Who and what the BowLES's are, I know as little, as this archcockney, when he "sits down to square the circle," knows of Nature; but this I am sure, the family of the BowLES's are honored by the remark, inasmuch as they may be considered lovers of the great prototype of all that is sublime or beautiful in art.

If any "explanation" were necessary, the BOWLES's need not be consulted, when even in criticism the expressive language was at hand, from authority that will not be doubted:

"First, follow NATURE, and your judgment frame
By her just standard, WHICH IS STILL the same.
UNERRING NATURE, still divinely bright,
One clear, unchanged, and universal light,
Life, force, and beauty, must to all impart,
At once the SOURCE, and END, and TEST, of

ART!!"

Essay on Criticism.

This general opinion, thus admirably and elegantly expressed, will be quite sufficient to justify me in what I have laid down, even if it should not be so clear as I wish to make it; and if the BOWLES'S have been for two thousand years ringing chimes and changes on the term "Nature," they may well imagine that some few others may indeed hope to succeed in their "favorite studies of squaring the circle," before they can comprehend it-certainly they must look beyond that "Nuture" which is bounded by "four walls!" and which, blind to the magnificence of the Creation, they facetiously designate as "In-door Nature," and think a poet, who preferred this Nature, to be in the same FILE with HOMER, and SHAKESPEARE, and MILTON, and DANTE!

Turning from a critic of this description, I would here address some particular observations to the reader.

Mr. CAMPBELL made an unfortunate appeal to MILTON, with respect to his having, in his sublimest parts of Paradise Lost, drawn images from art. I hope to be excused, if, in speaking on this point, I examine somewhat more closely MILTON's examples in general.

There are some passages which, without considering the cause, strike almost every reader with a kind of instinctive and involuntary dislike. Some of these passages will perhaps instantly occur. Who does not draw back with peculiar distaste from those passages where the Satanic army bring their great guns charged with the gunpowder? Why is this? Because an image of art is brought too close, and too immediately and distinctly to our view! The same may be said, when the Creator applies the "golden compasses" to mark the orb of the world! The image is taken from art, and brought too distinctly into our view! The same may be said, when Death and Sin build a "bridge" from Hell to this world!

These images from art are all too manifestly and too minutely in

sight. But this is not the case in general, where MILTON introduces images from art. They are placed before us, if I may say so, by a single evanescent touch-you are not left to dwell on them -and most commonly some epithet is added, to generalise them with higher imagery.

Thus, if the trumpet is mentioned, an indistinct grandeur is given to it by the epithet "the ARCH-ANGEL trumpet." The wheels of the brazen chariot are alive-" The madding wheels of brazen chariots raged."

If Satan lifts his shield, it is the "rocky orb of vast circumference." The "swords" are "" fiery;" the "shields," two BRIGHT

SUNS, THAT BLAZE opposite."

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The adjunct, generally taken from some magnificent object in Nature, subdues what has a too mechanical appearance, and this tends to exalt the image, as well as to prevent the imagination dwelling too minutely on it.

:

Gold, the most precious stones, are often added as epithets, where the naked image from art wants exalting in other cases, a word is joined for the sake of taking off and shadowing, if I may say so, the too distinctive glare of an artificial image.

It is for want of attending to this nice propriety, (which in MILTON, with the exception of some passages, appears instinctive,) that COWLEY is generally so absurd in his imagery,—as when he makes art and nature coachman and postilion, &c.

If COWLEY had used the image of the angel unfurling Satan's standard from the "staff," he would, probably, have minutely described it. MILTON scarce touches the image; but how does he instantly exalt it, by associating it with the most striking and awful image from nature!

"a Cherub tall,

Who, forthwith, from the glittering staff unfurl'd
The Imperial ensign, which, full high advanced,
Shone, like a meteor, streaming to the wind!"

The building of Pandemonium is associated with ideas of superearthly POWER. When it rises

"LIKE AN EXUALATION, to the sound
Of dulcet symphonies,"

every thing accords with the ideas of immense size and grandeur. Is not this in some measure destroyed, when MILTON speaks more minutely of pilasters, and Doric pillars, and architraves, and cornice, and frieze? And how repulsive is the image (it is to me) of Belial himself digging out the gold, pounding the ore, and scumming the dross; and the simile of the "sound board," and row of : pipes of the organ!

VOL. XX.

Pam.

NO. XL.

20

One image is peculiar, and very sublime, in the use of an image drawn from art, where Satan

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"above the rest,

In shape and gesture proudly eminent,
Stood, LIKE A TOW'R."

Here is an instant image of immoveable strength; but if the tower" had been particularised, by one stroke introducing battlements, pinnacles, corbels, &c. the image would have lost so much grandeur; but "stood, like a tower," at once conveys a distinct idea of stately and immoveable strength, by a single word; and it may here be observed, having spoken of the "sounding-board" of an organ, that almost all musical instruments, as sounding, (not otherwise,) are poetical. Why? Because the sound instantly assimilates itself with some kindred feeling or passion-as the flute with tenderness, the viol with sprightliness, the trumpet with heroic animation. Scott, of Amwell, has made a fine and original use of the drum by the association of sadness and pity

"I hate that drum's discordant sound,

Parading round, and round, and round."

The late Mrs. SHERIDAN has given to the sound "of the violin" a poetical feeling, which is as new as beautiful and affecting, where she speaks of her brother, bringing forth those tones that live beyond the touch!

