He is not entitled boldly to make the [bardic] visitation of a province,
Nor to the poet professorship of Eire,

Nor to that he asks, be it ever so trifling,

The poet to whom these [premises] are unknown.

In theory it was good that doctor poets, who, taken their degree in some college of the order, should decree on questions of right; but, in fact, their decisions were little respected in a land where might was right, because the sword was the only remedy. I must acknowledge, at the same time, that I have met with a curious proof that the poetic powers of bards formed, agreeably with Lord Macaulay's view, a principal source of their influence. The instance is, that among the ancient Welsh, the musicus aulicus, or musician of the hall of a chief, was entitled to the best heifer taken in a raid, provided he had previously sung an inspiriting chant.* Here, clearly, we obtain a notion of the value of a bard, who, in such cases, performed the part of brandy, such as was served out to the Russian soldiers in Sebastopol.

Reverting to the words of that distinguished and ennobled essayist, who, viewing poetry in its original sense of a creation (whence the Scots used to term a poet "a maker"), and premising that children are, of all people, the most imaginative, observes that, in a rude state of society, men are children with a greater variety of ideas. "It is, therefore," he concludes, "in such a state of society that we may expect to find the poetical temperament in its highest perfection." The greatest of poets, he who "exhausted worlds, and then imagined new," has, indeed, given a just idea of the working of the art in which he excelled, in these felicitous lines:

As the imagination bodies forth

The forms of things unknown, the poet's pen

Turns them to shapes, and gives to airy nothing
A local habitation and a name.

It has, nevertheless, been asserted that imagination produces no more
than memory can supply, since none can idealise what neither eye has
seen nor ear heard. If then it be true that imagination is merely drawn
from memory,
those whose memories are best stored may be understood
to possess most richly the chief ingredients of the poetic talent. Yet,
let me say,
that if the heat of genius, the vis animæ fervidæ, be want-
ing, the mind's train of thought may indeed be crowded with ideas, but
the fiery engine is not there that shall draw it up the heights of the
temple of fame.

The ancient Irish bards, we are considering, knew nothing of steam and electricity powers, as means of annihilating time and space; and, in short, so meagrely were their minds stored with civilised imagery, that their machinery from this vast warehouse is quite primitive and contemptible. Again, take them on their own ground, the rocky wilderness, with its beasts of prey, and the fowls of its keen air, I am of opinion that those old poets yield in love and appreciation of the sublime and beautiful to the educated Londoners of our own day, to whom little flowers peeping from under a rock, and the mere lichens adorning its surface are delicious and rejoiceful. What frenzied Gaelic bard ever described nature in her glory with fuller admiration than did George Gordon,

* Hon. D. Barrington's Observations on the Statutes.

fifth Baron Byron, of Rochdale, in manufacturing Lancashire? To
him, high mountains were a feeling; and, he asks:

Are not the mountains, waves, and skies, a part
Of me and of my soul, as I of them?

Is not the love of them deep in my heart
With a pure passion? Should I not contemn
All objects, if compared with these? and stem
A tide of suffering, rather than forego
Such feelings for the hard and worldly phlegm
Of those whose eyes are only turned below,

Gazing upon the ground, with thoughts which dare not glow ?

How shall we turn from this nervous verse to the pulings of Celtic children of the muse? Let us cry," New lamps for old !" new wit, faney, and wisdom, in lieu of old and incomplete. Some one said once, that more wit and pleasantry were uttered at many a modern dinner-table in London, during the hour after the soup, than would have furnished out a half-dozen of jokers of such jokes as Lord Bacon has taken the pains to record. To judge by his repertory of jests, our ancestors were easily pleased. Every one knows that the ancient office of jester, or fool, is now filled by jocose "diners-out;" and, it is agreeable to believe that these latter are, professionally and generally, considered superior to their predecessors, and far excelling the dull fellows who gave dinners in Elizabeth's time. A poem is not better for being old than a joke is, especially if both are indifferent, and if the former neither makes us smile nor teaches us what is worth learning. One fault to be found with old Irish poetry is, that it is far less humorous than are contemporary English ballads, such as the stirring series styled "Robin Hood's Garland," so replete with merry jests and quaint repartees, that one can laugh at as if they were as good as new. Seriousness, verily, is the characteristic of most of the elder poetry; a quality Elia accounts for, in his inimitable essay on "Imperfect Sympathies," by the want of candlelight among our troglodite ancestors, who, says he, found it useless to be witty, since, being in the dark, any one that made a joke must have had to feel his neighbours' cheeks to ascertain if they grinned.

