exuberant
genius; and yet maintain that the scenes in question contain much
_incidental_ poetry. Now and then the lustre of the true metal catches
the eye, redeeming whatever is unseemly and worthless in the rude ore;
still the ore is not the metal. Nay sometimes, and not unfrequently in
Shakespeare, the introduction of unpoetical matter may be necessary
for the sake of relief, or as a vivid expression of recondite
conceptions, and (as it were) to make friends with the reader's
imagination. This necessity, however, cannot make the additions in
themselves beautiful and pleasing. Sometimes, on the other hand, while
we do not deny the incidental beauty of a poem, we are ashamed and
indignant on witnessing the unworthy substance in which that beauty is
imbedded. This remark applies strongly to the immoral compositions to
which Lord Byron devoted his last years. Now to proceed with our
proposed investigation.

We will notice _descriptive poetry_ first. Empedocles wrote his
physics in verse, and Oppian his history of animals. Neither were
poets--the one was an historian of nature, the other a sort of
biographer of brutes. Yet a poet may make natural history or
philosophy the material of his composition. But under his hands they
are no longer a bare collection of facts or principles, but are
painted with a meaning, beauty, and harmonious order not their own.
Thomson has sometimes been commended for the novelty and minuteness of
his remarks upon nature. This is not the praise of a poet; whose
office rather is to represent _known_ phenomena in a new connexion or
medium. In _L'Allegro_ and _Il Penseroso_ the poetical magician
invests the commonest scenes of a country life with the hues, first of
a mirthful, then of a pensive mind.[21] Pastoral poetry is a
description of rustics, agriculture, and cattle, softened off and
corrected from the rude health of nature. Virgil, and much more Pope
and others, have run into the fault of colouring too highly;--instead
of drawing generalized and ideal forms of _shepherds_, they have given
us pictures of _gentlemen_ and _beaux_. Their composition may be
poetry, but it is not pastoral poetry.

[21] It is the charm of the descriptive poetry of a religious
mind, that nature is viewed in a moral connexion. Ordinary
writers (e. g.) compare aged men to trees in autumn--a gifted
poet will reverse the metaphor. Thus:--

'How quiet shows the woodland scene!
Each f