DESCRIPTIVE Poetry is either the most dull or the most delightful thing in the united kingdoms of Art and Nature. To write it well, you must see with your eyes shut-no such easy operation. But to enable you to see with your eyes shut, you must begin with seeing with your eyes open-an operation, also, of much greater difficulty than is generally imagined-and indeed not to be well performed by one man in a thousand. Seeing with your eyes open is a very complicated concern

as it obviously must be, when perhaps fifty church-spires, and as many more barns, some millions of trees, and hay-stacks innumerable, hills and plains without end, not to mention some scores of cities, towns, villages, and hamlets, are all impressed -tiny images-on each retinawhich tiny images the mind must see as in reflection within these miraculous mirrors. She is apt to get confused amidst that bewildering conglomeration-to mistake one object for another-to displace and disarrange to the destruction of all harmonies and proportions-and finally, to get, if not stone-at least, what is perhaps worse, sand-blind. The moment she opens her mouth to discourse of these her perceptions, the old lady is apt to wax so confused,

that you unjustly suspect her of a bad habit; and as soon as she winks, or shuts her eyes, begins prosing away from memory, till you lose all belief in the existence of the external world. Chaos is come again—and old John Nox introduces you to Somnus. The poem falls out of your b hand-for we shall suppose a poem-a composing draft of a Descriptive Poem to have been in it but not till you have swallowed sufficient of one dose to produce another doze that threatens to last till doomsday.

We really cannot take it upon ourselves to say what is the best mode of composition for a gentleman or lady of poetical propensities to adopt with respect to a Descriptive Poem -whether to sketch it, and lay the colours on-absolutely to finish it off entirely in the open air, sitting under the shade of an elm, or an umbrella; or from a mere outline, drawn sub dio, to work up the picture to perfect beauty, in a room with one window, looking into a back-court inhabited by a couple of cockless hens, innocent of cackle. Both modes are dangerous-full of peril. In the one, some great Gothic Cathedral is apt to get into the foreground, to the exclusion of the whole county; in the other, the scenery too often retires away back by much too far

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into the distance—the groves look small, and the rivers sing small-and all nature is like a drowned rat.

The truth is—and it will out-that the Poet alone sees this world. Nor does it make the slightest difference to him whether his eyes are open or shut-in or out-bright as stars, or "with dim suffusion veiled"provided only the Iris of each "particular orb" has, through tears of love and joy, been permitted for some twenty years, or thereabouts, to span heaven and earth, like seeing rainbows. All the imagery it ever knows has been gathered up by the perceiving soul during that period of time-afterwards 'tis the divining soul that works-and it matters not then whether the material organ be covered with day or with night. Milton saw without eyes more of the beauty and sublimity of the heavens than any man has ever done since with eyes-except perhaps Wordsworth; and were Wordsworth to lose his eyes-which heaven forbid -still would he

"Walk in glory and in joy, Following his soul upon the mountainside."

The sole cause of all this power possessed by the Poet over Nature, is the spirit of delight, the sense of beauty, in which, from the dawning of moral and intellectual thought, he has gazed upon all her aspects. He has always felt towards her "as a lover or a child"-she hath ever been his mother-his sister his bride-his wife-all in one wonderful Living Charm breathed over the shapings of his brain and the yearnings of his blood; and no wonder that all her sights dwell for ever and ever in the fountains of his eyes, and all her sounds in the fountains of his ears for what are these fountains but the depths and recesses of his own happy yet ever agitated heart?

A Poet, then, at all times, whether he will or not, commerces with the skies, and with the seas, and with the earth, in a language of silent symbols; and when he lays it aside, and longs to tell correctly of what he sees and feels to his brethren of mankind not so gifted by God, though then he must adopt their own language, the only one they understand, yet from his lips it becomes, while still human,

