sphere of religious thought, who either jauntily or ignorantly overlooks
this philosophic necessity. This, however, is what Messrs. Strauss and
Renan and the author of _Ecce Homo_ agree to do; and this is what makes
their several books, whatever subjective differences characterize them
to a literary regard, alike objectively unprofitable as instruments of
intellectual progress.

_The Masquerade and Other Poems._ By JOHN GODFREY SAXE. Boston: Ticknor
and Fields.

It was remarked lately by an ingenious writer, that "it never seems to
occur to some people, who deliver upon the books they read very
unhesitating judgments, that they may be wanting, either by congenital
defect, or defect of experience, or defect of reproductive memory, in
the qualifications which are necessary for judging fairly of any
particular book." To poetry this remark applies with especial force.

By poetry we do not understand mere verse, but any form of literary
composition which reproduces in the mind certain emotions which, in the
absence of an epithet less vague, we shall call _poetical_. These
emotions may be a compound of the sensuous and the purely intellectual,
or they may partake much more of the one than of the other. (The
rigorous metaphysician will please not begin to carp at our definition.)
These emotions may be excited by an odor, the state of the atmosphere, a
strain of music, a form of words, or by a single word; and, as they
result largely from association, it is obvious that what may be poetry
to some minds may not be poetry to others,--may not be poetry to the
same mind at different periods of life or in different moods. The most
sympathetic, most catholic, most receptive mind will always be the best
qualified to detect and appreciate poetry under all its various forms,
and would as soon think of denying the devotional faculty to a man of
differing creed, as of denying the poetical to one whose theory or habit
of expression may chance to differ from its own. Goethe was so apt to
discover something good in poems which others dismissed as wholly
worthless, that it was said of him, "his commendation is a brevet of
mediocrity." Perhaps it was his "many-sidedness" that made him so
accurate a "detective" in criticism.

According to Wordsworth, "poetry is the spontaneous overflow of powerful
feelings; it takes its origin from emotion recollected in tranquillity."
A good definition so far as it goes. But Wordsworth could see only one