So one of the good Fathers of the Church was wont to christen Poetry; and the name seems to have some show of appropriateness, considering how the pens of men have gone staggering over the subject, in criticisms, essays, and disquisitions innumerable, attaining such unsatisfactory and contradictory conclusions, that we may well impute some inebriating influence to the theme itself, which has turned the brains of all who approach its fascinating brink. No little writers and few great ones have left the world without leaving on record their private estimates of the matter, ranging all the way from Cicero, calling it "a certain divine inspiration," to Bacon, who denounced it as "the shadow of a lie." Of late times, however, thanks to DeQuincy and his army of microscopists, the question has been not so much What Poetry is, but, What is Poetry And upon this there has been much blundering. One subtle analyst after another has undertaken to show upon just what ultimate particle of an idea the word poetry can be properly impaled, until from refinement to refinement, it is almost sharpened down to an invisible point. Bridled and bitted, the rage for drawing distinctions is an excellent rage; but it has so rioted and careered on this unfortunate word, that at present no man knoweth what his neighbor means when he utters it. One will have it to be "beautiful thoughts beautifully expressed;" another calls nothing VOL, XXVI.

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poetry which is not vivid scene-painting; with others, the raving of passion and the sighs of sentiment pass for the only true poetry; Robertson labels it the indirect expression of intense feeling; others still, finding in certain prose-writers the peculiarities of their favorite poets, carry the word out of the field of metrical composition altogether, and talk of prose-poems; while Ruskin, bewildered by this jargon of definitions, chooses some attribute possessed by them all, and calls poetry, the "suggestion by the imagination of noble grounds for the noble emotions," whether in prose, in metre, or in painting. Now this is all very well if the object of language be to afford an .arena for the display of critical ingenuity; but if, on the contrary, it is to serve as the medium of communication between men's minds, every word ought to have a definite and understood meaning. As the sole coin of exchange between the thoughts of all articulate-speaking men, it is indispensable that the spoken sound should have an exchange value, fixed and universal, the world over. Now there are in all literature two distinct modes of Composition. One, in which the syllables and words follow each other by no regular laws of arrangement, which is prose. For the other, which proceeds upon a system entirely peculiar to itself, evidently some name is needed. Here is the word poetry, which has come down through the Greek and the Latin, standing in both of them as the name of this non-prose composition; moreover, counting that our language began with Chaucer, this word has had the same meaning in English for about five hundred years, and with the great mass of the people has it still. Now, is there any good reason why it should not continue to have this meaning? It is eminently a scientific method, to divide genera with ever so much minuteness, and to carefully name every separate species; but to carry the generic word up through each successive analysis to the last subdivision, leaving the unfortunate genus naked of any name and wholly forlorn, is only robbing Peter to pay Paul. There must be a word to cover this whole class of non-prose composition, and why not keep the one we have already? If Ruskin or Robertson want a word to express some newly distinguished atribute of a particular kind of poetry, let them coin one and not steal one. If every man were to keep his own private definitions, and houses, for example, to be called indiscriminately stairs, cellar or door-knob, I submit that it might lead to confusion,and that to any well-regulated mind indefinite exasperation might be expected to accrue therefrom in the course of a day's business. Of course there are all grades of poetry, from that perfect sort which uses all the pleasing effects possible by the application of art to lan