time, unless man's very nature changes; for it has been the same in strength through all bypast ages. Jacob directed his bones to be carried up out of Egypt, to the sepulchral cave of his fathers at Machpelah. Ruth, as the strongest proof that devoted affection could give to the mother of her deceased husband, exclaimed to Naomi,"Where thou goest I will go, and thy country shall be my country." Virgil, in the exquisite line,

"Moritur, et moriens dulces reminiscitur Argos,"

makes his dying Greek turn, in latest thought, to the pleasant fields of his nativity; and, as mentioned in a former lecture, John Leyden, in the delirium of a mortal fever at Java, was heard repeating snatches of old Border songs. Verstigan mentions that a traveller in Palestine was once startled by a captive Scotswoman singing, as she dandled her baby at the door of one of the Arab tents," Oh, Bothwell bank, thou bloomest fair!" and Mrs Hemans has founded one of the most beautiful of her lyrics on the affecting incident of a poor Indian in the Botanical Garden at Paris melting into tears at the sight of a palm-tree, which, heedless of the crowds around him, he rushed forward to, and embraced. Rogers has exquisitely depictured the Savoyard boy, lingering ere he leaves the brow of the last hill, which overlooks "the churchyard yews 'neath which his fathers sleep ;" and the Abbé Raynal, in his "History of the West Indies," relates that, when the Canadian Indians were asked to emigrate, their touching reply was-"What! shall we ask the bones of our fathers to arise, and go with us?"

Such are the ties which are spun around the heart of humanity, and among the finest of its sensibilities are those of Poetry and Music; and, if each be so strong when dissociated, their united spell must prove doubly so. Even among the proverbially hireling Swiss, we know that Napoleon, to prevent desertion from his ranks, found it necessary to prohibit the chanting of the "Ranz des Vaches;"

and Campbell has finely said-and not less truly than finely-that

"Encamped by Indian rivers wild,

The soldier, resting on his arms,

In Burns's carol sweet recalls
The songs that blest him when a child,
And glows and gladdens at the charms
Of Scotia's woods and waterfalls."

"makes all

"One touch of nature," as Shakspeare says, flesh kin," and what that national music and that national poetry are to the Scots, that national poetry and that national music are to the Irish. Burns and Moore have, therefore, a double guarantee of immortality; for they have wedded undying lays to undying notes, and thus not only driven the nail of security to the head, but have riveted it on the other side.

LECTURE V.

New phases of the poetic mind.-Leigh Hunt; Story of Rimini and Miscellanies. Specimens, Funeral Procession, and The Glove. Characteristics of the new school.-John Keats, Endymion, Lamia; his untutored fancy. -Extracts from Eve of St Agnes, and Ode to Nightingale: opening of Hyperion.-Percy Bysshe Shelley.-Alastor, Revolt of Islam, the Cenci, Queen Mab, and Miscellanies.-Extract from Sensitive Plant, A Ravine.His quasi-philosophy condemned. Barry Cornwall, Dramatic Scenes, Marcian Colonna, and Songs.-The Bereaved Lover; a Secluded Dell; The Pauper's Funeral.-Robert Pollok and Thomas Aird. -The Course of Time; extracts, Autumn Eve, Hill Prospect. - Aird's imaginative poetry, The Devil's Dream. - William Motherwell; William Kennedy; Ebenezer Elliot, Village Patriarch, and Miscellanies.-Thomas Hood.-Eugene Aram, opening of it; I remember; Flight of Miss Kilmansegg; Young Ben, a punning ballad.

Sicilian Story.

THE great original English school of poetry-English in its language, sentiments, style, and subjects-was that commencing with the graphic "Canterbury Tales" of Chaucer; and including Shakspeare, with the constellation of dramatists immediately before and after him— Webster, Marlow, Massinger, Ben Jonson, Beaumont and Fletcher, Ford, and Shirley. The second was that of Dryden, Prior, Swift, and Pope, by which the canons of French criticism were acknowledged; where art superseded nature; where, even in dramatic compositions, rhyme took the place of blank verse; and in whose subjects the conventionalities of society held a place superior to the great originating principles of human action. The third great school was that whose merits I have just imperfectly discussed; and which, finding our literaturo

at the lowest ebb, succeeded in raising it to a pitch of splendour, whether we look to grace or originality, power or variety at least nearly equalling the first. Its primal seeds, especially in the writings of Wordsworth, Coleridge, and Scott, seem traceable to Germany: not so in Crabbe, Moore, Southey, Wilson, or Byron; and it ripened into a harvest, whose garnered-up riches are destined for the intellectual provender of many succeeding ages. Fostered in the shadow of its noonday brilliance, and for a time attracting only secondary notice, a fourth school began to exhibit itself about thirty years ago, and since then has been gradually gaining an ascendency. Somewhat modified since its commencement it may be said to be, that at present existing, we dare not say flourishing,— seeing what we have seen in that which immediately preceded it, when, verily, there were giants in the land; not influencing merely a class or a coterie, but stirring popular feeling even to its profoundest depths, and enthroning poetry for a season above every other branch of literature. The source of this new composite school was at first very distinctly Italian; next blending itself with the literature of France; and, lastly, with that of Germany. Such has been its influence that, sad it is to say, but little of the flavour of the original British stock is now perceptible among our risen or rising poets.

I do not think we can trace an origin to this school,which soon comprehended among its disciples Keats, Shelley, and Barry Cornwall, with others of less note,farther back thau 1816, when it showed itself in fullblown perfection in the "Story of Rimini," by Leigh Hunt a poem which to this day remains probably the very best exemplar alike of its peculiar beauties and its peculiar faults.

Although previously well known as an acute dramatic critic, and a clever writer of occasional verses, it was by the production of the "Story of Rimini," that Leigh Hunt put in his successful claim to a place among British

HIS CHARACTERISTICS AS A POET.

211

poets. That he is himself truly a poet, a man of original and peculiar genius, there can be no possible doubt; but the fountains of inspiration from which his urn drew much light, were Boccaccio, "he of the hundred tales of love;" Dante, in whose "Inferno" is to be found the exquisite episode of "Francesca," which he expanded; and Ariosto, from whose sparkling and sprightly pictures he took many of the gay, bright colours with which he emblazoned his own.

With acute powers of conception, a sparkling and lively fancy, and a quaintly curious felicity of diction, the grand characteristic of Leigh Hunt's poetry is wordpainting; and in this he is probably without a rival, save in the last and best productions of Keats, who contended, not vainly, with his master on that ground. In this respect, nothing can be more remarkable than some passages in "Rimini," and in his collection entitled "Foliage,”—much of which he has since capriciousiy cancelled; and he also exercised this peculiar faculty most felicitously in translations from the French and Italian, although, in some instances, he carried it to the amount of grotesqueness or affectation. His heroic couplet has

much of the life, strength, and flexibility of Dryden-of whom he often reminds us; and in it he follows glorious John, even to his love for triplets and Alexandrines. Hunt's taste, however, is very capricious; and in his most charming descriptions, some fantastic or incongruous epithet is ever and anon thrust provokingly forward to destroy the unity of illusion, or to mar the metrical harmony. His landscapes are alike vividly coloured and sharply outlined; and his figures, like the quaint antiques of Giotto and Cimabue, are ever placed in attitudes sharp and angular- where striking effect is preferred to natural repose. The finest passages in the "Story of Rimini," are the descriptions of the April morning with which canto first opens; of the Ravenna pine-forest, with its" immemorial trees," in canto second ; and of the