civilized community, and to England above all others, will bring us back to our old taste for higher and better attractions. Let the professors of the new school rant as they please about its savage graces, and tremendous imaginings, though the natural and most rewarding propensity of the human mind is to seek a refuge from the casualties and disgusts of life, in trains of thinking that soothe and elevate. To assist and direct us in such endeavours is the purest office of poetry--and the minister of this delightful art, who would best fulfil the task assigned him, will not hurry off our already-wearied spirits to the horrors of dungeons and charnel-houses; he will rather lift us to some romantic asylum, where, amidst the enchantment that his genius has spread around, earth, and its crimes and sorrows, may be forgotten; or, if he detains us below, and makes the human heart, and the play of its inconstant passions, the subject of his inventions, he will not nauseate us by loathsome pictures of its deformities, nor impose upon us by dexterously colouring its vices, nor perplex our feelings and judgments by mystery and contradictions. The true poet has too much dignity and good faith to resort to such base contrivances: where a moral purpose demands it, he will glance at turpitude, occasionally and with reluctance; but in all his noblest representations, beauty and virtue will be in the foreground; if fortunate, to delight and animate us; if contending with adversity, to habituate us to offices of humanity, by consecrating the tears that we shed over unmerited calamity.

But to return to the Germans. Next to their perverse advocacy of the cause of irregular sentiment and passion, we have a word or two to say upon their mysticism, and the attempts now making to naturalize it in England. For ourselves, we must confess, that we have entered so little into the spirit of the mystic doctrines, that we can hardly undertake to define them. Madame De Stael was one of the initiated; and, if we recollect right, her dashing explanation of the subject is, that the German men of genius pass their entire lives in the seclusion of their studies, from which their minds, every now and then, make “excursions dans l'infini," and that the wonders and discoveries of the voyage are duly recorded upon their return, for the edification of more home-keeping spirits. But we happen to have lying before us an encomiastic article upon German literature, lately published in London, in which this new system is somewhat less vaguely announced. We willingly and cheerfully," says the writer, "acknowledge the truth, that there are deep and unfathomable powers in the universe, and that all poetry, which pretends to any thing more than a mere momentary existence, or rather which pretends at all to life, must rest ultimately, as all life does, upon a mysterious basis, that is, and ever must be, in

comprehensible to the reflective understanding." The writer goes on to allege that, in all the great works of poetry, though their beauty may have been intuitively perceived, ages and ages have passed away before the understanding could discover the secret of their merits-" for they were really mysterious, and actually and in truth possessed a mysterious life;" and he imputes it as a fundamental objection to most modern poems, that they have been so reduced to the level of the meanest capacity, that they require no study to discover, or critic to explain their beauties. A little further on he corroborates his opinions by the following extract from the writings of Frederick Von Hordenberg, in which, though the expressions may seem obscure, a little attention, he assures us, will discover that there is a deity. beneath the veil. "In a genuine tale, every thing must be marvellous, and mysteriously hanging together-every thing vivified, each in a different manner. The whole world of nature must be wondrously mixed up with the whole world of spiritsthus arises the age of universal anarchy, lawlessness, and freedom-nature's state of nature-the time before the world. This time before the world presents, as it were, the scattered features of the time after the world, as the state of nature is a singular type of the kingdom of heaven. The world of a tale is the one diametrically opposed to the world of truth, and for this very reason as thoroughly similar to it, as chaos is similar to the perfect creation. In the future world, every thing is as in the former world, yet altogether otherwise; the future world is the rational chaos-a chaos that has penetrated itself, that is within itself, and without itself. A genuine tale must be, at the same time, a prophetical representation, an ideal representation, an absolutely necessary representation. The genuine tale-writer is a seer of futurity. It is owing only to the weakness of our organs, and to our contact with ourselves, that we do not behold ourselves in a fairy world. All tales are only dreams of that our native world, which is everywhere and nowhere."

Now, we do not hesitate to assert, that all this (and we could select some similar bursts from the lectures of the renowned Schlegel) is the very quintessence of mystical pedantry, bearing precisely the same relation to true philosophical criticism, that the ravings of Johanna Southcot do to authentic revelation. We, however, offer it to our readers as a tolerably fair specimen of the luminous form in which German minds communicate the treasures of new light, which they bring back from their "excursions dans l'infini." But to bring the merits. of this recipe for tale-writing to a more familiar test: how would poor Fielding or Goldsmith have stared, if, upon offering one of their exquisite inventions for publication, they had been confronted by the awful canons of this "deity beneath the veil,”

to which, as tale writers, they were to be told, it was their bounden duty to conform. They might have said, "we have lived in the world, we have watched the conduct and feelings of men of various characters, in various situations, and in moulding our fictitious personages, we have never lost sight of the originals that we saw acting around us. Upon these observations are founded our notions of what is human nature, and in this work they are recorded. The qualities are real and authentic; we witnessed them in others, and felt them in ourselves-it is only in the combinations that we are inventors." To this simple profession of their literary tenets, how confounded and perplexed would they have been, if the publisher were to return Tom Jones or the Vicar of Wakefield upon their hands to be remodelled, according to the High German principles of composition. "My good Sir," he might say, "though your production certainly shews talent, still the beauties are really so utterly intelligible that the meanest capacity may comprehend them. The thing is cleverish in its way, but it isn't dreamy' enough by half. Couldn't you contrive to throw in a few touches of the age of universal anarchy,' or of the chaos that has penetrated itself.' The latter in particular would be sure to take. Then if, instead of giving us human nature, you'd stick to 'nature's state of nature,' I mean, the time before the world ;' if, in a word, you'd make your work, what every genuine tale should be, a dream of our native world, which is every where and no where,' I shall be ready to enter into terms for its publication."

