s. They by their literature enriched their poetry; and what they borrowed from the public stock of art and science, they repaid with interest, by the pleasure and instruction which they af ford mankind. Similar examples too might be shewn in our own time, to prove that the relation here contended for is real, and that those who have obtained any notice for their poetry, were persons, though in different degrees and, perhaps, different ways, of enlarged and cultivated minds.

"But such writers as Burns"-Such writers as Burns confirm my argument. That story would be poorly, indeed falsely, told, that left Burns gasping for inspiration at the ploughtail. Such a character would not have existed, but for that love of general nature and strength of feeling which in part lead to, and in part constitute, mental improvement. Writers much inferior to Burns prove no less; such as Taylor the Water Poet, and Stephen Duck the Thresher: they considered mental improvement so essential to their pretensions, as to be even ostentatious of the little they knew; and whoever chooses to dip into their poems, will find that the extent of their reading was commensurate, at least, with the reach of their poetry.

But not to seem presumptuous, and to claim for the poets more than their due, let us, in closing, make all reasonable concessions.

Though poetry, then, is thus linked, as we have seen, with philosophy, yet it must be allowed to be the nature of an ingenious mind to find resources in its own stores, and to dispose of what it collects elsewhere to the greatest advantage. Hence, while dull writers appear to know little or nothing, those of lively associations appear to know more than they really do; like collectors of curiosities and antiquities, who, without any deep research or much knowledge, may lodge the various productions of nature and the choice remains of different nations in their museums; or like gold-beaters, who spread a little gold over a great length of surface. We must add, too, what is often said, that a poetic ge nius possesses an elasticity which is wont to fly off from pursuits which appear in the rigid form of system and require a certain intenseness of application. Hence, they say, poets are rarely mathematicians; and hence we find Swift, and Johnson, and Gray, abusing, ignorantly enough, yet, as it, were, in their poetical cha racters, the dry, unbending mathematics. We may concede even all this, and yet hold to our conclusion,-one that the ancients were so fond of establishing, and which no modern has disproved, --that poetry is naturally allied to the arts and sciences, and that the same propensities which incline to this exquisite pursuit, gives a promeness to original observation, a fondness for useful or agree

able

able reading, a feeling which attaches to general truth, and in spires a love of nature.

Is it, after all, said, that fable, which has sometimes been called the offspring of poetry, furnishes an objection against poetry in this its supposed alliance with truth and philosophy? That would be a hasty objection which is, indeed, a very strong confirmation of the claim. For what was fable, ancient fable, I mean? Here we need not call in Alexander Ross's assistance, whose Muse's Interpreter is a thread spun too finely, and carried out to a length too extravagant, for the purposes of 'reasonable men; but Sallust was as grave a man, though of another school, a Platonist: and if he did not find truth, he travelled a long way to very little purpose; for Photius says he travelled over the whole world without sandals to find it. Sallust says 66 fables were divine: he connects them with the profoundest metaphysics and theogonies. The world itself he calls a fable, and for this reason, because while bodies and things are seen in it, souls and minds are hid; that truth is concealed under fables, to prevent the unthinking from despising it, and to compel the studious to become philosophers." Lord Bacon, too, whose searching intellect apprehended so well all the connecting links of science, places poetry very high in his Advancement of Learning, and has written a treatise profes. sedly to shew the Wisdom of the Ancients."

But the world are too fond of wonders, and are therefore lia. ble to be imposed on by crudities. Such are the ideas of a poet comprehending all knowledge, and a poet entirely ignorant. All knowledge is derived from the association of ideas; and man's knowledge is in proportion to his number of ideas: and as a mind truly poetical must possess those perceptions and feelings which form natural, lively, and strong associations, it is of little conse. quence whence those ideas are derived, whether from books or his own feelings, from actual observation or social intercourse. But no human excellence was ever formed out of nothing. " What can be more absurd," said Erasmus to a great prince, “than that he who commands the world should not know what the world is ?" In language somewhat resembling this might be addressed the person who, in the name of the poets, (for I am confident no poet would act thus himself), should treat science with contempt, in honour, as it were, of the paramount claims of genius.

AN OBSERVER.

ART.

ART. IX.-POLITICS and POETICS,

Or the desperate Situation of a Journalist unhappily smitten with the Love of Rhyme.

AGAIN I stop-again the toil refuse!
Away, for pity's sake, distracting Muse;
Nor thus come smiling with thy bridal tricks
Between my studious face, and politics.

Is it for thee to mock the frowns of fate?

