10. The smiling angel dropped his pen,- The man would be a boy again, And be a father too!" 11. And so I laughed,—my laughter woke And wrote my dream, when morning broke, LESSON XXVI. POETRY. BY LEIGH HUNT. James Henry Leigh Hunt, an English poet, essayist and critic, was born at Southgate, Middlesex, 1784. He was educated, with Lamb and Coleridge, at Christ's Hospital, London, which he left at the age of fifteen, having already written some verses. In 1812, he was fined £500 and condemned to two years imprisonment for having characterized the Prince Regent as "an Adonis of fifty." The joyous temper of the poet, however, and the care of his friends, especially Byron and Moore, made his prison life comfortable. His poems are characterized by a lively fancy and graceful expression. His essays and criticisms are his best works. He wrote with constant industry, yet seems to have continued in straitened circumstances until he received a pension of £200 in 1847. He died in 1859. Fa young reader should ask, after all, What is the best way of knowing bad poets from good, the best poets from the next best, and so on? the answer is, the only and twofold way: first, the perusal of the best poets with the greatest attention; and second, the cultivation of that love of truth and beauty which made them what they are. Every true reader of poetry partakes a more than ordinary portion of the poetic nature; and no one can be completely such, who does not love, or take an interest in, everything that interests the poet, from the firmament to the daisy-from the highest heart of man to the most pitiable of the low. 2. It is a good practice to read with pen in hand, marking what is liked or doubted. It rivets the attention, realizes the greatest amount of enjoyment, and facilitates reference. enables the reader also, from time to time, to see what progress he makes with his own mind, and how it grows up to the stature of its exalter. 3. If the same person should ask, What class of poetry is the highest? I should say, undoubtedly, the epic; for it includes the drama, with narration besides; or the speaking and action of the characters, with the speaking of the poet himself, whose utmost address is taxed to relate all well for so long a time, particularly in the passages least sustained by enthusiasm. 4. Whether this class has included the greatest poet, is another question still under trial; for Shakspeare perplexes all such verdicts, even when the claimant is Homer; though, if a judgment may be drawn from his early narratives, it is to be doubted whether even Shakspeare could have told a story like Homer, owing to that incessant activity and luxuriance of thought, a little less of which might be occasionally desired, even in his plays; if it were possible, once possessing anything of his, to wish it away. 5. Next to Homer and Shakspeare come such narrators as the less universal but intenser Dante; Milton, with his dignified imagination; the universal, profoundly simple Chaucer; and luxuriant remote Spenser-immortal child in poetry's most poetic solitudes; then the great second-rate dramatists; unless those who are better acquainted with Greek tragedy than I am demand a place for them before Chaucer; then the airy yet robust universality of Ariosto; the hearty out-ofdoor nature of Theocritus, also a universalist; the finest lyrical poets (who only take short flights, compared with the narrators); the purely contemplative poets, who have more thought than feeling; the descriptive, satirical, didactic, epigrammatic. 6. It is to be borne in mind, however, that the first poet of an inferior class may be superior to followers in the train of a higher one, though the superiority is by no means to be taken for granted; otherwise Pope would be superior to Fletcher, and Butler to Pope. Imagination, teeming with action and character, makes the greatest poets; feeling and thought the next; fancy (by itself) the next; wit the last. 7. Thought by itself makes no poet at all; for the mere conclusions of the understanding can at best be only so many intellectual matters of fact. Feeling, even destitute of conscious thought, stands a far better poetical chance; feeling being a sort of thought without the process of thinking—a grasper of the truth without seeking it. And what is very remarkable, feeling seldom makes the blunders that thought does. 8. An idle distinction has been made between taste and judgment. Taste is the very maker of judgment. Put an artificial fruit in your mouth, or only handle it, and you will soon perceive the difference between judging from taste or tact, and judging from the abstract figment called judgment. The latter does but throw you into guesses and doubts. Hence the conceits that astonish us in the gravest and even subtlest thinkers, whose taste is not proportionate to their mental perceptions; men like Donne, for instance, who, apart from accidental personal impressions, seem to look at nothing as it really is, but only as to what may be thought of it. 9. Hence, on the other hand, the delightfulness of those poets who never violate truth of feeling, whether in things real or imaginary; who are always consistent with their object and its requirements; and who run the great round of nature, not to perplex and be perplexed, but to make themselves and us happy. And luckily, delightfulness is not incompatible with greatness, willing soever as men may be in their present imperfect state to set the power to subjugate above the power to please. 