and that, in fact, a decline in poetry has been
observed--the first poets being uniformly the best. But we deny that the
field of poetry is limited. That is nature and the deep heart of man;
or, more correctly, the field of poetry is human nature, and the
external universe, multiplied indefinitely by the imagination. This,
surely, is a wide enough territory. Where shall poetry, if sent forth
like Noah's dove, fail to find a resting-place? Each new fact in the
history of man and nature is a fact for _it_--suited to its purposes,
and awaiting its consecration.

"The great writers have exhausted it." True, they have exhausted,
speaking generally, the topics they have handled. Few will think of
attempting the "Fall of Man" after Milton--and Dryden and Galt, alone,
have dared, to their own disgrace, to burst within Shakspeare's magic
circle. But the great poets have not verily occupied the entire field of
poetry--have not counted all the beatings of the human heart--have not
lighted on all those places whence poetry, like water from the smitten
rock, rushes at the touch of genius--have not exhausted all the "riches
fineless" which garnish the universe--nay, they have multiplied them
infinitely, and shed on them a deeper radiance. The more poetry there
is, the more there must be. A good criticism on a great poem becomes a
poem itself. It is the essence of poetry to increase and multiply--to
create an echo and shadow of its own power, even as the voice of the
cataract summons the spirits of the wilderness to return it in thunder.
As truly say that storms can exhaust the sky, as that poems can exhaust
the blue dome of poesy. We doubt, too, the dictum that the earliest
poets are uniformly the best. Who knows not that many prefer Eschylus to
Homer; and many, Virgil to Lucretius; and many, Milton to Shakspeare;
and that a nation sets Goethe above all men, save Shakspeare; and has
not the toast been actually given, "To the two greatest of
poets--Shakspeare and _Byron_?" To settle the endless questions
connected with such a topic by any dogmatical assertion of the
superiority of early poets, is obviously impossible.

But "the age will not now read poetry." True, it will not read whatever
bears the name it will not read nursery themes; nor tenth-rate
imitations of tenth-rate imitations of Byron, Scott, or Wordsworth; nor
the effusions either of mystical cant, or of respectable commonplace;
nor yet very willingly the study-sweepings