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Whether this is the right belief is another question altogether. At all events, what I have said will be sufficient to show "Theophylact" how the Church of Rome came to know what books make up the Bible. Why has he not answered the question put by "Ignatius," How do Protestants know what books make up the Bible? satisfactory answer to this question would settle the entire controversy. J. H.

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Philosophy.

IS THE POETRY OF TENNYSON AS HEALTHY IN ITS TENDENCIES AS THAT OF LONGFELLOW?

AFFIRMATIVE ARTICLE.-I.

WHAT is poetry in its essential nature and various forms? What is the true province and proper mission of the poet amongst men? By what standard, and in what manner, are we to judge of poetry? How does it affect the different classes of society in any given age and country? What dynamic force and influence does it exert upon individual life and character? In what way it modified by the advance of civilization, and the ever-changing aspect of the hopes and fears, the sorrows and aspirations, of humanity? And how does it, in turn, re-act upon these phenomena?

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Such we conceive to be some of the most important questions raised by the present discussion, and demanding our consideration before we pronounce sentence in favour of either poet. We can well imagine that some ardent admirers of both the authors named will be ready to recoil from questions and considerations at first sight so dry and uninviting, so apparently prosaic and alien to what they deem to be the spirit of poetry. Not a few, perhaps, will be half inclined to look upon us as mechanical, cold-blooded critics, devoid of enthusiasm and inspiration, and utterly incapable of judging of the merits of—

"A poet hidden

In the light of thought,
Singing hymns unbidden,
Till the world is wrought

To sympathy, with hopes and fears it heeded not."

Many, doubtless, would prefer to be at once revelling among the beauties of their favourite poet, and pouring out the most imagi native eloquence and the most glowing rhetoric at their command in his laudation. Such a course, we admit, is very natural in early life, but we fear that it is not very wise, and that it affords but an indifferent augury as to the permanence of any really deep inner

feeling of love for poetry. Many persons speak, think, and write of poetry with a degree of extravagance and fervour very closely resembling the impassioned outpourings of those florid love-letters, which not unfrequently amuse the world in the shape of a report of some breach of promise case in the law courts. Reason must concur with passion, or we may safely predict that the latter will pass away, ere long, without leaving any permanent trace behind. Admiration is not criticism, and if we allow it to lead our judg ment, instead of following, or, at least, of being founded upon it, we shall assuredly deceive ourselves, and lay up a store of future disappointment. Truly has Tennyson said that

"Beauty, good, and knowledge are three sisters
That doat upon each other, friends to man,
Living together under the same roof,

And never can be sundered without tears."

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We cannot judge of beauty or of good by mere instinct. 'Light, more light," was the touching, truthful cry of the dying Goethe. And ages before, old Homer penned that sublime prayer of Ajax, as he battled in the thick darkness :

"Oh, break this darkness, let us see
That we may conquer in the fight;
Or, if thy counsels doom to death,
Yet, Father, kill us in the light!"

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It is in the world of mind as in the world of matter-the dew will fall in vain if light be wanting. A straggling, sickly, colourless growth is all that can be realized, unless there be light around and above. We are continually overlooking these considerations in the present day; for ever sundering knowledge from beauty and from good, the intellect from the heart. Hence it is, we believe, that the current talk about, and taste for, poetry is so vastly disproportioned to its actual influence upon character and life; hence, too, that straining after something striking and effec tive which has given to the world so much morbid sentimentality and spasmodic poetry. Our decisions are too much in the nature of mere preferences; and yet a little thought will convince us that preferences, unless based upon reasoning and reflection, are nothing more or less than haphazard prejudices. We cannot judge of the value and tendency of literature, in its influence upon the world, by mere likes and dislikes, any more than we can judge of the suitability of food and medicine from their pleasantness to the palate. Unless we base our decision upon such considerations as those mentioned at the commencement of this article, is it not evident that a debate like the present will, of necessity, end where it begins, in the dogmatic expression of personal opinion? If we start with foregone conclusions, and merely endeavour to bolster them up by selection and quotation from the works of the two poets, shall we not resemble children, one choosing an orange for

its golden hue, and the other preferring an apple for its red-cheeked beauty-each loud in praising his own choice, while, perhaps, secretly longing to change with his companion?

Let us consider, then, in the first place, what is poetry. The design of all written compositions may be classed under one of two heads; they are intended either to instruct or to please. The historian, the biographer, the essayist, the man of science, &c., all aim at conveying information and instruction; their chief object is to teach, and not to gratify. But the poet, though he may convey information, and may argue or persuade, always aims at conveying intellectual pleasure. Here, then, we have one ever-present characteristic of poetry. We might define it as a species of composition which has for its object the creation of intellectual pleasure, by addressing primarily the imagination and feelings rather than the intellect. If we are pleased with poetry, we term it good poetry; if we fail to derive pleasure from it, we condemn it as poetry, however pure in morality, and however instructive or profound in thought. To some extent, therefore, we agree with Coleridge, who says that "the antithesis to poetry is science." Still, there are other compositions besides poems which aim chiefly and invariably at giving pleasure. The humourist, the novelist, and the romance writer, may, or may not, aim at our improvement, but they must aim at pleasing us; if they fail in this latter respect, they fail wholly. Where, then, is their distinction from the poet? Evidently it must be in the manner in which they endeavour to please, that is, in the form or style of their composition. They write what we currently term prose, while the poet writes what we 66 or metre. 'Any composition," says Archbishop Whately. in verse (and none that is not) is always called, whether good or bad, a poem, by all who have no favourite hypothesis to maintain." We know that this decision will appear harsh to many, but we are assured that it is sound and necessary. In whatever way we approach the subject, we must, if candid, come to this conclusion. Poetry is an art of composition, bearing the same relation to prose that singing bears to speaking. In speaking and in prose, the ideas to be conveyed are the paramount consideration; in singing and in poetry, the first object is to please, by the mode in which the ideas, whatever they may be, are conveyed. The analogy is close in every respect. On the one side, we have written and spoken metre; on the other, unmetrical speech and writing. We may say of ornate and imaginative prose, that it is poetical; and, in like manner, we may say of persons with very sweet voices, and good intonation and modulation, that they speak musically. Just as passion and imagination in a prose writer lead him into the use of language closely approaching poetry, so in a speaker they lead to something closely resembling the recitative of the musician. In truth, this analogy is one of necessity, arising from the origin of poetry and music. Adam Smith says of music and dancing, that they are "the first and earliest pleasures of man's own invention.

