oems. Almost every devout
admirer of the old bards, if demanded his opinion of their productions,
would mention vaguely, yet with perfect sincerity, a sense of dreamy,
wild, indefinite, and he would perhaps say, indefinable delight; on
being required to point out the source of this so shadowy pleasure, he
would be apt to speak of the quaint in phraseology and in general
handling. This quaintness is, in fact, a very powerful adjunct to
ideality, but in the case in question it arises independently of the
author's will, and is altogether apart from his intention. Words and
their rhythm have varied. Verses which affect us to-day with a vivid
delight, and which delight, in many instances, may be traced to the one
source, quaintness, must have worn in the days of their construction a
very commonplace air. This is, of course, no argument against the poems
_now_--we mean it only as against the poets _then_. There is a growing
desire to overrate them. The old English muse was frank, guileless,
sincere and although very learned, still learned without art. No general
error evinces a more thorough confusion of ideas than the error of
supposing Donne and Cowley metaphysical in the sense wherein Wordsworth
and Coleridge are so. With the two former ethics were the end--with the
two latter the means. The poet of the "Creation" wished, by highly
artificial verse, to inculcate what he supposed to be moral truth--the
poet of the "Ancient Mariner" to infuse the Poetic Sentiment through
channels suggested by analysis. The one finished by complete failure
what he commenced in the grossest misconception; the other, by a path
which could not possibly lead him astray, arrived at a triumph which is
not the less glorious because hidden from the profane eyes of the
multitude. But in this view even the "metaphysical verse" of Cowley is
but evidence of the simplicity and single-heartedness of the man. And he
was in this but a type of his _school_--for we may as well designate in
this way the entire class of writers whose poems are bound up in the
volume before us, and throughout all of whom there runs a very
perceptible general character. They used little art in composition.
Their writings sprang immediately from the soul--and partook intensely
of that soul's nature. Nor is it difficult to perceive the tendency of
this _abandon_--to elevate immeasurably all the energies of mind--but,
again, so to mingle the greatest possible fire, force, delicacy, and