From you, Sir, we now expect something of more consequence; something which, while it may delight your equals, may help to form the minds of the youthful; something which may lead to the important conviction, that morality is not necessarily dulness, nor instruction tediousness. Hac itur ad astra-this is the road to that double immortality, to which both as an author and as a man you must, and ought to aspire; that you may in neither respect be disappointed is the sincere wish of

Your unknown friend,

Sept. 1, 1807.

LONDINENSIS.

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 not 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 their way in the world. Liberal sentiments, an indignant spirit, and 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