10. Truth, of any kind whatsoever, makes great writing. This is the reason why such poets as Ariosto, though not writing with a constant detail of thought and feeling like Dante, are justly considered great as well as delightful. Their greatness proves itself by the same truth of nature, and sustained power, though in a different way. Their action is not so crowded and weighty; their sphere has more territories less fertile; but it has enchantments of its own, which excess of thought would spoil-luxuries, laughing graces, animal spirits; and not to recognize the beauty and greatness of these, treated as they treat them, is simply to be defective in sympathy. 11. The reader who is too thoughtless or too sensitive to like intensity of any sort, and he who is too thoughtful or too dull to like anything but the greatest possible stimulus of reflection or passion, are equally wanting in complexional fitness for a thorough enjoyment of books. Ho'mer, a Greek poet, supposed to have been born about 1,000 years before Christ. The oc'ri tus, a Greek poet, who lived about 270 years before Christ. Dăn ́te, an Italian poet, born in 1265. Chau'çer, an English poet, born in 1328. Ar i os ́to, an Italian poet, born in 1474. Spen ́ser, an English poet, born in 1553. Shakspeare: see page 270. Donne, an English poet, born in 1573. Fletch'er, an English poet, born in 1584. Mil'ton, an English poet, born in 1608. But ler, an English poet, born in 1612. Pope, an English poet, born in 1688. Joseph Addison, one of the classical English writers, was born in 1672, and educated at Oxford. At an early age he published a volume of poems, which were, however, devoid of special merit. He held many public offices in turn, rising to the dignity of Secretary of State. His best literary productions are his essays in the Spectator and Tattler, cited by all critics as models of the purest English. They treat of a great variety of topics, dealing with life in its less ambitious phases, criticism, allegory, and a multitude of themes of universal interest, and always in a style simple and perspicuous. Sir Rodger de Coverly, who figures in the Spectator, is a delightful creation. Addison died in 1719. It is a celebert dankind were cast into a public stock in T is a celebrated thought of Socrates, that, if all the mis order to be equally distributed among the whole species, those who now think themselves the most unhappy, would prefer the share they are already possessed of, before that which would fall to them by such a division. Horace has carried this thought a great deal further, in one of his satires, which implies, that the hardships or misfortunes we lie under are more easy to us than those of any other person would be, in case we could change conditions with him. 2. As I was ruminating upon these two remarks, and seated in my elbow chair, I insensibly fell asleep; when on a sudden methought there was a proclamation made by Jupiter, that every mortal should bring in his griefs and calamities, and throw them together in a heap. There was a large plain appointed for this purpose. I took my stand in the center of it, and saw, with a great deal of pleasure, the whole human species marching one after another, and throwing down their several loads, which immediately grew up into a prodigious mountain, that seemed to rise above the clouds. 3. There was a certain lady of a thin airy shape, who was very active in this solemnity. She carried a magnifying glass in one of her hands, and was clothed in a loose flowing robe, embroidered with several figures of fiends and spectres, that discovered themselves in a thousand chimerical shapes, as her garments hovered in the wind. There was something wild and distracted in her looks. Her name was Fancy. She led up every mortal to the appointed place, after having very officiously assisted him in making up his pack, and laying it upon his shoulders. 4. My heart melted within me to see my fellow-creatures groaning under their respective burdens, and to consider that prodigious bulk of human calamities which lay before me. There were, however, several persons who gave me great diversion. Upon this occasion, I observed one bringing in a fardel very carefully concealed under an old embroidered cloak, which, upon his throwing it into the heap, I discovered to be poverty. Another, after a great deal of puffing, threw down his luggage, which, upon examining, I found to be his wife. 5. There were multitudes of lovers, saddled with very whimsical burdens, composed of darts and flames; but, what was very odd, though they sighed as if their hearts would break under these bundles of calamities, they could not persuade themselves to cast them into the heap when they came up to it; but after a few vain efforts, shook their heads, and |