blance between the prophets and the poets, than there is between the lord-chancellor of Queen Elizabeth and the Malvolio of Lady Olivia.

Prophecy was of a divine instinct; poetry is of the same nature. There may be in the former more of faith; there is in the latter more of imagination. The lingering voice of God in the Garden of Eden was the poetry of Adam; the echo of that voice is the poetry of the fallen race.

If we glance for a minute at the history of the world we shall find that the ancients are chiefly renowned for their poets, such as Homer, Hesiod, Eschylus, Anacreon, and others that naturally suggest themselves to the reader's mind.

Coleridge defined prose to be proper words in their proper places, and poetry to be the best words in the best places. Some have objected to this definition as being too mechanical, but it must be borne in mind that Coleridge always included the mechanical in his definitions, otherwise it would only realize the poets of whom Wordsworth and Byron have spoken, such as those "who want the faculty of verse," and "many are poets who have never penned a single stanza, and perchance the best!"

Mr. Dana's chief prose work is "The Idle Man," a collection of papers much in the style of the "Sketch Book," but displaying infinitely more vigor of thought and force of style.

The critique on Kean is very just, and shows a greater knowledge of the requisites of a great actor than so secluded a man could be expected to exhibit.

Mr. Dana's prose is remarkably clear. It is of a far stronger order of writing than Irving's or Willis's, but we miss in it the

sly humor of the one and the piquant liveliness of the other: the whole is made in a firmer mould. There is nothing very original either in thought or expression, but in lieu, we have sound, earnest feeling, in good strong English. The chief fault is an amplitude of execution, which borders on the tedious; there is an absence of those flashes of imagination which light up a page, and illuminate the whole subject. In short, Mr. Dana is one of the old school, and abominates the new fashions of composition.

His prejudice in favor of his own school of writing is amusingly exemplified in his essay on "Hazlitt;" as a proof we select a few specimens from that paper.

He thus commences with his energetic protest against the sketchy illustration of the English critic:

"Here is a book of large and stately type, and fair and ample margin, which, with eighty pages of extracts, and a good stretch of blank at the beginnings and endings of chapters, leaves, after the deduction of a general introductory chapter, a little more than two hundred pages in which to treat upon the English Poets, commencing with old Chaucer, and closing with criticisms upon those of the present day."

Mr. Dana should bear in mind the intention of the volume thus denounced. It was not to make an elaborate exposition of every line the poets treated of, but to point out their peculiarities, which can be as well done in a dozen pages as in a volume. These voluminous critiques always defeat themselves. There would be no end to such minute examination.

We remember, some years ago, Mr. Horne, in the "Monthly Chronicle," commenced a series of papers called the "Unde

veloped Characters of Shakspeare." He carried them on for some time, and grew eloquent when he introduced us to the mother of Desdemona, the father of Othello, and the grandfather of Lady Macbeth. Even the Egyptian who gave the handkerchief to Othello's mother was not forgotten.

A critic in the "Morning Herald" brought the series to a precipitate end, by reminding the curious critic that he must not omit, when he came to Macbeth, to give the birth, parentage, and education of the "farrow of nine," as well as a history of their esteemed parent. Mr. Dana seems to be of Mr. Horne's researching nature.

We were not prepared for this unkind appreciation of Goldsmith:

"What Gray says of Addison's versification, we are sorry to add, too well applies to Goldsmith's also, which scarcely has above three or four notes in poetry, sweet enough, indeed, like those of a German flute, but such as soon tire and satiate the ear with their frequent return.”

To this Mr. Dana ill-naturedly adds:

"Goldsmith played this very instrument; it was significant."

We are sorry he does not like the flute, as it is the entire orchestra of the amiable author of the "Behemoth, or the last of the Mastodons," who, we understand, performs the "Hallelujah Chorus," ‚” “Hail Columbia," and "Yankee Doodle" on it with the surprising effect of clearing the street where he resides in a very few minutes. Mr. Dana's criticism is sometimes ingeniously amusing. For instance, he defends the undoubted foibles of his favorites in this manner:

"For the most part, we should be content with them as we find them, lest, with that obstinacy so common to such minds, they run more into the fault, or lest, in the endeavor to remove it, they tear away some beauty which was more closely connected with it than

we are aware.

And had Wordsworth, in the

"Some have complained of Milton's inversions, and perhaps they are now and then overstrained. Had he begun to correct them, who can tell where he would have stopped? Had he listened, some pedant critic might have spoiled the loftiest and most varied harmony of English verse. In the same way, Cowper's rhyme might have lost all its spirit. Excursion, given more compactness to his thoughts, where they are sometimes languidly drawn out, he might have lost something of that calm moral sentiment, of that pure shedding of the soul over his world of beauties, which lie upon them like gentle and thoughtful sunset upon the earth."

With all deference for so experienced a critic as Mr. Dana, we cannot agree to this piece of special pleading for Wordsworth's prosiness. "Calm, moral sentiment" is dignified and concise, and not wire-drawn verbosity, which constitutes so large a portion of "The Excursion."

There is an occasional shrewdness about his remarks which throws more light upon his subject than a dozen pages of his usual style. Critics complain of an author's dulness, and "outHerod Herod" by their own examples. Like Diogenes, they tread upon the pride of Plato with greater pride. This Satanrebuking sin was one day very amusingly exemplified by that prince of rare fellows, Elliston. He was informed that one of his first ladies of the ballet was so indignant at some dissatisfaction expressed by the audience one evening, that she declared

she would not finish her " pas de seul." The manager was horrorstruck at her pride, and sent for her to lecture her on such a preposterous self-conceit. The indignant danseuse was ushered into the presence of Robert William, the great autocrat of the theatrical world. He received her with these words: "Madame, I hope you will allow me to say that an audience has a right to hiss as well as to applaud. Your pride is dreadful to contemplate. Are you aware that I myself have actually been hissed?"

The lady's reply was, “Indeed, sir, and I hope you liked it.” To return to Dana's critique, he says very happily:

"The French tied up their writers, with the little inspiration they had, as if they were madmen, till well might Madame de Staël ask, 'Why all this reining of dull steeds?' At the same time they taught the world to hold as uncouth the movements natural to man, and to admire sudden, sharp, angular shootings of the limbs as the only true lines of beauty, yet the polite world not long ago read and talked nothing but French, and went to church in a galliard, and came home in a levanto.""

It is pleasant to meet with an American writer who has the courage to speak what he thinks right out, and this rare virtue belongs essentially to Dana. We hope the American public will receive patiently the expression of our firm belief that there is less freedom of opinion in the greatest of republics than in many of the greatest of despotisms.

"We must not forget, however, to make one exception from our general neglect of American authors, for therein is our boast-our