of reputed men, who deem, in
their complacency, that the world is gaping for the rinsings of their
intellect. But it will read genuine poetry, if it be accommodated to the
wants of the age, and if it be fairly brought before it. "Vain to cast
pearls before swine!" Cast down the pearls before you call the men of
the age swine. In truth, seldom had a true and new poet a fairer field,
or the prospect of a wider favor, than at this very time. The age
remembers that many of those poets it now delights to honor, were at
first received with obloquy or neglect. It is not so likely to renew the
disgraceful sin, since it recollects the disgraceful repentance. It is
becoming wide awake, and is ready to recognize every symptom of original
power. The reviews and literary journals are still, indeed,
comparatively an unfair medium; but, by their multitude and their
contradictions, have neutralized each other's power, and rendered the
public less willing and less apt to be bullied or blackguarded out of
its senses. Were Hazlitt alive now, and called, by any miserable
scribbler in the "Athenaeum" or "Spectator," a dunce, he could laugh in
his face; instead of retiring as he did, perhaps hunger-bitten, to bleed
out his heart's blood in secret. Were Shelley now called in "Blackwood"
a madman, and Keats a mannikin, they would be as much disturbed by it as
the moon at the baying of a Lapland wolf. The good old art, in short, of
writing an author up or down, is dying hard, but dying fast; and the
public is beginning to follow the strange new fashion of discarding its
timid, or truculent, or too-much-seasoned tasters, and judging for
itself. We have often imaged to ourselves the rapture with which a poet,
of proper proportions and due culture, if writing in his age's spirit,
would be received in an age when the works of Coleridge, and Wordsworth,
and Keats, are so widely read and thoroughly appreciated. He would find
it "all ear."

Great things, however, must be done by the man who cherishes this high
ambition. He must not only be at once a genius and an artist, but his
art and his genius must be proportioned, with chemical exactness, to
each other. He must not only be a poet, but have a distinct mission and
message, savoring of the prophetic--he must say as well as sing. He
must use his poetic powers as wonders attesting the purpose for which he
speaks--not as mere bravados of ostentatious power. He must, while
feeling the beauty, the charm,