In all the great competitions for fame. there is much that reminds the reader of quaint John Bunyan's parable, which his hero sees set before him in visible symbol in the Interpreter's house, and which is meant to refer to something much more important than the reputation even of great poets. Passion and Patience are the names of the two children, one of whom has his fine things all at once, while the other consents to wait for them, and is seen serene and cheerful, in all the confidence of hope, while the poor little passionate soul has had and worn and spoiled his finery, and gnashes his teeth over the too rapid fulfillment of his rash wishes. Without any deliberate choice in the matter, which is a thing seldom awarded to mankind, this contrast is continually presented to us in the world. Seldom, perhaps, we may allow, is real excellence kept permanently in the background; its day comes sooner or later; the blessing pronounced upon those who endure to the end is as true in temporal matters as in spiritual; and he who can wait is sure one time NEW SERIES.-VOL. XVI., No. 4.

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or other of his meed, according, or at least in some sort of proportion, to his worth. But while this is the case, it is equally certain that to some no waiting, no suspense is necessary. Of two men, between whom it would be impossible to discriminatewhich is the greatest, one will leap into sudden fame in the very morning of his career, while another toils on patiently to the lingering eve which finally rewards him, but only after long-drawn agonies of suspense, and weariness, and sickness of deferred hope.

Nor is there even such a superiority in the slow recompense over the swift one as to compensate the second of these two for his weary waiting. The sudden reward may be as lofty, as lasting, as great as the slow. "Unto this last" the penny is given, the very same penny which rewards the weary toil of him who has borne the heat and burden of the day. These are discrepancies of nature which the wisest can neither account for nor explain. It is so; and if few of us can say that we have less than our deserts, it is certain that many not more deserving get

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more than we do get it sooner, easier, and with gaieté de cœur-while we rise up early and lie down late, and eat the bread of sorrow. Neither nature nor religion affords any explanation of this. We know that the fact is so-and that is all we know. There is no better example of this than that afforded by the career of Byron. Of all the poets of his time, it was he who commanded the most instant popularity, who had the greatest immediate effect upon his age, and whose position as a power among men was most remarkable. Scott was the only man of his time who equaled his wonderful success; but even Scott's influence, though broader and deeper, was not so intense and individual. He was like a broad, and full, and quiet stream, enriching and ennobling without agitating the wide country through which it flowed; but Byron was like a torrent, sweeping every thing before him, waking and rous'ing all the echoes, so that nobody could ignore him, and even the quietest nook could scarcely escape some thrill of the din and tumult he occasioned. While only a few enthusiasts knew and believed in Wordsworth and Coleridge, whom no one now will assert to be inferior to their noble rival, every body had heard of, and half the world admired and adored, the daring young minstrel who had taken it by storm. And before these poets had done more than begin the first difficult steps of their progress up the steep hillside of Fame, he had reached the summit, and was making the air resound with his voice-a voice sometimes fine and musical as Apollo's iute, but sometimes noisy and coarse as any brazen trumpet. It may even be said, in some degree, that earth still resounds with that far-echoing voice; for among all Continental nations we believe that the English poet best known after Shakspeare is Byron. This curious fact must have been very perplexing to those of his contemporaries who were qualified to judge what was his true position, in comparison with the other living competitors for fame whom he so signally distanced in the race. To us the balance has been set even by those slow agencies of Time which work so surely, if so leisurely; but the wonder, though less bewildering, is not less interesting at a distance than near at hand-especially as in this case there seems to us a sufficient explanation for it, with which the mind can make itself reasonably content.

The position occupied by Art of all kinds-especially by the art of poetry-in the world, is a peculiar one. It has no common test of use or daily necessity to which all men can put it alike. Though we are strenuously of opinion that the common heart and mind of mankind is the final judge, and that no poet can be great who does not in the long-run win, to some sufficient degree, that universal franchise; yet we are obliged to allow that, in the first place, Poetry can not be justly judged by the multitude. Religion, if a simile may be permitted to us, is universal and for the world; yet religion is for the religious, for the devout, for those who can understand its spirit and obey its laws; although, at the same time, for all mankind. In the same way Poetry addresses itself to the poetically-minded, though it claims an empire wherever intellect or feeling exists even in infinitesimal portions. The poet is understood, not, at the first hearing, by all minds, but by all poetical minds; and through these Song filters as a stream filters through the golden pebbles and silver sand into common use, till it becomes a daily refreshment for all men, sparkling on the board of kings and on the peasant's table. The singer sings first of all for those who have ears to hear; and it is by dint of seeing how this melody, which at first is to them the vaguest of voices, thrills through and inspires its immediate audience, that the duller ears awaken, and the song swells out into full music and meaning forever a wider and a wider circle. This is the process in all ordinary cases; but there are cases which are not ordinary. To this rule, as to all others, there are exceptions. Now and then there comes into the world a sovran poet who needs no interpreters-whose verse wakes an echo in all but the very lowest intelligence, and creates a human heart where no heart seemed to be. These are so very few in number, that the definition which we have just attempted to give of the ordinary development of poetry among men is scarcely disturbed by the rare and exceptional apparition of a Homer far away amid the mist of ages-a Dante towering high over the crowded mediaval world, or a Shakspeare, great enough almost to overbalance our little island-great figures who reign over all. The position of such monarchs requires no preparation-their thrones have been ready for them from the beginning

