I said, under the impression that I denied to Pope the name of poet, I must disclaim his approbation; I did not say so. Pope is a true poet; in his own order he stands amongst the foremost; only, that order is the second, not the first. In the mastery of his materials, which are words, in the plastic power of expression, he is scarcely surpassed. His melody-I do not say his harmony, which is a much higher thing—is unquestionable. There is no writer from whom so many of those sparkling, epigrammatic sentences, which are the staple commodities of quotation, are introduced into conversation; none who can be read with more pleasure, and even profit. He has always a masculine fancy; more rarely, imagination. But you look in vain for the truths which come from a large heart and a seeing eye; in vain for the "thoughts that breathe and the words that burn;" in vain for those flashes of truth, which, like the lightning in a dark night, make all luminous, open out unsuspected glories of tree and sky and building, interpret us to ourselves, and "body forth the shapes of things unknown;" truths which are almost prophetic. Who has not read his Essay on Man, again and again? And yet it is but the philosophy of Bolingbroke, melodiously expressed in rhyme; whereas the office of Poetry is not to

make us think accurately, but feel truly. And his Rape of the Lock, which seems to me the one of all his works that most deserves the name of Poetry, the nearest approach to a creation of the fancy, describes aristocratic society, which is uniform, polished, artificial, and out of which a mightier master of the art than Pope could scarcely have struck the notes of true passion. Moreover, its machinery, the Rosicrucian fancies of sylphs and gnomes, is but machinery, lifeless. If you compare Shakspeare's Ariel or Puck, things alive, preternatural, and yet how natural! with these automatons, you will feel the difference between a living creation and cleverly moved puppet work. Throughout you have thought, not imagination; intellect, not intuition.

I read you last time Pope's estimate of his own art; now, contrast it with the conceptions formed of Poetry by men whom I would place in the first order.

First, let Burns speak. The spirit of Scottish poesy has appeared to him, and given him his commission. She says

"I saw thee seek the sounding shore,
Delighted with the dashing roar;

Or when the North his fleecy store

Drove through the sky,

I saw grim Nature's visage hoar,

Struck thy young eye.

"Or when the deep, green-mantled earth,
Warm-cherished ev'ry flow'ret's birth,
And joy and music pouring forth

In every grove,—

I saw thee eye the gen'ral mirth,

With boundless love."

Observe that exquisite account of the true poetic or creative power, which comes from love, the power of sympathy with the happiness of all kinds of being "I saw thee eye the general mirth with boundless love!"

Wordsworth shall speak next. I select his Sonnet to Haydon. You remember poor Haydon's tragic end. He died by his own hand, disappointed because the world had not appreciated nor understood his paintings. It had been well for Haydon had he taken to heart the lesson of these lines, pregnant with manly strength for every one, poet or teacher, who is striving to express deep truths for which the men of his generation are not prepared.

And remark, merely by the way, in this sonnet, Wordsworth's corroboration of the view I have placed before you, that Poetry is a something to which words are the accidental, not by any means the essential form.

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"High is our calling, friend! Creative Art,
(Whether the instrument of words she use,

Or pencil pregnant with ethereal hues,)
Demands the service of a mind and heart,

Though sensitive, yet, in their weakest part,
Heroically fashioned-to infuse

Faith in the whispers of the lonely Muse,
While the whole world seems adverse to desert.
And, oh! when Nature sinks, as oft she may,
Through long-lived pressure of obscure distress,
Still to be strenuous for the bright reward,
And in the soul admit of no decay,
Brook no continuance of weak-mindedness-
Great is the glory, for the strife is hard!"

We will next listen to the account given us by Milton, of the conditions under which Poetry is possible,-lofty and majestic, as we should expect from him:

"This is not to be obtained but by devout prayer to that Eternal Spirit that can enrich with all utterance and knowledge, and sends his seraphim with the hallowed fire of his altar, to touch and purify the lips of whom he pleases. To this must be added industrious and select reading, steady observation, and insight into all seemly and generous acts and affairs."

Tennyson shall close this brief list, with what he thinks the poet's calling:

"The poet in a golden clime was born,

With golden stars above;

Dower'd with the hate of hate, the scorn of scorn,

The love of love."

That is, the Prophet of Truth receives for his dower the scorn of men in whose breasts scorn dwells; hatred from men who hate; while his reward is in the gratitude and affection of men who seek the truth which they love, more eagerly than the faults which their acuteness can blame.

"He saw through life and death, through good and ill, He saw through his own soul,

The marvel of the everlasting will,

An open scroll,

"Before him lay."

And again:

"Thus truth was multiplied on truth: the world

Like one great garden show'd,

And thro' the wreaths of floating dark upcurled
Rare sunrise flow'd.

"And Freedom rear❜d in that august sunrise,

Her beautiful, bold brow,

When rites and forms before his burning eyes

Melted like snow."

Rare gifts of nature: power to read the "open secret of the universe;" the apostleship of light, truth, liberty; the faculty of discerning the life and meaning which underlie all forms: this is Tennyson's notion of a poet. You have heard the master-spirits discoursing of their art. Now if after these, you turn to Pope's conception again, you will feel there is a descent as into