kind. Sensibility is often possessed, even to excess, by persons who are very deficient in Taste. Mr. Stewart's account of this power is to the following effect: 'In objects presented to the mind an indefinite variety of circumstances may concur in producing that agreeable impression to which all give the name of Beauty. Yet the impression, as far as our consciousness can judge of it, is simple and uncompounded. It is impossible, then, for the most acute Sensibility, united with the greatest sagacity, to say, upon a single experiment, what are the circumstances in the supposed object to which we are chiefly indebted for the agreeable impression produced; what those, if any, that may be considered neutral; and what those which tend to diminish and injure the general effect. It is only by watching attentively a great variety of experiments upon different things that we can arrive at that discriminating knowledge which enables us to separate, in every expression, those circumstances which have been favourable to the general result from those which have been injurious to it. This power of discrimination we call Taste. It supposes of necessity some sensibility to pleasure and pain; but it is formed to the perfection, in which we see it often possessed, chiefly by diligence in multiplying, and accuracy in watching, those intellectual experiments from whence the materials which inform and exercise it are supplied. Mr. Stewart says: 'It is observed by Shenstone, that good Taste and good-nature are inseparably united; and although the observation is by no means true, when thus stated as an unqualified proposition, it will be found to have a sufficient foundation in fact to deserve the attention of those who have a pleasure in studying the varieties of human character.""

Mrs. Piozzi remarks: "It is observable that the further people advance in elegance, the less they value splendour; distinction being at last the positive thing, which mortals elevated above competency naturally desire. Necessity must, we know, be first supplied; convenience then requires to be contented; but so soon as men can find means after that period to make themselves eminent for Taste, they learn to despise those paltry distinctions which riches alone can bestow."

LECTURE IV.

"SOME RECOLLECTIONS OF A VISIT TO ABBOTSFORD,

AND OF

SIR WALTER SCOTT AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES."

DELIVERED BEFORE

THE CHURCH OF ENGLAND ASSOCIATION FOR YOUNG MEN,

IN THE BONAVENTURE HALL,

ON MONDAY EVENING, THE 10TH OF JANUARY, 1859.

ABOUT three weeks ago, I delivered the first of a Course of Lectures before such of the members of this Association as attend the Bible class; and this evening I am to commence another Course of a more general character, in the delivering of which we shall also have the assistance of some of the talent and learning of our Lay brethren. Notwithstanding the severity of the cold this day, unprecedented for the last thirty years, I am pleased to see so many assembled on this occasion; and I trust that the Course arranged by the Association, and thus auspiciously commenced, will be successful, not only in a pecuniary point of view, and thereby encreasing the funds at its command, but also in providing the means of usefully and pleasantly passing an evening-attracting a fair attendance of auditors, who may receive instruction in many useful general subjects, and an additional incentive to seek the improvement of their minds, and the cultivation of their tastes. And I do feel that if this end be answered, we shall not have altogether spent our labors in vain. With this object in view, I propose on

the present occasion to put together a few remarks respecting some of our modern English poets: rather, however, by way of anecdote, than as entering upon any general disquisition respecting them, but still giving occasionally a few quotations for the purpose of illustration.

It has been observed by a late English critic that, whatever be the cause, the effect appears undeniable, that we shall generally look in vain for satisfactory lives of the poets of the highest order: such lives as may furnish a real account, not merely a conjectural solution, of the chief facts in their history-their works. Of Homer for instance, who can affirm anything positive beyond the simple matters in the fragment preserved by Thucydides: that he was blind, that he resided in Chios, that he exercised the profession of aoidos (minstrel or bard), and in that character went occasionally (amongst other places) to Delos? Of the great father of tragic poetry, Eschylus, we can hardly be said to know more facts; but those which are preserved to us are more important, they are the critical points of his life-that he served actively as a soldier, that he fought at Salamis, that he invented additions of no small moment to the mechanical and scenical part of tragedy, that finding himself eclipsed by Sophocles he retired in his old age from Athens to Sicily; and lastly, and perhaps we may say chiefly, with regard to his cast of poetry, that he was a disciple of the Pythagorean school. The histories of Pindar, Lucretius, Virgil, and our own Spenser and Shakspeare, so much of them as is certainly known, might be related in as few and as brief sentences as these. Our modern poets suffer rather from an inconvenience of a different kind: not always happy in their biographers, the public are too often wearied with voluminous and uninteresting correspondence, and minute details, which are not given with spirit, and have no tendency even to illustrate character. Consequently, though their biographies are written in fullest detail, they are comparatively but little read; and thus much of the interest that might be attached to their works is lost. This is very much the case with recent biographies of Campbell, Wordsworth, Southey and Moore. Indeed, it requires no small judgment and peculiar talent to compose a successful and characteristic Biography, specially of an eminent poet.

