"Now, when the lords and barons of the realm
"Perceiv'd Northumberland did lean to him,
They more and less came in with cap and knee;
"Met him in boroughs, cities, villages;
"Attended him on bridges, stood in lanes,
"Laid gifts before him, proffer'd him their oaths,
"Gaye him their heirs, as pages follow'd him,
"Even at the heels, in golden multitudes.”

Perhaps, however, we shall be best enabled to define, or at least to understand the nature of poetry, by reverting a little to its origin. Poetry has certainly originated in that instinctive love of harmony and music, which is implanted in the whole human race. It is impossible to look back to any period of society for the first musical effusions. We find them among the savages of the lowest order, and we find them always there accompanied with words; for it is a depraved state of the public taste, when they attend to sound alone. This is the act of luxury and that sickliness of taste which perverts the very design of an art; and that of music was undoubtedly to give force and interest to sentiment and language.

Bishop Lowth has, with great labour, and not with less taste and discernment, traced the

Hebrew poetry to a very early period of society; to the exclamation of Lamech, the sixth from Adam, in the fourth chapter of Genesis, and also to the prophetic execration of Noah upon Ham. The inspired benedictions of the patriarchs Isaac and Jacob, he proves to have been altogether of the same description; and, when we proceed a litle further in the history of the Hebrew nation, we find the songs of Miriam and of Moses, who, it may be observed, was the reputed author of many of the Psalms now extant, and that of Deborah and Barak, &c. All these we know were adapted to musical notes, and there is undoubted evidence that a great part of the religious service of the Hebrews was performed by both vocal and instrumental music.

If we look into the history of other nations, we shall find all their early compositions to have been poetical, and actually set (as we should call it in modern language, perhaps composed) to music. Greece for successive ages was possessed of no records but the poetic. The laws themselves were metrical, as Aristotle proves by

* See Lectures of the Sacred Poetry of the Hebrews, Lect. iv. &c.

the very name nomai (laws) by which some of the early popular songs were distinguished. In short, the Germans, the Spaniards, and even the Swedes, had both their antient records and their antient laws in verse. A gentleman, who had seen more of savage life than any man I ever knew, assured me that all the savage nations had their songs adapted to a rude music; and that the common subjects of these songs were love and war.

Hence I think we have very clearly the origin not only of poetry, but even of numbers or metre. Music was early found to be the most fascinating vehicle for sentiment. The poetry was composed to the music, and not the music to the words, as in modern times. Hence the absolute necessity of metre or rhyme, or something which should correspond with the musical cadence; hence the invention of all the different antient metres; and hence we may lay it down as a maxim that metre of some kind is essential to poetry.

The origin of poetry will explain to us the nature of the style which is appropriated to it, and indeed all its peculiar qualities. It was before men had learned to reason, that they ap

plied themselves to poetry. There was therefore nothing for them to address but the senses and the passions. Music itself might almost be termed a sensual enjoyment; when with music therefore was combined all the information that men were capable of receiving in that stage of society, the heroic actions, or miraculous achievements of their ancestors, the entertainment must have been delightful. Still the expression must be such as to excite and engage the passions. The superstition always attached to so early a stage in the history of man, will also account for that alliance with the wonderful, the supernatural, which poetry has always claimed and hence the origin of poetical machinery. The very poverty of language at this early period, aided by the vividness of an imagination that had none of the polished haunts of men to dwell in, and nothing but the solitude of woods and groves in which to rove, would naturally lead to a language and expression highly figurative and metaphorical.

Hence you have all the ingredients and cha racteristics of poetry; and hence it may be defined "a metrical composition chiefly addressed to the passions, occasionally enriched by

machinery, or at least by the introduction of the supernatural, and expressed in highly figu rative language."

This definition, however, though the best that I am able to offer in a general way, is still very imperfect, for it does not embrace what is almost the spirit and essence of poetry. Since it is so difficult therefore to form a definition, let us seek for an etymology? A poem is the production of the imagination or fancy: hence it was originally termed poema (a creation) and the writers were called poietai (makers). Not that every thing contained in a poem was supposed to be a new invention, for that could not be true, and particularly of descriptive poems; but the composition as a whole might be regarded more strictly as an effort of the invention than the detail of facts or arguments, than the records of history, or the reasonings of the logician.

I have defined a poem to be a metrical com. position; but I am not going to send you back to your grammar, to descant on the quantities of syllables, to give rules to know a dactyl, a spondee, an iambic, &c. These you have already learned in your prosody. But there is