mind of greater strength and larger growth than ordinary, carried hither or thither to poetry, to philosophy, or to action-with a fair wind, and the tide of the age and a thousand chance currents, all more or less unknown and unknowable, but all under the eye and governance of that Almighty Wisdom which from the beginning foresees the end. Mind of such an order soon becomes alive to the powers with which it has been gifted; and fearlessly trusting in the same, shaking off, not indeed the guidance, but the yoke of authority, and going forward in its own indwelling strength, utters and fulfils itself in works quickened and bedewed with that freshness commonly called originality. We may therefore conclude, with Wordsworth, that among those qualities which go to form a poet "is nothing differing in kind from other men, but only in degree."

While the breadth, or in logical phrase the extension, of the definition should thus embrace all men, and not simply the well-starred few on whom have been bestowed, and justly bestowed, the most dazzling names, its depth or intension ought to reach from the very highest to the very lowest forms of poetry. We want not the knowledge of that which sometimes or even very often waits upon poetry as a kind of handmaiden, but the discovery of what is essential to poetic feeling, and that in all its stages, high, and low, and middling. It is remarkable that two of the world's greatest thinkers, Aristotle and Bacon, have defined poetry not in

itself, but by its accidents; the former laying stress on the fact that it is imitative and truthful, the latter on the fact that it is creative or feigned. And yet how thoroughly these are accidental is herein shown, that while Plato, in his Banquet, and by the mouth of Socrates himself reporting the words of an inspired prophetess, declares poetry to be a creation, nevertheless his grand objection to it in another work is, that it is but an imitation at third-hand. Circumstances equally accidental enter into other definitions. Were a man to explain anger by saying that it is a box on the ear, his description would be as good and of the same kind as many of the definitions of poetry. Simonides among the Greeks, for instance, and Darwin among ourselves, make poetry word-painting. Now, although wordpainting be very often the means of awakening poetic feeling, it is no more essential to that end than a blow, far less a blow on any particular spot, is needed for anger; and as one man waxes wroth when another in the same strait is unmoved, so what is poetry to one mind is not to another. Therefore we are not to ask what are the things that give birth to poetic feeling, which would be as idle as to reckon up all the things that make one angry; but we have to determine that state or mood of the mind called poetic. The definition must put no school beyond its pale; it must ban neither the Greek, nor the Gothic, nor the Asiatic; it must open its arms to all poetries alike, dramatic, epic, lyrical;

and it must apply to every variety of poem, poem, whether glowing with all the colours of Shakespere, or naked as from the hands of Crabbe. The unadorned works, indeed, of such a stern painter as Crabbe have been the rocks upon which many trim definitions have split; and witty and humorous pieces form another such reef. The wanderings and shortcomings of definitions are not wonderful, however; nor need we wonder at the ravings of those who, instead of defining, have been carried away into wild description. As Longinus thought to write sublimely on the sublime, as Addison wrote wittily about wit, as Horace, Vida, Boileau, Roscommon, Pope, and others have written poems on the poetic art, it is at present the fashion with some to indite a prose poem whenever the subject to be handled is poetry; quite forgetting that a poem without verse can be no more than the movement of a watch without the dialplate. In the following sheets there will assuredly be no such highflying; but, as it is not so easy to sail clear of other errors, I dare only hope to be on the right track.

Before attempting to define, however, we must know precisely what it is that we are going to define. Poetry may be packed between the covers of a book, but we know that it had its being and home within the poet's bosom before he thus embodied it in words and gave it an outward dwelling-place on paper. He felt it, and then he spoke out in words of fire. Now, although we may

be unable to give such or any utterance to our feelings, we may be sure from reason beforehand, and are doubly sure from trial afterward, that the poet, as such, has no more, and no other, and not always even stronger feelings than ourselves; and that therefore what marks out the poet, commonly so called, is not simply loftier feelings or brighter visions, but power to give these forth, and to make others see what he has seen, and feel what he has felt. We may not have to boast of the accomplishment of verse; our muse may be Tacita, the silent one, beloved of Numa; but those feelings of the poet which precede expression are shared with us and with all men. This truth may be gathered partly from the very use of words. We speak of the romance of childhood, of a romantic adventure, of the poetry of life in general: thus also Keats, making mention of what is in plain English the rapture of a kiss, says that the lips poesied with each other. As heat is found in all bodies, poetry dwells with quickening power in every man's soul; but only here and there, not always, however, where it may be hottest, it breaks out into visible fire. Here, then, are two things instead of one to be defined; first, that frame of the mind wherein poetry is felt; next, that mood of mind wherein it is uttered-poetry, and the art of poetry. This distinction will henceforward be observed, at least, wherever there is need of accuracy ; and I therefore beg leave to call the feeling poetry, and to call the expression of it in words poesy, or song. But

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it will be seen that to answer what is commonly understood by the question, What is poetry? we have only to do with the former, namely, with the feeling of poetry, however it may have arisen, whether unaware and from the unknown depths of our own soul, or by reading the pages of a book, or by gazing on the broadside of nature; and that to answer the other question, or what is the state of the mind giving birth to song, belongs rather to the whole art of composition or utterance than to this one corner of it. For poetry is uttered in other ways than by speech; as in visible forms, in musical sounds, in dumb show; in any, or in all together.

Now, in entering upon the wide field that here stretches before us, we are met in the very gateway by the fact that both the dreamer and the thinker, the singer and the sayer, have declared the immediate aim of poesy to be pleasure. They are at war on many another point, but here they are at one. It is the pleasure of a truth, says Aristotle; it is that of a lie, says Bacon; but both feel and admit that, whatever other aims poesy may have in view, pleasure is the main thing. Whatsoever we do has happiness for its last end, but with poesy it is the first as well as the last. This is not all, however; the tie is much closer. Poesy is not only meant for pleasure, but is founded on pleasure, and is the embodiment of all our happiness, past, present, and to come. It is built on, and of, and in, and for happiness. "It is the record," as Shelley has it, "of the best and