When I first began to be interested in such matters, Gray, and Goldsmith, and Cowper had passed away,-they were of a previous generation, but Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Byron, Scott, Campbell, Moore, and Rogers, were all in the zenith of their fame. Every year some new work, from one or other of them, issued from the press, to excite and interest the public mind. And what an illustrious company! We shall seldom find, in any age or country, so many names of high rank as contemporary poets. But all of them have now passed away from amongst us-all their pedestals have been vacated by them; and there have, alas! risen up no successors to fill their places. From such a height we are sadly fallen; and except Tennyson, who still is living, we can scarcely be said to retain a single name of high poetical fame, unless Macaulay's fine spirit-stirring Ballads shall remind us, that, though he is an historian and politician, he is also a poet.

With some of those persons, whose names I mentioned just now, it so happened that I was more or less personally acquainted, or with their families, and was brought, in a certain way, into connection with others; which gave me a still further interest in everything relating to them. And there is certainly always a considerable curiosity excited, and not an improper one, to see and know personally those who have, from any cause, achieved for themselves an eminent name. It is true, and especially in the case of great authors, that when our curiosity is gratified, we experience at times considerable disappointment; since those, who have won our admiration or our reverence by their writings, often fail to realize by their conversation our expectations of their talents, or of their appearance and manners; but still we cannot but wish to see and to know the great occupants of the Temple of Fame.

Now Campbell I knew very intimately from a very early age, and we were often guests together at the same friend's house. Southey I have met quietly in private society; Rogers often in more general company. I succeeded Crabbe as Rector of the Parish of Trowbridge, in Wiltshire; and though I never saw the poet himself, I became well acquainted with his family, and entered upon all the fresh reminiscences of his daily life. Moore was living a few miles off from me in the same county, close to Lord Lansdowne's at Bo

F

wood, but in declining health, and scarcely ever went from home. I only once saw Scott; he was sitting below the Judges in the Court house in Edinburgh. It was in the early part of the year 1827, just when he had publicly owned the authorship of Waverley. He was, as usual while in Court, busily engaged in writing, probably, as we learn from the account given of his habits in his life, some work then preparing for the press; perhaps "the Life of Napoleon," as that was the great work which he then had in hand. I have, however, been intimately acquainted of late years with several of his family, including Mr. Lockhart, his son-in-law and biographer, and his children; and on different occasions have been staying, for some weeks at a time, at Abbotsford with Scott's grandaughter and her husband, who were then the owners of the property.

There is a story told of the Caliph Omar by Gibbon, that, when he was at Alexandria, he caused all the books in the famous library there to be burned; because, he said, if they only contained what was in the Koran, they were not wanted; and, if they contained anything else, they ought to be destroyed. I need not stop to reason upon such an act, if it ever occurred, which however there is not much historical evidence to prove: but, as a matter of fact, in our day, since there is such a vast amount of literature in circulation, besides the Bible,—and since people will and ought to read, and acquire information, and strengthen and improve their understandings, surely it is most desirable that they should cultivate a taste for the higher grades of literature, and that the English Classics, so to style them, whether in prose or verse, should have their due places assigned them. And when there is such an abundance of mawkish, sentimental, wishey-washey trash, not to speak of works more positively evil sent across the Lines, to be retailed in limp covers at a few cents a volume, it is not out of place to remind you, that there is in the same language, matter more sterling at your command, and far more wholesome for your use. And moreover, I believe, that, in the education of youth, it is of immense importance not to omit the cultivation of the imagination. I am inclined to agree in the opinion that all romantic fiction, whether in poetry or prose, which does not actually and