thies. It is this mysterious adaptiveness of matter moulded into form, to express the various manifestations of woman's spirit, that constitutes the beauty of material objects. It is the sentiment expressed by them with which we sympathize. For spirit can sympathize only with spirit. To a thing that expresses nothing, the heart must of necessity be indifferent. There is nothing in it for the heart either to speak to or to respond to. And consequently, there can be no sympathy between them.

From the theory of the beautiful, which I have attempted to expound, I will now deduce a rule of criticism that will be of service to us when we come to examine the poetry of Burns.

If the beauty of material objects, as I have endeavored to show, consists in associations by which they become the symbols of some sentiment of woman, then that must be the highest order of poetry, which expresses these sentiments with the least intervention of material imagery; for it is the naked sentiments which possess the power of affecting our souls, and the freer they are from all material clothing, the mightier is their spell of sympathy over the heart. This is certainly so. And all the greatest poets, and Burns among the number, have possessed, in an extraordinary degree, the power of embodying their passions and sentiments in mere words, without the necessity of calling to mind material objects, with which the passions and sentiments are associated. It is, nevertheless, true, that material imagery

is one of the most powerful means of poetic effect, and has therefore its necessary place in the true art of poetry. But the greatest poets and orators never give it the highest place in their poetry and their eloquence. Their most divine conceptions have been clothed in diction, as simple and as transparent as light. You never see about their work, that suffocating profusion of metaphor which second-rate minds throw around their productions. The nature of material imagery, it appears to me, has not been very accurately analyzed. The associations by which it produces its effect have been lost sight of by critics, and the material imagery of its own inherent power, has been supposed to work the whole impression upon the soul. And therefore, the associations-the soul stirring within the material imagery-have been lost sight of in the principles of their criticism. And although it has ever been felt, that the poetry and the eloquence which expresses passions and sentiments directly and immediately in words, is of a higher order than that which expresses them by the intervention of material imagery, yet no reason founded in the nature of the human mind, and the theory of the impressions of external objects upon it, has heretofore been given for the effect. From the fact, that poets often employ material imagery to give vivid impressions of the emotions of the soul, critics have seemed to infer, that the material imagery, by its own inherent power, imparts, by the comparison, a greatness to the emotions described; and that the

whole effect is produced in this way. But this is a
fundamental error; for this very material imagery
derives its chief power, from being associated with
the emotions which it is used to illustrate.
stance,

"As in the bosom of the stream,
The moonbeam plays at dewy e'en,
So trembling pure, was infant love
Within the breast of bonnie Jean."

For in

In this beautiful simile, which Burns has used to describe the first impulse of love in the youthful heart, we are apt to suppose, at first thought, that it is the moonbeam in the stream, which heightens, by its own inherent power alone, the beauty of the love in the breast of the maiden. But it is just the reverse. It was bonnie Jean who awakened, in the bosom of the poet, all the conceptions; and the pure love in her breast, he expressed by the beautiful imagery of a moonbeam in the bosom of a stream. But the image of a moonbeam in the bosom of a stream, derives its poetic power from the association; for its poetic beauty is not felt until we read on to the infant love in the breast of the maiden, to which it is compared. Then, but not till then, the moonbeam in the bosom of the stream is clothed in magical beauty. The beauty of the infant love is transferred to it and consubstantiated with it, and the beautiful poetic analogy, which is felt to exist between them, exalts our idea of both. But it is the infant love, the associated sentiment, that is the soul

of the picture, giving it its warmth and its fascination. This example affords a fair illustration of the nature of the effect of all material imagery upon the heart of man. It is the associated sentiments that give to the material imagery its poetic power, although the imagery is employed to illustrate the sentiments; for we never feel the full beauty of the imagery until the sentiments which it is intended to illustrate are revealed to our minds, and all the poetic analogies between the sentiments and the imagery are clearly seen. Then we take fire. Then we are

wooed and won.

Another beautiful illustration of this point, just occurs to me, from Burns.

"As on the brier, the budding rose,

Still richer breathes, and fairer blows,

So in my tender bosom grows,

The love I bear my Willy."

It is the love growing in the tender bosom of the maiden that constitutes the soul of this picture, and imparts its own warmth to "the budding rose, that richer breathes, and fairer blows." It is always the sentiment that gives to the imagery the life, the fragrance, the magic hues, in a word, the beauty that captivates our hearts.

I have, I hope, sufficiently laid open the theory of the beautiful, to enable us to enter upon the consideration of Burns as a poet. This we will do in the next chapter; and I think, we shall see the theory

which I have propounded, clearly exemplified in his poetry. For, as I have said, Burns was emphatically the poet of the beautiful; and we may therefore expect to see him catching his inspiration from the source of beauty that I have unveiled, that we might behold the loveliness of her countenance, before we enter upon the examination of the poetry of Burns, where merely her image is mirrored.

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