GEORGE CROLY.

"A great profusion of things, which are splendid or valuable in themselves, is magnificent. The starry heaven, though it occurs so very frequently to our view, never fails to excite an idea of grandeur. This cannot be owing to anything in the stars themselves, separately considered. The number is certainly the cause; the apparent disorder augments the grandeur, for the appearance of care is highly contrary to our ideas of magnificence. Besides, the stars lie in such apparent confusion, as makes it impossible, on ordinary occasions, to reckon them. This gives them the advantage of a sort of infinity. In works of art, this kind of grandeur, which consists in multitude, is to be very cautiously admitted; because a profusion of excellent things is not to be attained, or with too much difficulty; and because, in many cases, this splendid confusion would destroy all use, which should be attended to in most of the works of art with the greatest care; besides, it is to be considered, that unless you can produce an appearance of infinity by your disorder, you will have disorder only without magnificence. There are, however, a sort of fireworks, and some other things, that in this way succeed well, and are truly grand. There are also many descriptions in the poets and orators which owe their sublimity to a richness and profusion of images, in which the mind is so dazzled, as to make it impossible to attend to that exact coherence and agreement of the allusions which we should require on every other occasion.”—BURKE.

THE genius of this poet is of the boldest and most splendid character; he displays in all his writings, the most trifling not excepted, a profusion of intellectual wealth. Brought up and nurtured amid wild hillscenery, his mind naturally partakes of its grandeur and sublimity; and even his vast Oriental researches and predilections have not entirely subdued the

ruggedness of his conceptions. Eastern luxuriance and Eastern voluptuousness have not wholly taken possession of his soul; there still remains the fresh, free, vigorous strength of a mountaineer,

His poems will never become popular; they are too gorgeous and magnificent for the multitude; they pall upon the taste; the mind is not ever in a mood to enjoy their massive splendour; it cannot always be on the stretch; it seeks for simpler and sweeter strains. The wild blast of the hurricane-the startling flash of the lightning-the tremendous roll of thunders-the bellowings of ocean-do not always please; they elevate, indeed, the thoughts, but they soon weary the senses; they expand and dilate the being; the imagination is fired; we admire the terrible confusion, and even love for awhile the loud crashings of the storm, but we soon turn with joy to the softer features of an evening landscape beneath an Italian sky; and as the traveller, in the midst of the sublime scenery of the North Cape, with an eye fully capable of taking in all its grandeur and glory, often casts his spirit back to those less rugged and more lovely spots of his own beautiful isle, so do we turn from the more brilliant gushes of minstrelsy to the chaster and humbler music of the heart with a feeling of delight and rapture.

The love of grandeur and magnificence is the ruling passion of our poet, and is discoverable in every production of his lyre; and it is to this very characteristic that they will owe their unpopularity: they will never move the people; they will never enchain the mind of the nation; their rich, powerful music will fall unheeded. To gain their ear and heart, it wants something more lively and simple; sweetness is the charm

that wins them. This is not only true with the writings of poet and of orator, but it is also true with regard to painters. It is not the sublime sketch of the "Last Judgment" that enchants, but the humbler drawing of some rural festival: beauty, and not splendour, is the idol. There is, however, no question as to which is higher in the scale of intellectual greatness; the tremendous conception of the future desolation requires a stronger and a loftier stretch of mind than some picture of an English landscape; and it needs a greater bard to sweep the deep, sinewy chords of eternity than the trembling strings of earthly sweets. And yet the latter shall be the favourite with the many; and, indeed, this may be seen in the case of Milton and Cowper; for although the former is so much applauded, and that, too, deservedly, yet we very much doubt if he is as much read as the sainted bard of Olney.

Had our author been less gifted, he would doubtless have had more numerous admirers; there is too much dazzling splendour for the populace; had he less, he would have been better known. He indeed works powerfully on a few master-minds; to them he gives new impulses; but with the multitude, he, as it were, has no existence; the names and songs of his humbler brethren are in every one's mouth-they are household words.

