by the spinning-jenny, and by that other times. This undertaking involved in it piece of new improved machinery, the very considerable difficulties. For, in the souls and bodies of British children, for first place, most great poets possess more which death alone holds the patent." than one distinguishing peculiarity. To From Mrs Browning, perhaps the most select a single differential point is always imaginative and intellectual of British hazardous, and often deceptive. Secondly, females, down to a pale-faced, thick-voiced, after you have selected the prominent degraded, hardly human, factory girl, what characteristic of your author, it is no easy a long and precipitous descent! But, task to express it in a word, or in a line. though hardly, she is human; and avail- To compress thus an Iliad in a nutshell, ing herself of the small, trembling, but to imprison a giant genie in an iron pot, eternally indestructible link of connection is more a feat of magic than an act of implied in a common nature, our author criticism. Thirdly, it is especially difficult can identify herself with the cause, and to express the differentia of a writer in a incarnate her genius in the person, of the manner at once easy and natural, picpoor perishing child. How unspeakably turesque and poetical. In the very terms more affecting is a pleading in behalf of of such an attempt as Mrs Browning a particular portion of the race, than in makes, it is implied that she not only behalf of the entire family! Mrs Brown- defines, but describes the particular writer. ing might have uttered a hundred "cries But to curdle up a character into one of the Human," and proved herself only noble word, to describe Shakspere, for a beautiful artist, and awakened little instance, in such compass, what sunsave an echo dying away in distant elfin syllable shall suffice; or must we renew laughter; but the cry of a factory child, Byron's wish ?— coming through a woman's, has gone to a nation's heart.

"Could I unbosom and embody now
That which is most within me; could I
wreak

My thought upon expression!

And that one word were Lightning, I would
speak;

But as it is, I live and die unheard,
With a most voiceless thought, sheathing
it as a sword."

Although occupied thus with the sterner wants and sorrows of society, she is not devoid of interest in its minor miseries and disappointments. She can sit down beside little Ella (the miniature of Alnaschar), and watch the history of her daydream beside the swan's nest among the reeds, and see in her disappointment a type of human hopes in general, even Accordingly, this style of portraiture when towering and radiant as summer has seldom been prosecuted with much clouds. Ella's dream among the reeds! success. Ebenezer Elliott has a copy of What else was Godwin's Political Justice? verses after this fashion, not quite worthy What else was St Simonianism? What of him. What, for example, does the folelse is Young Englandism? And what lowing line tell us of Shelley?— else are the hopes built by many now "Ill-fated Shelley, vainly great and brave." upon certain perfected schemes of education, which, freely translated, just mean The same words might have been used the farther sharpening and furnishing of about Sir John Moore, or Pompey. Mrs knaves and fools? Browning's verses are far superior. SomeShadowed by the same uniform serious-times, indeed, we see her clipping at a ness are the only two poems of hers which character, in order to fit it better into we shall farther at present mention-we mean her "Vision of Poets," and her "Geraldine's Courtship." The aim of the first is to present, in short compass, and almost in single lines, the characteristics of the greater poets of past and present

the place she has prepared for it. Sometimes she crams the half of an author into a verse, and has to leave out the rest for want of room. Sometimes over a familiar face she throws a veil of words and darkness. But often her one glance

wrought no such lovely work as when she rounded a tear.

