scenes of nature, the shadow of the trees, or the soothing murmur of the fountain. And here I may notice, what I think has not always been sufficiently admired, the peculiar beauty and transparency of his language. His imagination is as clear as it is deep; you see every particle of gold at the bottom. Nor let this be accounted a slight advantage; for I am acquainted with no Greek writer to whom the same charm belongs.

LOGIC OR GEOMETRY NECESSARY FOR A POET.

LOGIC, for every general purpose, is, in my opinion, infinitely more useful than geometry, and furnishes a more healthful regimen for the mind; and I say this without in any way undervaluing the importance of mathematics; for I, too, have—

Mused on Granta's willowy strand,

The sage of Alexandria in my hand,
And marked his mystic symbols; the severe
And cogent truths dwell in my reason's ear*.

Nor have I forgotten the words of that illustrious man, by whom SCIENCE was married to POETRY, and in whose writings she always appears in the

*Pursuits of Literature.

they

company of the Graces. Need I mention Lord Bacon? "If the wit be too dull," said he, “ sharpen it; if too wandering, they fix it; if too inherent in the sense, they abstract it." This great principle ought to be kept constantly in sight. Geometry is a means to an end—a series of steps to a temple; many, I fear, there are who never get beyond the steps. The admirable Fuller, of whom Queen's ought to be almost as proud as of Erasmus, has placed the matter in a very clear and proper light, in his character of a learned and accomplished person. "Mathematics," he says, "he moderately studieth to his great contentment, using it as ballast for his soul; yet to fix it, not to stall it, nor suffers it to be so unmannerly as to jostle out other arts." A mere mathematician, made up of unknown quantities, is a dreary and melancholy spectacle-a tree without leaves.

I am aware that poets, and persons in whom the imaginative faculties are very fully developed, often regard the severer sciences as unconnected with their pursuits. I have known more than one young and ardent writer of this description, to whom my advice has always been couched in the words of a writer competent to speak:-Season your studies with more hard and knotty inquiries; and let the mind be daily employed upon some subjects from which it is averse. Such aids, if they do not im

prove the blossom of the budding tree, will prop and strengthen the stem: at least half the mental deformity abounding in the world is caused by the want of such a support. For let it be remembered, that after the tree has attained a certain growth, its position cannot be altered;—it is crooked for life. Nothing can be more absurd than this belief of the necessary opposition of poetry to science. In all great poets the reverse is manifest. You see it in Homer, in Dante, and, above all, in Milton. Perhaps I ought rather to say, that you feel its influence, in shaping the conceptions of the poet, and preserving those fine proportions whose combination makes the harmony of a structure. What can be more ridiculous than the poetical architecture in fashion among the moderns? A magnificent portal leads to a mud hovel; you ascend a marble staircase, and arrive at- -a garret.

Poetry is, I think, the only art which is thought to require no preparatory education. Chaucer, somewhere, very happily calls it a Rock of Ice; and the only safe mode of climbing it, is by cutting our steps carefully as we advance. We may thus, with patience, labour, and a strong heart, reach the top at last. A rash and foolish attempt to scale it at a run, will inevitably terminate in overthrow and disgrace. A rhymer in our day thinks less of Parnassus than a Swiss peasant of his mountains,

for he does carry a staff with him. To return, for a moment, to my original argument. It will be understood that I attribute very little efficacy to the demonstration of a proposition per se; but to the devotion and absorption of mind which the operation requires; not so much to the actual showing, upon paper, that "Solid Parallelopipeds, which have the same altitude, are to one another as their bases,” as the few minutes required to prove it. If the mind wanders, the steps must be retraced: thus by perseverance we acquire the power of keeping the mental eye fixed, without wavering, upon any object; an acquisition, by the way, of infinite importance.

A DISTINCTION.

YET the qualities we have been condemning in are not so much positive vices, as what we may call, with Butler, virtues, degenerated and grown wild for want of culture. You discover the beauty of the flower even in the weed.

LANGHORNE AND DONNE.

I THINK you will find the original of Langhorne's celebrated line

The child of misery baptized in tears,

in Donne's Sermon on the First Epistle to the Thessalonians. The prose works of this admirable Divine, are Armouries for the Christian Soldier. Such a depth of intellect, such a nervousness of style, such a variety of illustration, such a power of argument, are to be looked for only in the writings of that race of Giants. Donne's poetry must be sought in his prose; yet some of his verses breathe an uncommon fervency of spirit, and when he looked in his heart and wrote, his manner is delightful. The following poem, for sweetness and tenderness of expression, chastened by a religious thoughtfulness and faith, is, I think, almost perfect. It is, you see, the address of a lover, or friend, to one whom he leaves behind;-mark the exquisite allusion in the conclusion of the second and fourth stanzas:

Sweetest love, I do not go

For weariness of thee,

Nor in hope the world can show
A fitter love for me;