"New lamps for old!" is the best cry since, though it was bad in the mouth of the African magician in Aladdin-modern illumination as far excels the knowledge of men who lived in caves, as our gas, bude, and electric lights outshine a rushlight. This cry is implied and recommended in the remarkable apophthegm of Lord Bacon, that "the antiquity of the world is not in the past time, but in the present." Our own age is the oldest, and all recorded knowledge and experience is ours. Of the art of poetry it must be true, as of other arts, that its general perfectibility has increased with the growth of time. In this view, let me, without pausing to compare the rude rhymes of old Irish bards with the polished odes and lyrics of Moore, and forsaking the theme of the poetry of "The Island of Song" for a glance at that of neighbouring lands, observe how the poetic talent of Scotland brightened from the time when Archdeacon Barbour versified the exploits of the Bruces, and when Sir David Lindsay threw off his coarse and clever satires, to our own age, when it has been enriched by the elaborate perfection of the muse of Abbotsford. Again, it is the artistic inferiority of Chaucer and Spenser, far less than the obscurity of their archaic diction, that has rendered them half eclipsed by the brilliant galaxy of modern English poets. In

Devent

dividual talent will, of course, shine forth in its degree of magnitude, in whatever age the luminary may appear: yet assuredly not so brightly during general darkness, as if assisted by reflected and borrowed lights. For my critic self, much as I despise premeditated and unimproving plagiarism, I stoutly uphold the principle that there should be no monopoly, no patent right, in poetic and literary ideas, but that the best merit consists in the most felicitous expression of them. Molière's frank avowal as to wit, "C'est mon bien, et je le prends partout où je le trouve," is a candid acknowledgment of this Gallic poet's freebooting practice, in respect of the airy good he coveted, and a plain pleading of "guilty" to any arraignment for plagiarism before a court of literature. Such brigandage as to grosser matters was, no one need be reminded, "the good old plan," a time-honoured custom, among Gaelic chiefs, to whom nothing came amiss in a raid, unless it were too hot or too heavy; and we may be sure that their bards were prevented from improving their compositions in similar fashion solely by their state of ignorance.

Shallow as I propose my disquisition on the merits of antique Irish versification to be, I may notice that there are no depths to sound that would afford any proofs of extraneous gold having been mingled with the rough native ore; and that, moreover, however depreciatory may be my criticisms, they are quite fortified by those of the author of "Lalla Rookh," who, in his history of his country, dismisses Brian Boru's chief poet and secretary with the remarks that the remains of this royal bard's composition give by no means a favourable notion of his poetic powers; and, as for the rhythmical distichs, or ranns, scattered through annals, "their meaning is of the most negative description." The value of all these ancient specimens of lore consists, indeed, not in their poetic merit, which is nil, but in the facts of history they have preserved; the flies being, in this case, richer and rarer than the amber. Verses having been, before parchment and paper were invented, the medium of recording, we are not entitled to criticise runes and ranns, that were merely meant to keep certain traditions, as to events and laws, in national memory, as if written by bards whose eyes were rolling about at the time in fine frenzy.

Taking the poetic merit of early specimens of verse that might claim rank above mere law and history distichs into consideration, I avow the nugatory state of my taste for these relics, and remember the rough remark of a stern opponent of the claims of Macpherson's "Ossian," the great philosopher of Fleet-street, Dr. Johnson, in thus summing up the accomplishments of Highland poets: "The bard was a barbarian among barbarians, who, knowing little himself, lived with others that knew no more.' This summary of the ancient condition of Celtic knowledge, or want of it, cannot be refuted. Many of those bards were blind, and took up their vocation in default of capability to follow any profession but music, for which the very deprivation of one of the physical senses especially, as is well known, adapted them. Knowledge was quite shut out from them by entrance at the sight. Nevertheless, the same natural defect did not preclude "the blind old man of Scio's isle" from describing the shield of Achilles, nor, though also clouding the vision of Milton, prevent his rapt intelligence from piercing either above the empyrean, or to the dark shades below.

NOTES ON NOTE-WORTHIES,

OF DIVERS ORDERS, EITHER SEX, AND EVERY AGE.

BY SIR NATHANIEL.

And make them men of note (do you note, men?)-Love's Labour's Lost, Act III. Sc. 1.

There's not a note of mine that's worth the noting. D. Pedro. Why these are very crotchets that he speaks, Notes, notes, forsooth, and noting!

Much Ado About Nothing, Act II. Sc. 3.

And these to Notes are frittered quite away.-Dunciad, Book I.

Notes of exception, notes of admiration,

Notes of assent, notes of interrogation.-Amen Corner, c. iii.

XXI.-FLAVIUS JOSEPHUS.

