Like a high-born maiden In a palace tower, Soul in secret hour With music sweet as love, which overflows her bower: Like a glow-worm golden In a dell of dew, Its aërial hue Among the flowers and grass, which screen it from the view: Like a rose embowered In its own green leaves, By warm winds deflowered, Makes faint with too much sweet those heavy-winged thieves. Sound of vernal showers All that ever was Joyous, and clear, and fresh, thy music doth surpass. In the Cloud, by the same poet, the imagery is partly fantastic, partly imaginative, as may be seen in the following extract: That orbed maiden, with white fire laden, Glides glimmering o'er my fleece-like floor, And wherever the beat of her unseen feet, Which only the angels hear, May have broken the woof of my tent's thin roof, The stars peep behind her and peer; And I laugh to see them whirl and flee, Like a swarm of golden bees, When I widen the rent in my wind-built tent, Like strips of the sky fallen through me on high, I am the daughter of earth and water, And the nursling of the sky: I pass through the pores of the ocean and shores; I change, but I cannot die. For after the rain, when with never a stain, The pavilion of heaven is bare, And the winds and sunbeams, with their convex gleams, I silently laugh at my own cenotaph, And out of the caverns of rain, Like a child from the womb, like a ghost from the tomb, I arise and unbuild it again. 4. The philosophical is distinguished from the didactic poem by the absence of a set moral purpose. In the Essay on Man, Pope starts with the design of vindicating the ways of God; and, whatever may be thought of the mode of vindication, this design is adhered to throughout. Nor, again, does the philosophical poem, like the narrative or epic, embody a definite story, with beginning, middle, and end. Its parts may indeed be connected, as in the case of the Excursion, by a slight narrative thread; but its characteristic excellence does not depend upon this, but upon the mode in which the different subjects and personages introduced are philosophically handled, and, it may perhaps be said, on the soundness of the philosophy itself. How far the pursuit of these objects is consistent with the full production of that kind of pleasure which it is the business of poetry to excite, is a question difficult of decision. CHAPTER II. PROSE WRITINGS. A ROUGH general classification and description of the subject-matter, with a few critical sketches of particular works, or groups of works, is all that we shall attempt in the present volume. The prose writings of our literature may be arranged under the following six heads : 1. Works of fiction. 2. Works of satire, wit, and humour. 3. Oratory; (with the connected departments of Journalwriting and Pamphleteering). 4. History; (including, besides history proper, biography, and narrative works of all kinds, as subsidiary branches). 5. Theology. 6. Philosophy; (including, besides philosophy proper, essays and political treatises, and all works of thought and theory, e.g. æsthetics and literary criticism). 1. Prose Fiction. By a work of fiction a narrative work is always understood. A fiction which describes, not imaginary actions, but an imaginary state of things, such as More's Utopia, must be considered as a work of thought and theory, and will fall under our sixth head. Works of fiction, then, or fictitious narratives, are of two kinds-those in which the agencies are natural, and those in which they are not. In the latter case they are called romances, in the former, stories of common life. Romances are either mock or serious;-and mock romances may be either satirical, humorous, or comic. Stories of common life are divided into tales of adventure and novels; the novel being in its highest and purest form the correlative in prose of the epic poem in poetry, and, like it, treating of one great complex action, in a lofty style, and with fulness of detail.'1 Whatever be its form, the novel must possess unity of plan, and is thereby distinguishable from the mere tale of adventure or travel, in which this unity is not required. Novels, again, may either refer to the past, in which case they are called historical novels, or to the present. If the latter, they admit of a further subdivision, according to the social level at which the leading characters move, into novels of high life—of middle life --and of low life. Further, there is a cross division applicable to the whole class of novels, into those of the artistic and those of the didactic kind. The following table exhibits the above classification of works of fiction at a glance :-- 1. The word romance is here used in a sense which implies, that in works so-called, some preternatural or supernatural agency is instrumental in working out the plot. We have not many serious romances in English; the Grand Cyrus, and other delectable productions of Scudèry and Calprenède, were read, admired, and translated amongst us in their day, but do not appear to have been imitated, at least in prose. St. Leon, by Godwin, Frankenstein or The Ghost-seer, by his daughter, Mrs. Shelley, and the Old English Baron, by Clara Reeve, are among the principal performances in this kind. The Phantom Ship, by Captain Marryatt, is a remarkable and beautiful story, founded on the grand old legend of the Flying Dutchman. One of the Waverley novels, the Monastery, in which the apparitions of the White Lady of Avenel have an important influence on the development of the story, falls accordingly within the scope of our definition. The most notable examples of the mock romance are the Travels of Lemuel Gulliver. The comic variety is exemplified in the Voyages of Brobdingnag and Lilliput, the satirical in the Voyages to the Houyhnhnms and Laputa. 2. The distinction of novels into artistic and didactic is founded on the different aims which entered into their composition. The artistic novel aims at the beautiful representation of things and persons, such as they really appear in nature, or may be conceived capable of becoming; its purpose is æsthetic, and not moral. Goethe's Wilhelm Meister is a celebrated instance. The didactic novel has some special moral lesson in view, which the progress and issue of the story are intended to enforce. Godwin's Caleb Williams, Bulwer's Paul Clifford and Eugene Aram, and the whole class of religious novels, are instances in point. 3. Among tales of adventure, Defoe's Robinson Crusoe bears the palm. Among the many imitations, more or |