an angelic speech. Aye-even their homeliest phrases-their everyday expressions-in which they speak of life's dullest goings-on and most unimpassioned procedure-seem kindled as by a coal from heaven, and prose brightens into poetry. True, that the poet selects all his wordsbut he selects them in a spirit of inspiration, which is a discriminating spirit-as well as a moving and creating spirit. All that is unfit for his high and holy purpose, of itself fades away; and out of all that is fit, genius, true to nature, chooses whatever is fittest-out of the good-the best. Not with a finer, surer instinct, flies the bee from flower to flower-touching but for a moment, like a shadow, on the bloom where no honey isand where that ambrosia lies, piercing with passion into the rose's heart. Poetical language, indeed-who may tell what it is? What else can it be but poetry itself? And what is poetry—we know not-though “our heart leaps up when we behold" it -even as at sight of a Something in the sky-faint at first as a tinging dream, cloud-born-but growing gradually out of the darkness of the showery sky-child of the sun-dying almost as soon as born-yet seeming to be a creature-a being-a living thing that might endure for ever

and not a mere apparition, too, too soon deserting the earth and the heaven it has momentarily glorified with a-Rainbow!

But is Poetry indeed thus evanescent? Yes-in the Poet's soul. For it is produced upon the shadowy and showery back-ground of the imagination, by genius shining upon it sunlike; that visionary world fades away, and leaves him "shorn of his beams," like a common man in this common world; but words once uttered may live for ever-in that lies their superiority over clouds; and thus poetry -when printed by Bensley or Ballantyne becomes a stationary world of rainbows. And there are wayssacred ways which religion teaches

of preserving in the spirit of men who read Poetry-even till their dying day-that self-same ecstasy with which Noah and his children first beheld the Arch of Promise.

There was a long period of our poetry, during which poets paid, ap-.. parently, little or no devotion to ex

ternal Nature; when she may be said to have lain dead. Perhaps, we poets of this age pay her we must not say too much homage-but too much tribute as if she exacted it-whereas it ought all to be a free-will offering, spontaneous as the flower-growth of the hills. It is possible to be religious overmuch at her shrine-to deal in long prayers, and longer sermons, forgetting to draw the practical conclusions. Without knowing it, we may become formalists in our worship; nay, even hypocrites; for all moods of mind are partly hypocritical that are not thoroughly sincere and truth abhors exaggeration. True passion is often sparing of words; compressedly eloquent; not doting upon and fondling mere forms, but carrying its object by storm-spirit by spirit a conflict a catastrophe and peace. There is rather too long a courtship-too protracted a wooing of Nature now by shilly-shallying bards; they do not sufficiently insist on Her, their bride, naming the nuptial day; some of them would not for the world run away with her to GretnaGreen. They get too philosophical too Platonic; amicitia seems their watchword rather than amor; and the consequence is, that Nature is justified in jilting them, and privately espousing a mate of more flesh and blood-Passion, who not only pops the question, but insinuates a suit of saffron, and takes the crescent honeymoon by the horns. Nature does not relish too metaphysical a suitor; she abhors all that is gross, but still loves something in a tangible shape; no cloud herself, she hates being embraced by a cloud; and her chaste nuptials, warm as they are chaste, must be celebrated after our human fashion, not spiritually and no more, but with genial embraces, beneath the moon and stars, else how, pray, could she ever be-Mother-Earth? Unfruitful communion else, and the fairy-land of Poetry would soon be depopulated.

But observe-that if true poets are sometimes rather too cold and frigid in their tautological addresses to Nymph Nature, those wooers of hers who are no poets at all, albeit they lisp to her in numbers, carry their rigmaroling beyond all bounds of her patience, and assail her with sonnets as cold as icicles. Never was there

a time when poetasters were more frigid in their lays than at present; never was there a greater shew of fantastic frost-frost; instead of a living Flora, you are put off with a Hortus Siccus. And therefore it was, that in the first sentence of this article we said that Descriptive Poetry might be the dullest-and we now add the driest and deadest thing in the united kingdom of Art and Nature -or the most delightful—just as the true Poet is wedded to Nature, or the true proser keeps dallying with her, till he with a flea in his ear is ordered out of her presence, and kicked by Cupid and Hymen into the debateable land between Imagination and Reality, where luckless wights are, like fish without fins, or fowls without wings, unable either to swim or fly, and yet too conceited to use their feet like either walking, creeping,or crawling creatures. Never -never was there such a multitude of pretenders elbowing themselves into notice among the inspired; and one and all of them it is our intention to take-monthly during the next ten years by the nape of the neck-and after exhibiting them in writhing contortions for a few minutes, to duck them-for evermore -into the Pool of Oblivion.

