heroes, and amiable personages, at whose excellencies mer. kindled, and over whose sorrows women wept. Every rhymer, also, who could construct a stanza, began to discover himself an afflicted, persecuted man, of whom the world was unworthy; and thus in every street and highway, there were to be found poetasters blaspheming humanity, or weeping to the moon and stars, and complaining that men and the very elements had joined in a conspiracy to annoy them. And yet, how miserably had they mistaken the nature of Lord Byron's misanthropy! It was not his kind in the abstract which he hated, but the artificial character that had been impressed upon them. He dreamt of certain noble elements as constituting the perfection of the human being, but which had been perverted or effaced by the corruptions of modern refinement. This was the only original sin through which man had fallen, while the only imparadised Adam was the fierce barbarian roaming unchecked, and obeying nothing but the impulses of his own free will. He would fain have advanced, or rather thrown back, the whole human race into this Utopian condition, and made man a loving, hating, and slaying animal by turns, and a poetical being in every change, like his own Giaours and Corsairs, whom he invested with a few moral impulses, to redeem them from total depravity; and who, with hearts overflowing with benevolence, were constrained to deeds of murder and plunder by a sort of irresistible destiny. These were the unvarnished men whom he delighted to contemplate; the men of fearless impulses, to which he would have again reduced mankind, in preference to the cold and formal impersonations of modern civilization; but the insuperable obstacles to such a consummation threw him into a state of despair, that attained its climax in the withering contempt with which he branded the whole existing state of society, in the pages of Don Juan. Had he but taken a right estimate of the present state of man! -had he but seen it in reference to the past and the future! He would then have perceived that man does not live in vain; and that all, however untoward and unhopeful here, is finding, through its dark and rugged channels, that eternal ocean in which it seeks to terminate. But without faith there can be no hope, and therefore, like the blinded Cyclops, he continued to grope within his cave, and murmur his disappointments. In

such a state, it was a relief to throw himself into the whirlwind of warfare; and a thought still lingered within his heart that, by a desperate effort, his theories upon human nature might yet be realized, and that liberty, civilization, and happiness, might be engrafted upon the barbarian virtues of oppressed and allen Greece. He only lived long enough to witness the natural tendency of these wild unregulated energies, from which he had hoped so much, and to know that the half-savage state of man exceeds every other only in the magnitude of its crimes, and the completeness of its depravity.

But vast as were the merits of Lord Byron's poetry, its popularity even already has fallen greatly into abeyance. By universal consent, indeed, it has been raised to a high and permanent place in the literature of our country; but this concession has been made to its intellectual merits, rather than to its moral worth, or its influence upon the sympathies and affections of the public. The brightness with which it dazzled and astonished, the irresistible force with which it struck and overpowered, were followed by a reaction that left time for calm, dispassionate inquiry; and the sophisms which it had so eloquently inculcated, were reduced to their original nothingness. or deformity. Were the endearing courtesies and mild virtues of the artificial state of society worth nothing? Were those delicate and manifold threads that so gently unite man to man a mere selfish union, and an inglorious bondage? Were those ameliorations of the ills of life, and those numberless facilities for human improvement, which our present social state has created, to be foregone for that poetical state of society in which love and hate might rage without disguise, and without control? And above all, was man in very truth that abject, shivering, helpless creature, whose beginning and end were equally in nothingness, and whose far-reaching soul left nothing but. the crumbling church-yard skull which it had once tenanted? The wild glare of barbarism, and the thick, dismal gloom of atheism, were atmospheres of existence from which the better feelings of the age turned away with loathing and indignation: no poetry, however magnificent, could atone for the insult of having recommended them. And still, society in its estimate of Lord Byron, has done him ample justice. It acknowledges, that, as a poet, he was incontestably the greatest of his illus

trious contemporaries, although his power had been that of a malignant sorcerer, instead of a spirit of health. His parallel is only to be found in past ages, among that illustrious pair whom he so nearly approached; but the comparison is only the more unfavourable, because these authors are, Shakspeare, the lover of humanity, and Milton, the poet of immortality.

