is after all only of a poem, and is intended to distinguish that species of writing from prose. Evangeline, and many works far inferior to it, come indisputably within the definition. If we wish to examine what are the elements of a great poem, we shall find them in the succeeding and concluding paragraphs of the chapter, under the definition of poetry. Of course the excellence of a poem as a work of art must be determined by the manner in which it develops those elements. After the form, the question is, how far is the piece poetic? Or the examination might be reversely thus after considering how far the piece is poetic, the only other question must be, how far is the form born of and consonant with the quality of the piece as poetry? For in poetry the form and the spirit are in reality inseparable, and the task of considering them apart, to which our minds are compelled by the infirmity of their constitution, while it is the only way by which we arrive at a clear understanding of the whole subject, leads necessarily through a labyrinth of distinctions in which it is hardly possible to thread one's way with

out errors.

We might now consider the form of Evangeline, and its general keeping, and its intellectual ability and merit as a work of taste; the definitions already given being, as we consider, for such an examination, the best standard. But as all these qualities should be subordinate to, and created by, POETRY, we must go still further into the matter abstractly before descending into particulars. Poetry is to all the other qualities what charity is to human abilities; without it all is "sounding brass." It is the father of all metres; all varieties of rhyme are but its outward limbs and flourishes. Let us abandon ourselves once more to the guidance of the adventurous explorer, whose soul lived in the tropics of passion, while at the same time his mind wandered clear and unchilled in the darkest and coldest zones of thought.

"What is poetry? is so nearly the same question with, what is a poet? that the answer to the one is involved in the solution of the other. For it is a distinction resulting from the poetic genius itself, which sustains and modifies the images, thoughts and emotions of the own mind. The poet, described in ideal brings the whole soul of man into

p

activity, with the subordination of its faculties to each other, according to their relative worth and dignity. He diffuses a tone and spirit of unity, that blends, and (as it were) fuses, each to which we have exclusively appropriated the into each, by that synthetic and magical power, name of imagination. This power, first put in action by the will and understanding, and retained under their irremissive, though gentle and unnoticed, control, (laxis effertur habenis,) reveals itself in the balance or reconciliation of opposite or discordant qualities; of sameness, crete; the idea, with the image; the individ with difference; of the general, with the conual, with the representative; the sense of novelty and freshness, with old and familiar objects; a more than usual state of emotion, with more than usual order; judgment ever awake, and steady self-possession, with enthusiasin and feeling profound or vehement; and while it blends and harmonizes the natural and the artificial, still subordinates art to nature; the manner to the matter; and our admiration of the poet to our sympathy with the poetry."

Finally, GOOD SENSE is the BODY of poetic genius, FANCY its DRAPERY, MOTION its LIFE, and IMAGINATION the SOUL, that is everywhere, and in each; and forms all into one graceful and intelligent whole."

To make this perfectly clear, it would be necessary to read, or rather study, the chapters in the preceding volume of the Biographia, leading to the discussion of the esemplastic power, up to the point where the author wisely writes himself a letter, advising him to proceed no furthera task we would recommend to none who are not already somewhat versed in metaphysical reading, and have not smattered away the original confidence in their ignorance, which is the surest guide to knowledge. Let us reverently endeavor to explain what he means by the Imagination which is the soul of poetic genius, and the Fancy which is its drapery. In common parlance these words are used interchangeably: here their meanings are widely different. If the important words in this final sentence are fully understood, we are under no apprehension of being unintelligible, when we speak of the genius of Mr. Longfellow.

What is meant by "good sense" is clear; we understand a vigilant presiding reason, having the common knowledge of the world in greater or less degree under its control: in some of our modern small poets animal feeling seems to take its place, and

