perienced writer, who most likely would have developed great excellence had he lived,—has put into the mouths of the two language possible only to a blasé society beau and belle making love in play. According to the poem, a lady approaching discovers a slumbering poet and exclaims:

Ha! what is this? A bright and wandered youth,
Thick in the light of his own beauty, sleeps

Like young Apollo, in his golden curls!

At the oak-roots I 've seen full many a flower,
But never one so fair. A lovely youth
With dainty cheeks and ringlets like a girl,
And slumber-parted lips 't were sweet to kiss!
Ye envious lids! . .

So, here's a well-worn book

From which he drinks such joy as doth a pale

And dim-eyed worker, who escapes, in Spring,

The thousand-streeted and smoke-smothered town,

And treads awhile the breezy hills of health.

[Lady opens the book, a slip of paper falls out, she reads.]

WALTER (awakening).

Fair lady, in my dream

Methought I was a weak and lonely bird,

In search of summer, wandered on the sea,

Toiling through mists, drenched by the arrowy rain,
Struck by the heartless winds; at last, methought

I came upon an isle in whose sweet air

I dried my feathers, smoothed my ruffled breast,
And skimmed delight from off the waving woods.
Thy coming, lady, reads this dream of mine:
I am the swallow, thou the summer land.

LADY.

Sweet, sweet is flattery to mortal ears,
And, if I drink thy praise too greedily,

My fault I'll match with grosser instances.
Do not the royal souls that van the world
Hunger for praises? Does not the hero burn
To blow his triumphs in the trumpet's mouth?
And do not poets' brows throb feverous
Till they are cooled with laurels ? Therefore, sir,
If such dote more on praise than all the wealth
Of precious-wombed earth and pearlèd-mains,
Blame not the cheeks of simple maidenhood.

-Life Drama, 2: Alex. Smith.

No wonder that this tough specimen of "simple maidenhood" should have prayed so fervently not to be blamed-putting her word into the plural also for her cheek in using such language to the poet before an introduction to him, and in prefacing it too with a peep at his manuscript.

There is an intimate connection between representation rendered inappropriate by the general character of the thought, and that rendered so by the smallness of the thought. In the following the same poet tells us of a youth who heard a woman singing. He had never seen her; but

When she ceased

The charmed woods and breezes silent stood,

As if all ear to catch her voice again.

Uprose the dreamer from his couch of flowers,

With awful expectation in his look,

And happy tears upon his pallid face,

With eager steps, as if toward a heaven,

He onward went, and, lo! he saw her stand,

Fairer than Dian, in the forest glade.

His footsteps startled her, and quick she turned

Her face,-looks met like swords. He clasped his hands,

And fell upon his knees; the while there broke

A sudden splendor o'er his yearning face ;

'T was a pale prayer in its very self.

Thus like a worshipper before a shrine,

He earnest syllabled, and, rising up,
He led that lovely stranger tenderly

Through the green forest toward the burning west.

-Idem, 3.

In our next quotation the same tendency has passed beyond the stage of sentimentality into that of obscurity. The thought in it is so small for the kind of representation given it, as to be at times altogether invisible. It is intended to describe hot weather and a shower; and is a singular exemplification of the way in which extremes meet; for while the poet evidently supposes himself to be illustrating his subject, he is really trying to explain it. His endeavor to exercise his imaginative tendency has led him to argue; and while he thinks himself influenced by a poetic motive, it is really prosaic. Thus his style is a fail. ure in two regards: it is both too figurative and too philosophical.

Should Solstice, stalking through the sickening bowers,
Suck the warm dew-drops, lap the falling showers;
Kneel with parched lip, and bending from its brink,
From dripping palm the scanty river drink ;
Nymphs! o'er the soil ten thousand points erect,
And high in air the electric flame collect.

Soon shall dark mists with self-attraction shroud
The blazing day, and sail in wilds of cloud;
Each silvery flower the streams aërial quaff,

Bow her sweet head, and infant harvests laugh.

-The Botanic Garden, Part First: E. Darwin.

By comparing any of the clean-cut, clear descriptions of Homer with this passage, in which, on account of the farfetched illustrative nature of the form, it needs often a second thought to detect what the poet is talking about, one will have a sufficiently forcible exemplification of the difference between poetic form that is representative, and

that which, on account of the addition to it of elements having to do merely with the illustrative methods of presenting the thought, is not representative.

The fault now under consideration characterizes, as will be noticed, all poems in which the subject does not justify the treatment,-from those like Spenser's Faerie Queene, (in which the allegory meant to illustrate the thought, and therefore an element merely of the form, is made to appear the principal thing, because developed to such an extent that one forgets all about what the subject of the poem is,) down to sensational plays, and romances of the lowest order, in which the characters, for serious, not comic purposes, are placed in situations and made to utter sentiments inconceivable in their circumstances. There is no necessity for quoting from such works here.

CHAPTER XXIV.

EXPLANATORY ALLOY IN DIRECT REPRESENTATION.

Alloy, if carrying to Extreme the Tendency in Plain Language, becomes Didactic; if the Tendency in Figurative Language, it becomes Ornate -Didactic Alloy explains, and appeals to the Elaborative Faculty, not the Imagination-Rhetoric instead of Poetry-Examples of Didactic Alloy where Representation purports to be Direct—In Cases where the Thought is Philosophical-How Thought of the same Kind can be Expressed Poetically-In Cases where the Thought is Picturesque, as in Descriptions of Natural Scenery-How similar Scenes can be described Poetically-Didactic Descriptions of Persons-Similar Representative Descriptions-How Illustrative Representation helps the Appeal to the Imagination-In Descriptions of Natural Scenery-Of Persons-The Sensuous and the Sensual.

THE

HE reader who has followed our line of thought to this point, probably understands by this time the general nature of the difference between pure and alloyed representation. But he cannot understand the extent of the inartistic influence which the latter introduces into poetry as a representative art, until he has traced its developments a little further. That will be done for him in this and following chapters.

It has been said that whatever is added to representation of such a nature as to change it from pure to alloyed, must come from the poet. This is true, and yet he may not always be himself the primary source of these additions. He may get them either from his own mind or from nature, a term used here to apply to every thing ex