tions of ambition, or grief, or desire, are often so strongly influenced by this instinct of bashful reserve as to be the most disqualified for their expression. They cannot speak their feelings.

Akin to the emotions just referred to, which are thus checked in their expression, is that of vague aspiration after the achievement of some great thing which, however, as yet, hovers before the mind in a fluctuating and undetermined shape :-Aliquid jamdudum invadere magnum mens agitat;-an aspiration, which may be drawn forth by the contemplation of human life, or of the beauty of the universe, or of ideal virtue.

Under the influence of such emotions, human nature requires some mode of relieving itself of its overcharged feelings; and that provident and all-merciful God, who tempers not only the heavens and the earth, but also the hearts of men, has provided for us the needed succour in the gift of poetry. And wonderfully does poetry soothe and tranquillise the spirit. Whilst, on the one hand, it leads the mind to linger upon words, and numbers, and measures, it recals it, without seeming to do so, from its cares and anguish; and, on the other hand, whilst occupied in the labours of imagination, whilst recalling the past and presaging the future, and imbuing everything with that colour in which the mind for the time best loves to view it, one feels that it spares and indulges his raging passions, and that at last it has accorded to the soul the boon, the refusal of which proved Dido's ruin-requiem spatiumque furori. And, for those feelings of virtuous reserve, and that fear of the broad daylight, which have been spoken of, how could their indulgence be better provided for, than when, through those indirect methods which poets best know, the mind, whether labouring under the excitement of passion, or exalted by its higher aspirations, finds itself at last enabled to disclose its inward thought? In this occupation, likewise, those vague desires after the great and excellent, of which many are the subjects, meet with their long desired gratification; before, there was wanting something to determine their choice amidst a thousand paths which presented themselves to their selection; but now this embarrassment is removed in the occupation of working out the forms of poetical composition.

We may therefore regard this most excellent art of poetry as a kind of divinely-infused medicine, designed to heal the secret disorders of the mind without offending the feelings of shame, to give play to the tumult of the passions, and yet at the same time remind them of the necessity of order and moderation.

Our readers will now understand the first words of the titlepage; it is 'On the healing efficacy of Poetry,' that Mr. Keble discourses throughout the whole series of lectures.

The view of the subject now taken, the Professor proceeds to say, is confirmed by the application of the term poetical, in the language of ordinary life. This term is applied to many cases where there is no metrical composition: what is the element present in such cases, to which the epithet especially attaches?

room

When the youthful Perdiccas, mentioned in the eighth book of Herodotus, (chap. 137), together with his brothers, was refused his lawful wages by the king, who answered the demand by pointing to the sunshine streaming into the through the chimney, (which then admitted air and light, as well as carried off the smoke), and saying, 'I give you this sun they are the wages you deserve,' he replied, 'We receive your offer, king;' and forthwith with his dagger he traced a line on the floor, enclosing the sunshine, and, after thrice drawing, as it were, some of the sunshine into his bosom, he left the apartment. No one would have witnessed this scene without recognising in the boy's behaviour a scintillation of the poetical; and it was indicated in this, that he sought by this singular pantomime to relieve his kingly spirit, eager for distinction, but not yet ripe for the business of actual life. If those aspirations had been checked in the paths of ambition by unfavourable circumstances, one might easily conceive him endeavouring to soothe his disappointed hopes, as he best might, by some such strains as those of Homer, and growing old in singing of battles.

Again; take the case of the lower orders, particularly of countrymen. It savours of mere arrogance to deny to the poor a participation in what seems rather to be inherent in human nature as such; and greatly are those wealthier men mistaken, who, deeming the perception of magnificent and wild scenery to be the principal aliment of the poetical in the contemplation of external nature, are thus led to despise them who familiar only with the homely scenes of agricultural life, as incapable of the poetical sentiment. There is, indeed, good reason for suspecting the genuineness of those feelings of delight, which they themselves so loudly talk of, as felt by them in beholding such

scenes.

We must here follow the example of the Professor, who, we fancy, has led us a little out of the direct course of his argument, in order to introduce the following passage, of which the beauty is so conspicuous as, we trust, not wholly to disappear even in our translation.

'But grant them (these expressions of delight at wild scenery) to be ever so genuine, and to flow from deepest inward feeling; yet they are not those which best become one truly smitten with the love of streams and woods. By him whose soul has once been touched, as it were from heaven, by the sweetness of external nature, those common delights

which belong to all places,-such as the aspect of the clouds and the stars-the various revolutions of the sun and the moon,—the tints of spring and of autumn-the singing of birds-the sounds of winds, waves, and trees,-by such an one, I say, these objects, and the like to these, which are confined to no particular spot, will be perceived with so lively a pleasure, that he will regard as but of small account such as are the peculiar characteristics of the several localities in which they are found. One really fond of the country will everywhere feed on these as his vital air; and thus, though he may feel delight in other things, he will always prefer to all besides his own neighbourhood, as the abode of his fathers, as the seat of his home, and as endeared and made sacred to him by the offices of human life. If, then, we compare the views severally taken by untutored countrymen and by men of education, respecting the beauteous variety of natural scenes which surrounds us, it will be worthy of our serious consideration, whether the difference does not lie here; that the latter are better pleased with the remote, the former, by the familiar and homely; that the latter appear disposed to discourse upon the sweetness of particular localities, but the former to rejoice and boast in the common gifts of nature. And this being considered, I question whether those, who belong to the class of what are called gentlemen, care more for the 'rura et riguis in vallibus amnes,' than those who are destitute of the advantages of education. If I may be forgiven for saying so, I do not suspect that there are very many who really care about these things, either in the one class or in the other.'— pp. 18, 19.