sees, and her one word shows, the very heart of an author's genius and character. Altogether, this style, as generally proFrom this beautiful poem alone, we secuted, is a small one, not much better might argue Mrs Browning's capacity for than anagrams and acrostics-ranks, in-producing a great domestic tragedy. We deed, not much higher than the inge- might argue it, also, from the various nuity of the persons who transcribe the peculiarities of her genius-her far vision Pleasures of Hope" on the breadth of into the springs of human conduct-into a crownpiece, and should be resigned to those viewless veins of fire, or of poison, such praiseworthy personages. By far which wind within the human heartthe best specimen of it we remember, is her sympathy with dark bosoms-the inthe very clever list involving a running stinct for truth, which pierces often the commentary of the works of Lord Byron, mist of her dimmer thought, like a flash by Dr MacGinn or Delta, we are not of irrepressible lightning her fervid sure which of them, unless, indeed, it be temperament, always glowing round her Gay's "Catalogue Raisonné" of the por- intellectual sight-and her queen-like tentous poems of Sir Richard Blackmore. dominion over imagery and language. Who shall embalm, in a similar way, the We think, meanwhile, that she has misendless writings of James, Cooper, and taken her sphere. In that rare atmoDickens? sphere of transcendentalism which she has "Lady Geraldine's Courtship," as a reached, she respires with difficulty and transcript from the "red-leaved tablets with pain. She is not "native and enof the heart"- —as a tale of love, set to dued" into that element. We would warn the richest music- as a picture of the her off the giddy region, where temsubtle workings, the stern reasonings, pests may blow as well as clouds gather. and the terrible bursts of passion -is Her sonnets in "Blackwood" are sad above praise. How like a volcano does failures-the very light in them is darkthe poet's heart at length explode! How ness thoughts, in themselves as unfirst all power is given him in the dread- tangible as the films upon the window ful trance of silence, and then in the pane, are concealed in a woof of words, loosened tempest of speech! What a wild, till their thin and shadowy meaning fierce logic flows forth from his lips, in fades utterly away. Morbid weakness, which, as in that of Lear's madness, the she should remember, is not masculine foundations of society seem to quiver strength. But can she not, through the like reeds, and the mountains of conven- rents in her cloudy tabernacle, discern, tionalism are no longer found; and in far below in the vale, fields of deep the lull of that tempest, and in the re- though homely beauty, where she might turning sunshine, how beautiful, how more gracefully and successfully exercise almost superhuman, seem the figures of her exquisite genius? She has only to the two lovers, seen now and magnified stoop to conquer. By and by we maythrough the mist of the reader's fast- using unprofanely an expression originally flowing tears! It is a tale of successful profane-be tempted to say, as we look love, and yet it melts you like a tragedy, up the darkened mountain, with its flashes and most melts you in the crisis of the of fire hourly waxing fewer and feebler, triumph. On Geraldine we had gazed "As for this poetess, we wot not what as on a star, with dry-eyed and distant has become of her." admiration; but, when that star dissolves While we are venturing on accents of in showers at the feet of her poet-lover, | warning, we might also remind her that we weep for very joy. Truly, a tear is a there are in her style and manner pecusad yet beautiful thing; it constitutes a liarities which a wicked world will perlink connecting us with distant countries, sist in calling affectations. On the charge nay, connecting us with distant worlds. of affectation, generally, we are disposed Gravitation has, amid all immensity, to lay little stress-it is a charge so easily

got up, and which can be so readily down? will he make many supplications swelled into a cuckoo cry; it is often unto thee? will he speak soft words unto applied with such injustice, and it so ge- thee? Will the Unicorn be willing to nerally attaches to singularities in man- serve thee, or abide by thy crib? canst ner, instead of insincerities in spirit and thou bind him with his band in the furmatter. But why should a true man, row? will he harrow the valleys after or a true woman, expose themselves need- thee? wilt thou believe that he will bring lessly to such a charge? We think, in home thy seed, and gather into thy barn?” general, that true taste in this, as in No; like the tameless creatures of the matters of dress and etiquette, dictates wilderness-like the chainless elements of conformity to the present mode, provided the air-such men obey a law, and use a that does not unduly cramp the freedom language, and follow a path of their own. and the force of natural motions. There But this rare privilege Mrs Browning is, indeed, a class of writers who are can hardly claim. And she owes it to chartered libertines-who deal with lan- herself and to her admirers to simplify guage as they please-who toss it about her manner-to sift her diction of whatas the autumn wind leaves; who, in the ever is harsh and barbarous to speak agony of their earnestness, or in the fury whatever truth she has to tell, in the of their excitement, seize on rude and clear articulate language of men-and to unpolished words, as Titans on rocks and quicken, as she well can, the dead forms mountains, and gain artistic triumphs in of ordinary verbiage, by the spirit of her opposition to all the rules of art. Such own superabundant life. Then, but not were Wilson, Burke, and Chalmers. These till then, shall her voice break fully men we must just take as they are, and through the environment of coteries, be thankful for them as they are. We cliques, and magazine readers, and fall must just give them their own way. upon the ear of the general public, like And whether such a permission be given the sound, sweet in its sublimity, simple or not, it is likely to be taken. "Canst amid its complex elements, earthly in its thou draw out Leviathan with a hook, or cause and unearthly in its effect upon the his tongue with a cord which thou lettest soul, of a multitude of waters.