But tremble not-gentle reader— whoever you beat such denunciation of our wrath; for sure we are that no friends of Maga can ever be brought under that ban. Perhaps we may relent and spare even the dunces; for our wrath is like that of a summer-wave, rising and falling with

a

beautiful burst and break of foam, that frightens not the sea-mew, nor even the child sporting on the shore. And thou-thou art a Poet-whatever be the order to which thou mayest belong-and there are many orders, believe us, among the true Sons of Song. Mediocrity indeed! Where may that line be drawn? How many ranks-degrees of glory-between William Shakspeare and Allan Ramsay! Between Allan Ramsay and the humblest shepherd that ever tuned the rural pipe to love on Scotia's pastoral hills! Nature is not such a niggards to her children-but scatters her blessed boons wide over life. Each nook has its own native flower-each grove its own songster-and methinks the daisy, "wee, modest

crimson-tippit flower," is little less lovely than the imperial rose; to our hearing, when the nightingale is mute, most sweetly doth the linnet sing;

"One touch of Nature wakes the whole

world of kin."

Surely touches of Nature are not so rare as to be thought miraculous ; her harp gives forth music to many a hand; and though highest genius is the endowment but of a few, yet genius-that is, geniality-dwells in unnumbered bosoms, and its breathings are heard wide over all the world on a thousand airs. Its voice is always recognised at last, let it whisper as humbly-as lowly as it may; and the brow that misses the laurel, or merits it not, may be encircled with the holly or the broom, emblems both, in their greenness, of immortality. 'Tis not much of the divine spirit, after all, that is needed to give a name its magic. One song-one verse of a song-has consecrated a peasant's name, who cared not for fame the phantom; and unborn ages have wept over the pathos of some tune which flowed almost unconsciously from the shepherd's heart, at the " Wauken of the fauld," or when waiting by moonlight at the Trysting Thorn. Now, much of the poetical literature of every people is of this character. Is not Scotland full of it-and all Scottish hearts? Not the work of intellect, surely-but the finer breath of the spirit, passion-roused and fancyfired by the hopes, joys, and fears of this mortal life!

Surely this must be the spirit in which all poetry-high or low, humble or ambitious—ought to be read; for only in such a spirit can its spirit be fully, fairly, and freely felt; and in any other mood, inspiration itself will be wasted and thrown away on even the most gifted mind. True, that in states of society exceedingly cultivated and refined that is to say, artificial-when the most exquisite and consummate skill of execution is necessarily aimed at, and therefore expected, nothing short of the most faultless perfection of style will secure to any poet the highest honours of his art and at such a period did Horace deliver his celebrated anathema against mediocre bards. But poetry in the modern world has rare

ly been so trammelled; and Genius and Feeling have been allowed their triumphs, in spite of the accompanying defects, deficiencies, and faults in taste. It is far better so; and indeed the cause of this lies deep in human nature, which seems to have had depths opened up in it altogether unknown in the world of old. The very perfection of the Greek drama proves its inferiority to that of Shakspeare. His materials are not in nature susceptible of being moulded into such shapes and forms as were required on the Greek stage. And as of Shakspeare, so in due degree, in the cases of all true poets, down to those of even the lowest order— all of them, without exception, have excelled, not so much by the power of art as of nature, in whose free spirit they had their being as poets. An indefinable feeling is excited by their productions-imperfect, mediocre in execution, nay, even in design, as many of them are-a feeling which rises but beneath the breath of genius, and a certain proof, therefore, of its existence. So noble-so sacred an achievement is it to give delight to the spirit through its finer emotions! So that glory is his who so moves us, and gratitude; though he has done no more than present to us a few new images, round which, by the mysterious constitution of our souls, we can gather some dearlycherished thoughts and feelings, and, when they are so gathered, know that they are for ever embalmed, as it were, in words which it was genius for the first time to utter, and which, but for genius, could never have been for our delight or our consolation.

Thus explained, Mediocrity in poetry appears at once to be a height to which, though many aspire, but few attain-and which can be reached only by genius. There are at present in this island, hundreds, aye thousands, nay, millions, of writers in verse, who would disdain to accept the palm of mediocrity, who turn up their noses at senior and junior Ops, and dream of nothing less than being high Wranglers. Yet, among the will they remain while they consume crops. It is not in them to beautify —or to embalm beauty; and therefore, as Cowley says, they "like beasts or common people die;" and their