e will proceed to examine our two poets by the principles before
stated, not forgetting to compare or contrast them, as there may be
opportunity. In Mr. Taylor there is a just equipoise of the moral and
intellectual natures, while the sensual nature, if not so strong as the
former two, is at least calmed and subdued by their united power. With
fine animal spirits, he has but little taste for gross animal
enjoyments; and the mischief which his unlicensed spirits might commit,
is foreseen by a sensitive conscience, and checked by a mind that sees
the end in the act, and provides to-day against the future. Mr. Taylor's
inclinations are for scenes of grandeur. Sublime human actions, nature
in her awful revolutionary states, the wild desolation of a mountain
peak or a limitless desert, the storm, the earthquake, the cataract, the
moaning forest--these are the chief inspirations of his powers. Whatever
is suggestive of high emotions, that act upon his moral nature, and in
turn are acted upon by it, forms an unconquerable incentive to his
poetical exertions. Mere word-painting he has no affection for. A scene
of nature, however beautiful, would be poetically valueless to him,
unless it moved his feelings past the point of silent contemplation. The
first poem in his volume affords a striking illustration of his
apprehension of intellectual bravery. Through fasting that approaches
starvation, unanswered prayers, and repeated discomfitures, the soul of
the hero burns undimmed, and his eyes remain steadily fixed on his
purpose. Physical suffering only strengthens his resolution, and defeat
only nerves him to renewed efforts. Round these ideas the poet lingers
with a triumphant emotion, that proves his sympathies to be centred less
in the outward action of the poem, than in the power of human will--a
power which he conceives to be capable of overcoming all things, even
the gods themselves. We have before stated that nature, unless
suggestive of some intellectual emotion, is nothing to Mr. Taylor. To
arouse himself to song, he must vitalize the world, must make it live,
breathe and feel, must find books in the running brooks, and sermons in
stones, or brooks and stones are to him as if they had not been. In the
"Metempsychosis of the Pine," this characteristic is finely displayed.
The poet imagines himself to have been a pine, and retraces his
experiences while in that state of being. The pine becomes a conscious
creature, revelling i