JOANNA BAILLIE.

"POETICAL WORKS pour in upon us | kets," or even in one. At least twenty after "poetical works;" and the worst is, real poets have written, or are writing for captious critics at least, that the ma- still, during what has passed of the ninejority of them are, as Jacob Tonson would teenth century; and although all of them have said, from "approved hands," "able have left, or are leaving, "poetical works," pens," persons of honour," poets and yet where is the "work" of any which poetesses whose names are household fulfils the idea of the name? It is as if words, whose writings are already classi- some such catastrophe as has shattered cal, and on whom there exist criticisms one stately planet of our system into nearly as classical as the poems! But Pallas, Vesta, and the rest, had visited how long must we wait ere we see such a the mind of this century, and split it title as "the work" of this or that dis-up into disunited, although beautiful and tinguished author, his " 'Iliad," or his centre-seeking, portions! "Paradise Lost?" Alas! we are in this age doomed to live upon fragments, although, sometimes, as a variety, these are presented to us in "twelve" or two "bas

First, for the fact of this fragmentary tendency, and then for what seem to be the reasons which explain it. We may enumerate the following names as those

the

together a number of beautiful ballads, by

of real poets, dead or alive, included in no complete "bow of God." Moore's the first half of the nineteenth century in "Lalla Rookh" is an elegant and laboBritain:-Bloomfield, Wordsworth, Cole-rious composition-not a shapely buildridge, Southey, Campbell, Moore, Byron, ing; it is put together by skilful art, not Shelley, Keats, Professor Wilson, Hogg, formed by plastic power. Byron's poems Croly, Maturin, Hunt, Scott, James are, for the most part, disjointed but Montgomery, Pollok, Tennyson, Aird, Mrs | melodious groans, like those of Ariel from Browning, Mrs Hemans, Joanna Baillie, the centre of the cloven pine; "Childe and the author of "Festus." We leave Harold" is his soliloquy when sober-"Don this list to be curtailed, or to be increased, Juan" his soliloquy when half-drunk; at the pleasure of the reader. But, we "Corsair" would have made a splendid epiask, which of those twenty-three has pro- sode in an epic-but the epic, where is it? duced a work uniquely and incontestably, and "Cain," his most creative work, though or even, save in one or two instances, a distinct and new world, is a bright and professedly GREAT? Most of those enu- terrible anomaly-a comet, instead of a merated have displayed great powers; sun. So, too, are the leading works of poor some of them have proved themselves fit Shelley, which resemble Southey in size, to begin greatest works; but none of them, Byron in power of language, and himself whether he has begun, or only thought only in spirit and imagination, in beauties of beginning, has been able to finish. and faults. Keats, like Shelley, was arBloomfield, the tame, emasculate Burns rested by death, as he was piling up enof England, has written certain pleasing during and monumental works. Professor and genuine poems smelling of the soil, Wilson has written "Noctes" innumebut the "Farmer's Boy" remained what rable; but where is his poem on a subject the Scottish poet would have called worthy of his powers, or where is his work "haflin callant," and never became a full-on any subject whatever? Hogg has bound grown and brawny man. Wordsworth was equal to the epic of the age, but has a string of no great value, and called it the only constructed the great porch leading "Queen's Wake." Scott himself has left up to the edifice, and one or two beauti- no solid poem, but instead, loose, rambling, ful cottages lying around. Coleridge could spirited, metrical romances-the bastards have written a poem-whether didactic, of his genius-and a great family of legitior epic, or dramatic-equal in fire and mate, chubby children of novels, bearing force to the "Iliad," or the "Hamlet," or the image, but not reaching the full the "De Rerum Natura," and superior to stature, of their parent's mind. Croly's any of the three in metaphysical truth poetry, like the wing of his own "seraph and religious feeling-a work ranking kings," standing beside the sleeping Jacob, immediately beside the "Paradise Lost;" has a "lifted mighty plume," and his elobut he has, instead, shed on us a shower quence is always as classical as it is soundof plumes, as from the wing of a falling ing; but it is, probably, as much the angel-beautiful, ethereal, scattered, and public's fault as his that he has never tantalising. The most of Southey's poems equalled his first poem, "Paris in 1815," are large, without being great-massive, which now appears a basis without a buildwithout being majestic; they have rather ing. Maturin has left a powerful passage the bulk of an unformed chaos, than the or two, which may be compared to a feat order and beauty of a finished creation. performed by the victim of some strong Campbell, in many points the Virgil of his disease, to imitate which no healthy or time, bas, alas! written no Georgics; his sane person would, could, or durst atodes and lesser poems are "atoms of the tempt. James Montgomery will live by rainbow;" his larger, such as "Gertrude his smaller poems; his larger are long of Wyoming," may be compared to those lyrics—and when was a long lyric any other segments of the showery arch we see in a than tedious? Hunt has sung many a disordered evening sky; but he has reared joyous carol, and many a pathetic ditty,

