a favourable judgment, which may guide the opinions of the general public? In either case, we cannot but stand in some doubt as to whether Professor Maurice's literary or theological attainments have placed him on any such eminence as this. We know him as a misty, well-meaning, self-contradictory thinker, oppressed with a vague desire for Liberty, to be attained “à tout prix," by every sacrifice, if needful; and we cannot conceive that any portion of the public, beyond a certain knot of gaping "youngsters," —very “good fellows" in their way perchance, but not singularly wise or sober, would be willing to accept Professor Maurice as an infallible exponent of the Faith. We suspect that the general body of readers would look on a poem with increased suspicion, rather than with more hearty confidence, in a religious point of view, if ushered into the world under the especial patronage of Professor Maurice. As for his literary and critical attainments, these are decidedly more than questionable: a vague thinker and talker, like our good Professor, was never fashioned for a critic. We give him all credit for kindness of heart and nobility of disposition; but, unfortunately, clearness of intellect is here the one thing needful, and that the Professor does not possess. Amusing instances of his "random flashes" may be discovered in this very preface, in which, for instance, he comments on the essentiallydramatic character of Milton's "Paradise Lost," which is no more dramatic, as we need scarcely say, than every epic needs must be, which sets forth some great conflict as its theme, and which, if any one character were to be appropriated to it, might, with equal justice, be designated "descriptive," or "narrative," or "didactic;" but, in truth, the calm dignity of Milton, whose individual idiosyncracy is apparent throughout all his works, may be said to be essentially opposed to the genius of the drama, which is more or less demonstrative and passionate. Milton's greatness, indeed, enabled him to excel in every thing which he attempted, but he never did essay the portraiture of the passions, which is the drama's peculiar domain.

Of a like airy and unsubstantial hue with this eulogium of Milton's dramatic genius are almost all the utterances of this preface; words, very fine words indeed, but unhappily not much beside. Here is a characteristic sentence. "Whether poetry is again to revive among us" (Tennyson and Keble stand for nought, it should seem), " or whether the power is to be wholly stifled by our accurate notions about the laws and conditions under which it is to be exercised" ("teste,” we presume, Carlyle, and Emerson, and Professor Maurice), "is a question upon which there is room for great differences of opinion." (As usual, a wholesome latitude of thought! On what is there not such room,

according to the Professor's judgment?) "Judging from the past, I should suppose, that till poetry becomes less self-conscious, less self-concentrated, more dramatical in spirit, if not in form, it will not have the qualities which can powerfully affect Englishmen." What does Professor Maurice say, then, to the intense popularity of Byron for so many years? Was not he self-conscious? On the contrary, we affirm, a poet who writes about self, will almost always be the most vulgarly popular: he is the most easily appreciable, and he will generally, for awhile at least, command far more attention than the dramatic bard, who does not incessantly harp upon one string, but is, like nature's self, impartial. One reason for this is, that the sympathetic reader often places himself in the position of a self-idolater like Byron, and feels his vanity flattered by supposing himself elevated above "the sordid mass" with the poet.

The truth is, that it is more difficult rightly to appreciate a great dramatic work than any other: most people look for fine speeches and fine thoughts in plays,-images, and so forth,-and think little or nothing of dramatic fitness, and the truth and reality of the passions exemplified. Not one man in a thousand reads "Shakspeare" for his real dramatic qualities, or understands them, though every body is prepared to admire and quote his so-called "beauties," things which belong to him rather as a poet, than as the greatest of dramatists. The mingled rage and love of "Lear," subsiding gradually into madness, and forming the most terribly affecting of all mere human portraitures, is far less celebrated than Hamlet's shallow "To be, or not to be,”shallow, that is, in its morbid Germanism, yet equally admirable in a dramatic point of view, as an exponent of the characterless Teutonic "Hamlet." People understood so little about the drama, that this last sentence of ours must be to the majority "a mystery and the marvel:" they cannot comprehend how a thing can be good and bad at the same time, philosophically false, and yet dramatically admirable. They are so real, that they cannot look at any thing objectively, and "in the concrete;" and, therefore, the drama is to them a sealed book.

Believing this, we dispute Professor Maurice's dictum, that poetry must become more dramatic to gain any hold on the mind of the nation: it must become more real, and honest, and true : it must discard affectation and foreign "isms" of all sorts; it must come from the heart, and speak to the heart. And it is because Mr. Tennyson's poetry does this in no small degree, that it is so popular as it is: we allude more especially to his "Minor Poems," his "May-Queen," and "Miller's Daughter,' and "Lord of Burleigh," and "Lady Clare," which, when under

stood, must always awaken a sympathetic thrill of delight. But dramatic genius of the higher order is so far from commanding popularity, that it is rather a bar to it: it is too abrupt, too passionate, too apparently unsystematic: people don't know what to make of it. They feel frightened, and puzzled too. This acounts for the comparative unconsciousness of the rare gifts of a contemporary," Browning," which still exists among us. If "Taylor" has achieved a real success with his "Philip van Artevelde," that is rather because it is so eminently undramatic, so void of passion, so "didactic." The fame of this production, one of the most prosaic (be it said in all charity) of all metrical contributions to literature, is a standing proof of the almost total absence of appreciation for the drama in the present English public. Readers do not seek for real dramatic utterances, for the inner life of characters in action, such as they would find in "Browning" for instance, but for set speeches, "striking thoughts," "fine ideas," and so forth that is, for essays in a dramatic form, and not for dramatic poems.

