populace, which he tells us is necessary to the excellence of the first, without being necessary to. that of the latter, it is certain, the splendid orators of our day, the late Chatham, and his illus trious successor, with the brilliant opponents of that successor, Burke, Fox, and Sheridan, are as little intelligible to the mere populace, as the poetry of Beattie, Mason, and Hayley. That great orators are seldom great poets, is accountable from their different habits, not from their different natures. The poet must devote the chief part of his time to study and sequestration, in which the graces of insinuating address, and extempore fluency of speech, rust in inaction. The orator must live in the busy haunts of men, nor has leisure to cultivate the arts of versification; which, when they are exquisite, are less spontaneous than they are imagined :—and, after all, the beautiful poetic effusions which have fallen from the pen of Mr Fox, and yet more copiously from that of Mr Sheridan, exemplify the total mistake of the Professor's assertion. Equally erroneous are all the rules he lays down to defend that assertion: for instance, he maintains that brevity is the chief excellence of poetry, and copiousness of oratory-now, both in turn become the leading merits of each, as may easily be proved. It is by amplification that those nicely discriminated features are given, which enchant the spirit, by bringing the scene described to the eye, or the passion described to the heart, and this more forcibly than it is in the power of any broad and general idea to effect, given with the bold conciseness of the elder poets. The Hebrew bards are often striking and poetic, when they speak of the preparation of armies for battle, and of the dread of superior force in the martial contests: yet Shakespeare's description of the night preceding the battle of Agincourt, produces greater effect by copious discrimination, even than they do by brevity. The neighing of the steeds; the darkened face of either army, just visible to the other through the pale gleam of the night-fires ;the crowing of the village-cocks at distance, announcing the approach of a morning so full of fate; and, above all, the dreadful notes of pre`paration from the hammers of the artificers, closing up the rivets of the armour!—Ah, surely no brief condensing into one general image no single comparison, however bold and exalted, could so deeply impress the mind as these felicities of poetic amplification! It is by them that the morning hymn in Paradise Lost, is rendered so much more poetically beautiful than the Psalm from which it is evi dently taken. "O! all ye works of the Lord, bless ye the Lord, praise him, and magnify him for ever!" "These are thy glorious works, parent of good, Thus wond'rous fair;-thyself how wond'rous then, In these thy lowest works;—yet all declare Thy goodness beyond thought, and power divine." "O! all ye angels of the Lord, bless ye the Lord, praise him, and magnify him for ever!" << Speak, ye who best can tell, ye sons of light, Him first, him last, him midst, and without end." "O! all ye stars of Heaven, bless ye the Lord, praise him, and magnify him for ever!" "Fairest of stars, last in the train of night, If better thou belong not to the dawn, Sure pledge of day, that crown'st the smiling morn While day arises, that sweet hour of prime." It is thus that, by filling up what are mere outlines in the Hebraic poetry, Milton, through the whole course of the Paradise Lost, proves that amplification may be, and very frequently is, the leading excellence of poetry, and that the poetry of a much later day can do more than approach the acknowledged excellence of the Hebrew bards. I was beyond measure astonished at the Professor's note, vol. ii. p. 242, upon the sublime exclamation of David, sung in chorus, by the priests and Levites, when the ark had arrived at the top of Mount Sinai : "Lift up your heads, O ye gates! and be ye lift up ye everlasting doors, and the King of Glory shall come in !" With a literality most miserably groveling, does this annotator endeavour to extract all the noble enthusiasm from this soul-exalting address-first, by changing the word everlasting to ancient; and then by telling us that the real meaning of the passage is, "The gates, which were mean and narrow before, and unworthy of Jehovah, should be heightened and extended." The plain sense of which intepretation is, "send for the carpenter to widen the door-place, or the ark will never get in." But if, in general, I do not think Professor Michaelis, by any means a just or feeling decider upon the constituent excellencies of poetry, I am charmed by his historic and geographic elucidations of several parts of our Bible, particularly with those in the first volume, which commence page 140. A note of your's entirely does away his conclusion upon the imaginary astronomic ignorance of the Hebrew bards, drawn from their poetry being so little stellar. The stars are certainly too monotonous in their appearance to form a fruitful resource of poetic imagery. Amongst a number of Mr Henly's admirable notes, I am particularly pleased with the sensible comments upon Virgil's eclogue to Pollio. Most rationally do they account for the similarity of its passages to the prophecies of our Saviour, and for their being applied to the expected, though yet unborn son of Augustus, which, unfortunately for the poet and his prophecy, proved a daughter. The Bishop, however, seems to lean to the strange fancy of some enthusiasts, that Virgil was writing he knew not what, about he knew not whom, which proved an unconscious inspiration from the true God, shadowing forth the birth of the Messiah, and the blessings of his reign. Your poetic translation of the 42d psalm is eminently beautiful:-yet I think you will agree with |