but produced no high or lasting poem.| And now for the reasons of this fragPollok has aimed at a higher object than mentary phenomenon. These are various almost any poet of his day; he has sought, in various authors. In some it arises from like Milton, to enshrine religion in poetic the union of unlimited ambition with form, and to attract to it poetic admirers; limited power-their energies, like the he did so in good faith, and he expended limbs of one running in a dream, sink below great talents, and a young life, in the exe- them; and they either relinquish the atcution; but, unfortunately, he confounded tempt as a bad job, or make a bad job of it Christianity with one of its narrowest by persevering. These betray a lack of shapes, and hence the book, though elo- mental foresight, and have not counted the quent in passages, and dear to a large intellectual cost. Others are stopped by party, is rather a long and powerful, sheer oddity and affectation. "Is it not," though unequal and gloomy sermon, than they say, "characteristic of genius to be ira poem; he has shed the sunshine of regular-to veer and falter in its lofty aspihis genius upon his own peculiar no- rations? Are not all asterisks stars? Petions, far more strongly than on general rish the slow, cumulative, gin-horse protruths; and the spirit of the whole per- cess which rears up long elaborate works!" formance may be expressed in the words Others are injured by carelessness and caof Burns, slightly altered, "Thunder- price. Each new day brings its new scheme, tidings of damnation." His and our and no scheme is ever permitted to confriend, Thomas Aird, has a much subtler, solidate or crystallise in its author's mind. more original and genial mind than Pol- Thus, Coleridge once read to a friend, lok's, and had he enjoyed a tithe of the from his pocket-book, a "list of eighteen same recognition, he might have produced different works which he had resolved to a Christian epic on a far grander scale; as write, and several of them in quarto, not it is, his poems are fragmentary and epi- one of which he ever effected." To this sodical, although Dante's "Inferno" con- is often added a desire to pique and stimutains no pictures more tremendously dis-late curiosity, by ceasing ere they are well tinct, yet ideal, than his "Devil's Dream upon Mount Acksbeck." Tennyson is greater Calvinist, in one sense, than either of the Scottish poets we have named-he owes more to the general faith of others in his genius than to any special or strong works of his own. Bailey of "Festus" has a vast deal more richness of mind than Tennyson, but "Festus" seems either different from, or greater than, a work. We are reminded of one stage in the history of the nebular hypothesis, when Sir W. Herschel, seeing a central mass in the midst of a round burr of light, was almost driven to the conclusion that it was something immensely greater than what we call a star-a kind of monster sun. So with the prodigious birth men call "Festus."

It were easy to extend the induction to our lady authors, and to show that Mrs Hemans, Mrs Browning, Joanna Baillie, Mrs Shelley, &c., have abounded rather in effusions, or efforts, or tentative experiments, than in calm, complete, and pe

rennial works.

begun; and then they confound the stare of astonishment which succeeds the abrupt close with admiration. Others, again, stop short from the effect of sudden damps and chills of mind, found even in ardent temperaments to quench its ardour. It requires the "evening and the morning" to make the day, but the poet has, perhaps, only the evening to dream of immortal works; the morning has sterner duties. Sometimes he fails from the want of encouragement held out by the public. And sometimes bad bitter criticism kills at once the works he has produced and the capacity of producing more.

While holding strong opinions on this subject, we must not be understood to depreciate the quality or to deny the abundance of the poetry of this age. Never since the world began was there so much of the unconsolidated ether of genuine poetry-never were so many beautiful verses wandering about our literature or so many minds thinking and speaking in a poetical way. What we want, and the