"Once
Begun, work thou all things into thy work,
And set thyself about it as the sea
About the earth, lashing at it day and night."

Poets who give and follow such advice as this, grow to have a horror of distinctness of thought. They shrink from examining their own ideas, lest these should turn out to be no ideas at all; or perhaps very good and sensible ideas, but shockingly true and commonplace. They leave them, therefore, with the bloom of obscurity upon them, and lapse into the conviction that a certain degree of indistinctness is inseparable from subtlety and refinement of thought. A great mistake. Your subtle and refined thinking, if it be worth anything, if it be really thinking, must be distinct to those who have the ability to perceive what is subtle and refined. The thinnest gossamer that floats upon the air, if it is to be seen, must have an outline as well defined as if it were part of a ship's cable. But it is in vain to preach this doctrine to such writers—vain to argue that the imagination, in its most ethereal exercise, should still have an alliance with sense—we do not say with common sense, but with some intelligible thought: they have a direct interest in believing the contrary. What! sacrifice this image!—silence all this thunder!—throw away this new word we have just coined to express our else unutterable conceptions!—impossible!

If these remarks of ours appear to be of a very elementary character, the fault lies with those who render their repetition necessary. Mr Bailey, in his composition, has contrived to commit all the oldest sins in the newest kind of way. He has not only, by the aid of German metaphysics, become transcendently obscure, but he also emulates Messrs Sternhold and Hopkins, in the baldness and ruggedness of his verse.

"It is time that something should be done for the poor."

Who would imagine that this was a line of poetry? It is, however; and forms the commencement of a speech of Lucifer's. The whole speech follows in the same style of composition:—

"Lucifer.—It is time that something should be done for the poor.
The sole equality on earth is death;
Now, rich and poor are both dissatisfied.
I am for judgment: that will settle both.
Nothing is to be done without destruction.
Death is the universal salt of states;
Blood is the base of all things, law and war.
I could tame this lion age to follow me.
I should like to macadamize the world;
The road to Hell wants mending."

We give another specimen. It is a lyrical effusion delivered by the Angel of the Earth. We must give a lengthy and continuous sample, lest it should be said that it is we who, by omitting some portions, have made nonsense of the rest.

"Angel of Earth.—Stars, stars!
Stop your bright cars!
Stint your breath—
Repent ere worse—
Think of the death
Of the universe.
Fear doom, and fear
The fate of your kin-sphere.
As a corse in the tomb,
Earth! thou art laid in doom.
The worm is at thy heart.
I see all things part:—
The bright air thicken,
Thunder-stricken:
Birds from the sky
Shower like leaves:
Streamlets stop,
Like ice on eaves:
The sun go blind:
Swoon the wind
On the high hill-top—
Swoon and die:
Earth rear off her cities
As a horse his rider;
And still, with each death-strain,
Her heart-wound tear wider:
The lion roar and die,
With his eyeball on the sky:
The eagle scream,
And drop like a beam:
Men crowd and cry,
'Out on this deathful dream!'
A low dull sound—
'Tis the march of many bones
Under ground:
Up! and they fling,
Like a fly's wing,
Off them the gray grave-stones;
They sit in their biers—
Father and mother,
Man and wife,
Sister and brother,
As in life;
Lady and lover—
Love all over.
Their flesh re-appears—
Their hearts beat—
Their eyes have tears:
Woe—woe!
Do they speak?
Stir? No.
Tongues were too weak,
Save to repeat
'Woe!'
But they smile
In a while," &c.—(P. 84.)

In these days, when it is said that verse has hard matter to keep its ground, and is thought to be going altogether into disrepute, is it wise to give us such verse as this? Or was it well to conjure up angelical or supernatural persons to repeat it? Or, again, is it wise of one, who really has poetic power, to abuse it in such rant and hyperbole as the following? We quote from a part of the poem where the author is dealing with the most popular and favourable subject a reflective poet could select. Festus, under pretence of giving an account of another, describes his own early emotions at his first intercourse with nature and with life—those emotions which made a poet of him. Our extract leads off with a noble line, as happy as it is bold—"All things talked thoughts to him;" and we would wish to rescue from apparent censure the fine expression for the sky—"The blue eye of God." For the rest, it is what we have attempted to characterise as poetical rant—imagination grown raving and delirious.

"All things talked thoughts to him!—The sea went mad,
And the wind whined as 'twere in pain, to show
Each one his meaning; and the awful sun
Thundered his thoughts into him; and at night
The stars would whisper theirs, the moon sigh hers.
The spirit speaks all tongues and understands;
Both God's and angels', man's, and all dumb things,
Down to an insect's inarticulate hum,
And an inaudible organ. And it was
The spirit spake to him of everything;
And with the moony eyes, like those we see,
Thousands on thousands, crowding air in dreams,
Looked into him its mighty meanings, till
He felt the power fulfil him, as a cloud
In every fibre feels the forming wind.
He spake the world's one tongue: in earth and heaven
There is but one; it is the word of truth.
To him the eye let out its hidden meaning;
And young and old made their hearts over to him;
And thoughts were told to him as unto none,
Save one, who heareth, said and unsaid, all.
And his heart held these as a grate its gleeds,
Where others warm them.
Student. I would I had known him.
Festus.—All things were inspiration unto him:
Wood, wold, hill, field, sea, city, solitude,
And crowds and streets, and man where'er he was;
And the blue eye of God which is above us;
Brook-bounded pine spinnies, where spirits flit;
And haunted pits the rustic hurries by,
Where cold wet ghosts sit ringing jingling bells;
Old orchards' leaf-roofed aisles and red-cheeked load;
And the blood-coloured tears where yew-trees weep
O'er churchyard graves, like murderers remorseful."