summers past. Let us not scorn any of these poetry books. Have they not their audience-an audience far more eager, genial, and warm in welcome, than anything we can hope to attain to Have we not all, in our day, lived upon those simple sweets, and loved them? It is the undying Youth always renewed, and never, thank heaven, perishing out of the land, about whose hyacinthine curls these song-birds cluster. It is to him they sing soft songs and tender measures before the age of passion. It is for him they weave those gossamer webs of soft superficial feeling-emotions which content his unawakened heart. Tender moralisings which stand for thought-mild touches of landscape which answer instead of nature-have not we all, some time or other, partaken of that fare, and thanked heaven for the genius that made it sweet, and risen up with tender impulses of emulation, and such affection for the singer as does not move us towards greater singers now Few are the poetry-books which can tempt us through them nowadays; but because we are old, dare any one suppose that Youth is dead and the seasons changed? They still go piping through the country, these verse-makers, and the young people go after them in a sweet fervour and surprise of admiration it is verse, and the Youth-Magician has glamour in his ears as well as his eyes. Where we only see a fiddler, it is Orpheus, to his eyes, that draws the bow-the strains are strains to which the stars stand still and listen, though we find so little music in them therefore sing, ye minor minstrels! your evening stars and roses-your soft whispers of the love that is coming all in its early mists and rainbows -your tender lamentations and elegies are sweet to that young soul; what they lack, his own imagination can add to them; therefore sing! and let no evil-minded critic come between you and the young worshipper at your knee.

But there is an intermediate sphere-"ower bad for blessing, and ower good for banning"-which gives all the trouble in the world to public opinion and its self-constituted assistants a tantalising and troublesome

class, who have it in them, but will not bring forth in any satisfactory manner that portion of the divine gift which has fallen to their share. It is amusing to witness the efforts made by all our literary authorities for the proper establishment in life of these uncertain and provoking poets. What solicitations - what coaxings-what threats are put forth upon them! one critic dolefully beseeching that his poet will bestir himself a little, and justify the good opinion which he has not hesitated to pronounce; another opposing, all sardonic and ironical, the entrance of the candidate for honours, warning him that, without more serious effort, his hopes are vain. Nothing can be well imagined more provoking, if one happens to have hazarded one's opinion early as to the future chances of such an aspirant, than the appearance of a new piece of work from those dubious and not-to-be-trusted hands. The unfortunate censor of the press, for pure love, could whip his protegé, but dares not, out of regard for his own reputation, as well as for that of the reckless neophyte; and hence is built up many an uncertain, unsteady little turret of fame, founded on youthful promise, and the plaudits of a press which must be consistent to itself, whatever its author chooses to bea flimsy erection, ready to topple over, any unwary moment, and with no real ground to stand on. Such reputations are not few, and, singularly undesirable as they are, the owners of them are perhaps the last to perceive the deceptive nature and unreality of the praise which is naturally pleasant to their palate. Dangerous praise-approval which does not stimulate, but lulls, and perhaps hinders some minds of the full degree of eminence they might have attained, had they been treated more honestly. To be sure, it is with this class that the art of criticism, so far as it has any title to be called an art, has most to do, and ought to have greatest influence. For great poems flash beyond criticism; we say our say because it is our business; and our wages oblige us, even when we have the grace to be ashamed of ourselves, to utter judgment on the

Celestials. But we might as well hold our peace, as we are all very well aware; and as for the singing-birds, in their indiscriminate melodious crowd, who but some ruthless ruffian, severely goaded by the impish visitations of the printer's familiar, could find it in his heart to harm their innocence? It is precisely the intermediary people with whom, if we are to be of any service in this world, we have to do.

