Curious, not knowing, not exact, but nice,
Form short ideas, and offend in arts

(As most in manners) by a love to parts. (20)

[A love of conceits and trickeries of thought also misleads.]

Some to conceits alone their taste confine,

And glittering thoughts (21) struck out at every line;
Pleased with a work where nothing's just or fit,
One glaring chaos and wild heap of wit.

Poets, like painters, thus unskilled to trace
The naked nature and the living grace,
With gold and jewels cover every part,

And hide with ornaments (22) their want of art.

85. Intellect; love of conceits.

86. Peculiar; wise; precise; pedantic. 87. Defective notions; make mistakes.

90. Dazzling; effected in.

90

95

92. Offensively brilliant mixture; disorderly.

(20) "It would be amusing to make a digest of the irrational laws which bad critics have formed for the government of poets. First in celebrity and in absurdity stand the dramatic unities of place and time. No human being has ever been able to find anything that could, even by courtesy, be called an argument for these unities, except that they have been deduced from the general practice of the Greeks. It requires no very profound examination to discover that the Greek dramas, often admirable as compositions, are, as exhibitions of human character and human life, far inferior to the English plays of the age of Elizabeth. All the greatest masterpieces of the dramatic art have been composed in direct violation of the unities, and could never have been composed if the unities had not been violated. It is clear, for example, that such a character as that of Hamlet could never have been developed within the limits to which Alfieri confined himself."-Macaulay's “ Essays," Moore's "Life of Byron."

(21) "The metaphysical poets were men of learning, and to show their learning was their whole endeavour. If poetry be an imitative art, these writers will, without great wrong, lose their right to the name of poets, for they did not imitate anything; they neither copied nature from life, neither painted the forms of matter, nor represented the operations of intellect. Their thoughts are often new, but seldom natural; they are not obvious, but neither are they just; and the reader wonders by what perversity of industry they were ever found. The most heterogeneous ideas are yoked together; nature and art are ransacked for illustrations, comparisons, and allusions; their learning instructs and their subtlety surprises, but the reader commonly thinks his improvement dearly bought. They were not successful in representing or moving the affections. Wholly employed on something unexpected or surprising, they never inquired what on any occasion they should have said or done. Their attempts were always analytic; they broke every image into fragments, and could no more represent by their slender conceits and laboured peculiarities the prospects of nature, or the scenes of life, than he who dissects a sunbeam with a prism can exhibit the wide effulgence of a summer's noon."-Dr. Samuel Johnson's "Lives of the Poets"—"Cowley."

(22) "Figures of speech, which poets think so fine

Art's needless varnish to make nature shine

All are but paint upon a beauteous face,

And in description only need a place.
But to make rage declaim, and grief discourse,
From lovers in despair fine things to force,

True wit is nature to advantage dressed, (23)
What oft was thought but ne'er so well expressed;
Something whose truth convinced at sight we find,
That gives us back the image of our mind.
As shades more sweetly recommend the light,
So modest plainness sets off sprightly wit;
For works may have more wit than does them good,
As bodies perish through excess of blood. (24)

99. Accuracy unhesitatingly; admit. 102. Demure; decks; lively.

103. Possess; is advantageous.
104. Die; too much.

Must needs succeed, for who can choose but pity

A dying hero, miserably witty?

But oh! the dialogue where jest and mock
Is held up like a rest at shuttlecock;
Or else like hills eternally they shine,
They sigh in simile, and die in rhyme!'

Sheffield's "Essay on Poetry.”

(23) "'Tis not a flash of fancy, which, sometimes
Dazzling our minds, sets off the slightest rhymes;
Bright as a blaze, but in a moment done:
True wit is everlasting like the sun,

Which, though sometimes behind a cloud retired,
Breaks out again, and is by all admired.

Number, and rhyme, and that harmonious sound,
Which not the nicest ears with harshness wound,
Are necessary, yet but vulgar arts;

And all in vain these superficial parts
Contribute to the structure of the whole;-
Without a genius, too, for that's the soul:
A spirit which inspires the work throughout,
As that of nature moves the world about;
A flame that glows amidst conceptions fit,
Even something of divine, and more than wit;
Itself unseen, yet all things by it shown,
Describing all men, but described by none."

100

John Sheffield, Duke of Buckinghamshire," Essay on Poetry." (24) "It is inattention to the universality of the principles of criticism that makes our judgment on literary matters uncertain and inconsistent.

