NATIONAL POETRY.

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necessary for feeding the lamp of animal life in the frost-bound herbless solitude which forms the other's habitat; and it is the same, in some measure, even with plants and the lower animals. But man is more than these, and has a double nature, his sensibilities surrounding him like the fingers of a polypus. The place of birth, the scenes of infancy, the associations of home, -do not these link the heart not only to a particular country on the world's map, but to a particular spot in that country, "on which the tired eye rests, and calls it home!" Yes, and by a thousand Liliputian ties—each, it may be, like a spider's thread in tenuity, but their united strength is irresistible, making that home the dearest spot in all the world, alike to the poor savage,

Hears God in storms, and sees Him in the wind,
And thinks, admitted to an equal sky,

His faithful dog shall bear him company,"

and to the modern Greek, who, unforgetful of the ancient glory and greatness of his ancestral country, weeps as he wanders over the field of Marathon. "Give me," said the patriotic Fletcher of Saltoun, strong in his knowledge of man's nature-"give me the making of a nation's songs, and I will leave to others the making of its laws." Nor can this feeling cease to be the same to the end of 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,"

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LOVE OF COUNTRY.

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

66

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."

BURNS AND MOORE.

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"One touch of nature," as Shakespeare says, "makes the whole world 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.-Extracts from Sensitive Plant, A Ravine. -His quasi-philosophy condemned.-Barry Cornwall, Dramatic Scenes, Sicilian Story.-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.

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 Shakespeare, 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 literature 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 ascendancy. 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 than 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