and it was no wonder that the harpings of his more gentle contemporaries were drowned in the loud blasts of his war-trumpet. The whole land re-echoed, and every heart leaped into double life at such inspiring music, enhanced as it was by the boldness and originality of its character. Under the mastery of the poet, the chiefs of departed ages became something more than mere poetical impersonations; their arms, their dress, even their features, were so vividly and minutely described, that they were living men of flesh and blood: we heard their measured tread, and the rustling of their robes, as they paced the hall; and we saw the very sparks that flashed from their horses' hoofs, as they spurred to the encounter. The choice of the poet also in the articles of time and place, gave him the command of a rich variety, by which he could change the scene at pleasure, and produce a fresh interest with every change. Thus, the fierce border outlaw succeeded the equally fierce, but more haughty and high-minded baron; the clans of the Gael variegated, with their tartans, the sombre monotonous ranks of the Saxons; and the pastoral and woodland landscape of the Lowlands, was alternated with the wilder and grander scenery of the Highlands. But the feverish excitement which such poetry produced could

not be lasting, and the period of re-action came when men could calmly inquire wherefore they had been so moved and delighted. And what was the result? They found that they had been allured into a semi-barbarous state of society with whose principles and modes of life they had unwittingly fraternized. The grim baronial tower and its donjon, the haughty lord and his slavish retinue, the ferocity, the nakedness, and the abjectness, of the feudal ages, had constituted the framework of that state of existence with which they had been so highly enchanted. The phosphoric brilliancy of a chivalrous fancy had been flung over the scene, so that nakedness itself had been clothed with splendour, and men whose sole occupation was plunder and massacre, had been exalted into heroes and patriots. With the feelings of men who discover that they have not only been duped, but made ridiculous, society discovered that they had been deifying that mere brute courage which is common to the animal man at large, and which the brute-like savages of an American forest were capable of appreciating as fondly, and lauding as highly, as themselves. And this unwonted fit of sober calculation was marvellously aided by the peculiar state of the political season under which it occurred. Our country was upon the close of the war, and was retiring from the strife, crowned indeed with victory, but bleeding, breathless, and exhausted, while the terrible accountbook which was now opened to her loathing view, persuaded her that military renown was not only the most profitless, but the most expensive, of all luxuries. When not only the merciless test of philosophical analysis, but the churlish spirit of political economy, was thus brought to bear upon such martial poetry, the advanced spirit, as well as the vanity and selflove of the age, was wounded by the remembrances of its former ascendancy, and the popularity of Sir Walter as a poet decreased as suddenly as it had risen. The bard of feudalism appeared as if he had been suddenly surrounded by a new and uncongenial race of beings; and he felt, that he had indeed become the "Last Minstrel," and that the age of chivalry was gone for ever.

But although society was convinced of the delusion under which it had laboured, it was not yet ripe for the abandonment if its literary follies; and, therefore, when Scott's extraordi

nary popularity had been weighed in the balance and found wanting, it was only to exchange one source of poetical excitement for another. The craving for something new was universal, and such a demand was not likely to remain ungratified; it invariably finds or creates the luxury upon which it seeks to feed. Under this powerful feeling, Lord Byron was as completely evoked from his original obscurity, as was Napoleon himself from the first subsiding elements of the French Revolution—and, like Napoleon, he came forward to astonish, overthrow, and be dethroned. Nothing too could have been more startling or original than his commencement. Other poets had

attempted to conciliate the public favour by assent and flattery; but in Byron's eyes it was valueless unless it was obtained by sheer violence, and therefore he carried it, like a conqueror, by storm. He took for his theme the worthlessness of those whom he addressed, the emptiness of their pursuits, and the hopelessness of their destinies, and branded them all with fierce and withering contempt. Such was constantly his world-defying theme, whether he spoke under the gloomy aspects of Harold, the Corsair, Lara, the Adrian Renegade, or the more sportive character of Don Juan; in every change he told society that their struggle for glory and happiness was a dream, and their fancied excellence a deceit, for that man was a ferocious, frivolous, and heartless being, as unworthy of life as he was unfitted for immortality. The universality of such a challenge prevented a reply: when the whole world was thus defied, who would throw the first stone at the maligner? And these odious and repulsive charges were delivered in far other language than that of common misanthropy. They were not only surrounded with a show of truth, but invested with a splendour of poetry that could only find a parallel in the brightest of past ages; and they were expressed with a vehement earnestness that swept before it the hearts of men, and deprived them of all power to pause or deliberate. Here was the luxury of a new sensation, for which much could be overlooked or forgiven. But there were ulterior considerations independent of mere poetic power, that gave a stronger attractiveness to such unpalatable doctrines. Each reader, for the time, was exalted above the rest of his species; and he could look down with an air of superior wisdom upon the dark valley

beneath his feet, and sneer at the earthlings who were toiling and fretting in the worthless struggle of existence. Thus the self-love of each was gratified at the expense of his fellows, and he was enabled to vent his petty scorn or hatred by a new and most overwhelming nomenclature of misanthropy. A powerful additional charm also to Byron's poetry arose from the history and personal feelings of its noble author. The lofty and isolated pinnacle upon which he stood, and the almost supernatural energy of bitterness with which he denounced and defied society, would have constituted him a demon rather than a man, so that the astonishment and admiration he at first excited would soon have been succeeded by abhorrence. But the poet declared that he had loved his species and been only recompensed with their hate-that he had trusted them and been deceived and that they had driven him from among them, and forced him to retire to that unenviable pre-eminence from which he would fain still descend and mingle with them in affectionate sympathy, but they would not—and as he announced these his wrongs, whether real or imaginary, and bewailed his banishment, it seemed at times as if "tears such as angels weep burst forth," to attest that his heart still yearned with the fondest sympathies of our nature. It was these keen sudden flashes of human feeling breaking through the darkness of his poetry, like lightning through a thunder-cloud, that invested with a glorious halo what would otherwise have been an unmitigated and forbidden gloom, so that hostility was softened, and sympathy wept over woes which had wrung from the poet's heart such throes and denunciations of agony. Here then was a cause, and an apology, for the misanthropical spirit of the poet, which exalted its most questionable attributes into beauties, and obtained for it a popularity that threw every other kind of poetry into the shade. The Byronic enthusiasm, when it had reached its height, was displayed by the public in correspondent exhibitions. It was thought, that a man who assassinated his neighbour in the dark, might have valid apologies for the deed: an infidel might elope with the wife of a Turk, and slay the unreasonable husband who presumed to punish her; and a pirate, who scuttled ships, and cut throats without compunction, might have his "thousand crimes" redeemed by his one virtue of domestic affection. All these were