It

is true that various languages, different religions, and distant ages have produced, and will perpetuate, numerous peculiarities in ancient and modern works of literature; but however these causes may induce a diversity of colour and shape, we shall find that the substance of such works of the intellect is in all of them essentially the same. Excellence in all of them must depend, according to their several natures, on the presence of imagination, fancy, good sense, and purity of language; and all that is previously necessary for the critical examination of ancient and modern poetry, upon the same principle, is to set aside for the moment those qualities which are the accidents of particular places and times, and then a review of those qualities which remain, and are common to every place and to all time, will be as obvious in the case of a Greek and English, as in that of an English and a French author."-H. Coleridge's "Introduction to the Greek Classic Poets," p. 1.

Literary Notes.

Modern Logicians.

THE LATE GEORGE BOOLE, LL.D., D.C.L.

"A generation will arise in which the leaders of education will know the value of logic, the value of mathematics, the value of logic in mathematics, and the value of mathematics in logic."-A. DE MORGAN, F.R.A S.

THE Queen's Colleges of Cork, Galway, and Belfast, though now incorporated into and forming one University, were opened as separate institutions in 1849. In that year the council of the Cuvierian Society (an association founded in 1835) projected a conversazione, which was held in the rooms of the Royal Cork Institution and School of Design, under the presidency of A. F. Roche, Esq., then mayor of the city. This reunion was intended as a complimentary reception and welcome to the president and professors of the newly established college, and partook, in some measure, of the nature of a popular demonstration in favour of that institution. The conversazione was a great success; much interest was excited in the public mind by the event, and the new staff of officials which Government had added to the equipment of the city found themselves in the midst of friends. At the opening of the succeeding session (1850-51) another conversazione was held with equal success, and the college was thereafter considered as one of the home institutions of the Munster seaport.

Of course, the planning, preparation, and arrangement of lectures, class lessons, examination questions, &c., the reception and classification of pupils ; and attention to their regular, gradual, and effective mastery of the science of which he had been chosen the teacher, occupied much of the time and thought of the new professor, who was doubly diligent, because he felt that the true test of his own worth would be held to be the success of his students. The ultimate form into which his department settled was two classes-senior and junior-meeting four days in the week; either or both of these classes being subdivided, as might be found convenient for purposes of special and adapted instruction. All the students of the senior class, as well as the more advanced members of the junior class, received arranged exercises weekly, to which answers in writing were required. The course of study commenced with the arithmetic of fractions, and led through the elements of Euclid and the study of algebra, to the application of these in the sciences and the arts. The senior section was introduced to a knowledge of solid and analytic geometry, the differential and integral calculus, 1865.

the

M

the philosophy of operations, and the adaptation of their principles to the problems arising in mathematical physics and astronomy. In all the work that he did, he was thorough, and his system of teaching, though strictly scientific, was amply relieved from tedium by the ingenuity and facile tact of the proficient instructor. In a very short time he became the idol of his students. They saw in him much more the learned friend than the stern preceptor. He took a personal interest in them, not only in the class-room, but in their own homes or lodgings. He opened his house to them in the most social manner, and not unfrequently gave of his slender substance to help them in temporary straits, and especially in times of sickness he acted not as counsellor only, but consoler-for he carried in his heart the living warmth of practical godliness, and the fadeless light of Christian faith. They knew his sympathy with them, and they repaid him by diligence and with love. Though, in fact, one of the most profound and original mathematicians of this age, he stooped to the humblest capacity, and expounded the merest elements to the veriest tyro with an earnest simplicity and absence of pretension which seldom failed to secure its end-the progress of the student.

But he was not a one-sided soul, of mathematics all compact. He was genial, intelligent, and widely informed, as lovable in the social circle as he was keen-minded in the study. He was held as an acquisition in the city of his adoption, both on account of his frank, candid, and honourable demeanour, and of his enthusiastic readiness to work for the furtherance of any good end. Among his colleagues he rapidly acquired respect and love. They saw his wonderful adaptation to his office; they knew the love he inspired in his students, and they noticed the daily influence he exerted on all classes to harmonize differences and promote peace and good-will among men. But while he rose in general esteem, he did not fail to prosecute the great life-task laid out for him-his own self-development, and through that the development of the kindred sciences of mathematics and logic.

In 1851, at the opening of the third session of Queen's College, Professor Boole, as Dean of the Faculty of Arts, delivered a "lecture on the Claims of Science, especially as founded in its relations to human nature." This is a discourse of remarkable expansiveness of thought. In it he considers the origin of human knowledge, the relations of science to the constitution and design of our own minds, the benefits we owe to it, and the claims which it possesses on our regard. We cull from its pages the following extracts:

Science, then, we may regard as the joint result of the teachings of experience, and the desires and faculties of the human mind. Its inlets are the senses; its form and character are the result of comparison, of reflection, of reason, and of whatever powers we possess, whereby to perceive relations, and trace through its successive links the chain of cause and effect. The order of its progress is from particular facts to collective statements, and so on to universal laws. In Nature