A few pages before he has spoken of the breaking up of a happy friendship

"There sat the Shadow, feared by man,
Who broke our fair companionship."

Afterwards he calls it:

"The Shadow, cloaked from head to foot,
Who keeps the key of all the creeds."

Take, at a venture, any charity-school boy, of ordinary intelligence; read to him these lines; and he will tell you that the Shadow feared by man is death; that it is cloaked from head to foot because death is mysterious, and its form not distinguishable; and that he keeps the keys of all the creeds, because he alone can unlock the secret of the grave, and show which of all conflicting human creeds is true.

"It is a noticeable thing," we are told, “that a shadow should hold keys at all." It is a very. noticeable thing that a skeleton should hold a scythe and an hour-glass: very noticeable that a young lady should hold scales when she is blindfold; yet it is not a particularly uncommon rule of symbolism so to represent Time and Justice. Probably the writer in the criticism, if he should chance to read of "riding on the wings of the wind," would consider it a very noticeable method of locomotion; perhaps would inquire, with dull

facetiousness, what was the precise length of the primary, secondary, and tertiary quills of the said wings; and if told of a spirit clothing itself in light, he might triumphantly demand in what loom light could be woven into a great coat.

Finally. The critique complains that a vast deal of poetic feeling has been wasted on a lawyer; and much wit is spent upon the tenderness which is given to "Amaryllis of the Chancery bar." A barrister, it seems, is beyond the pale of excusable, because poetical sensibilities. So that, if my friend be a soldier, I may love him, and celebrate him in poetry, because the profession of arms is by all conventional associations heroic: or if he bears on his escutcheon the red hand of knighthood, or wears a ducal coronet, or even be a shepherd, still there are poetic precedents for romance; but if he be a member of the Chancery bar, or only a cotton lord, then, because these are not yet grades accredited as heroic in song, worth is not worth, and honour is not honour, and nobleness is not nobility. O, if we wanted poets for nothing else, it would be for this, that they are the grand levellers, vindicating the sacredness of our common humanity, and in protest against such downright vulgarity of heart as this, reminding us that—

"For a' that, and a' that,

A man's a man for a' that."

So much then for this critic: wrong when he praises and wrong when he blames: who finds Shakspere false to the facts of human nature, and quotes Dr. Johnson as a model poet: who cannot believe in the Poetry of any expression unless it bear the mint stamp of a precedent, and cannot understand either the exaggerations or the infinitude of genuine grief.

Let it serve to the members of this Institution. as a comment on the opinion quoted at the outset, that it is sufficient education for Working Men to read the newspapers. If they form no more living conception of what Poetry is than such as they get from the flippant criticism of a slashing article, they may learn satire, but not enthusiasm. If they limit their politics to the knowledge they may pick up from daily newspapers (which, with a few honourable exceptions, seem bound to pander to all the passions and prejudices of their respective factions) they will settle down into miserable partizans. And if Working Men are to gain their notions of Christianity from the sneering, snarling gossip of the religious newspapers, I for one, do not marvel that indignant infidelity is so common amongst them.

And let it be to us all a warning against that detracting, depreciating spirit which is the curse and bane both of the religion and the literature of

our day-that spirit which has no sympathy with aught that is great beyond the pale of customary formalities, and sheds its blighting influence over all that is enthusiastic, and generous, and highminded. It is possible for a sneer or a cavil to strike sometimes a superficial fact; I never knew the one or the other reach the deep heart and blessedness of truth.

LECTURE II.

IN the former Lecture I endeavoured to answer the question-What is Poetry? Two replies were given: It is the natural language of excited feeling; and-A work of imagination wrought into form by art. We said that it arises out of the necessity of expression, and the impossibility of adequate expression of any of the deeper feelings in direct terms. Hence the soul clothes those feelings in symbolic and sensuous imagery, in order to suggest them.

And thus our definitions agree with two of Milton's requirements for Poetry that it be "simple, sensuous, passionate." Sensuous, that is, suggestive to the imagination of truth through images which make their impression on the senses. Passionate, that is, as opposed to scientific; for the province of Poetry is not the intellect, but the feelings.

And thus, too, they coincide with the character given to Poetry by the great critic of antiquity, as an imitative art: for it is the art of suggesting