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itself on the bosom of beauty, or support the cumbrous honours of her train; but an end is predestined to its glories, and Abasement the minor shall seize the possession from Pride the trustee. It shall one day be broken, lost, trampled under foot, and forgotten; its slender length, which now is as straight as the arrow of Cupid, shall be as crooked as his bow; and it shall share the fate of decrepid demireps and exploded patriots.

Remember, ye statesmen, and learn from the pin: while it was upright as the councils of

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remained in office and preferment; and was not laid aside till it became ruinous as the politics of Machiavel.

LOVE-POETRY.

LOVE is certainly a poetical subject. All poets, who deserve the name, are, or have been, lovers; and a considerable portion of lovers wish to be poets. How comes it then, that, of the innumerable amatory effusions which comprise more than half the minor literature of the world, so few are even tolerable? If the lover would but express his real feelings in plain language, with such figures, and such only, as the passion spontaneously suggested, surely we should have sense at least, if not poetry. But a notion long prevailed, that poetry must be something different from sense; and that love must be irrational, because it is sometimes indiscreet. Love is a divinity, therefore it must talk as unintelligibly as the Pythian prophetess,—he is a child, therefore it is proper he should whine and babble; or, to speak less like a Pagan, it is too genteel an emotion to call any thing by its proper name. Love-poets seem to have borrowed, from the amorous Italians, a fashion of paying their addresses in masquerade. The fair lady is changed into a nymph, a siren, a goddess, a shepherdess, or a queen. She lives upon air, like the camelion; or on dew, like the grasshopper. Like the bird of Paradise, she disdains to touch the earth. She is not to be courted, but worshipped. She is not composed of flesh and blood,

but of roses, and lilies, and snow. In short, she is altogether overwhelmed and mystified with the multitude of her own perfections. The adorer is Damon or Strephon, a shepherd, or a pilgrim, or a knighterrant; and his passion is a dart, a flame, a wound, a Cupid, a religion,-any thing but itself.

We are afraid that the weary iteration of these extravagant common-place conundrums arises from a · source very different from passionate admiration. Authors are but too apt to have a mean opinion of the female intellect. Ladies' men, of the school of Will Honeycomb, rarely appreciate woman as they should do; and recluse students, conscious of their own deficiency in the graces which are supposed indispensable to gain the favour of the fair, endeavour to despise the sex which overawes them. Another source of this silly sameness of love-verses is the notion, that a lover must compose as well as dress in the height of the fashion. Hence the endless repetition of stockphrases and similes,-the impertinent witticism,— the wilful exclusion of plain sense and plain English, -the scented, powdered, fringed, and furbelowed coxcombry of quality love-poets.

The drawing-room style is, however, well nigh obsolete. We hear little of the Damons and Strephons, with their Phillis and Amaryllis, for all the world like the porcelain shepherds and shepherdesses that used to adorn our mantle-pieces, before geology and mineralogy became fashionable for ladies. Diana and Minerva, and Hebe and Aurora, and the rest of those folks, are left to slumber peacefully in Tooke's Pantheon; though a certain class of poets have bestowed

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the names of those divinities on a whimsical set of beings of their own invention.

We should not, however, censure the introduction of the Grecian deities in Greek and Roman poetry. Not only were they objects of popular belief, but distinct and glorious forms, familiar as household things to every eye and memory. Sculpture and painting had given them a real being,-their names immediately suggested a fair or sublime image,—a delightful recollection of the wonders of art, sanctified by something of a religious feeling, that inspired them with immortal life, and invested them with imaginary beauty. Even the classic allusions of our own early writers may be defended, but on different ground. Mythologic names were not then unavoidably associated with school-boys' tasks, and court or cockney poetry. They were flowers fresh from the gardens of Italy and Greece, perfumed with recollection of the olden time. They did not indeed suggest distinct images to ordinary readers; but what, perhaps, was better, they gave a momentum to the imagination in a certain direction, they excited an indefinite expansion a yearning after the ideal-a longing for beauty beyond what is seen by the eye, or circumscribed by form and colour,-a passionate uncertainty.

A PREFACE THAT MAY SERVE FOR ALL

MODERN WORKS OF IMAGINATION.

IF to be original it were necessary to be new, originality is at an end. Not only all the sense in the world is preoccupied, but all the nonsense likewise. There is not a simile, however devoid of similitude,--a paradox, however outrageous,— -a pun, how execrable soever, but may be found in works that were extant long before the oldest man living was thought of. All the originality that a modern work can possibly attain is the originality of a quilted counterpane, in which old shreds and remnants assume a novel appearance from ingenious juxtaposition. I dare say, by the bye, this comparison has been made use of before in some book which I never read.

It would be impossible, even for an opium-eater, to conceive a superstition which has not been the sober belief of some tribe or other; nor could the genius of absurdity, personified in the shape of a fancy dress-maker or dandy tailor, invent an absolutely new fashion.

Even if originality were possible, it would not be desirable; for it must of necessity be false. There was a time, perhaps, when golden lands and fortunate islands were hidden in the vast ocean; but now nothing remains to be discovered but the sandy deserts

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