But to speak more seriously of these fantastic dogmas. It is utterly false, at least nothing but a miserable abuse of terms can make it true, that genuine poetry must be founded in mystery. In the metaphysical sense of the word it is certainly true; but so is every thing, that can be named, founded in mystery. The visible world our invisible emotions-existence-consciousness --all the natural phenomena, within and without us, when philosophically investigated, baffle our comprehension, and turn out in the last result to be strange, unaccountable, and mysterious. But, in this view of the subject, the position, that the basis of all good poetry must be mystery, has no more novelty or truth, than to say, that the basis of a good apple-pie, or of the best home-brewed ale, must be mystery. In either case, the understanding, when pushed for an explanation, will find it equally impossible to account for the particular combinations, that form the articles in question, conveying pleasurable sensations to the body or the mind; and, however preposterously it might sound to descant in pompous terms upon the "deep and unfathomable powers" of a pot of marmalade or a cask of Calvert's entire, as the basis of their excellence, we should be as

much justified in such a mode of speech, as when we speak of the "deep and unfathomable powers of the universe," as the ultimate basis of our poetical emotions.

The

But though all things, when metaphysically analysed, must be admitted to be involved in mystery, the human mind, in its ordinary moods, is little addicted to this subtle and fruitless process of investigation. In the practical details of our existence, the mystery that overhangs them, never occurs to our imaginations. Whether it be from instinct, or from a long familiarity that supplies its place, we take appearances upon trust, and act and feel in regard to them under the impression of a popular belief, amounting to a most perfect assurance, that they are, in fact and essence, precisely such as our senses represent them. When we gaze upon a rich landscape, or a human form of surpassing beauty; or when we witness an admirable action, the emotions which any of these objects excite, derive none of their power from their mysterious origin. This is a subtle topic to which our minds never think of adverting. To us, there is no mystery in the impressions made upon us. sentiment of admiration or of moral approbation is clear, distinct, and to every practical intent and purpose, perfectly intelligible. The case is precisely the same, when objects come before us in the form of poetical representation. The purpose of poetry is not (as the sticklers for mystery would persuade us,) to throw the mind into new and undefinable states of being; and if it had the wish, it wants the power: all that it can do is, to call up our familiar emotions in a state of higher excitement than the ordinary details of life produce. This it accomplishes by presenting us with fictitious objects, which our imagination adopts as realities; and so far is any thing like mystery from being a necessary ingredient in these fanciful creations, that all their excellence and power (whether they aim at representation of external nature, or the developement of human passions) consist in exciting images and feelings so defined and distinct, that we become, as it were, actual spectators and actors in the scenes to which they refer. The business of the poet is to delight and interest the mind, not to bewilder it; and it may be laid down as an undeviating rule, that all his pictures will produce their destined effects, precisely in the inverse ratio of their vagueness.

We have dwelt at some length upon this topic, because we really consider it of some importance to direct the attention of our readers to the empirical pretensions of the professors and disciples of this school, to exclusive taste and genius, and to the degradation, which must befal our literature, if their flimsy ravings should be permanently incorporated with it. In the observations above offered, we by no means intend to assert that in no case can poetical effect be heightened and dignified by

mysterious associations. There are majestic appearances in eternal nature, which at once direct our minds to the contemplation of "the great unknown," of whose power they are the symbols. There are trains of meditative abstraction, leading to sublime conjectures and appalling doubts upon our final destinies, in which the poet's visions catch a glorious awe from the darkness that surrounds them. In these and similar instances, we fully admit the sacred influence of mystery, in the most extensive meaning of the word :-what we protest against is, the perverse doctrine, that, because it is a powerful poetical agent, it must be the fundamental and only one; and that such is the constitution of our nature, that we can never be truly delighted, except by what we cannot comprehend.

We are aware that these opinions may give offence to some, but our respect for our native literature, and our anxiety that it should long retain its old masculine character of energy and nature, and rational enthusiasm, compel us to exclaim against the modern efforts to enfeeble and debase it. The effects are already visible in the published reveries of a notorious fraternity of inland versifiers, and not less so in the apologetic effusions of their misguided disciples. The latter appear, on the whole, to be much farther gone; and when we listen to their ravings, we scarcely know whether most to pity or to envy them. They are decidedly wild upon the subject of their favourite theories; but then their delirium, by their own account, is attended by so many redeeming ecstasies, that a return to reason would, we fear, only prove to them an irretrievable calamity. We can collect from them, that their gentle souls are endowed with innumerable mystical instincts, for which they find provided around them as many visionary sources of gratification. The lowliest objects in nature teem with "sanctities" and "consecrations,” and venerablenesses" and "unearthly reminiscences." To them a pigsty is holy ground. They can prostrate themselves in soulexalting adoration before an inscrutable deity, and discover volumes of eternal truth in the sublime provincialisms of pedlars and leech-catchers. Their sympathy with idiots is extraordinary and unbounded. A ragged coat importuning for a penny, is the bean ideal of created beings-a lounge in the precincts of a parish workhouse suggests trains of as lofty musing as a walk in the groves of Academus. They go forth with their souls so attuned to poetic rapture, that the most vulgar touch can awaken the sweetest strains. Just like this barrel-organ beneath our window, which, while we write, is discoursing a most sentimental ditty, in despite of the coarse and awkward hand of the weatherbeaten old tar that grinds it. Surely they must be happy, if to be rich in resources can make them so; for while Old England can supply them with a vagrant, or a stump of

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