This moral test, which has been acquiring the ascendancy during the nineteenth century, was imperiously needed, to check the extravagances of the Romantic school of poetry; and its existence is the most gratifying indication that could be afforded of the healthy spirit and improveable capacity of the age. During the supremacy indeed of the new race of great poets, and while the public mind was in a whirl of astonishment and delight, the language of scruple was unheard, or but faintly whispered, and society was unwilling to be roused from that delightful trance into which it had been thrown. The literary censorship, in most instances, assisted to confirm this acquiescence, by the unmeasured laudations in which it dealt; and a fundamental principle in the "cant of criticism" was, that the moral perversities of intellectual power were not to be scanned too closely. But the dream was exhausted, and men awoke, and instead of turning themselves once more to sleep, they betook themselves to examination and inquiry. The stern cui bono, with its reference to the highest and best interests of our species, was established as the criterion of popular approbation, and it has exhibited results which are, perhaps, unparalleled in the history of any former poetical period. This is the spirit that annihilated in an instant the obscenities of Little, and condemned the heartless immoralities of Don Juan -which will not tolerate either sneer or sophism against the sacred things of Revelation, nor even sympathise with the perversities of an alien creed, however beautiful may be the poetry with which they are adorned. The sanctities of humanity have equally banished the spurious sentimentalism of universal liberality, and the stern gloom of all-pervading misanthropy, so that they are no longer recognised as legitimate poetical elements; and as for the spirit of devotion, it can no longer be kindled by the poet who invokes a strange god, or eulogizes a false prophet. And then, too, the great pervading themes which have formed the chief delight of poets, the rose-wreathed

cup of festive sensuality, and the hero's conquering and destroying sword-even these have ceased to charm as they were wont, although they are seated in the master-principles of our nature. Even the graces must be clothed and veiled before they can step forth into public admiration. And that this feeling has been no mere transient whim, or prudish affectation, has been shown by that poetry of the present age which holds the highest place in public estimation. The devoted patriotism of Moore, and not his Epicureanism-the hearty Caledonian nationality that glows in the poetry of Scott, instead of his love of chivalrous exploits-the simple, heartfelt devoutness of Southey, rather than his pagoda divinities, and Dom-daniel wizards-the sudden bursts of elevated feeling, or melting tenderness, which are wrung by fits from the better nature of Lord Byron-and, above all, that buoyant, up-soaring spirit of faith and love which characterises the first great work of the Bard of Hope these are the qualities of the great masters of modern song, which are now the most fondly and exclusively cherished, and without which no mere intellectual excellence could have saved them from neglect. Thus it is, that a home scene of domestic virtue and happiness outshines a Roman triumph, and a sacrifice to duty is of more account than a whole epic of heroic achievements. And to what is owing the great popularity of such poets as Milman, Croly, Heber, Pollok, and a whole host of inferior writers who have followed in their path? It was but a century ago that a religious bard of great power trembled to approach the public, because his theme was so unwonted, and so alien to the prevalent spirit, that he anticipated nothing except neglect or contempt. But now the religious poet is valued the more highly, and obtains a more universal popularity, by how much he succeeds in kindling the feelings of ardent devotion, and finding the most impressive language for its utterance.

Another great moral characteristic of the poetry of the present age has been evinced, in the closer approximation which it has made towards the history and feelings of the lower classes, and the manner in which it has connected them with literary and aristocratic sympathies. The stilted poetry of former ages could not descend to the "short and simple annals of the poor." It was only with the heroic sufferings

and sentimental sorrows of high life that it could entertain a fellow-feeling. A king dethroned, or a hero expiring on the field, was the principal topic of the sublime; the faithlessness of a coroneted lady's lover, or the death of her pet parrot or lap-dog, was the chief argument of the pathetic. What indeed could the bard do more who depended for patronage or a dinner upon the wealthy and the noble? He was only acquainted with aristocratic joys and sorrows, and upon these alone he therefore expended his tuneful numbers. All that pertained to unadorned nature, and simple feeling, was only to be found by descending into the untitled world. The "herd," the "mob," the "lower orders," constituted a filthy Alsatia, into whose foul lanes the dainty and silk-shod Muse did not dare to penetrate. But this exclusive and fastidious spirit was broken when Crabbe and Wordsworth led the way. The world was startled to find, as if it had been a new discovery, that even the hamlet and the hovel contained the elements of true poetry as well as the castle and the palace; and that the unsophisticated feelings of an English and a Christian community, could furnish pictures more exciting than all the rude energies of semi-barbarians, or even the fictions of romance. The heroic struggle with the real ills of life; the grandeur of the victory, or the misery of the defeat-the love which difficulty could not daunt, nor poverty impair-the tenderness, the devotedness, the endurance, that so frequently warm and animate the otherwise cheerless fire-side of poverty and lowliness-these were topics of moral sublimity and tenderness which could now gratify the improved public taste, more especially after it had been dieted to the full upon the monotony of high life, or the mockery of fiction. When two such powerful and original minds as those we have mentioned thus gave the example and pointed the way, it was no wonder if others hurried into the unoccupied tract: the new principle rapidly widened, so that the history of the poor has now become as legitimate a source of poetry, as that of the regal and the noble. Thus the learned have been united with the illiterate, and the high with the low, by that eclectic spirit of poetry which constitutes one of the prevailing characteristics of the present day: the fire was so intense that a fusion inevitably followed, and the discordant elements of society have been resolved into one sympathetic