Paris in 1815 is Croly's principal poem: it has more of the solemn and stately grandeur than the gorgeous; there is a lofty tone running through the whole. His cities are marble; his people, moving statues. It is prefaced by a splendid dissertation on the French revolution; it is in perfect accordance with what follows. How characteristic of its author is the following

description of the worship in Notre Dame; and then the reference to the simpler service of the village churches of England :

The organ peals; at once, as some vast wave,
Bend to the earth the mighty multitude,
Silent as those pale emblems of the grave
In monumental marble round them strewed.
Low at the altar, forms in cope and hood

Superb with gold-wrought cross and diamond twine,
Life in their upturned visages subdued,

Toss their untiring censers round the shrine,
Where on her throne of clouds the Virgin sits divine.
But only kindred faith can fitly tell

Of the high ritual at that altar done,

When clashed the arms, and rose the chorus-swell,
Then sank, as if beneath the grave 'twere gone;
Till broke the spell the mitred abbot's tone,
Deep, touching, solemn, as he stood in prayer
A dazzling form upon its topmost stone,

And raised with hallowed look, the Host in air,

And blessed with heavenward hand the thousand kneeling there. Pompous! but love I not such pomps of prayer;

Ill bends the heart 'mid mortal luxury.

Rather let me the meek devotion share,

Where in their silent glens and thickets high,
England, thy lone and lowly chapels lie.
The spotless table by the eastern wall,

The marble, rudely traced with names gone by,
The pale-eyed pastor's simple, fervent call;

Those deeper wake the heart, where heart is all in all.
If pride be evil; if the highest sighs

Must come from humblest hearts; if man must turn
Full on his wreck of nature to be wise;

If there be blessedness for those that mourn;
What speak the purple gourds that round us burn?
Ask of that kneeling crowd whose glances stray

So restless round on altar, vestment, urn;
Can guilt weep there? can mild repentance pray?
Ask, when this moment's past, how runs their Sabbath-day!
Their Sabbath-day! alas! to France that day

Comes not; she has a day of looser dress,
A day of thicker crowded ball and play,
A day of folly's hotter, ranker press;
She knoweth not its hallowed happiness,
Its eve of gathered hearts and gentle cheer.

Throughout the whole of this there is dignity: itis deeply coloured with the stateliness of his own mind. There is not a line which is not full and sonorous, we had almost said pompous. Even when the poet alludes to the religious peasantry of England, and the beautiful and sunny spots on which so many of their churches stand-when he speaks of the calm, unruffled peacetheir hours, so soft and spirit-like, of Sabbatic resttheir fervid aspirations after the pure and holy-their simple but heart-breathing services—their sigh of deep contrition-their plea for pardon their entire reliance on Jesus-their spiritual hymns, we have the same majestic roll of music; there is little or no diminution in its solemn movement; there is no sweet, low pause; no gentle hush. The gorgeous ceremonies of the apostate church are more in accordance with his muse than the lovelier ritual of our own. And even here he is not so much at home as in pictures of sullen grandeur. His best poems remind one of the setting of the sun amid a brooding storm; the cry of the sea-gull-the dark clouds-ever and anon a streak of bluish white-the crimson and the gold in the western sky-the tempestuous breeze the lashing of the waters, often combine to form a scene of wild and strange magnificence.

I had a vision: evening sat in gold
Upon the bosom of a boundless plain,

Covered with beauty; garden, field, and fold,
Studding the billowy sweep of ripening grain,
Like islands in the purple summer main,
And temples of pure marble met the sun,

That tinged their white shafts with a golden stain,
And sounds of rustic joy, and labour done,
Hallowed the lovely hour, until her pomp was gone.
The plain was hushed in twilight, as a child
Slumbers beneath its slow drawn canopy;

But sudden tramplings came, and voices wild,