It is evident that Mr. Keble is a true disciple of the true faith in poetry, whatever he may be in theology. Nearly fifty years ago, the Bard of Westmoreland-(long may he live to wear the wreath with which an admiring, and at length sympathising country, has encircled his head! and surely, amongst the numerous tributes of homage which he receives, he cannot be wholly indifferent to the reverential and affectionate dedication which prefaces these lectures)-it is nearly fifty years since Mr. Wordsworth sung to ears, which were then, and continued long afterwards to be, through the loud and harsh discords to which they were wilfully surrendered, insensible to his music, such notes as these :

Long have I loved what I behold,

The night that calms, the day that cheers;
The common growth of mother earth
Suffices me, her tears, her mirth,

Her humblest mirth and tears;'

and since he denounced the mere man of the world, represented under the guise of Peter Bell, as one whom the ordinary sights of nature could not affect ;

'The soft blue sky did never melt
Into his heart,-he never felt

The witchery of the soft blue sky.'

This coincidence in sentiment may be perfectly accidental; at any rate, it is clearly traceable to an agreement of feeling, respecting the essential nature of the poetical, widely different from that superficial agreement which is distinctive of a mere servile imitation.

But to return to the thread of the argument.

Taking the case of the lower orders, particularly countrymen, the poetical is recognised, first in the fond reminiscences of their homes, when removed from them by the circumstances of life—those reminiscences so beautifully expressed by Burns, in a well-known verse, which, of course, the Professor could not produce in his lectures without putting it into a classical form, and has accordingly given in the style of Theocritus. His translation seems to us to be sweet, but the 'hamely' Scotch Doric is, we fancy, much sweeter:

'I look to the west when I gae to rest,

That happy my dreams and my slumbers may be :
For far in the west is he I lo'e best,

The lad that is dear to my baby and me.'

Burns's Letters, No. 116.

The expression of this feeling in such lines as these, is the work of an accomplished poet; but the feeling is evidently one which many a countryman has shared who could not thus write. The renewal by colonists in far distant lands of the names of places dear to their recollections, is an indication of the same poetical element; as likewise is the desire so common, in the minds of countrymen particularly, to be buried in the churchyard with which early habits have rendered them familiar. Their punctilious care in the performance of funeral rites, and the tokens of their pious recollection of the deceased, given in their scrupulous regard to their wishes, in their long continued signs of mourning, and in their periodical revisitings of their graves-furnish a second class of illustration.

Thirdly, we may trace it in religious usages, 'in the universal reverence for the most holy cross, which, hardly any one will deny, might have been originally suggested to pious minds by nature herself-only we cannot but regret and most strongly disapprove of the abuse, in which, through supposing some virtue to cling of necessity to its use, they imagine, either that God can be appeased by a bare sign, or that, as if magically, it

can be applied as a remedy to the ailments of the body, instead of being a mere solace for the mind;' in the regard for relics, which first soothe the desolate feelings of mourners; and then, being preserved, are believed in course of time to have in themselves something sacred and salutary;' waiving the discussion of the most important question, whether mortal judgments in these matters have not in many cases received a sanction from heaven;'* and in the respect paid to portents and omens, interpreted with reference to the objects of their deepest interest for the time being, and founded on the persuasion that the invisible world sympathises in our good and our

evil.

The sentiments which originate these various phenomena, (and many others might be mentioned) may, without hesitation, be called poetical; for the common language of educated persons when speaking of the country, agrees in this, that whatever they see devised by countrymen, out of the ordinary course of things, and with a certain degree of grace, for the purpose of expressing their feelings of piety and natural affection, whether it pertains to regard for places, or to the memory of the dead, or to religion, this they immediately wish consigned over to poets, as materials proper to their art.'

In painting, if we compare the celebrated picture of Rubens, the Descent from the Cross, with Raphael's Transfiguration, we shall see what it is that forms that element of poetry, which Sir Joshua Reynolds has described as so frequently attaching to the productions of the Italian, and as so generally absent from those of Rubens. However perfect is Rubens's imitation of nature, however masterly his management of light and shade, of composition and of colour, he is yet defective in expressing devotional feeling; and hence, it is rather admiration of his skill, than the feeling of pious reverence, which fills the mind in the contemplation of this his chef d'œuvre. But when we turn to the Transfiguration, though the twofold scene which it exhibits-on the one hand, the Son of God on the summit of the mountain, clothed with unapproachable light, and, on the other, the disciples at the foot of the mountain, contending in vain, in the absence of their Master, with the demon,--certainly at first offends the eye, especially as the disciples really seem tall enough to overlook the mountain; yet it is felt incredible that Raphael could have done this from ignorance of his art:

* We are not sure whether we understand Mr. Keble here; his words are: -Ut illud gravissimum in præsens disputare omittam, an cœlitus etiam comprobari videantur multa mortalium in his rebus judicia.' Mr. Newman maintains, we believe, the historical truth of at least very many of the miracles which are believed in by the Roman Catholic church.