THE credit enjoyed, first and last, by Josephus, as the "great Jewish historian," has been fluctuating enough. Denounced by his own countrymen, he was valued at the highest rate by early Christian writers, who accepted him without demur as a witness in favour of much wherein they were polemically interested. Then again he was scrutinised in no friendly fashion by more searching investigators of a later day. Bayle* mentions, in his article on Abimelech, that his indignation against Josèphe was a thing of very long standing, as well as of firm standing too. Le Père Hardouin is so hot against Josèphe, that he can't bear to hear him called Joseph, the name of a Christian saint: le bon Père has nought but scorn for the renegade Jew, and insists on calling him Josèphe, nothing (not a letter, not one poor vowel) less†-no one, that we are aware of, disputing the excited Father's liberty to take that liberty (if it be one) with the name in question. Basnage is another pronounced opponent. Baronius in his Ecclesiastical Annals does Flavius Josephus some damage. Salien and Salméron withhold not the scourge from his shoulders. Bochart, Le Clerc, Gillet, Calmet, and others, show up his habit of tampering with the sacred text, and wresting a plain record to suit his crooked purpose. Voltaire is shrewd and caustic-is himself, in fact-in his strictures on the denationalised Hebrew. Later again there has been a reaction. The authority of Josephus has been defended by

*Dict. hist. et littér.

"Je ne veux plus l'appeler Joseph, ce serait le confondre avec saint Joseph. Je n'ai que du mépris pour ce Josèphe; car je le nommerai toujours ainsi." Father Hardouin is something piquant in a pet.

More telling and more dignified is the remark of Manasseh Ben Israel, in allusion to the historian's Romanising ways-that his histories should have borne the name of Flavius, not of Josephus.

various apologists-some of them perhaps interested ones, such as Jost,* the German author of a History of the Israelites since the age of the Maccabees, who maintains the excellence of this suspected witness, and lauds his veracity at the expense of that of Eusebius, the pseudo-Philo, the pseudo-Hegesippus, and many obscure Roman and Greekish-Roman writers, and scribblers of legendary lore. In our own country a turn in the tide, in Josephus's favour, has occurred since Dr. Traill's translation,† which gave occasion to a cautious reviewer to observe at the time, that the credibility of the historian, after having been admitted without question, or strongly maintained rather for the sake of ulterior considerations than on the ground of its own merits-and next unduly depreciated for no better reasons--was now rising again in general estimation, as inquiry and research disclosed fresh evidence in its favour: the historical character of Josephus in this respect being compared to that of Herodotus" both have been subject to unreasonable suspicion, and both are now vindicated by the results of recent investigation in a manner at once satisfactory and surprising." But sturdy objectors there are, and will be, on whom the surprise will act as a very mild shock, and to whom the satisfaction will be found utterly wanting. Both at home and abroad there are scholarly thinkers who can't be brought to terms with Josephus, and who leave to others of more penetrable stuff the joys of being thus satisfied and surprised. As examples of this recalcitrant and, if you will, ultra-protestant class, may be named, among English scholars, Thomas de Quincey; and among French, Philarète Chasles. Both are antiJosephite to the back-bone, each in his peculiar way.

The latter, M. Chasles, has written a rather elaborate essay on the subject, which occupies the first seventy pages of his Etudes on Early Christianity and the Middle Ages. The former, Mr. de Quincey, has taken Josephus to pieces, leaving whoso will to sweep up the bits, in more than one of his multifarious tractates-in the ingenious paper (more ingenious, may we say it? than convincing) on the Essenes, and in the grave and gay disquisition on Secret Societies. Given Josephus as an enshrined elkov in the Temple of Fame-then are both gentlemen, the Briton and the Gaul, stalwart iconoclasts, neither of whom is in the mood to forget his own particular swashing blow. And to Josephus a niche of the kind has been appropriated, with all the honours. Witness Chaucer

in the House of Fame:

Alderfirste loo ther I sighe,
Upon a piller stonde on highe,
That was of lede and yren fyne,
Hym of secte Saturnyne,‡

* Interested, inasmuch as Herr Jost had nobody but Josephus to consult on the entire period of his Geschichte which deals with Herod and Vespasian (as M. Chasles remarks)—so that if Josephus be objected to, as untrustworthy, there is thus far an end put to Herr Jost's History: naturally therefore, as human nature goes, or poor historians' human nature at least, the learned and really painstaking Herr is anxious to uphold against all assailants, and certainly against considerable odds, the validity of the only evidence extant for his use.

Posthumous-edited by Mr. Isaac Taylor.

Chaucer makes Josephus of the sect of Saturn because, according to the com. mentators, Saturn it was that presided over the frightful famine, pestilences, and slaughters which the Jews endured during the siege of Jerusalem, as related by this historian.