we then have poems very well sustained, very well clothed, moving very gracefully, but for all that extremely weak and nonsensical. What is meant by motion is also perfectly plain; but the other two words are less easily distinguished, and no man can understand them fully, unless he possesses them in a conscious degree himself, which very many do not. Let us go back to the concluding definitions in the first volume, already referred to:-"The IMAGINATION, then, I consider either as primary or secondary. The primary IMAGINATION, I hold to be the living power and prime Agent of all human Perception, and as a repetition in the finite mind of the eternal act of creation in the infinite I AM." That is to say, as we understand it, it is that first principle in the mind of man, which enables him to say, "I exist;" over this the will has no control. "The secondary I consider as an echo of the former, co-existing with conscious will, yet still as identical with the primary in the kind of its agency, and differing only in degree, and in the mode of its operation. It dissolves, diffuses, dissipates, in order to re-create; or, where this process is rendered impossible, yet still, at all events, it struggles to idealize and to unify. It is essentially vital," etc. "FANCY, on the contrary, has no other counters to play with, but fixities and definities. The fancy is, indeed, no other than a mode of memory emancipated from the order of time and space, and blended with, and modified by, that empirical phenomenon of the will, which we express by the word CHOICE. But, equally But, equally with the ordinary memory, it must receive all its materials ready-made from the law of association."

In brief, it is to the imagination that we owe the sustaining power in poetry, and to the fancy its imagery. The imagination is the wing-the fancy, the plumage; that is, considering them as distinct qualities, like the "organs" of the phrenologist. But they unite in all proportions, and in all degrees of submission to the primary consciousness. Where the poet, in the open day, with the disappointments of the past, the distraction of the present, and the hopelessness of the future around him; with his judgment all awake, his memory stored with learning and his fancy teeming

with images; can resolutely cast himself loose and abandon himself to a rapture that is feigned and yet real-that despises reason, yet never goes beyond it—that in short sets the whole of the faculties of his nature into intense activity-it is by the strength of his imagination that he is enabled to do it; and it is according as this faculty of his mind is put forth, that we feel his power. In some, it is exerted with less of the will than in others. Shakspeare's imagination carried him quite beyond consciousness, so that he utters the divinest songs without knowing it; Milton's had more of the dull clay to contend with, but then, with an Atlas-like strength, he bears the burden to the very sky. Coleridge himself is another splendid example of the power of the faculty he has analyzed. He must have had an almost infinitely greater tenacity of conscious reason to overcome than ordinary men, yet when he does rise, how strong is his flight! He reminds one, though the reader will smile at the application, of what the French Lord says of Parolles, in All's Well that Ends Well: "Is it Is it possible he should know what he is, and be that he is?" Like his own Albatross, he is an unwieldy bird; but when he is once on the wing, "thorough the fog," or on the good south wind, he wins his way with an unconquerable vigor.

Wherever this strength is put forth, and under whatever variety of obstacles, it never fails to be felt. It is indeed "the faculty divine." Whether exerted with more or less of learning, in poetry or prose, in writing or in any other art, or in actual life, it is at once perceived and its force measured according to its degree. It is the contact of soul with soul. In life, it is the essence of character. Men do not affect each other through dry intellect; it is not by argument alone that they sway each other; it is by the strength of the imagination. Some men have weak intellects combined with great force of character: it is almost miraculous what a power they will exert over those around them. In some this power develops itself, through a rough nature, in violence and impetuosity; in others it works smoothly. It makes the tunes, with which, in this jangled and discordant world, the spirits of men play upon each

other. Some are sweet and tender, some rapid and harsh, some melting, others inspiring. In what but the imagination consists the subtle power of great rulers? Mere force of will is not sufficient to account for it. We must estimate the souls even of such men as Napoleon by our own, and certainly all the power of will in the whole human family would never suffice to account for such phenomena, without the presence of that "synthetic and magical power" which ever "struggles to idealize and unify"-a power which, in such extreme cases, seems almost to deprive the soul of its free agency, and make the man a "child of destiny," while in reality it is the excess of liberty.

But the most lovely development of this Imagination, which is the soul's life, is in Poetry and the fine arts. Here it acts not to gain, or primarily to overcome, but to please. Here it speaks through beautiful forms, and the delightful play of thoughts. It moves us, but at the same time enchains us. If it awes us it does not make us afraid, but merely quickens in us, for the moment, a kindred thrill. Only here, through poetry and art, is it that man to man is lovely and excellent; only here that his soul expands above the gross things of earth, and aspires to reach the original image of its Maker. The act of adoration is its highest exercise. To pray truly is not, though it should be one's duty to strive to make it so, an act for all times and places, nor is it to be accomplished easily, though to endeavor is all that is required of us. Hence the dim aisles of venerable churches, lofty music, and solemn ceremonies, are assistants to devotion, because they call off the Fancy from its ordinary scenes, and, by turning it to loftier ones, teach it to lead its elder sister the Imagination to retire into its secret closet and there worship the Infinite Majesty of Heaven. Next to this exercise of the soul, there is no art in which it develops itself against more difficulty or with more irresistible power than in music. This art requires infinite learning and infinite physical education. It tasks both body and mind, at the very moment of imaginative rapture. The poet here must soar with his mind crowded to the utmost with mathematical symmetries, and his fingers literally, as well as figuratively, on

