340 THE POPULAR SCIENCE MONTHLY. 



cause " a question has arisen which suspends all united action among 

 Radicals. . . . On this most grievous subject we shall, in the course of 

 this article, declare our whole opinion." He yet, however, finds it 

 necessary first to denounce in fitting terms Lord John Russell's decla- 

 ration of hostility to all reform on the first night of the session. The 

 discussion of the Canadian problem is in his very best style, and is as 

 well worth reading even now as any of his reprinted papers. 



The number for April, this year, opens with one of his literary 

 articles, reproduced in the " Dissertations " " Alfred de Vigny." This 

 article is his latest and most highly elaborated attempt to philosophize 

 upon literature and poetry. The " Thoughts on Poetry " is his only 

 other paper that he has thought worth preserving. The reviews of 

 Tennyson and Carlyle's "French Revolution" are replete with just 

 criticism, but do not reach the height of philosophical explanation. In 

 his philosophy of style, there are many good points, but, as I conceive, 

 some serious omissions. I doubt if he gave enough thought to the 

 subject. The earlier part of the " De Vigny " article on the influence 

 exerted on poetry by political changes, such as the French Revolu- 

 tion, is, I think, very happily expressed, and is quite equal to any 

 other similar dissertations by our best historians and critics. It is 

 when he comes to state the essential quality of the poetic genius or 

 temperament that I think his view defective. In the first place, he 

 puts too much stress on the emotional quality, and too little on the 

 intellectual. In the second place, he is wrong in identifying the poet 

 intellectually with the philosopher or thinker : he regards genius, 

 whether in poetry or in philosophy, as the gift of seeing truths at a 

 greater depth than the world can penetrate. On the former of these 

 two heads he accepts De Vigny's emotional delineation " the thrill 

 from beauty, grandeur, and harmony, the infinite pity for mankind " 

 as the tests, or some of the tests, of the poetic nature ; but he takes no 

 direct notice of the genius of expression, the constructive or creative 

 faculty, without which emotion will never make a poet, and with 

 which the grandest poetry may be' produced on a very slight emotional 

 basis. To criticise Shelley without adducing his purely intellectual 

 force, displayed in endless resources of language, is to place the super- 

 structure of poetry on a false foundation. Shakespeare, in any view 

 of him, was ten parts intellect for one of emotion; and his intellect did 

 not, so far as I am aware, see truths at a greater depth than the world 

 could penetrate. Mill inherited his father's disposition to think Shake- 

 speare overrated ; which, to say the least, was unfortunate when he 

 came to theorize on poetry at large. 



In August, appeared the review of Bentham, which I will advert 

 to presently. 



The next number is December, 1838. It closes with Mill's second 

 article on Canada " Lord Durham's Return " vindicating his policy 

 point by point, in a way that only Mill could have done. It concludes: 



