Might stamp me mortal! A triumphant shout Beneath some vast old tempest-swinging wood! This in a different vein. It is in reply "to a friend who asked, how I felt when the nurse first presented my infant to me." Charles! my slow heart was only sad, when first I scanned that face of feeble infancy : For dimly on my thoughtful spirit burst But when I saw it on its mother's arm, And hanging at her bosom (she the while Bent o'er its features with a tearful smile), Then I was thrilled, and melted, and most warm With Keats we close our very slight sketch of writers of the sonnet. A late article in Arcturus Magazine (Dec., 1841), has done him true poetic justice. To this delicate appreciation of the young English Poet, as Hunt affectionately calls him, we can add nothing, but only contribute a hearty assent. The hour has come at last for Keats, that always comes to the true poet. A brother bard (J. R. Lowell), whose first volume contains passages and poems Keats would have been willing to acknowledge, and whose own delicate genius enables him to appreciate a cognate talent, has done honor to the English bard in stanzas, that put to the blush all prose criticisms. Poets should criticize each other, or rather be the most intelligent admirers of their respective talents. A critic is "of understanding all compact," and wants imagination to relish the finest touches. "The words of Mercury are harsh after the songs of Apollo." IX. JEREMY TAYLOR, THE SPENSER OF DIVINITY. A POET should be the critic of Jeremy Taylor, for he was one himself, and hence needs a poetic mind for his interpreter and eulogist. Bald criticism becomes still more barren (by contrast) when exercised on the flowery genius of the prince of pulpit orators. Taylor thought in pictures, and his ideas were shadowed out in lively images of beauty. His fancy colored his understanding, which rather painted elaborate metaphors, "long drawn out," than analyzed the complexity of a problem, or conducted the discussion of a topic, by logical processes. The material world furnished his stock of similes. He drew on it for illustrations, rather than seek them in the workings of his own mind. His descriptions are almost palpable. They have an air of reality. His landscape is enveloped in a warm and glowing atmosphere; his light is "from heaven." His style is rich and luxuriant. He is all grace, beauty, melody. He does not appear so anxious to get at the result of an argument, to fix the certainty of a proposition, as to give the finest coloring to a received sentiment. He is more descriptive and less speculative. He reposes on the lap of beauty. He revels in her creations. The thirst of his soul was for the beautiful. This was with him almost synonymous with the good-"the first good and the first fair." Is it not so? Is not the highest truth the highest form of beauty? Our common idea of beauty is more sensual and tinged with earthliness. But the platonic and spiritual conception is nobler and truer. There was a period when the volumes of Taylor lay comparatively neglected: when the Blair taste was dominant. This sensible but cold critic does not even refer to Taylor in his lecture on pulpit eloquence. The present race of critics, unlike Blair, are for elevating Taylor as the very first of orators. Of pulpit orators, he is, indeed, the Chrysostom; but Burke holds the first, the highest place of all orators. With the poet's imagination, he had also the logician's art and the deep reflection of the philosopher. Burke had less multifarious acquisition, and his intellect worked all the better. Taylor had a vast quantity of useless learning, which had the ill-effect of inducing a certain laxity of belief. I mean laxity in a good sense. He was too credulous. His faith as well as his memory was equally tenacious of all statements, whether well or illfounded. Bishop Heber notices this individual character of Taylor in his life. Undoubtedly, Taylor is a first-rate genius of the descriptive kind. His strength lay in that; and his range, too, was universal. He painted every scene and every varying phase of any one. He is Claude, Rubens, Rembrandt and Raphael combined. He unites softness, richness, depth of shadow, and pure beauty. Taylor has been called the "Shakspeare of Divinity"a parallel that requires some limitation. If, by this, it be meant that, compared with other preachers, he had a richer fancy, greater copiousness of poetic sentiment, and an unequalled profusion of beautiful metaphor, the praise is just ; but if it be intended to express that, like Shakspeare, he was gifted with an union of wonderful and various powers, almost superhuman, the criticism is extravagant, if not absurd. For, in his printed works, we can find not a gleam of wit or humor-scarcely any talent for portrait-painting -no profound depth of reflection-no nice observation of real life. We say this with no intention of undervaluing Taylor; but only to show the folly of any close comparison between him and Shakspeare. We would rather say, Taylor was the Spenser of Divinity. In a former criticism, we have called Temple a sort of prose Spenser. This phrase would apply with much greater force to Taylor, who was really a poet in prose. With Spenser, Taylor is eminently a descriptive writer. torial; and, although without the allegory of Spenser, he has the same bland amenity of sentiment—the same untiring particularity of description-the same angelic purity of thought-the same harmonious structure of composition. His imagination is pic Taylor is the painter: inferior to Barrow in point of reason, and to Clark in reasoning; without a tithe of South's wit or epigrammatic smartness: less ingenious than Donne: he has a fancy and style far more beautiful than any prose writer before his time, and perhaps since. It has been called "unmeasured poetry." The Edinburgh Review and Coleridge (critics wide apart) have joined in pronouncing his writings more truly poetic than most of the odes and epics that have been produced in Europe since his day. And Hazlitt (surest critic of all) quotes a fine passage from Beaumont, which is apparently a translation |