those influences work? What was there in the nature of things to prevent John Dennis, the great, from writing that work which Steele described as in progress, showing "from reason and philosophy why oysters are cried, cardmatches sung, turnips and all other vegetables neither cried, sung, nor said, but sold with an accent and tone natural neither to man nor to beast"? Perhaps criticism may yet accomplish the feat, fathoming all the depths of "Old Clo'," and reaching all the heights of "Caller oo.' Here, however, nothing so high nor so low will be attempted. In the following remarks it is proposed simply to glance at the history of art in so far as its development in the individual and in the national soul are alike.

I. It is very true that the chief end of poesy is pleasure: but we must beware of understanding this too loosely. A thing of pleasure we are not wont to regard as of need; we may have it or not according as we choose; in common parlance we may have it at pleasure, that is, at will. Is poesy, then, the offspring of human will, or of an unavoidable instinct?

Up to a certain point, it will be readily admitted that the expression of our feelings generally, therefore of poetic feeling, is unavoidable. Says Malcolm in Macbeth,

"Give sorrow words: the grief that does not speak
Whispers the o'erfraught heart, and bids it break."

So Alvarez in Aaron Hill's tragedy of Alzira :

"Words will have way, or grief, supprest in vain,

Will burst its passage with the outbursting soul;"

We

and many more; all of whom but echo the words so well known to every one, "Out of the fulness of the heart the mouth speaketh." These statements may be taken as acknowledging the fact, as beautiful illustrations of it also, but are by no means to be regarded as explanatory. For it is remarkable, that even when the cause of our feeling-say grief-is in nothing weakened, but remains in full force, and perhaps may have been strengthened, the merely having given utterance to our sorrow yesterday, lightens it to-day and for ever. can easily understand how, by simply putting our feelings into words for the benefit of another, or into a journal for no other eye than our own, they should for the time cool down, writing and speaking being in their nature so much more cold-blooded than is feeling; but why they should, as they often do, remain cool for ever after, is not so clear. And we find the same law in the head as well as in the heart; for burn as we may to communicate our knowledge, when once we have done so whether we have really made it known to some one, or only written it on paper, placing that paper in a desk, we have often no more desire to tell it, and cease even to think of it; or, if we do so, it comes up in some new shape, or linked with some new fact.

Bearing this in mind, that to write in a diary, or, as Bacon tells, the speaking to a statue, gives often as much relief as speaking to a friend; it will be evident that to account fully for the necessity felt more or less by all thus to express what is passing within them, we must look to something deeper than the social impulse, we must go down to the instincts of the individual man. Now, it is clear, that what first of all we want is to make a memorial. The prisoner who writes on the dim wall of his dungeon, the lone traveller who builds a cairn, the copper Indian notching his club, is satisfied with this, and with nothing short of this. And what is it but the working of the instinct of self-preservation? the instinct of immortality, an instinct which is no doubt most often found in league with the social feelings, but which, as surely as we have been so framed that in the life to come we shall be like the angels of God, neither marrying nor giving in marriage, is in reality concerned only with our individual selves. In this instinct, every word that we utter, all remembrancers whatsoever, much more those of the poet, are rooted. He, far more than other men, is influenced by "the pleasing hope, the fond desire, the longing after immortality." This it is which throws a lustre on the meanest work of art. It dignifies the very rattling of a chatterbox.

This hope, however, this desire is not to be confounded with a thirst of fame. It may take that shape; as

was most remarkably seen in the Elizabethan poets; but such a feeling is no essential part of it.

"Dan Chaucer, well of English undefiled,

On fame's eternal bederoll worthy to be filed:"

Here is but one out of a hundred such expressions that might be culled from the poets of Elizabeth. A poor man is Chaucer if eternal fame is all that he has earned; and how very poor are those who, having sought the bubble reputation, have never found it! This hope might have comforted the heart of a heathen: it was natural that the Spartan kings in going to battle should sacrifice to the muses, with a prayer that, if they died in the fight, they might at least live in song; but it will not much move a believer in that Gospel which has brought Life and Immortality to light. And if ever expressed in the writings of Christian poets, it is surely in its right place when there found in the pages of those whose Allfather is the superannuated Jupiter, whose Mediator is a Cupid, and whose inspiration is begged of those ladies who haunt the garrets of ParnasIt will be found, indeed, in the history of English poesy, that, according as poets rejected the heathen gods, they learned to make light of fame. In the Verses by a Lady of Quality, Pope ridiculed the modern worship of Olympus, and in all that he has written he has likewise professed to hold fame cheap. Later still, when our poesy had been thoroughly cleansed of

sus.

the heathen hypocrisy, we find Goldsmith, in the preface to his Essays, making merry with the idea of fame by drawing a bill upon posterity, thus:

"Mr Posterity,

“Sir,

"Nine hundred and ninety-nine years after sight hereof, pay the bearer or order a thousand pounds worth of praise, free from all deductions whatsoever, it being a commodity that will then be very serviceable to him, and place it to the account of, &c." And now perhaps it is not too much to say that our best writers, without overlooking or undervaluing the advantage and the pleasure of fair renown, would not only refuse to consider fame as anything more than the means to an end, and think it beneath them to place their highest happiness on such a stake, but even regard with a kind of loathing the expressions of those who do. It would be wrong to make an exception even of the guess hazarded by Sir James Mackintosh that a man after all might be content to find his immortality in the memories of his fellow-men; a fleeting fancy which he would never openly and heartily have avowed. The only imperishable fame, the only fame for a Christian, the only fame to satisfy the man who will for a moment rise above himself, would be the everlasting remembrance of Him who inhabiteth eternity; for the sake of which he would dare, and might well dare, enter the darkest gate of death, and