Look round, look round, and mark my desp'rate state.
Cannot thy gifted eyes a sight behold,

That might have quell'd the Lesbian bard of old, *
And made the blood of Dante's self run cold?
Lo, first this table spread with fearful books
In which, whoe'er can help it, never looks;
Letters to Lords, Remarks, Reflections, Hints;
Lives, snatch'd a moment from the public prints;
Pamphlets to prove, on pain of our undoing,
That rags are wealth, and reformation ruin;
Journals, and briefs, and bills, and laws of libel,
And bloated and blood-red, the placeman's annual bible.
Scarce from the load, as from a heap of dead,
My poor old Homer shews his living head;
Milton, in sullen darkness, yields to fate,
And Tasso groans beneath the courtly weight:
Horace alone (the rogue !) his doom has miss'd,
And lies at ease upon the Pension List.
Round these, in tall imaginary chairs,.
Imps ever grinning, sit my daily cares;
Distaste, delays, dislikings to begin,
Gnawings of pen, and kneadings of the chin.
Here the Blue Dæmon keeps his constant stir,
Who makes a man his own barometer;
There Nightmare, horrid mass! unfeatur'd heap!
Prepares to seize me if I fall asleep:

And there, with hands that grasp one's very soul,
Frowns Head-ache, scalper of the studious poll;
Head-ache, who lurks at noon about the courts,
And whets his tomahawk on East's Reports.
Chief of this social game, behind me stands
Pale, peevish, periwigg'd, with itching hands,

A

* Alcæus.

A goblin, double-tailed, and cloak'd in black,
Who while I'm gravely thinking, bites my back.
Around his head flits many a harpy shape

With jaws of parchment and long hairs of tape,
Threat'ning to pounce, and turn whate'er I write,
With their own venom, into foul despight.

Let me but name the court, they swear and curse,
And din me with hard names; and what is worse,
'Tis now three times that I have miss'd my purse.
No wonder poor Torquato went distracted,

On whose gall'd senses just such pranks were acted,
When the small tyrant, God knows on what ground,
With dungeons and with doctors hemm'd him round. *
Last, but not least, (methinks I see him now!)
With stare expectant, and a ragged brow,
Comes the foul fiend, who,-let it rain or shine,
Let it be clear or cloudy, foul or fine,

Or freezing, thawing, drizzling, hailing, snowing,
Or mild, or warm, or hot, or bleak and blowing,
Or damp, or dry, or dull, or sharp, or sloppy,
Is sure to come ;-the Dev'l who comes for copy!

If sights like these my gentle Muse can bear,
Thy visage may be seen, capricious fair,

In courts and taverns, and the Lord knows where.

Gifford

* See Black's Life of Torquato Tasso, which, if it does not evince a mature judgment in point of style, is written at once with great accuracy of investigation and enthusiasm of sympathy. One can never hear without indignation, of the state to which this unfortunate genius was reduced by a petty Italian prince, the Duke of Ferrara, who, from some mysterious jealousy, chose to regard his morbid sensibility as madness, and not only Jocked him up, but drenched him with nauseous medicines. It is truly humiliating to hear the illustrious poet, in spite of his natural high-mindedness, humbly petitioning to be relieved from his inordinate quantity of physic, or promising, in the event of obtaining a small indulgence, to take it more pa tiently. One of the miseries with which disease, persecution, and fancy, conspired to torment him during his confinement in St. Anne's Hospital, was an idea that he was haunted by a mischievous little goblin, who tumbled his papers about, stole his money, and deranged his contemplations. The following wild and simple touch of pathos is supposed to have been written by him during these afflictions :

Tu che ne vai in Pindo

Ivi pende mia cetra ad un cipresso,
Salutala in mio nome, e dille poi,

Ch' io son daglianni, e da fortuna oppresso.

O thou who to Parnassus tak'st thy way
Where bangs my harp upon a cypress tree,
Salute it in my name, and say,

That I am old, and full of misery.

Gifford may yet his courtly chains forego,
Or leave Reviews to those who dare say no;
Old Brinsley too, with whiskey dead alive,
Look up once more, and feel his flame revive;
And Canning, for a public joke, prefer
Some merrier fiction than his character.
E'en Walter Scott may see thee now and then,
Spite of the worn-out sword he wields for pen,
And all that ancient state in which he sits,
Of spears, plaids, bugles, helms, and border-wits.
Enchanter Scott, who in black-letter read,
Gains a rank life by raising of the dead,
Sure but to fix his destiny more fast,

And dying like themselves, be damn'd at last.

But see! E'en now thy wondrous charm prevails
The shapes are mov'd: the stricken circle fails :
With backward grins of malice they retire,
Scar'd at thy seraph looks and smiles of fire.
That instant, as the hindmost shuts the door,
The bursting sunshine smites the window'd floor:
Bursts too, on ev'ry side, the sparkling sound
Of birds abroad; th' elastic spirits bound;
And the fresh mirth of morning breathes around.
Away, ye clouds :-dull politics, give place :-
Off, cares, and wants, and threats, and all the race
Of foes to freedom and to graceful leisure!

To day is for the Muse and dancing pleasure!

O for a seat in some poetic nook,

Just hid with trees, and sparkling with a brook,

Where through the quiv'ring boughs the sunbeams shoot
Their arrowy diamonds upon flow'r and fruit,
While stealing airs come fuming o'er the stream,
And lull the fancy to a waking dream!

There shouldst thou come, O first of my desires,
What time the noon had spent it's fiercer fires,
And all the bow'r, with checquer'd shadows strown,
Glow'd with a mellow twilight of it's own.

There shouldst thou come; and there sometimes with thee

Might deign repair the staid Philosophy,

To taste thy fresh'ning brook, and trim thy groves,
And tell us what good task true glory loves.

I see it now!-I pierce the fairy glade,

And feel th' enclosing influence of the shade.
A thousand forms, that sport on summer eves,

Glance through the light, and whisper in the leaves,