N° XIV.

On the Traits and Concomitants of Poetical Genius.

IT has seldom happened that a man has finally obtained the fame of a poet, whose life has not exhibited some traits in coincidence with the character of his art. The Muse is a jealous mistress, that will scarcely ever suffer any other to divide the attentions she considers due to her. And whoever is devoted to her alone, must necessarily possess many peculiarities.

There have been some poets indeed, who have held forth, that their productions were the mere amusement of a few leisure hours. But such assertions originated from a silly and unbecoming affectation. To have a taste for poetry, and to read it with delight, even though it be only occasionally and accidentally indulged, is very common; but to create it, requires a very different sort of power and habit.

If therefore we examine into the biography of those, who have aspired to this highest rank of authors, we shall find that those, who did not make it the principal, if nct exclusive, object of their

ambition, were either mere versifiers, deficient in all the main distinctions of this celestial art or so weak in execution, that all their struggles fell lifeless in the attempt.

Ansty, and Cambridge, and Graves, might write doggrel verses; and John Hoole, and Potter, and Murphy, and Carlyle, might translate; but I can scarcely allow them the character of poets. The Wartons, Mason, Burns, Bampfylde, Cowper, Hurdis, Darwin, Beattie, Mrs. Carter, Mrs. Smith, and Kirke White, &c. exhibit a very different picture. In each of these will be found many prominent and striking features. It will be perceived that those of them especially, who have most the power of affecting the heart, were themselves the victims of extreme sensibility. Something romantic and uncongenial with the ordinary routine of life, marks the whole progress of their existence. Their lot, as far as wealth and honours are concerned, is obscure; and their efforts are unattended with the smallest success. Some of them absolutely incapable, and others enabled with great difficulty, to emerge from the gripe of poverty itself, they seem almost to prove, that the smile of the Muse is a signal for being condemned to pecuniary embarrassment, or anxiety,

The abstraction of mind, which generates and nourishes poetical excellence, is inconsistent with

those minute attentions, by which people make ge world. Liberal sentiments, an in

their way y dignant spirit

i a tender heart are all constantly checking the progress of such a journey. But these are the very fountains, from whence the bard draws the living colours of his song.

Hence the mere harmonious rhymer, the lively delineator of familiar manners, the writer of dry ethical precepts, which address the understanding only, even in verse the most musical, and diction the most correct, may, perhaps, assort more advantageously with worldlings, and succeed as they do. But he is not a poet; he is deficient in the soul of poetry. If the composition neither furnishes food to the fancy, nor elevates or softens the heart, the very essence of the Muse is wanting.

Nothing disgusts me more than the vulgar habit of confounding the versifier with the poet. The versifier is a very common kind of being; the gift of poetry is among the rarest of Nature's endowments. It requires no waste of the spirits; no exhausting thrills of the bosom; no world-forgetting excursions of the imagination to produce thousands of the most melodious rhymes. But the temperament of a poet is that of passion.

Perhaps of all the lately deceased poets the two most popular have been Burns and Cowper. And never was popularity more justly bestowed. They

had both of them been steeped in the stream of Parnassus. They lived, as well as wrote, with every mark of the Muse upon their daily habits. They were the children of sensibility, which was the bane, as well as the source, of their happiness. Had they deadened this sensibility, by giving up their talents to worldly pursuits, they might have been lawyers, or statesmen, or heroes, but the well-fount of poetry would have been dried up.

It seems extraordinary that the Muse should be able to exert herself with success in the midst of anxieties, sorrows, and sufferings; but experience furnishes perpetual instances of it. The "Fairy Queen" must have been composed amidst perpetual alarms, in a country of barbarous rebels, impelled by want, revenge, and despair; in momentary insecurity, when a successful incursion of the threatening hordes who surrounded the author, would, even if he could save himself and his family from murder, condemn the remainder of his days to poverty and ruin. The "Paradise Lost" was dictated by the sublime and inspired Bard, under the clouds of proscription and disgrace, with the sword of state dangling, almost by a hair, over his head. It is probable that their deep afflictions heightened the strong colours with which Nature had imbued the materials of their rich minds.

These peculiar faculties therefore are, beyond

doubt, a dangerous and fearful gift; and we may forgive, though we may sometimes indulge a smile of contempt at, the cold and prudential, who shake their heads and bless themselves for having escaped it. But he, who is so stupid and so brutal-hearted as not to behold it with pity and reverence, even in its errors and its misfortunes, is a wretch who scarcely deserves the name of an intellectual being. I never contemplate the fate of poor Collins without a mixture of indescribable grief, and awe, and admiration. How eloquently and affectingly has Johnson said, "How little can we venture to exult in any intellectual powers, or literary attainments, when we consider the condition of poor Collins! I knew him a few years ago, full of hopes and full of projects, versed in many languages, high in fancy, and strong in retention. This busy and forcible mind is now under the government of those who lately would not have been able to comprehend the least and most narrow of its designs.""That man is no common loss. The moralists all talk of the uncertainty of fortune, and the transitoriness of beauty; but it is yet more dreadful to consider, that the powers of the mind are equally liable to change; that understanding may make its appearance and depart; that it may blaze and expire!" f

f See CENS. LIT. III. p. 194.