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of authorized opinion became as tow, in the hands of the sage. And it was not till these were broken, that genius ever mounted upward. The queries that mind then proposed to itself, were such as he is fabled to have asked, who, as the story would have it, awoke into being, in the maturity of manhood, on a solitary isle-" Whence came I? What am I? Whither am I bound?" Who can hear them propounded in the controversies of the fifteenth and sixteenth centuries, in reality, though not in form, without the intensest interest. They are the language of the first aspirations of mind. And how do our grief and admiration alternate, as we see "this spark of the divinity" thrust by its own fiat into the deepest shades "of nothingness," and afterwards behold it tired of its abode, "through upper and through middle darkness borne," basking in the light of Him, in whom all the magnificence of heaven and earth is lost. After it had assumed its true position on the scale of excellence, and its spirit of research was abroad in the earth, exploring nature and tasking her powers for the benefit of art, those of the finest mould in every nation came together, each with his hammer and chisel, and with their collected talent, formed a frame-work which Hiram's wealth and Solomon's taste might emulate in vain-the temple of the mind. Within its sacred walls, the studious and the learned, the philosopher and the logician, the poet and the orator, have ever since offered up their vows and sacrifices.

Let not then that study, which has awakened genius, be trodden under foot. He who would exterminate his species and glut himself with blood, might leap exulting upon the mangled corpses of his enemies; he might even insult the dead, and outrage, in his fury, all our feelings, and yet be innocent, compared with him who sneers at the untiring industry of the sage, that spends his days in unravelling the mysteries of the mind. His is a study, without which no other, whether in art or science, can come to maturity and be divested of the false glare of speculation and theory.

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Few of us in this world are so very prosaic, as not to be delighted occasionally with poetry. Moments are found in every profession, and crevices even in the closest hearts that need filling up some way or other; and this same 'some way or other' no other way, than stretching one's self lazily on his sofa, shoving by a monstrous effort his troubles from his mind, and surrendering himself to the pleasing lassitude of dreamy meditation. We never found the man so dull, or the mind so dead to the high and ardent revelings of a fine imagination, that it did not sometimes love this employment. We never saw the man-though we have seen those who professed otherwise— who could not by some means or other be betrayed into a confession of this, and thus prove the truth one of universal application, that every man is something of a poet.

We do not mean by this that every man writes poetry, or attempts it even. Perhaps not one out of fifty on an average, is bent on making himself ridiculous. But we do mean to say, that every man has felt the power which the poet makes others feel, that there is that in him which sympathizes though he understand it not, and that in this sympathy he finds a pleasure when other things are tasteless. There is poetry in every thing that lives and breathes, and poetry in every thing that contributes to the happiness of all living intelligences. The clown who stops his plow and leans on his paddlestaff, hushing his own gay whistle to hear the gayer whistle of the robin in the covert, gives evidence of the poetry in his nature. The fact that a man never attempts the exercise of this power, is no evidence that he does not possess it; while the fact that he is involuntarily betrayed into an approval of its principles, proves it written on his heart. Men are so betrayed when they admire a landscape, a cataract, or the rush of the ocean, giving evidence of the same sense

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of beauty which the poet possesses though differing in degree, yet they would laugh at you to tell them so. We have even heard some men condemn poetry, who are melted into tears by music; and have heard them withhold the tribute to its merit, and yet confess its excellence. The secret of all this incongruity is, their ignorance of its nature; for if, instead of regarding it as a gift for the few, they would see it, as it is, a blessing for the many, the difficulty would vanish.

We know very well this is somewhat heretical, and that sonneteers and singers in scores will condemn it, and probably shut us forever from the pale of poetic good-breeding, nevertheless we shall hold to the doctrine and support it with all our eloquence. We never believed in this exclusive right of poets, under which they have committed all manner of abominations; we never believed they had a right to all their eccentricities and to die in garrets. They are as much obliged to eat beef, to walk on Turkey carpets, and sleep on a bed of down, as the greatest lord of the land. The privileges extended to them, have only made them the most miserable fellows in existence; made them feel that like Cain every man's hand was against them, and shut from society some of the noblest hearts that ever knocked against the ribs of mortality. A poet's heart is a fountain of the best feelings in the world; his susceptibility is such that he can find pleasure in little things as well as great, and therefore there's no necessity for his being treated fastidiously; his wit is as sparkling as the first foam on the summer stream, while his face is a sort of looking glass in which every one may see good nature. He whiles off our leisure moments, and cheers us up when the heart aches; he keeps alive the freshness of youthful feelings, and binds them like a green laurel around the brow of age; he wooes for us when we love, complains for us when we suffer, and when we die writes epitaphs. How in the world he got the privilege of being the only miserable body, no body knows. Ever since Dante was exiled and Tasso starved, it has been forced upon him that he was a favored person; and under this belief he has exhibited weakness that put the world out of countenance, while all the rest of us have suffered as much as he and yet bear it like men.

Now one evil arising from allowing him this privilege is, the tendency to make fools. A young man no sooner finds within himself a longing to be something, than he takes it to be the incipient throes of genuine inspiration; he therefore claps a laurel on his brow a la Tasso, or throws back his delicately wrinkled neckcloth a la Byron, and begins sighing to his mistress or bedeviling human nature. Now the result of all this is as we readily perceive, the desecration of the high art of poetry and the overstocking of bedlam. The genuine poet sees his noble profession degraded, the eagle comes down from its high altitude, and the philanthropist mourns over the waste of human energies, while the puling melody itself falling on our ears,

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