literature is going on-an appetite for more stimulant fiction being fostered, partly by corrupt foreign influences, and also by the craving for something more exciting than a just and pure imagination gives.

The literature of our times has been very abundant and often excellent in a variety of miscellaneous prose literature. In pulpit oratory, voices have been heard that bring back the sound of the sacred eloquence of England in the age of her great divines.

Looking to our English prose as an instrument of expression, it may be said to have been brought in our times to a high state of excellence, for in our contemporary literature it is possible to find passages-characteristic passages-which bear comparison with the best English prose of any former period, combining indeed with the merits of the earlier prose new powers suited to the new uses that the progress of a people's mind demands. A high order of excellence of English prose, both as to the choice of words, the structure and the rhythm of the sentences, is a much rarer attainment than people are apt to suppose. It is of such high excellence that I speak, when I say that in our contemporary literature it is to be found in the prose of Arnold, of Southey, of Sydney Smith, and of Byron, and Landor, and in the sermons of Manning. A high authority in English philology places the prose of Landor as first among living authors;-the prose in the "Imaginary Conversations," a work of great but very unequal merit, and also in some smaller productions.

The poetic literature of this half century has displayed an abundance that proves an imaginative activity equal to the intellectual activity of our times. We are apt

sometimes to yield to the notion that our modern days are unpoetic, and that the sphere of imagination has been contracted by the influences of later times. But when this half century shall be looked back to from a distance, the judgment of posterity cannot but be that it was distinguished by great poetic fertility and power-a period that has produced many elaborate poems of a high order, and a large amount of such minor poetry, as may be seen, when such poetry is good, shining in modest beauty in the same sky with the larger luminaries. Considering the number of poets who have been successful in their appropriate spheres, the amount, the variety, and the merit of the poetry which the nineteenth century has already given to English literature, it may be more fitly compared with the Elizabethan age, rich as it was in the company of poets, than with any other period of our language. Indeed it may be added, that one cause of literary power in our times is to be discovered in this, that never before has there been such dutiful zeal for the revival and restoration of the elder literature; never before has that literature been so carefully and reverently studied. The best criticism on Shakspeare, on Spenser, on Milton, is that which this century has produced; and within the same time has there been the most earnest desire to promote the study of Bacon and the great divines.

In attempting to group, with reference to time, the poets of the present century-the poets of our own times— some curious considerations at once present themselves. It is now more than a quarter of a century since the death of Byron and of Shelley, both poets of a younger generation than Wordsworth; and we begin to think of them as belonging to past times, while the elder poet sur

vives, now in his eightieth year. But what is more remarkable, there are living two poets, who were known as poets when Wordsworth was a youth-Bowles and Rogers, each on the verge of fourscore and ten. It seems scarcely credible that there should be living now a poet (I refer to Mr. Rogers) whose first poem was published sixty-four years ago, in 1786, fourteen years before the death of Cowper, (whom he has survived half a century,) and within a twelvemonth after the publication of the Task.* A subsequent poem of Rogers, "The Pleasures of Memory," a subject of universal interest agreeably presented, established his reputation, and was no doubt the prompting of Campbell's poem on "Hope." Rogers' higher poetic power is, however, to be found in a later work, which, appearing at a time when new poets had gained the public ear, never attained the same popularity as his earlier poem, which was more fortunate in its time. From the poem-I allude to the "Italy"-I am tempted to cite one passage for the sake of the fine picture it gives of an occurence of which I made a passing mention in a former lecture-the interview of Galileo and Milton:

"Nearer we hail

Thy sunny slope, Arcetri, sung of old
For its green vine, dearer to me, to most,
As dwelt on by that great astronomer,
Seven years a prisoner at the city-gate;
Let in but in his grave-clothes. Sacred be
His cottage, (justly was it called the jewel,)
Sacred the vineyard, where while yet his sight
Glimmer'd, at blush of dawn, he dress'd his vines,
Chaunting aloud in gayety of heart

This was written in 1850, and now, in 1855, this aged poet still lives, the survivor of him who thus spoke of him. W. B. R.

Some verse of Ariosto. There, unseen,
In manly beauty, Milton stood before him,
Gazing with reverend awe, Milton his guest,
Just then come forth, all life and enterprise;
He in his old age and extremity,
Blind, at noonday exploring with his staff,
His eyes upturned as to the golden sun,
His eyeballs idly rolling. Little then
Did Galileo think, when he bade welcome,
That in his hand he held the hand of one

Who could réquite him, who would spread his name
O'er lands and seas; great as himself, nay greater:
Milton, as little, that in him he saw,

As in a glass, what he himself should be;
Destined so soon to fall on evil days

And evil tongues; so soon, alas! to live

In darkness, and with dangers compassed round,
And solitude."*

Of the other aged poet, William Lisle Bowles, who has survived so many of his brother bards, I can only remark, in so cursory a survey of the contemporary literature as this must be, that Coleridge acknowledged a deep obligation to his poems-a tribute which in itself is proof of some beauty and power in them.

The most decided and marked influence of a contemporary production is that which is known to have been exerted by Coleridge's Christabel an influence that may be traced on the genius of Scott, Shelley, and Byron. It was an influence that Scott acknowledged with all his characteristic frankness, and Byron too, though with more. reserve, for it was not his habit to acknowledge or perhaps to recognise such influences. "Christabel" was circulated in manuscript many years before it was pub

* Italy, p. 115.

lished; and, recited among the poets, it made, especially on their minds, an impression that proved an agency of poetic inspiration to them. Mr. Lockhart tells us that the casual recitation of "Christabel" in Scott's presence so"fixed the music of that noble fragment in his memory," that it prompted the production of the "Lay of the Last Minstrel."* It was a great lesson to the poets, in that it disclosed an unknown, or at least forgotten, freedom and power in English versification-a music the echoes of which are to be heard in the poems both of Scott and Byron. The grandeur of its imagery, too, moved the poets to whom it was made known, as in that sublime and familiar passage on a broken friendship:

"They stood aloof, the scars remaining,

Like cliffs which had been rent asunder;

A dreary sea now flows between ;

But neither heat, nor frost, nor thunder,
Shall wholly do away, I ween,

The marks of that which once hath been."

"Christabel" proved its influence over the poetry that followed, by the power with which both the natural and the supernatural were imaged in it; in the latter respect, particularly, Scott felt the power of the poem. There is probably nothing finer of its kind in poetry than those passages which tell of the wicked might of witchcraft in the eye of the witch, who has assumed a beautiful human form: it is first felt as Christabel passes with her by the nearly extinct embers on the hall-hearth :

"They pass the hall that echoes still,

Pass as lightly as you will!

The brands were flat, the brands were dying,

Amid their own white ashes lying;

Lockhart's Scott, vol. ii. p. 210.