mpathises with
whatever is beautiful, and grand, and impassioned in nature, in its
simple majesty, in its immediate appeal to the senses, to the thoughts
and hearts of all men; so that the poet of nature, by the truth, and
depth, and harmony of his mind, may be said to hold communion with the
very soul of nature; to be identified with and to foreknow and to record
the feelings of all men at all times and places, as they are liable to
the same impressions; and to exert the same power over the minds of his
readers, that nature does. He sees things in their eternal beauty, for
he sees them as they are; he feels them in their universal interest, for
he feels them as they affect the first principles of his and our common
nature. Such was Homer, such was Shakspeare, whose works will last as
long as nature, because they are a copy of the indestructible forms and
everlasting impulses of nature, welling out from the bosom as from a
perennial spring, or stamped upon the senses by the hand of their maker.
The power of the imagination in them, is the representative power of all
nature. It has its centre in the human soul, and makes the circuit of
the universe.

Pope was not assuredly a poet of this class, or in the first rank of
it. He saw nature only dressed by art; he judged of beauty by fashion;
he sought for truth in the opinions of the world; he judged of the
feelings of others by his own. The capacious soul of Shakspeare had an
intuitive and mighty sympathy with whatever could enter into the heart
of man in all possible circumstances: Pope had an exact knowledge of all
that he himself loved or hated, wished or wanted. Milton has winged his
daring flight from heaven to earth, through Chaos and old Night. Pope's
Muse never wandered with safety, but from his library to his grotto, or
from his grotto into his library back again. His mind dwelt with greater
pleasure on his own garden, than on the garden of Eden; he could
describe the faultless whole-length mirror that reflected his own
person, better than the smooth surface of the lake that reflects the
face of heaven--a piece of cut glass or a pair of paste buckles with
more brilliance and effect, than a thousand dew-drops glittering in the
sun. He would be more delighted with a patent lamp, than with "the pale
reflex of Cynthia's brow," that fills the skies with its soft silent
lustre, that trembles through the cottage window, and cheers the
watchful mariner on the lone