conduct of the celestial part of his story is very exquisite. Wherever God is represented as directly acting as Creator, without any exhibition of his own essence, Milton adopts the simplest and sternest language of the Scriptures. He ventures upon no poetic diction, no amplification, no pathos, no affection. It is truly the Voice or the Word of the Lord coming to, and acting on, the subject Chaos. But, as some personal interest was demanded for the purposes of poetry, Milton takes advantage of the dramatic representation of God's address to the Son, the Filial Alterity, and in those addresses slips in, as it were by stealth, language of affection, or thought, or sentiment. Indeed, although Milton was undoubtedly a high Arian in his mature life, he does in the necessity of poetry give a greater objectivity to the Father and the Son, than he would have justified in argument. He was very wise in adopting the strong anthropomorphism of the Hebrew Scriptures at once. Compare the Paradise Lost with Klopstock's Messiah, and you will learn to appreciate Milton's

judgment and skill quite as much as his genius.

The conquest of India by Bacchus might afford scope for a very brilliant poem of the fancy and the understanding.

It is not that the German can express external imagery more fully than English; but that it can flash more images at once on the mind than the English can. As to mere power of expression, I doubt whether even the Greek surpasses the English. Pray, read a very pleasant and acute dialogue in Schlegel's Athenæum between a German, a Greek, a Roman, Italian, and a Frenchman, on the merits of their respective languages.

I wish the naval and military officers who write accounts of their travels, would just spare us their sentiment. The Magazines introduced this cant. Let these gentlemen read and imitate the old captains and admirals, as Dampier, &c.

October 15. 1833.

THE TRINITY. INCARNATION.-REDEMP

TION.-EDUCATION.

THE Trinity is the Idea: the Incarnation, which implies the Fall, is the Fact: the Redemption is the mesothesis of the two- that is the Religion.

If you bring up your children in a way which puts them out of sympathy with the religious feelings of the nation in which they live the chances are, that they will ultimately turn out ruffians or fanatics — and one as likely as the other.

October 23. 1833.

ELEGY.-LAVACRUM PALLADOS. -GREEK AND LATIN PENTAMETER. MILTON'S LATIN POEMS. POETICAL FILTER. GRAY AND COTTON.

ELEGY is the form of poetry natural to the reflective mind. It may treat of any subject, but it must treat of no subject for itself; but always and exclusively with reference to the poet himself. As he will feel regret for the past or desire for the future, so sorrow and love become the principal themes of elegy. Elegy presents every thing as lost and gone, or absent and future. The elegy is the exact opposite of the Homeric epic, in which all is purely external and objective, and the poet is a mere voice.

The true lyric ode is subjective too; but then it delights to present things as actually existing and visible, although associated with

the past, or coloured highly by the subject of the ode itself.

I think the Lavacrum Pallados of Callimachus very beautiful indeed, especially that part about the mother of Tiresias and Minerva.* I have a mind to try how it would bear translation; but what metre have we to answer in feeling to the elegiac couplet of the Greeks?

I greatly prefer the Greek rhythm of the short verse to Ovid's, though, observe, I don't dispute his taste with reference to the genius of his own language. Augustus Schlegel gave me a copy of Latin elegiacs on the King of Prussia's going down the Rhine, in which he had almost exclusively adopted the manner of Propertius. I thought them very elegant.

You may find a few minute faults in

* Παῖδες, ̓Αθαναία νύμφαν μίαν ἔν ποκα Θήβαις πουλύ τι καὶ πέρι δὴ φίλατο τῶν ἑτέραν, ματέρα Τειρεσίαο, καὶ οὔποκα χωρὶς ἔγεντο· κ.τ.λ. v. 57. &c.