and pure, as well as unselfish and self-controlled. The imagination, in order to rise and soar, must at least feign that she believes and worships. Shelley and Byron and Goethe are memorable witnesses to this important truth.

But what poets shall we read, and in what order? and why should we select certain poets above others? Upon this topic we have sought to furnish principles rather than rules; to enable the reader to select for himself rather than rely on the authority of another. But we may for a moment glance at a few of the leading names in the long list of English poets. Chaucer leads the way—the morning star of English poesy-fit leader of a host so brilliant; for we may say, without conscious exaggeration or fear of dispute, that the poetry of England is the richest, the most varied, and the most brilliant of any which the world has ever seen; as it should be, reflecting as it does a manhood which has been developed most variously and most nobly, and a life the most heroic, the most fervent, the most affectionate, that has marked the world's history. Chaucer must be studied in order to be read; but when Chaucer has been studied so as to be easily followed, he confronts you with the dawn of a brilliant day-dewy, fresh, transparent, and invigorating. He gives you the Odyssey of the English poetry, and reveals the spring-time of English life. Next comes Spenser, wearisome for his meandering verse laden with its wealth of bewildering imagery, but affluent to excess with pictures that are clear and bright, and always noble, chivalrous, pure and Christian. He gives English feeling in its knightly aspect, as it was exemplified in the life of Sidney and others of the selecter spirits of "great Eliza's golden time." Then comes Shakspeare, the myriad-minded indeed, reflecting in the manifoldness of his products and the power with which he lives and feels in all, the fervent and manifold life of England's population in his times; the admiration of the modern world in

its height of culture and its depth of philosophy; the challenger of critics, before whose mysterious power to think and express they confess themselves abashed, and by the unsolved enigmas of many of whose characters and whose truths they continue to be dazed and overcome. Milton follows, representing another type of poets, and another aspect of English life; learned, grave, and stern, bearing the impress of one who had indeed been "caught up into Paradise and heard unspeakable words;" but still human in his unmatched love of nature, his tender sympathy with human life, and his delight in music, whether

He hears the pealing organ blow

To the full-voiced choir below,

In service high and anthems clear,

or rejoices in the sweet rising of the earliest morn with "charm of earliest birds." Milton gives us the life of the English people, when believing in God as the greatest of kings, they dared in his name to vindicate the rights of human subjects, and showed the virtues of that stern knighthood which had received such a fiery consecration. We name Dryden next, the best and the manliest poet of English thought and feeling at the beginning of a sad degeneracy-the man of the world, frank, brave, outspoken, with a brilliant genius, but often untrue to his better self through the corruption of manners and the degradation of the higher imagination. Pope follows next, sententious, acute, brilliant, and felicitous, the servant of an age which he was content to flatter and to please, but never attempted to elevate, who fixed for English poetry that factitious and stilted poetic diction which was echoed and re-echoed by imitators till it became ashamed and vexed at its own empty reiterations.

Against this excess of factitious emptiness there came an inevitable reaction. Thomson dared to follow his own

luxuriant fancy, and rose to occasional flights that remind us of the earlier and better times of Milton and Spenser. Cowper with no suspicion of his own genius, and often homely and uncultured in his diction, was by the very unconsciousness of his power left more free from the trammels of allegiance to poets or critics, to follow the promptings of his love of nature, humanity, and God. Crabbe, more homely even than Cowper, was also more literal than he in his transcripts of the humble life with which he was familiar. Burns, having no impulse and little guidance except from within, sung from his own heart songs of penetrating sense and wondrous tenderness. Campbell, Scott, and Joanna Baillie represent types that are unique, but each gave an impulse to the better spirit. Byron was stirred by pride and wrath to use the genius which he could not repress; breaking other of the traditions of the past besides the poetic, which he fancied he kept as against his rivals, the Lake Poets. With Byron, Shelley may properly be connected, though in many respects more spiritual, refined and noble. Meanwhile the Lake School had been gathering strength, and began to act as a redeeming force. Wordsworth, with his cool defiance of the prevailing fashion, promulgated an extreme theory, with a practice still more extreme. Coleridge, Southey, Wilson, Landor, and Lamb were agreed, not in adopting the theory or following the practice of Wordsworth, but in their emancipation from any fashion of poetic diction, and in their fresh and liberal imitation of, or rather inspiration by, the elder poets. From their triumph commences the new era of English poetry in England and America. Milman, Tennyson, Barry Cornwall, Henry Taylor, the Brownings, Hood, Ingelow, Arthur Clough, and Matthew Arnold, in England; Dana, Pierpont, Percival, Bryant, Longfellow, Lowell, Whittier, and Emerson in America, follow in great or less measure the impulses of the modern school,

Last of all comes Wil

which we need not characterize. liam Morris, with his antique and objective spirit, as a healthful and needed counterpoise to the excessively subjective tendencies of the same recent school.

In religious poetry English literature is rich. Milton, George Herbert, Watts, Doddridge, the Wesleys, Keble, and Faber are examples of its different types. In poetic translators from the ancient bards we have of Homer, Chapman, Pope, Cowper, Lord Derby, Sotheby, Newman, Bryant and others; of Virgil, Dryden, and Conington; of Horace, Lytton Bulwer and Conington; of Dante, Cary and Longfellow; of Tasso, Fairfax; and of various works of the modern German, Coleridge, Scott, Lytton Bulwer, and others.

But it is time we had ended. The golden roll of English poetry is embarrassing from its wealth and tempting suggestions.

CHAPTER XVII.

THE CRITICISM AND HISTORY OF LITERATURE.

WITHIN the present century, there has come into being a new description of Books and Reading, viz. : those which are devoted to the criticism and history of literature itself. Our libraries and book-shops are furnished with many books which consist of criticisms of other books. Not only is there a countless number of essays devoted to the criticism and interpretation of single authors and even of single works, but entire volumes are occupied with commentaries on great authors or some one of their writings. We have more than one series of essays, and even whole libraries, occupied solely with critiques upon single writers, as Homer, Goethe, and Shakspeare. Active controversies have arisen between the partisans of opposing theories. Indeed, critiques and counter critiques are so abundant, that it almost seems as though this was the age of nothing but criticism, and literature were nothing if not critical. It is certain there now exists a special department of literature which is employed in the interpretation and judgment of literature itself, and that it has enlisted the services of many of the ablest writers of their time, some of whom have not only been distinguished as critics of the productions of men of surpassing genius, but have themselves been known as foremost writers of their own generation. We need name only Goethe, the Schlegels, Coleridge, Wordsworth, Made. de Stael, St. Beuve, Professor John Wilson, and Matthew Arnold. Criticism itself has become a department of literature, and is justified in its claims by