as it appears to me, and association, a modification of memory, depend for their power over the soul less upon the imagination, which revives the forms and scenes of the past, than upon that intensity of feeling which delights in their contemplation. A deep acquaintance, moreover, with human nature, is gained not by any power of fancy, but by the acute perceptions and like sympathies existing in the poet's own breast.

All this is confirmed by the consideration that a high degree of sensibility may exist without much imagination, and has been the source of many sweet and pathetic effusions. Indeed, the greater portion of written poetry of acknowledged merit is less distinguished for brilliant or soaring fancy than for warmth of feeling and delicate sentiment. Such, for example, are the works of Cowper; and, a still greater instance, the melodies of the Scottish Burns. For though Tam O'Shanter and various other pieces indisputably prove that Burns possessed a powerful and felicitous imagination, yet the multitude of them are rather characterized by a simple tenderness and pathos drawn from the heart. Whoever has read, among a thousand others, the stanzas "to the daisy turned up by the plow," "Man was made to mourn," or more especially the "Cotter's Saturday night," will bear witness. to the truth of this. But on the other hand, a glowing imagination is never found but in alliance with that part at least of the the sensibility we have described, which drinks in with rapture the beauty and sublimity of the visible creation. For as all images in the mind are but the reflected forms of visible objects or combinations of those forms, that the mind should take pleasure in forming or in dwelling upon these images without loving to gaze upon their glorious originals, were an utter impossibility. To paint in the mind an elysium with hues and forms of more than mortal loveliness, the poet must derive those forms and hues, enhanced, it may be, in their transmission, from the fairest earthly elysium his eyes have beheld. And still farther, even where great imagination is found uncombined with those gentler sensibilities, which entwine themselves rather among the relations of humanity than around the loftier objects of nature, what are its effects? More powerful perhaps for a moment, but less lasting and less beneficial than the influence of the simple effusions of deep feeling. Brilliant and sublime but cold, as a glacier by moonlight, however it may dazzle and enchant the mind, it can never warm the heart.

But the true poet must have both united. Though acute sensibility, such as we have endeavored to portray, may justly be considered as occupying the foremost rank and giving tone to the whole character, yet imagination can with equal justice claim the second. In truth, these two qualities are necessary to each others full development, and divide between them the empire of po

etry. If a delicate perception of the charms of nature be necessary to furnish food to the imagination and give its conceptions life and beauty, the power of the latter is no less necessary to give form and expression to the deep impulses of the soul those charms call forth. The one is the foundation of taste, whose province is to check the erratic wanderings of genius and chasten its fire; it is the province of the other to impart, like the sun, new light and heat to sustain it on its distant course.

With this view of the great characteristics of a poetic temperament, we shall easily perceive why one, regardless of the beauties of earth, makes it through life but a "working-day world," while another yields his soul to their inspiration, and, save for the miseries and crimes of men, dwells as in Paradise. We shall see that the unlikeness comes not from any difference in circumstances or early education, but has a deeper origin in the essence of their being.

Let us observe two such in their childhood, members of the same family and dwelling among the same quiet scenes of rural life. To one the influences of nature are as if they were not. In vain does she from his earliest days unfold to him her charms, since she has herself denied him the ability to perceive or feel them. Through all his course the pleasures won by toil and mingled in the enjoyment with care and pain are dearer to him than her free gifts. With constant though baffled ardor, therefore, does he spring forward in the dusty chase of life's ever evasive phantoms unmindful of the loveliness and grandeur the Creator has shed around him. Such is the unpoetic temperament. The other, almost from the dawn of perception, appears to love the face of the external world. As childhood advances this disposition becomes strengthened by indulgence. While the other is ever in sport with his fellows, he is oftener found gazing in silence upon the solemn magnificence of nature. Perhaps, as we have said before, there is no deeper spring of poetry than the love of the mysterious. It is a principle inherent in all, though in different degrees; and in the poet especially it exerts a subduing power. It is the strong aspiration of the soul after higher knowledge-an intense desire to learn the nature and relations of its own existence. By the sensibilities are pointed out to it all objects of interest, which then the imagination magnifies and invests with unreal colors, awing and bewildering even the reason. It may in truth be considered the soul of poetry. And thus should it be in the boy of whom we spoke. All nature is to him "a marvel and a mystery." Upon his heart she writes her oracles, which are just far enough interpreted to him to keep alive wonder and make him her constant worshiper. To him each flower and leaf tell of Infinite wisdom; each tone of the wind is a call of spirits, a sound from other worlds, and the roar of

ocean goes up like the voice of eternity. The mountains, valleys, and lakes, seem sleeping in mystery. When the "morn is out with sandals gray," how gazes he upon the curdled clouds! How does he watch the sun go forth from his "pavilion of the morning," and turn a delighted, pensive eye upon the purple and gold spread beneath the last steps of day! And most of all, comes down upon his spirits a spell of power from the sky and the stars by night, when meeting their silent gaze he deems them angel sentinels keeping an eternal watch upon the mere outskirts of the realms of God, and is subdued at the thought of his majesty and power. Such is the poetic temperament.

In childhood and youth, before thought has been "wreaked upon expression," it is, as some one has most beautifully called it, "unwritten poetry." When the soul has matured its energies-when feeling has glowed into thought, thought into conception, and the imagination "puts on swift wings," then it bursts forth in the full tide of song. The description of such a one at the moment of inspiration, drawn by himself, the master spirit of poetry, though oft quoted, may not be inappropriate, as exhibiting most fully upon the best authority the world can afford the truth of all we have said.

"The poet's eye in a fine phrenzy rolling

Doth glance from heaven to earth, from earth to heaven,

And as imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unseen, the poet's pen

Turns them to shapes and gives to airy nothing

A local habitation and a name."

Is not this a true delineation of the qualities and spirit of the true poet-of such as formed a Shakspeare? Why glanced his eye from heaven to earth and from earth to heaven, if it was not to fill his mind with their brightness and beauty, and image their lovely forms, and then educe from them a brighter and a fairer world of his own creation? And such was Shakspeare, possessing just such a temperament as we have described. It is little which is known of his character in other respects, but the poetic qualities in his temper are as discernible as light from all his writings. A sensibility was his alive to all the sympathies of humanity, and a perception gained from this sensibility, which gave him the deepest acquaintance of all men with the passions of the human heart. A sensibility was his alive to the beauty of all things in nature, and a varied imagination, playful or stern, simple or magnificent, stooping or soaring, which, transferring them by images to its magic realm, magnified, colored and combined them at will with a variety, splendor and distinctness equally amazing. This is the temperament, these the qualities of the true poet. These have made Shakspeare the greatest of all that have lived.

SAPPHO'S LAMENT.

"Among the poets of antiquity, there is none whose fragments are more beautiful than those of Sappho. Her soul seems to have been made up of love and poetry. She is called by the ancients the tenth muse; and by Plutarch is compared to Cacus the son of Vulcan, who breathed nothing but love. An inconstant lover called Phaon occasioned great calamities to this poetical lady. She took a voyage into Sicily in pursuit of him, whither he had fled to avoid her; but Phaon was still obdurate, and Sappho was resolved to get rid of her passion at any price. There was a promontory in Acarnania called Leucate, on the top of which was a temple dedicated to Apollo. In this temple it was usual for despairing lovers to make their vows in secret, and then fling themselves from the top of the precipice into the sea: this place was hence called the Lover's Leap. Sappho tried the cure, but perished in the experiment.”—Addison.