And what holds good, we are sorry to say it, of the general reader (of course, with many exceptions), is still more strikingly exemplified in the judgments of the critics of the day, almost with no exceptions at all. Thus "Quarterly" and "Edinburgh" have striven which should lavish the most enthusiastic praises on such a still-born child, such a dead-alive "Mach-werk," (as the Germans say), as this same Mr. Taylor's "Edward the Fair;" while the organ of northern wisdom has lately devoted an article, of some fifty pages, to such an elaborate mistake (we can use no milder phrase) as Bulwer's "King Arthur." The mention of this poem, as it is not dramatic, might seem "out of keeping" with our theme; but the same love for the false and the artificial, the same preference of a metrical "Talkification" on any theme to a real living creation, is exemplified in this instance. Some day or other, we purpose to immolate both "Philip van Artevelde, that embodiment of pains-taking laudable mediocrity, and the unfortunately laborious, and tediously artificial "King Arthur," and the far more obnoxious "Festus," so audaciously magnificent in its pretensions, so small and so barbarous in its performance, with various other offenders, at the shrine of poetical justice. For the present, however, we must revert to our original theme; and, leaving Professor Maurice and his unlucky preface behind us (on which we are tempted to say much more respecting Germany's "having a right to claim the whole realm of the abstract,"-Query, the Inane? &c. &c.), we pass to Mr. Kingsley's poem, which has really merits of a high order, and must secure its author's fame. It is far from being free from faults;

the poet says, in his own definite and sensible preface, that he is painfully aware of them. These faults are exaggeration, overstrained boldness verging upon coarseness, a tendency to bitterness and apparent want of "love," and an occasional burst of "fine talk," strained and stilted, reminding us that the bard has not wholly soared above "the spirit of his age," and reached the sphere of reality and truth. But that Mr. Kingsley is a poet who can question, who reads the magnificent "Proem," which we shall transcribe for our readers' edification? There are two imaginary speakers, the man of feeling and the man of action, Epimetheus and Prometheus, the past and the present. First speaks "Epimetheus." (The italics are our own.)

"Wake again, Teutonic Father-ages,

Speak again, beloved primæval creeds;
Flash ancestral spirit from your pages,
Wake the greedy age to noble deeds.

"Tell us, how of old our saintly mothers

School'd themselves by vigil, fast, and prayer;

Learnt to love, as Jesus loved before them,
While they bore the cross which poor men bear.

"Tell us, how our stout crusading fathers

Fought and died for God, and not for gold:
Let their love, their faith, their boyish daring,
Distance-mellow'd, gild the days of old.

"Tell us, how the sexless workers, thronging,
Angel-tended, round the convent doors,
Wrought to Christian faith and holy order,
Savage hearts alike, and barren moors.

"Ye who built the churches where we worship,
Ye who framed the laws by which we move,

Fathers, long belied, and long forsaken,

Oh! forgive the children of your love!”

How beautiful is the self-abandonment, the inspired worship, as it were, breathed in these lines! The very rhythm is most happily suggestive; and yet it is used with equal effect in the reply of Prometheus, the man of action, the spirit of the present. He says, then, also addressing our forefathers:

"Old anarchic floods of revolution,

Drowning ill and good alike in night,
Sink, and bare the wrecks of ancient labour,
Fossil-teeming, to the searching light.

"There will we find laws, which shall interpret,
Through the simpler past, existing life;
Delving up from mines and fairy caverns,
Charmed blades, to cut the ages' strife.

"What though fogs may steam from draining waters?
We will till your clays to mellow loam,
Till the graveyard of our father's spirits
Sparkle round us into fruitful bloom.

"Old decays but foster new creations;

Bones and ashes feed the golden corn:

Fresh elixirs wander every moment

Down the veins through which the live past feeds

its child, the live unborn,'

These very grand lines (despite the presence of some little Germanism,) must speak for themselves. They express the purpose of our author, which is to separate the good from the evil in the Middle Age World; but more especially to stigmatize that false asceticism, which confounded the use and the abuse, and which still threatens to lead many good and noble hearts astray. In this undertaking we can only wish Mr. Kingsley God speed; but then we must aver, that this is a work to be undertaken with all possible care, in a spirit of deep reverence and of love. We will not affirm that this has not been the case with the author of "The Saint's Tragedy;" but we do think that he has been injudicious in various respects; that he has written, so as necessarily to repel many, whose sympathies and judgments he must be most anxious to gain,—that is, if he be the man for which we wish to take him, a real lover of his brethren, and a defender of "the truth." We refer more especially to those passages in which he has placed cold-blooded affirmations of horrors, which we regard rather as the extravagant aberrations of asceticism, than as its deliberate " dicta," on the lips of its most intellectual representative, "Conrad," the monk of Marpurg. He is made to speak to the youthful Lewis (see pp. 49 and 50), in a strain of morbid and blasphemous passion, which is positively frightful, which must shock the most favourable reader (we should say), and excite the bitterest indignation in very many. Be it admitted that Romish ascetics have used, are in the habit of using, such language