of time, and they take their places with all the gentle grace of nature, seeing no wonder in it. Shakspeare needs neither interpretation nor defense. The soul which fails in loyal worship of his greatness, places itself beneath the level of ordinary human intelligence, and is worthy no notice of ours. But Wordsworth, for instance, stands on a very different level. He is a great poet, and one whose influence goes very deep, and whose fame stands very sure in the heart of England. Yet there probably never will be a time in which skeptics will not take exception to Wordsworth, and doubt his divinity; and there must always be a large class which will attain its appreciation of him only at secondhand, reflected through the warm appreciation of others. And it is Wordsworth, a man who has equals, and not Shakspeare, who has none-whom it is necessary to accept as the representative of poetry among ordinary men.

There is, however, another class which we will not identify with any names, but which has existed in all times, snatching for itself an immense but evanescent reputation from its power of satisfying the common non-poetical mind with something which that mind takes to be poetry. The true poet is the sworn enemy of commonplace, but the sham poet is its apostle; and there is no art more immediately successful than that which places the general and common in the place of the natural, throwing over them that glow of sentimental coloring which is appropriate to higher subjects, and presenting to the prosaic mind the delightful delusion that it is poetical. He who does this-who has the power of bringing the diction and music of poetry to the service of those commonplace views of men and things which are general to the common mass of humanity, and of clothing conventional despairs, miseries, and triumphs in the royal robes of song-may hope almost any thing from the applause of his contemporaries. We all affect to despise the conventional in art; but how we love it, let the walls of every picture-gallery and the pages of many a book testify. To elevate that commonplace so that it shall look as if it were nature-to deify that conventional till it seems heroic-is not an elevated use of poetry, but it is one which reaps an immediate reward. When a really good faculty is employed in this

way there are scarcely any bounds to its triumph. It becomes universal, with a breadth almost Shakspearian-and is not Shakspearian, only because, fascinating all others, it fails to fascinate the poetically-minded, the real audience of true poetry. Thus there is, as it were, an advance and a rear guard to the army of song. The van is occupied by the sovran poet

the rear by the brilliant sham poet, who deifies vulgarity, and so tricks out the commonplace that it thinks itself divine.

To say that Byron added this power to the greater and more genuine poetical power which he undeniably possessed, will perhaps scarcely please the majority of his worshipers; but it seems to us a very important fact in his career. We have not a word to say against his greatness— he was a true poet; the fire divine was in his heart, the light celestial in his eyes; but along with his greatness he possessed the lower faculty which we have just described. The commonplace was not repugnant to him. The secondary part of his nature-all that was not genius-was common, conventional, almost vulgar. He had preeminently that power of tricking out the poorest and most threadbare conceptions in glittering, sentimental, and heroic garments, which the multitude loves. He made the trite seem grand, and elevated the stilted conventional romance of the ordinary mind into something that looked like imagination. Thus, without any thing of Shakspeare in him, he became almost as universal as Shakspeare. He passed all his contemporaries, true poets as great as he, at a gallop. While they made their way slowly into note, he took his place at once. He secured the suffrages of the poetically-minded because of his real genius, which they were incapable of mistaking, notwithstanding all the less noble extraneous matter by which it was accompanied; and at the same time he seized upon the vulgar by the side of their vulgarity which he shared: he secured the common by his triumphant commonplace. The crowd took it for romance in the splendid flood of his songthey took it for passion, and leaped up in emulation, and felt themselves gods, too, and Byrons. The misanthropies and stage tortures, the dark despairs and secret crimes, were far more comprehensible to them than were the true depths of nature, which it is the poet's real office to fathom