And it is a doubtful and difficult question how far any criticism, except that of time and circumstance, can decide upon the powers and capabilities of youth. Young men, trained as young men are after our highest standard of education, come naturally out of that process with a considerable amount of talk and conversation in them, which it requires no great inducement to persuade them to put on paper. A large amount of reading, a spirited adoption of opinions on which the youth's fervor and natural belief in himself confer a certain aspect of originality and genuineness, make a very pretty capital to start with, and it is necessary that he be permitted to work off that first impetus, before it is very perceptible what real mettle is in him;-whereas, on the other hand, a young man of genius is quite as likely-perhaps more likely, the natural veneration being stronger in him-to copy and echo his favourite authors as the more ordinary intellect by his side. The two run together, side by side, for some time after they have started. Perhaps a certain grace of incompleteness hangs about the performances of the destined poet, but the chances are that this is but an omen of failure to himself and other people. The competitors are fresh from the same subjects, the same studies, and a certain faculty of verse-making is the common property of youth. Who is to tell which of them will go beyond that graceful possibility of authorship which adds a certain ethereal touch to the refined intelligence of many an ordinary English gentleman? Who will make bold to conclude that this is the poet-born, and not the other? Perhaps there is no great writer or great man who does not lovingly and wistfully remember

some one who started in the race with him, but did not, to the perennial amazement of the conqueror, win the crown. One hears of such at the commencement of every great life, at the beginning of every notable struggle sometimes it is he, and not the real winner, whom the bystanders have most cheered. Can any one tell how this is, or discriminate when they set out between the man who will stop short presently, and drop out of the course, and he who will go on with a growing power and ardour to the crowning laurel and the celestial goal? Not bystanders alone, but elected umpires and sublime authorities of Olympus, have made the most egregious blunders on this score: nobody knows it, not even the victor himself, who in his heart has most likely adjudged the crown to his rival. They run together for a longer or a shorter time, as may be, and no man can tell which will win, when suddenly one comes to a sudden pause and stands still, not a little surprised at himself. Why does his comrade devour the way with these flying steps, while he is suddenly brought to a standstill? It is a predicament in which, one time or another, every man must find himself, who ventures on the contest with that child of air. Puzzled and amazed, the foiled competitor stands at the end of his tether, and sees the flash of his companion's progress, and hears the shouts that hail him. Blank and dismayed, the critics cluster round that unfortunate; some of them condole with him, some of them abuse him-for, to be sure, it must have been his fault: he was indolent, or he was careless, or he forgot how much other people's credit was involved with his own. They are all entirely amazed and uncomprehending, unable to explain to themselves how any man should dart forward with that ineffable, unexplainable speed. But on the other side, the modest genius stands breathless, surprised only at failure, able to comprehend his rival passing and surpassing, and going far above him, wondering only at that strange sudden pause and stoppage-as ready almost as the vanquished himself to blame some

blunder or circumstance for the inevitable breakdown.

Now to be able to divine which was which-to discriminate the unconscious champion, and prophesy on some surer ground than chance, which man, by divine right of nature, carried already the budding crownwould be something of a business for the critic, if he were equal to it. Unfortunately, it is only the old remorseless critic Time who ever does settle that question. The touch of his indifferent old fingers makes everything certain, if we can but wait long enough; but in the mean time what is to hinder that we should all let loose our opinion? or, at least, if nothing else is to be done, set forth before the competitors the dangers as well as the glories of the racethe possibilities of stopping short inglorious-the chance of being miraculously outstripped and left behind? Yet believe not, oh young hero! that our prelections will be of much advantage to your training. It will not be your fault if you stop short at the end of your tether. Neither we nor anybody else can lengthen that inevitable band; but if a word of well-meant and consolatory warning-preparation in case of the worse-excellent good advice, such as, the whole world knows, is universally acceptable to the wellconducted mind of youth, be of any service to you, you are heartily welcome to it; and it is hereby offered to you. Let not him that putteth on his armour boast himself as if he were putting it off. Be not too confident in your own powers. If, in this case, the race is to the swift and the battle to the strong, no man breathing can point out, until the issue proves it, where is that deepbreathed breast, and those winged feet.