"Ah! who, like him, can teach the liquid notes,

So soft, so sweet, so eloquently clear,

TO LIVE BEYOND THE TOUCH, and gently float

In dying modulations on the ear ?"

But let us look a little farther abroad.

Take any work of art, how little, considered as a work of art, can you make it POETICAL, without adjuncts from Nature!

Take useful or decorative architecture, statuary, pictures, carvings, music, bridges, aqueducts, canals, &c.

Take an elegant mansion, or an old abbey :-It would be ridiculous to say which, as an object, is most poetical. Undoubtedly that which is rendered more interesting by various moral associations and picturesque beauty. Time, that leans on the reft_battlements, brings with it a thousand associations of sublimity and melancholy. These are most poetically affecting! Even external adventitious circumstances of Nature make the picture more peculiarly and intensely interesting:

"Scarce a sickly straggling flower

Decks the rough castle's rifted tower."-WARTON.
"Ile, who would see Melrose aright,

Must see it by the pale moonlight."-SCOTT.

But, one of the finest pictures of modern poetry, where Nature makes the works of art so much more effectually poetical, is to be

found in the Gladiator dying in the Coliseum, who remembers, as he dies, "the scenes of his infancy, the hut of his mother, on the banks of the Danube."

"I see before me the Gladiator lie:

He leans upon his hand his manly brow;
Consents to death, but conquers agony:
And his droop'd head sinks gradually low;
And from his side the last drops, ebbing slow
From the sad gash, fall heavy, one by one,

Like the first drops of a thunder-shower; and now
The arena swims around him. He is gone

Ere ceased the inhuman sound which hail'd the wretch
who won.

He heard it, but he heeded not. His eyes

Were with his heart, and that was far away:
He reck'd not of the life he lost, nor prize;
But where his rude hut by the Danube lay,
There were his young barbarians all at play,
There was their Dacian mother. He, their sire,
Butcher'd to make a Roman holiday!

All this rush'd with his blood. Shall he expire,

And unaveng'd? Arise, ye Goths, and glut your ire."

In the" Faithful Shepherdess" of BEAUMONT and FLETCHER are two similes, immediately succeeding each other, one from a beautiful image in nature, the other from a common one of human art

"Holy virgin, I will dance

Round about these woods as quick
AS THE BREAKING LIGHT, and prick
Down the lawns, and down the vales,
Faster than the WIND-MILL SAILS!"

It is the "sails careering in the wind" that gives such poetical effect to the last image. How exquisite is a picture from the finest poem of the present age

"It was the hour

Of vespers, but no vesper-bell was heard,
Nor other SOUND, than of the passing stream.
Or stork, who, flapping with wide wing the air,

Sought her broad nest upon the SILENT tower."-SOUTHEY.

A clock, as a work of art, is not very poetical; but its sound at night is poetical in the highest degree: more so when associated with moral feelings-the time past-the time perpetually going on Why is this? Because we hear the sound

"As if an angel spoke."

A striking circumstance of this kind is to be found in Wilson's City of the Plague. The clock is motionless! There is no poetry in this circumstance, abstractedly; but how deeply, how affectingly, is it rendered poetry, when the circumstance that has caused

'This has been already spoken of.

it to cease is taken into consideration, and is felt to be the strongest proof of the death and silence of a multitudinous city almost devastated!

This point is so certain, so clear, that I feel almost lessened in self-estimation, that it should appear necessary to bring any proof of what ninety-nine men in a hundred, of common sense and taste, acknowledge and feel.

The two greatest works of art that are introduced in ancient poetry are the carved cup in THEOCRITUS, and the shield of Achilles in HOMER. But how is the description of these works of art rendered more peculiarly poetical, by animating them,-by making the objects represented in them live, and become as if a part of Nature! The dead carving is not remembered, when we see the old fisher, with his swelling muscles, near the gray rock, not on the cup, but as in the very landscapes of Nature. It is the same in the shield the creation, the sun, the moon, the concourse of citizens, the shepherds, &c. all are represented, not as in dead art, but as living and moving. And it is this necessity of losing as much as possible the idea of the work of art, and fixing the eye and thought on the works of Nature herself, which give the only interesting and most poetical charm.

This position has been disputed in two literary journals, to which we have been taught to look for sound principles of critical investigation.

The first, the Edinburgh Review, now admits what it at first did not: at least, in the review of CAMPBELL'S Specimens, it is said,

"They incline to my opinion!" I have no doubt, the more they think of it, or the more Mr. JEFFREY thinks of it, the more he will be inclined to admit it. I have the same opinion of the most intelligent writers of the Quarterly Review, and indeed of every one, except that "unfortunate wight" who was permitted to "fret his hour upon the stage," to talk such strange nonsense about "In-door Nature!!"

To this gentleman I shall now point out, by way of apology for representations that may be to him as dark as Muggletonian dreams, some images both from Art and Nature, which himself may

estimate.

COWLEY calls Nature a postilion, and Art a coachman: "Let the postilion, NATURE, mount, and let

The coachman, ART, be set-."

COWLEY, whose "language of the heart" we still love, notwithstanding these vagaries, seems very fond of images drawn from "in-door" nature. So he says, speaking of the "blue sky," it would make an admirable waistcoat for an arch-angel: