CHAPTER IV.

THE POETRY OF POVERTY.

THE gifts and endowments of the poet are rare, and it seems necessary that he should possess three attributes. The first and most indispensable of these is Intensity of Feeling; MORAL INSIGHT, a spiritual nature, tenderness, strength. It is this which makes him the reader of the hearts of men, the reader of Nature; and that this power may exercise its wondrous faculty it seems necessary that the frame should be more sensitive than the frames of most men, that its organism should he more susceptible and intelligent. The poet needs other attributes, and has them, but this it is which gives him his wondrous power over man; it is this which enables him to read their hearts; and the greatness of our poets is measured by it. This is the chief charm of Wordsworth and Tennyson; this gives his dark and terrible power to Goethe; this is the secret of dramatic strength, and this is the source of the mystic's mystery. Jacob Bohmen, Emanuel Swedenborg possessed it. It is the secret in some sort of the orator's power; it arms every reformer in the world of morals and of mind with a tremendous strength, it has a wonderful knowledge of the world; of politics;-emotion-sympathy-affection. To the

man who possesses it, there passes by a spirit in the shiver of every leaf, and wailing voices are heard in every wind. The universe is peopled with spirits; by it he has a wonderful, an intuitive insight into the laws of being, and his inquisitive and searching eye moves through all space, searching out the mysteries of all, and linking together the relations of all. The second attribute of the poet is description-painting -COLOURING that which he sees, he sketches, he pourtrays, and as his eye differs from the eyes of other men, the force and the colouring differ. Every poet is a painter-a describer. If, as a poet he is inferior, he will paint in literals-fancy will guide his pencil; if he is superior in strong outlines, he will make you to see the object at a single stroke of his pencil. But this power depends greatly on Memory, we draw largely on her stores for the materials with which we make the picture to glow. The richest poets will always abound in this power. Memory will group figures for them, and the intensity of their own vision will array them in the most appropriate colours, and therefore it is that no piece of statuary from the chisel, nor painting on the canvass impresses us so much as a true poem. The true poet will be able to supply both of these; his genius will at once shape a perfect form, and the drapery in which he will clothe it will not be like a drapery hewn from stone, but as if fresh from the loom and the woof.

The Poet, therefore, needs indispensably the PAINTER'S EYE, the quick perception of the beautiful, when it is presented to him; but the eye leans for its knowledge much upon the heart; to see simply, is not sufficient, but it is most necessary to see. spirit, indeed, feels the beauty, but the eye runs over the landscape or the museum, before it is allowed to weep; the poet's quick eye that detects everywhere a

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resemblance and a difference in things; and all things wear to him the aspect of beauty: the quiet sheltered pathway by the bank of the stream; the grey water ouzel flitting over it and beneath it; the old tree thrown across it, covered with the linchen and the ivy; the quiet churchyard and the mouldering abbey turret; the eye seizes all these, but these are only generalities; the poet seizes particulars. There is poetry to him in the wreath of smoke, ascending from the cottage, but he notices its colour, and makes a distinctness in it. Clouds are not to him always alike; in the course of a day's walk, he will notice to you twenty varying hues and characters in the same kind of cloud, varied by the difference of soil, of social life, of scenery: there are some calling themselves poets, who would have the clouds, and birds, and plants of Westmoreland in Kent, and of Kent in Westmoreland -the true poet recognises the individuality of Nature, and of all her moods, as well as of these and of all things; and the heart interprets what the eye sees. The heart makes the great, grand mystery human,makes the picture-a speech and a language oracular.

The third requisite to the poet's character, is UTTERANCE, a power of speech-the expression musical and correct. This last, and indeed really most inconsiderable, yet indispensable attribute is spoken of as the attribute of chief and highest importance; and without it there could be neither orator or poet, yet it is the vehicle through which ideas transmit themselves. Words are the colours with which poets paint; Now if either of these existed sole and alone, they would not constitute poetry. The first, by itself, would be merely the dream-life of the soulthe possessor of such gifts would indeed, be possessed of "joys unspeakable," but they would be to him. rather a source of agony and pain, from the fact of his

being dumb and unable to communicate to others his sensations of his joys. So the second, by itself, would only be the power of sober prose expression eminently fitting for the archives of a naturalist or an antiquarian, but not sufficiently spiritual to make a Historian, far less a Poet. And the third by itself, would only be the wild rhapsody of words. Blend the three together, and they make in their degree a poet: divorce them, and however useful they may be, they do not make the mind fitted for the flight of the mind through the fields of Imagination and Power. And now, if these be poetry we may ask what are the circumstances of the labourer's lot, which seem peculiarly to fit him among men to be the poet, the minister and instructor of his race? we suppose that he has had no opportunity of studying in the Library. Schools and colleges have been closed to him; a first glance would lead us to suppose that he was cut off from leisure, if so what is there in the life of this man who makes up for these deficiencies, and tends to the exaltation of his name? In reply, there are many teachers: 1st. We may say POVERTY, itself, is a teacher. Poverty, when it comes to the right man, and the right mind, greatly fits for the messages of instruction: its bleak winds bear seeds to the spirit, and in the right mind they spring up and bear much fruit. Perhaps it may be said, that he is unfitted to be the minister to the people, who has not suffered. We are all made perfect through suffering," and, although there is a nobler, because a severer, kind of suffering, than the merely physical, yet, to the poor man, invariably, the sensations of his own poverty harrow him also with the spectacles of suffering beside his own. Thus it is that the sympathies of our hearts are unlocked; thus it is that some of the greatest lessons in our human history are communicated to us.

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There are, of course, many natures not proof against poverty, and let us not speak too harshly of their failings, even these are high angels compared with many of the children of wealth and rank: but there are noble natures, whose hearts have passed through the searching fires unscathed; like the Hebrew children in the fiery furnace, they beheld, and others beheld, the likeness as of the Son of Man by their fire: the fires were fierce, but they could not scorch away the true affections of their nature;-they contracted no misanthropic hatred of their kind; they did not blasphemously blame the Father of all good, but looked up with most reverent eye to His throne; and so, from that time forth, they came, harp in hand, qualified to be the ministers and instructors of their race; nay, sometimes from the very furnace of trial itself, there came forth as the wail of music-a strong spiritual nature battling with despair-Light, as of old, contending with darkness.

A second source of inspiration is the very fact of LABOUR. A working man feels his strength, feels his independence, and in that independence is the soul of all effort. There is no vanity about Labour; pride is there a generous and noble pride. Birth, dress, place, precedence-all these are low and little; but to create good and blessed things from most remote causes, to feel that our own arm bears up state and throne; no vanity there; there is poetry-there is inspiration, where there is moral significance when the spiritual, felt, but unseen, stands behind, and invests the real with ideal beauty :-there is no true labour but it may become thus. The symbol of a higher life, and the true poet, is he, whether he belong to the working classes or to any other class, who arrives at the moral significance of his being-and of