poetry is like a Grecian temple, with pure form and rising columns, created, one fancies, by a single effort of a creative nature: modern literature seems to have sprung from the involved brain of a Gothic architect, and resembles a huge cathedral-the work of the perpetual industry of centuries-compli cated and infinite in details; but by their choice and elaboration producing an effect of unity which is not inferior to that of the other, and is heightened by the multiplicity through which it is conveyed. And it seems to be this warmth of circumstancethis profusion of interesting detail-which has caused the name 'romantic' to be perseveringly applied to modern literature.

It is only necessary to open Shelley, to show how essentially classical in its highest efforts his art is. Indeed, although nothing can be further removed from the staple topics of the classical writers than the abstract lyric, yet their treatment is nearly essential to it. We have said, its sphere is in what the Germans call the unconditioned-in the unknown, immeasurable, and untrodden. It follows from this that we cannot know much about it. We cannot know detail in tracts we have never visited; the infinite has no form; the immeasurable no outline: that which is common to all worlds is simple. There is therefore no scope for the accessory fancy. With a single soaring effort imagination may reach her end: if she fail, no fancy can help her; if she succeed, there will be no petty accumulations of insensible circumstance in a region far above all things. Shelley's excellence in the abstract lyric is almost another phrase for the simplicity of his impulsive imagination. He shows it on other subjects also. We have spoken of his bare treatment of the ancient mythology. It is the same with his treatment of nature. In the description of the celestial regions quoted before -one of the most characteristic passages in his writings-the details are few, the air thin, the lights distinct. We are conscious of an essential difference if we compare the "Ode to the Nightingale" in Keats, for instance-such verses as

"I cannot see what flowers are at my feet,

Nor what soft incense hangs upon the boughs;
But, in embalmed darkness, guess each sweet
Wherewith the seasonable month endows
The grass, the thicket, and the fruit-tree wild,
White hawthorn, and the pastoral eglantine,
Fast-fading violets cover'd up in leaves,
And mid-May's eldest child,

The coming musk-rose, full of dewy wine,

The murmurous haunt of flies on summer eves.

Darkling I listen; and for many a time

I have been half in love with easeful death,
Call'd him soft names in many a musèd rhyme,
To take into the air my quiet breath;

Now more than ever seems it rich to die,
To cease upon the midnight with no pain,
While thou art pouring forth thy soul abroad
In such an ecstasy.

Still wouldst thou sing, and I have ears in vain—
To thy high requiem become a sod."

-with the conclusion of the "Ode to the Skylark”—
"Yet if we could scorn

Hate, and pride, and fear;
If we were things born
Not to shed a tear,-

I know not how thy joy we ever could come near.
Better than all measures

Of delight and sound,
Better than all treasures

That in books are found,

Thy skill to poet were, thou scorner of the ground!
Teach me half the gladness

That thy brain must know;
Such harmonious madness
From my lips would flow,

The world should listen then, as I am listening now."

We can hear that the poetry of Keats is a rich, composite, voluptuous harmony; that of Shelley a clear single ring of penetrating melody.

Of course, however, this criticism requires limitation. There is an obvious sense in which Shelley is a fanciful, as contradistinguished from an imaginative, poet. These words, being invented for the popular expression of differences which can be remarked without narrow inspection, are apt to mislead us when we apply them to the exact results of a near and critical analysis. Besides the use of the word "fancy" to denote the power which adorns and amplifies the product of the primitive imagination, we also employ it to denote the weaker exercise of the faculty which itself creates those elementary products. We use the word "imaginative" only for strong, vast, imposing, interesting conceptions: we use the word "fanciful" when we have to speak of smaller and weaker creations, which amaze us less at the moment and affect us more slightly afterwards. Of course, metaphysically speaking, it is not likely that there will be found to be any distinction; the faculty which creates the most attractive ideas is doubtless the same as that which creates the less attractive. Common language marks the distinction, because common people are impressed by the contrast between what affects them much and what affects them little; but it is no evidence of the entire difference of the latent agencies. Speech, as usual, refers to sensations, and not to occult causes. Of fancies of this sort Shelley is full: whole poems as the "Witch of Atlas"-are composed of nothing else. Living a

good deal in, and writing a great deal about, the abstract world, it was inevitable that he should often deal in fine subtleties, affecting very little the concrete hearts of real men. Many pages of his are, in consequence, nearly unintelligible, even to good critics of common poetry. The air is too rarefied for hardy and healthy lungs: these like, as Lord Bacon expressed it, "to work upon stuff." From his habitual choice of slight and airy subjects, Shelley may be called a fanciful, as opposed to an imaginative, poct; from his bare delineations of great objects, his keen expression of distinct impulses, he should be termed an imaginative, rather than a fanciful, one.