Well up in the list of modern poets, who, whatever they may be, are not great poets as yet, stands the name of Owen Meredith-an appellation, as everybody knows, wisely chosen to veil another name, which might well bias anybody's judgment towards the heir of its glory. The young author has now ground of his own to stand upon, and appears before us a very clear and perfect in

stance of the uncertainty which we have just been speaking of. A young plant from the natural and uncul tured soil could not have thrown out its early branches so vigorously, without establishing beyond doubt its innate powers; but the case is entirely different with the young representatives of the flower of English society, towards whose making all the arts have lent a hand, and to whom the accumulations of all the world-riches that have withstood the fire of ages, and the revolutions of time-come calmly, an assured inheritance. A young, capable, and ardent mind, full of youthful force and confidence, sedulously trained to acquaintance with all the literature of the world, accustomed to meet in everyday intercourse the best minds of its own era, permitted to snatch its own fervid and rapid impressions from the brilliant, gay, inscrutable surface which it calls Life; and full of an early power of expression which it is easy to mistake for something deeper than the ready utterance of youth-is of all other developments of intellect the one most difficult to judge of. Working-day people, when they write verses, are generally more humble in their self-estimate; and a man who has to hold his own against a hard world, forgets that confidence in words and symbols which we all start with, and learns to be sure of little more than the bit of steadfast ground he stands on-if he is happy enough to have so much-and the glimpse of sky over his head. But things are different with our young paladin. He goes abroad upon the world nowadays not with the old knightly purposes. He is not a Quixote; but he cannot help being young, however old, and sage, and experienced he may choose to appear. He goes out of his college in glory and in joy. He goes abroad to the Italy of romance -the France of pleasure. He casts his delighted eyes abroad, and sees the flower of humankind amusing itself; but he is a philosopher-that does not content him. So he plunges below the surface, as he imagines, and, emerging at the other extremity of social existence, finds another quality of humankind, not ornamental, also

amusing itself. Between the two hovers a dark sphere, often illuminated with brilliant hectic lights, where the two extremities surge together in wild, gay, sometimes hideous combinations; a world of vice which the young spectator visits unabashed spectator-wise, to study, not to enjoy ;-and immediately our philosopher-poet flashes up to the hill-top, and sounds his trumpet, and utters his poem. Has he not a right to assume the prophet's mantle, the garland, and the robe of song? Has he not been looking out with fresh eyes, new and bright and unprejudiced-and does not he know Life? What can any one say to him?— it is all entirely natural, so true in its falseness that the objector pauses, overpowered with the perpetual charm of that paradox. To be sure, it is not agreeable that his observation should be turned in that special direction, and that, even in his first delusion, life should bear that aspect to his eyes; but still we can surely all remember the time when the scene under our own eyes was the world, and our own conclusions were too infallible to be doubted. The triumphant young mind, dazzled with its own clearsightedness, is so abundantly true to itself in the midst of its wisdom, that we stop with a smile the disapproval on our lips. Some time the young philosopher will know better; some time he will find out that German baths and French salons are a marvellously small bit of the world; and that a snatch of dissipation is no more life than the bitter bubbles of fermentation are wine. In the mean time, he has flashed abroad that wonderful delight of his first sensations, his joy, his admirations-sorrows that are unspeakable -loves that will last for ever; has done them all into melodious verse, and cast them abroad upon the world, and stands with the fumes of his poem-celestial intoxicationhanging about him, waiting for the plaudits that are to follow that outburst of the everlasting song!

Such are the circumstances in which Mr Owen Meredith stands, as many another poet fated to the highest honours has stood in his day, before the world. We cannot tell

whether this young author will hold out and attain a supreme place-and still less would we prophesy that he is one of those who will stop short, and carry nothing but a reputation of promise out of the hard-contested field. He has made a sufficient appearance to attract some interest and some curiosity-to thrill the souls of literary newspapers, and float his name and the knowledge of him upon the surface of society: he has done so much that it will be surprising if he does not do more. But he is so far from having achieved anything which will retain real influence on the public mind, or procure him any genuine reputation, that he is precisely in that typical position so tempting to the moraliser. He is a fugleman of that host, so numberless in our days, of whom admiring friends expect such astonishing results, and of whom we read in those popular records of college-life, in which every second man is certainly born to be either Primate, Premier, Lord Chancellor, or First Poet of the age. How the world goes on in its old mediocrity all the same, in spite of these marvellous drafts of young life, is very astonishing; for State jobbing, and Church Patronage, and Promotion by Purchase, though doubtless inventions of the Evil One, have not been found hitherto to produce such very perilous and melancholy results as the extinguishment of a generation. Mr Owen Meredith is a fugleman of the order, but an honest and candid one. He is not afraid to cast forth upon the world the overflowings of his mind, and be judged by the positive standard-the only tenable standard of men or poems-of what he can do. There is much to condemn in his fugitive verses; there is much wanting in his more serious work; but there is everything to commend in the sincere and open-hearted manner in which he gives forth his conclusions upon the world and life and things in general. This young writer does not affect anything rural or rustical. He makes none of the old conventional babbling of green fields; he assumes boldly that his artificial world is the world, and proceeds undaunted on that foundation. Feeling himself perfectly equipped, and