the strings of his lyre. Hence it is an art in which the imagination is more wondrously near and present than in any other; and also, one in which the great masters are fewer than in any other, and the interval between them and their inferiors, wider. Were it not for this, that the composer can educate himself into such a habit that he can create a whole work in his mind alone, or pass and repass it at will across his fancy, as one may a movement that he has often heard, the productions of the great musical geniuses would be absolute miracles; as it is, the i spiritual vigor stands before us more naked in this art than even in poetry. The power of Handel is felt more universally and at once, than that of Milton; many have admired the ever-active and graceful invention of Haydn, to whom Chaucer would be a mere antique; the qualities of Mozart are more instantly moving than those of Shakspeare; and it is easier to understand Beethoven than Coleridge. For the learning of the science supplies in music the place of "good sense” in poetry; and symmetry becomes more readily the habit of the mind than sense.

But poetry, if it is below music in intensity and rapidity, is above it, and above painting and sculpture, in universality. If in it the imaginative power is not so sudden, it is not, on the other hand, confined to so narrow a range. If it does not draw the spirit so near, it enables us to see more of it at a time. If it does not magnify so much, its field of vision is greater. For it is not limited to symmetries of ear-forms, or groups, figures, or views for the eye; it includes all forms and all thoughts. It "brings the whole soul of man into activity, with the subordination of its faculties to each other, according to their relative worth and dignity." God be thanked for all these lovely arts, but most of all for this-the divinest of all!

Let us now descend from these abstract principles, and endeavor to apply them to Evangeline. But we must first inform the reader more particularly what the book is, than he could learn from the title-page, copied at the beginning of our article. That only informs him that it is a “tale of Acadie," which was the old French name for the peninsula that is now a part of Nova Scotia. The particular place where

the story begins, is Grand Pré, a village of French settlers containing about a hundred families. The time is soon after the expedition against Louisburg. The interest chiefly depends on the misfortunes of the hero and heroine, Gabriel Lajeunesse and Evangeline Bellefontaine-either of whom, by the way, would have had shorter names had we been present at the christening. These two are betrothed and are soon to be married; but before they are so, some English ships come into the harbor with orders to break up the settlement and carry off the inhabitants, which is accordingly done. The wretched people are landed, some at one place, some at another, and are thus scattered throughout this country. Evangeline loses Gabriel, and the whole of the remainder of the tale is an account of her feelings and efforts to find him. At one time she is going down the Mississippi on a cumbrous boat, while he is going up on a swift boat she feels in her spirit that he is near, but does not know that he has passed, till her boat reaches the new home of his father the next day, and she hears that he has gone to the far West, on a trapping expedition. Not disheartened, she sets off after him the succeeding day, and follows him, always too late to overtake him, even to the base of the Ozark mountains. So passes her whole life, in a fruitless search for her lost lover. She goes everywhere: to the shores of Lake Huron, down the St. Lawrence, to the Moravian Mission-" in cities, in fields, in the noisy camps and battle fields of the army!" At length in her old age she lands, from the troubled sea, at Philadelphia. "Pleased with the Thee and the Thou of the Quakers," she remains there, and joins the Sisters of Mercy, whose duty it is to visit the sick. Finally, in the time of the yellow fever, she sees among the dying at the hospital an old man with thin locks; she utters such a cry of anguish that "the dying start up from their pillows:" it is Gabriel! He just recognizes her, and then the light of his eyes suddenly sinks into darkness, "as when a lamp is blown out by a gust of wind at a casement." She bows her head; the long agony is over now, and the story ends with her saying, "Father, I thank thee!"-an ejaculation in which, for reasons perfectly clear to ourself, and which we hope to make so to

the reader, we could not refrain from heartily joining.