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No nation has yet been discovered so uncivilized, as to be altogether without them." And he proceeds to point out how poetry became the necessary consequence of music. The first of all musical instruments, and the only one always and everywhere at command, would be the human voice. We all know that children invent syllables in their singing; musicians have their do, re, mi, &c.; and our old ballads and popular street-songs abound in choruses of Fa-la-la, Derry down down, Ri-fol-de-rol, &c., &c. In fact, if we have not suitable words for singing, we must form some; it is irksome in the extreme to sing without using articulate sylla bles, either meaningless or meaning. In the earliest ages, singing would doubtless consist of syllables such as we have adduced above, but ere long it would be perceived that ordinary words may be so arranged as to be suitable for, and to coincide with, the time and measure of a tune. Such discovery was the invention of poetry; and it would be an interesting study to notice how (in the poetry of our own country, for instance) the defective art of the poet caused the introduction of those unmeaning syllables which abound so much in our early ballads, and to notice how gradually they have fallen out of use as the poet's art has improved. We think, therefore, that we have fully established the essential character of poetry, and justified our adoption of the definition of Archbishop Whately, that " "poetry is elegant and decorated language in metre, expressing such and such thoughts." The poet, then, is essentially an artist, who deals with language as the musician deals with sound. Coleridge said well, when he declared that poetry was "the best words in their best order;" for the best words naturally are capable of the finest shades of expression, and their best order is when they are so arranged as to reach the highest point of melody and music. He strikingly illustrated this in his poem of "Kubla Khan," where the music of the verse is so exquisitely beautiful, as to charm the reader, and call forth his admiration, in spite of the want of anything like a definite meaning and purpose in the ideas conveyed.

We have said that the poet is an artist. Poetry is one of the Fine Arts, all of which concur in having for their primary object the production of intellectual pleasure. They deal with the Beautiful and the Sublime, and appeal to the imaginations, the emotions, and passions of mankind. They all address themselves to the spiritual nature; and hence, while each has a special department, they are all linked together, and their differences arise chiefly from the different avenues (so to speak) by which they seek approach to the soul. While poetry, dealing with language (a product of the soul, for the brutes have no language), is the more spiritual of the Fine Arts, and comes in immediate contact with our spiritual being, painting, sculpture, and music (to use the quaint language of Bunyan's allegory) enter the town of Man-soul through Eye-gate and Ear-gate. But we find that any of these arts may concur in conveying certain ideas to the mind; they are all imitative, and by

language, colour, form, or sound, they place images before us. This naturally results from their appealing to our immaterial nature. The soul of man cannot rest in empty, idea-less pleasures long. The child, as intelligence grows, wearies of nursery rhymes, and demands a poetry which shall convey ideas, and possess a more refined music than the mere jingle of strong accentuation and rhyme. Could the painter rival the prismatic hues into which the man of science resolves a ray of light, his skill would fail to please us unless he did more; the mere array of colours would speedily be regarded as glaring and wearisome. Were a sculptor to outvie Phidias in his powers, be could never rise to fame, if he sculptured here an arm and there a breast, without ever combining the creations of his chisel in one bust or figure. So, too, no lover ever would think of serenading his mistress with fife and drum, and no tootling of a love-song on the flute could inspire men, in the hour of battle, like the flourish of the trumpet, or the heart-stirring, measured beat of the war-march. The Fine Arts must be instinct with ideas. The artist of necessity becomes the teacher. Happily, man, though fallen, yet has the impress of Divinity in his soul. It takes a training in degradation before he finds real abiding pleasure in that which is low, sensual, and degrading. Intellectual pleasure cannot be refined and permanent without being moral. To quicken the imagination, and to stimulate the sensibilities of the heart, is to raise men to a higher moral condition for the time being, to lift them, in some degree, above the power of the senses, the narrowness of self, and the predominance of surrounding circumstances. Poetry may, like the other Fine Arts, be perverted to the service of vice; but so strongly is this felt to be unnatural, that we find no work has ever enjoyed enduring popularity which has not been essentially moral in its tendency.

He is a metrical

We have seen what the poet is as a poet. artist. He seeks to work up language to its highest powers of expression and elegance, in the shape of that peculiar measure and melody which we term verse or metre; this is his distinction in respect of language. Again, his distinction in respect of thought and ideas is that he appeals directly to our sense of the Beautiful and the Sublime, to our emotions and passions, to the imagination and the heart,-in a word, to that side of our complex spiritual being which the Deity has endowed with the capability of receiving impressions of pleasure, and thus supplying us with active motives, as distinct from the pure convictions of the intellect, which are passive and complete in themselves. We next inquire, What is the legitimate province of poetry, and what is its true mission ? "Poetry," says that great essayist, historian, statesman, and poet, around whose tomb in England's noblest abbey the regrets of a nation centre as we write, "poetry holds the outer world in common with the other arts. The heart of man is the province of poetry (i. e., as a Fine Art), "and of poetry alone. The painter, the sculptor, and the actor can exhibit no more of human passion and

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