ready for anything that may happen to him, he goes forth with that sublime superiority to good and evil -that calm equality of observation, studying impartially vice and virtue -with perhaps rather a leaning of interest towards the former, a more dramatical and piquant element in the history of humanity, which characterises, in our day, these young philosophers to declare to us his impressions and experiences. Life! oh, so serious! filling one's cup with an unspeakable bitterness, which nevertheless one somehow enjoys and so wicked! men and women falling in and out of love without intermission, and bringing about the saddest catastrophes, which, melancholy as they are, one welcomes eagerly for the sake of an event and a sensation -and so perverse! the wrong man and the wrong woman always turning up in that lottery, where all the world (it is to be supposed) struggles constantly for prizes. This, at present, is Mr Owen Meredith's conception of the existence, which, nevertheless, is shared by multitudes of commonplace middle-aged people, and has a background of very dull neutral tint, carelessly washed in, to throw into bolder relief those superlative moments of ecstasy and ages of anguish which belong to the young hero. And far be it from us to make any objection. Hard are those mentors who refuse to the young people their day of romance; but unfortunately our poet's romance is of a fashion unknown to the English imagination. It is French love which he keeps simmering over his brasier-the highest goddess of his thoughts "wears a chain," is hailed as "my love, and yet not mine," and reproached because she "could not wait" the advent of Love and the Poet. Now, though it may be very pretty and dramatical to imagine the separated pair from the end of the world sending their thoughts to each other-the lover who has come too late, and the lady who would not wait, each doing their sad duties angelically well, that dear sweet pale creature, enduring her husband and putting up with her children, and looking forward to a happy union in heaven with the true object of her affections somehow it does not at

all fall in with our insular prejudices. They are used to that sort of thing in France, and don't mind it; but we must remind our poet that he writes English, and that true art does not permit a thought which is conceived in the idiom of one tongue to be expressed in that of another. We know nothing about such loves in English speech. Vice is vice everywhere; and we have, to be sure, Divorce Courts, and other such horrors, like other people; but we have not come to like, and, the chances are, never will come to like, that delicious balance, so dear to our lively neighbours, which holds just at the climax point the grand moral seesaw, one end of which rises into superlative and angelical virtue, while the other drops into the gaping ruinous darkness. We do not appreciate the poise, nor enjoy the breathless and entrancing interest which attends it. The very virtue, at its highest,appears to our dull ideas something to be rather ashamed of than otherwise-something certainly quite beyond the touch of words. Nor can we, dull to sentiment in that supernal region, at all approve of the final appeal to heaven, which is suspiciously like a mere spiritual elopement. Loves of this fashion had much better be left to their native language; they do not suit our plain-spoken tongue, still less do they suit our contracted ideas. The love of England wears maiden blushes. We give free licence to all young poets to see this roselight of morning upon earth and sea, to think nothing in the world so important as the "congenial soul" and "sympathetic heart"-the inspiration of their vernal songs,-even in the early glow of this intoxication, to fancy everybody as much interested in the universal love-making as themselves; but we set limits to the licence.

The heroine who "wears a chain," blushes hectic, and not rose red. Let him write French who writes sentimental letters to her. We do not acknowledge, even as a dramatic situation-not even as a tableau of virtue triumphant-the legerdemain of Passion, poetical and superlative, balancing upon its see

saw.

Notwithstanding all this, there are