LETTER ON CHARLES LOYSON. loO 



The first lesson and exanii)le set Ijefore ns in these 

 pages, is that of an enlightened as well as ardent devo- 

 tion to literatnre, and particularly in that -which is the 

 liighest form of human thought and sentiment — poetry. 

 The question has heen often asked, in our day, whether 

 the reason of the existence of this form of literature had 

 not ceased in view of the severe and positive require- 

 ments of the spirit of the age; — whether the function 

 of poetry was not about to terminate with that of reli- 

 gion, to which in many ways it is so near akin, and 

 which it has served, more than once, as a most noble 

 interpreter. This question, already agitated in his time, 

 is discussed by Charles Loyson, and he concludes with 

 the conviction that whatever there is in the heart of man 

 that relates to the sense of the infinite, is permanent; 

 while, at the same time, he points out with rare sagacity, 

 the changes rendered indispensable in literature by the 

 march of time. lie is doubtless wrong when he banishes 

 poetry from the realm of nature, which he mistakenly 

 conceives to have been disenchanted by modern science 

 and industry: he is right when he opens to it the inner 

 world of the soul and the unexplored regions of our 

 spiritual nature. He is wrong again when he condemns 

 as a critic what he has excellently practised as a poet — 

 tlie description of common life, the charm of domestic 

 details, and the household muse from whose inspiration 

 the irreat novelists of Eno;land and America, of late 

 years, have derived results so rich in incident and so 

 lofty in their moral tone; but he is grandly in the right 

 Avhen, rejecting with scorn the old mythological ma- 

 chinery, the object even at this time of superstitious re- 

 spect, he demands in all things the substitution of truth 

 for conventionality, and gives in these terms a sort of 

 prelude to whatever is legitimate and necessary in the 



