it had been all dying sunset or moonlight, or the new-born dawn. His human sensibilities are so fine as to be in themselves poetical; and his poetical aspirations so delicate as to be felt always human. Hence his sonnets have been dear to poets-having in them “ more than meets the ear"-spiritual breathings that hang around the words like light around fair flowers; and hence, too, have they been beloved by all natural hearts who, having not the "faculty divine," have yet the "vision"—that is, the power of seeing and of hearing the sights and the sounds which genius alone can awaken, bringing them from afar, out of the dust and dimness of evanishment. But has Bowles written a great poem? If he has, then, as he loves us, let him forthwith publish it in Maga.

What shall we say of the Pleasures of Hope? That the harp from which that music breathed, was an Æolian harp placed in the window of a high hall, to catch airs from heaven, when heaven was glad, as well she might be with such moon and such stars, and streamering half the region with a magnificent aurora borealis. Now the music deepens into a majestic march-now it swells into a holy hymn-and now it dies away elegiac-like, as if mourning over a tomb. Vague, indefinite, uncertain, dreamlike, and visionary all; but never else than beautiful; and ever and anon, we know not why, sublime. ceases in the hush of night—and we awaken as if from a dream. Is it not even so? As for Gertrude of Wyoming, we love her as if she were our own only daughter-filling our life with bliss, and then leaving it desolate. Even now we see her ghost gliding through those giant woods! As for Lochiel's Warning, there was heard the voice of the Last of the Seers. The Second Sight is now extinguished in the Highland glooms-the Lament wails no

more,

"That man may not hide what God would reveal!"

It

Never saw we a ship till Campbell indited " Ye mariners of England." Sheer hulks before our eyes were all ships till that strain arose—but ever since in our imagination have they brightened the roaring ocean. And dare we

say, after that, that Campbell has never written a great poem ? Yes in the face even of the Metropolitan.

It was said by the Edinburgh Review, that none but maudlin milliners and sentimental ensigns supposed James Montgomery was a poet. Then is Maga a maudlin milliner and Christopher North a sentimental ensign. We once called Montgomery a Moravian; and though he assures us that we were mistaken, yet having made an assertion, we always stick to it, and therefore he must remain a Moravian, if not in his own belief, yet in our imagination. Of all religious sects, the Moravians are the most simple-minded, pure-hearted, and high-souledand these qualities shine serenely in the Pelican Island. In earnestness and fervour, that poem is by few or none excelled; it is embalmed in sincerity, and therefore shall fade not away, neither shall it moulder-not even although exposed to the air, and blow the air ever so rudely through time's mutations. Not that it is a mummy. Say rather a fair form laid asleep in immortality-its face wearing, day and night, summer and winter, look at it when you will, a saintly- --a celestial smile. That is a true image; but is the Pelican Island a great poem? We pause not for a reply.

Lyrical poetry, we opine, hath many branches-and one of them, "beautiful exceedingly," with bud, blossom, and fruit of balm and brightness, round which is ever heard the murmur of bees and of birds, hangs trailingly along the mossy greensward, when the air is calm, and ever and anon, when blow the fitful breezes, it is uplifted in the sunshine, and glows wavingly aloft, as if it belonged even to the loftiest region of the tree which is Amaranth. That is a fanciful, perhaps foolish form of expression, employed at present to signify song-writing. Now, of all the song-writers that ever warbled, or chanted, or sung, the best, in our estimation, is verily none other than Thomas Moore. True, that Robert Burns has indited several songs that slip into the heart, just like light, no one knows how, filling its chambers sweetly and silently, and leaving it nothing more to desire for perfect contentOr let us say, sometimes when he sings, it is like listening to a linnet in the broom, a blackbird in the brake,

ment.

a laverock in the sky. They sing in the fu'ness of their joy, as nature teaches them—and so did he and the man, woman, or child, who is delighted not with such singing, be their virtues what they may, must never hope to be in heaven. Gracious Providence placed Burns in the midst of the sources of lyrical poetry-when he was born a Scottish peasant. Now, Moore is an Irishman, and was born in Dublin. Moore is a Greek scholar, and translated -after a fashion-Anacreon. And Moore has lived all his life long in towns and cities--and in that society which will suffer none else to be called good. Some advantages he has enjoyed which Burns never did-but then how many disadvantages has he undergone, from which the Ayrshire ploughman, in the bondage of his poverty, was free! You see all that at a single glance into their poetry. But all in humble life is not high-all in high life is not low-and there is as much to guard against in hovel as in hall-in "auld clay bigging" as in marble palace. Burns too often wrote like a rude unpolished boor-Moore has too often written like a mere man of fashion. But take them both at their best-and both are glorious. Both are national poets-and who shall say that if Moore had been born and bred a peasant, as Burns was, and if Ireland had been such a land of knowledge, and virtue, and religion as Scotland is-and surely, without offence, we may say that it never was, and never will be-though we love the Green Island well-that with his fine fancy, warm heart, and exquisite sensibilities, he might not have been as natural a lyrist as Burns, while, take him as he is, who can deny that in richness, in variety, in grace, and in almost all the power of art, he is infinitely superior to his illustrious rival? Of Lallah Rookh and the Loves of the Angels, we defy you to read a page without admiration; but the question recurs, and it is easily answered, we need not say in the negative, did Moore ever write a great poem?