In the first place, the author has chosen to write this tale, not in any usual or natural form of English verse, but in Latin hexameter, or a form intended to resemble it, and without rhyme. The English muse is boldly invoked to permit him to sing (page 90; he has the grace not to request her aid) in lines which are the counterparts of

"Quadrupedante putrem sonitu quatit ungula campum."

The consequence is, that each line is by itself, and rushes down with a doleful decadence that in a short time carries the reader's courage along with it. Knowing, as Mr. Longfellow of course does, the fate of all similar attempts, it is strange that he should have had the hardihood to have made another. But it is still stranger that one who has so exquisite an ear for the melody of verse, considered by itself, should be so little able to distinguish its propriety considered in connection with a subject, and as aiding to imbody and carry out harmoniously a particular imaginative hue. "Nothing can permanently please which does not contain in itself the reason why it is so, and not otherwise :"-the reader will remember that we italicized this sentence in the definition of a poem ; it was that we might use it here. We cannot see why this tale should have been written in this measure; there is no consonance between the form and the substance of the narrative. But to show this, let us quote a passage as a specimen. We will take the description of the heroine :-

"Somewhat apart from the village, and nearer the Basin of Minas, Benedict Bellefontaine, the wealthiest farmer of Dwelt on his goodly acres ; and with him, directGrand-Pré, ing his household,

Gentle Evangeline lived, his child, and the pride of the village.

Stalworth and stately in form was the man of seventy winters;

Hearty and hale was he, as an oak that is covWhite as the snow were his locks, and his cheeks ered with snow-flakes;

as brown as the oak-leaves.

Fair was she to behold, that maiden of seven

teen summers,

Is this natural poetry? Does the narrative require these "dying falls?" We answer, no; the measure jars upon us; it is as though we were reading intense prose before a slowly nodding China mandarin. The face falls at the end of every line. Where was the necessity for choosing such a form? It cannot be that the idea of its appropriateness rose up spontaneously in the author's mind on his first conceiving the piece, and that he used it because he fell it to be the best; at least it is to be hoped it did not. That motion which Coleridge calls the life of poetry, is here a very melancholy life indeed. It is a "body of this death." Was it because it was a new form, and the author wished to show that "some things could be done as well as others?" Then he should not have attempted it for three reasons: first, the motive is unworthy of a poet; secondly, the same thing or others very like had been tried before a hundred times, and it is evident to any student that it has never succeeded, because it does not accord with the ucture of our language; and, thirdly, no

s a right to try such novelties with

out being, like Collins in his Ode to Evening, successful. Was it because the old forms were exhausted? How much richer would be an imitation, were it necessary to make such, of the melody of Comus, than such a monotonous tune as this! We have tried all ways of reading it, now minding accents and pauses, now reading it as prose; and whether as prose or verse is equally but it is neither one thing nor the other, cold, affected and unnatural. The whole book did not accustom us to it; and from its growing more and more tedious till the end, we do not believe another would, twice as bulky.

walk of art to which strictness of criticism But it may be urged, Evangeline is in a should not be applied. It is not attempted to make the characters natural, but only to make them in harmony with each other. It is raised very high into the poetic region; and the mind which approaches it must put on spectacles which turn all things to i for the nonce lay aside common sense and gold. To appreciate such constancy as Evangeline's, one must be very refined indeed. The whole work, in short, is so fine that it required these awkward inclined planes of lines, that perpetually carry the reader down-and down-and down-ain order to make it sufficiently remote and strange. It is a painting on glass, and has laws of its own. The attempt is not to idealize, but to create.

So far as such opinions recognize the propriety of works of art in which the fancy shall give the whole a delicate and peculiar hue, their justice must be admit ted, of course. We suffer ourselves to be pleased with transparencies around lamps; we see landscapes in the frost pictures on windows; there are innumerable golden regions above the sunset, and miniatures of them in the glowing coals; nay, faces of angels and devils peep out upon us even from the papered walls. Whatever the fancy permits will come into poetry. There may be good poems as literal as the Tales of the Hall, and others equally good, as fanciful as the Faery Queen. But in one, as much as in the other, the form and motion should be, because it must be, created by and conform with, and belong to, and be a part of the essence of, the whole. For example, take the Ancient Mariner: nothing is more common than the ballad form;