LIFE AND LETTERS OF JAMES GATES PEECIVAL. 181 



professor of poetry rather than a poet, and we are not 

 surprised at the number of lectures he reads us, when 

 we learn that in early life he was an excellent demon 

 strator of anatomy, whose subject must be dead before 

 his business with it begins. His interest in poetry was 

 always more or less scientific. He was forever trying 

 experiments in matter and form, especially the latter. 

 And these were especially unhappy, because it is plain 

 that he had no musical ear, or at best a very imperfect 

 one. His attempts at classical metres are simply un 

 readable, whether as verse or prose. He contrives to 

 make even the Sapphic so, which when we read it in 

 Latin moves featly to our modern accentuation. Let 

 any one who wishes to feel the difference between ear 

 and no ear compare Percival's specimens with those in 

 the same kind of Coleridge, who had the finest metrical 

 sense since Milton. We take this very experimenting 

 to be a sufficient proof that Percival's faculty, such as it 

 was, and we do not rate it highly, was artificial, and not 

 innate. The true poet is much rather experimented 

 upon by life and nature, by joy and sorrow, by beauty 

 and defect, till it be found out whether he have any 

 hidden music in him that can sing them into an accord 

 with the eternal harmony which we call God. 



It is easy to trace the literary influences to which the 

 mind of Percival was in turn subjected. Early in life 

 we find a taint of Byronism, which indeed does not 

 wholly disappear to the last. There is among his poems 

 " An Imprecation," of which a single stanza will suffice 

 as a specimen : 



" Wrapped in sheets of gory lightning, 

 While cursed night-hags ring thy knell, 

 May the arm of vengeance bright'ning, 

 O'er thee wave the sword of hell ! " 



If we could fancy Laura Matilda shut up tipsy in the 