Let us make a tour of the Lakes. Rydal Mount! Wordsworth! The Bard! Here is the man who has devoted his whole life to poetry. It is his profession. He is a poet just as his brother is a clergyman. is the Head of the Lake School, just as his brother is Master of

Trinity. Nothing in this life and in this world has he had to do, beneath sun, moon, and stars, but

"To murmur by the living brooks

A music sweeter than their own."

What has been the result? Five volumes (oh! wh not five more?) of poetry as beautiful as ever charmed the ears of Pan and of Apollo. The earth-the middle airthe sky-the heaven-the heart, mind, and soul of manare "the haunt and main region of his song." In describing external nature as she is, no poet perhaps has excelled Wordsworth-not even Thomson-in embuing her and making her pregnant with spiritualities, till the mighty mother teems with "beauty far more beauteous" than she had ever rejoiced in till he held communion with her therein lies his own especial glory, and therein the immortal evidences of the might of his creative imagination. All men at times "muse on nature with a poet's eye," but Wordsworth ever-and his soul has grown religious from worship. Every rock is an altar-every grove a shrine. We fear that there will be sectarians even in this natural religion till the end of time. But he is the High Priest of Nature-or, to use his own words, or nearly so, he is the High Priest" in the metropolitan temple built by Nature in the heart of mighty poets." But has he-even he -ever written a great poem? If he has-it is not the Excursion. Nay-the Excursion is not a poem. It is a series of poems, all swimming in the light of poetry, some of them sweet and simple, some elegant and graceful, some beautiful and most lovely, some of "strength and state," some majestic, some magnificent, some sublime. But though it has an opening, it has no beginning; you can discover the middle only by the numerals on the page; and the most serious apprehensions have been very generally entertained that it has no end. While Pedlar, Poet, and Solitary breathe the vital air, may the Excursion, stop where it will, be renewed; and as in its present shape it comprehends but a Three Days' Walk, we have but to think of an excursion of three weeks, three months, or three years, to feel the difference of a great and a long poem. Then the life of man is not always limited to the

term of threescore and ten years! What a journal might it prove at last! Poetry in profusion till the land overflowed; but whether in one volume, as now, or in fifty, in future, not a great poem-nay,-not a poem at all-nor ever to be so esteemed, till the principles on which great poets build the lofty rhyme are exploded, and the very names of Art and Science smothered and lost in the bosom of Nature, from which they arose.

Let the dullest clod that ever vegetated, provided only he be alive and hears, be shut up in a room with Coleridge, or in a wood, and subjected for a few minutes to the ethereal influence of that wonderful man's monologue, and he will begin to believe himself a poet. The barren wilderness may not blossom like the rose, but it will seem, or rather feel to do so, under the lustre of an imagination exhaustless as the sun. You may have seen perhaps rocks suddenly so glorified by sunlight with colours manifold, that the bees seek them deluded by the show of flowers. The sun, you know, does not always show his orb even in the daytime-and people are often ignorant of his place in the firmament. But he keeps shining away at his leisure, as you would know were he to suffer eclipse. Perhaps hethe sun is at no other time a more delightful luminary, than when he is pleased to dispense his influence through a general haze, or mist-softening all the day till meridian is almost like the afternoon, and the grove anticipating gloaming, bursts into "dance and minstrelsy" ere the god go down into the sea. Clouds too become him wellwhether thin and fleecy and braided, or piled up all round about him castlewise and cathedral-fashion, to say nothing of temples and other metropolitan structures; nor is it reasonable to find fault with him, when, as naked as the hour he was born, "he flames on the forehead of the morning sky." The grandeur too of his appearance on setting has become quite proverbial. Now in all this he resembles Coleridge. It is easy to talk-not very difficult to speechify-hard to speak; but to "discourse" is a gift rarely bestowed by Heaven on mortal man. Coleridge has it in perfection. While he is discoursing, the world loses all its commonplaces, and you and your wife imagine yourself Adam and Eve listening to the affable archangel