case formerly, or whatever flagrant exceptions may be quoted, of modern date,-there is now scarcely any alternative left between "an honest fame" and "none." No living writer can hope for immortality in its only enviable earthly sense, who does not occupy his talents on subjects worthy of them, and, at least, not disreputable to their Author,-the Father of lights! The follies, the sins, and the misfortunes of poets have, indeed, been proverbial since the proudest days of Greece. I shall neither expatiate upon these, nor palliate them; but a word or two may be expedient.

In youth, when we first become enamoured of the works of the great poets, we naturally imagine those must themselves be the happiest of men who can communicate such unknown and unimagined emotions of pleasure, as seem at once to create and to gratify a new sense within us; while, by the magic of undefinable art, they render the loveliest scenes of nature more lovely, make the most indifferent topics interesting, and from sorrow itself awaken a sympathy of joy unutterably sublime and soothing. He who in early years has never been so smitten with the love of sacred song as to have wished, nay, to have dreamed, that he was a poet,-as Hesiod is said to have done, though few, like him, awaking, have found their dream fulfilled, is a stranger to one of the purest, noblest, and most enduring sources of mortal blessedness. When, however, glowing with enthusiastic admiration, we turn from the writings to the lives of these exalted beings, we find that they were not only liable to the same infirmities with ourselves, but that, with regard to many of them, those vehement passions, which they could kindle and quell at pleasure in the bosoms of others, ruled and raged with ungovernable fury in their own, hurrying them, amid alternate penury and profusion, honour and abasement, through the vicissitudes of a miserable life, to a premature, deplorable, and some

times a desperate death. On the other hand, among the more amiable of this ill-starred race, those finer sensibilities which warm the hearts of their readers with ineffable delight were to the possessors slow and fatal fires, feeding upon their vitals, while they languished in solitude, and sank to the grave in ob scurity, after bequeathing to posterity an inheritance, in the unrewarded products of their genius, to endure through many generations, and cast at once a glory and a shade on the era in which they flourished, as the phrase is,—in which they perished, as it ought to be.

On the whole, then,-though it is a frigid and disheartening conclusion,-it is well when a youth of ardent hope and splendid promise, who has been allured into the "primrose path of dalliance" with the Muses, by the songs of their most favoured lovers, heard like the nightingale's, unseen,-it is well when such a one, in due time (and before being irrecoverably bewildered), is alarmed and compelled to retreat by the affecting and humbling sight of those lovers, in the characters of men, frequently of low estate, neglected or contemned by the multitude, trampled down by the pride of wealth and power, desponding martyrs of sloth, or suicidal slaves of intemperance. If ever there was an example of paramount genius, like the first created lion, bursting from the earth,

"Pawing to get free

His hinder parts ;"-MILTON.

then rampant, and bounding abroad, and "shaking his brinded mane," in all the joy of new-found life; -if ever there was such an example, calculated to quicken souls as sordid as the clod, and make them start up from behind the plough into poets, the story of Robert Burns affords it. And if ever there was a warning of the degradation and destruction of talents

of the highest order, calculated to scare the boldest and vainest adventurer from the fields of poesy, the story of Burns presents that terrific warning; that flaming sword turning every way, to forbid entrance into that paradise of fancied bliss, but real wo, in which he rioted and fell. But as I propose to allude further to his career in the close of this paper, at present I hasten to notice (very imperfectly, indeed) the themes of poetry, and its influences.

The Themes of Poetry.

It is an affecting consideration, that more than half the interest of human life arises out of the sufferings of our fellow-creatures. The mind is not

satisfied alone with the calm of intellectual enjoyments, nor the heart with tender and passionate emotions, nor the senses themselves with voluptuous indulgence. The mind must be occasionally roused by powerful and mysterious events, in which the ways of Providence are so hidden, that the wisdom and goodness of God are liable to be questioned by ignorance or presumption, while faith and patience must be silent and adore: the heart must sometimes be probed by sympathies so rending, that they only fall short of the actual agony to which they are allied; the senses cannot always resist the undefinable temptation to yield themselves to voluntary torture.

Among the crowds that follow a criminal to execution, is there one who goes, purely, for the pleasure of witnessing the violent death of a being like himself, sensible even under the gallows to the inconvenience of a shower of rain, and cowering under the clergyman's umbrella, to listen for the last word of the last prayer that shall ever be offered for him? No; some may be indifferent, and a few may be hardened, but not one can rejoice; while the multitude, who are melted with genuine compassion,

R

nevertheless gaze from the earliest glimpse of his figure on the scaffold, to the latest convulsions of his frame, with feelings, in which the strange gratification of curiosity, too intense to be otherwise appeased, so tempers the horror of the spectacle, that it can not only be endured on the spot, but every circumstance of it recalled in cool memory, and invested with a character of romantic adventure.

Can any sorrow of affection exceed, in poignancy, the anguish and anxiety of a mother, watching the progress of consumption in the person of an only son, in whom her husband's image lives, though he is dead, and looks as he once looked when young, and yet a lover; the son in whom also her present bliss, her future hopes on earth, are all bound up, as in the bundle of life? No; there is a worm that dies not in her bosom, from the first moment when she feels its bite, on discovering the hectic rose upon his cheek, that awakens a thousand unutterable fears, -not one of which in the issue is unrealized,-till the last withering lily there, as he lies in his coffin, with the impress on his countenance of Death's signet, bearing, even to the eye of love, this inscription, Bury me out of thy sight!"-Yet, of all the pangs that she has experienced, there is not one which she did not choose even for its own sake,she would not be comforted!-there is not one which she would have foregone for any delight under heaven, except that which it was impossible for her to know-his recovery; and while she lives, and while she loves, the recollections that endear him to her happiest feelings are heightened almost to joy in grief, by the remembrance of how much she suffered for him.

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To the man of thought, all that is terrible and afflictive in nature, in society, in imagination, is food for his mind, such as spirits alone of higher temperament can fully taste and turn into luxury; but which inferior ones can relish, too, in no small mea

sure. Earthquakes, volcanoes, lightning, tempest, famine, plague, and inundation; hard labour, penury, thirst, hunger, nakedness, disease, insanity, death; the existence of moral evil; the deceitfulness and desperate wickedness of man's heart; envy, malice, hatred, and all uncharitableness;—the commission and the punishment of crimes against society; oppression, bondage, impotent resistance of injustice; with all the wrongs and woes of a corrupt or a tyrannical government; the desolations of foreign war; the miseries of civil strife: to sum up all, the troubles to which we are born, the calamities which we bring upon ourselves, the outrages which we inflict on each other, the judgments of Divine Providence on individuals, families, nations, the whole human race, each class, and the whole accumulation of these awakening and appalling evils, not only afford inexhaustible subjects of sublime and inspiring contemplation to the sage, and themes for the poet; but by the manner in which they affect the entire progeny of Adam, prove that more than half the interest of mortal life arises out of the sufferings of our fellow-creatures.

The wisdom and kindness of God are most graciously manifested in thus educing good from evil. There is so much floating and perpetual distress in the world, and in every part of it, that were a person of the firmest nerve to know all that is enduring for one hour only, in one place, the present hour, at this moment, throughout this great city,--and were he able to sympathize with it, in every case, and all at once, as though the whole were under his eyes, within hearing, in his neighbourhood, in his family, -his spirit would assuredly sink under it, and if life were prolonged, and reason not totally overthrown, he would never relapse into gayety. On the other hand, there is so much selfishness in our nature, that if the groans of the whole creation around could neither reach our ears nor touch our hearts, we