Some of this odd combination of qualities Shelley doubtless owed to the structure of his senses. By one of those singular results which constantly meet us in metaphysical inquiry, the imagination and fancy are singularly influenced by the bodily sensibility. One might have fancied that the faculty by which the soul soars into the infinite, and sees what it cannot see with the eye of the body, would have been peculiarly independent of that body. But the reverse is the case. Vividness of sensation seems required to awaken, delicacy to define, copiousness to enrich, the visionary faculty. A large experience proves that a being who is blind to this world will be blind to the other; that a coarse expectation of what is not seen will follow from a coarse perception of what is seen. Shelley's sensibility was vivid, but peculiar. Hazlitt used to say, "he had seen him; and did not like his looks." He had the thin keen excitement of the fanatic student; not the broad, natural, enjoying energy which Hazlitt expected from a poct. The diffused life of genial enjoyment, which was common to Scott and to Shakespeare, was quite out of his way. Like Mr. Emerson, he would have wondered they could be content with a "mean and jocular life." In consequence, there is no varied imagery from human life in his poetry. He was an abstract student, anxious about deep philosophies; and he had not that settled, contemplative, allotted acquaintance with external nature which is so curious in Milton, the greatest of studious poets. The exact opposite, however, to Shelley, in the nature of his sensibility, is Keats. That great poet used to pepper his tongue, "to enjoy in all its grandeur the cool flavour of delicious claret." When you know it, you seem to read it in his poetry. There is the same luxurious sentiment; the same poise on fine sensation. Shelley was the reverse of this; he was a waterdrinker; his verse runs quick and chill, like a pure crystal stream. The sensibility of Keats was attracted too by the spectacle of the universe; he could not keep his eye from seeing, or his ears from hearing, the glories of it. All the beautiful objects of nature reappear by name in his poetry. The abstract idea of beauty is

for ever celebrated in Shelley; it haunted his soul. But it was independent of special things; it was the general surface of beauty which lies upon all things. It was the smile of the universe and the expression of the world; it was not the vision of a land of corn and wine. The nerves of Shelley quivered at the idea of loveliness; but no coarse sensation obtruded particular objects upon him. He was left to himself with books and reflection.

So far, indeed, from Shelley having a peculiar tendency to dwell on and prolong the sensation of pleasure, he has a perverse tendency to draw out into lingering keenness the torture of agony. Of his common recurrence to the dizzy pain of mania we have formerly spoken; but this is not the only pain. The nightshade is commoner in his poems than the daisy. The nerve is ever laid bare; as often as it touches the open air of the real world, it quivers with subtle pain. The high intellectual impulses which animated him are too incorporeal for human nature; they begin in buoyant joy, they end in eager suffering.

In style, said Mr. Wordsworth-in workmanship, we think his expression was-Shelley is one of the best of us. This too, we think, was the second of the peculiarities to which Mr. Macaulay referred when he said that Shelley had, more than any recent poet, some of the qualities of the great old masters. The ресиliarity of his style is its intellectuality; and this strikes us the more from its contrast with his impulsiveness. He had something of this in life. Hurried away by sudden desires as he was in his choice of ends, we are struck with a certain comparative measure and adjustment in his choice of means. So in his writings over the most intense excitement, the grandest objects, the keenest agony, the most buoyant joy, he throws an air of subtle mind. His language is minutely and acutely searching; at the dizziest height of meaning the keenness of the words is greatest. As in mania, so in his descriptions of it, the acuteness of the mind seems to survive the mind itself. It was from Plato and Sophocles, doubtless, that he gained the last perfection in preserving the accuracy of the intellect when treating of the objects of the imagination; but in its essence it was a peculiarity of his own nature. As it was the instinct of Byron to give in glaring words the gross phenomena of evident objects, so it was that of Shelley to refine the most inscrutable with the curious. nicety of an attenuating metaphysician. In the wildest of ecstasies his self-anatomising intellect is equal to itself.

There is much more which might be said, and which ought to be said, of Shelley; but our limits are reached. We have not attempted a complete criticism; we have only aimed to show how some of the peculiarities of his works and life may be traced to the peculiarity of his nature.

ART. V.-DE FOE AS A NOVELIST.

Bohn's British Classics. De Foe's Works. Vols. I.-IV. London, Henry G. Bohn. 1854, 1855.

THE modern novel is the characteristic literature of modern times. It is not difficult to detect some of the leading sources of its growth in the conditions and tendencies of modern society, especially in England. Increase of personal liberty has given increased scope and a greater common importance to individual life and character. A diminishing political and social restraint over men's lives, and a less urgent necessity for active personal engagement in political affairs, combined with a less formal and exigent code of manners in society, have endowed men with both more room and more leisure for the conscious determination of their own lives and characters. The sphere of human duty is not less wide and important than it used to be: but it is more voluntary-less under the law; its claims are less engrossing and less exacting; the relations to God are less distracted-less mediate-more comprehensive. A man may either live that he may act in a certain way, or he may so act that he may live a certain life and be a certain sort of thing. The facilities for the latter arrangement of existence are probably greater now in England than they have ever hitherto been in the world; and the effects of a growing tendency in this direction are visible enough in our literature. An increased interest in our own characters has naturally given us an increased interest in the individual characters of others; and the examination and representation of character has been the most universal object of modern imaginative literature, its most special characteristic, and its highest excellence. The limits of the drama have not sufficed for its wants: it requires to display not only statical forms of character, but its development under the most varied and protracted circumstances; and an intimate union of the dramatic and narrative modes of delineation has been contrived, to give scope to the new requirements of art. The same tendencies may be observed in other sorts of writing. They have somewhat warped history from its true model and objects, and they have given a higher and truer character to biography. The distinguishing use of history lies in the light it throws on the political and social nature of man. Its lessons are for the statesman and the citizen. It investigates, or should do, the principles of common human action in communities, and furnishes its students with comprehensive grounds for judging the