" And Spenser droop'd his dreaming head
(With languid sleep-smile you had said
From his own verse engendered)
" On Ariosto's, till they ran
Their locks in one !—The Italian
Shot nimbler heat of bolder man
" From his fine lids. And Dante stern
And sweet, whose spirit was an urn
For wine and milk pour'd out in turn.
" And Goethe—with that reaching eye
His soul reach'd out from, far and high,
And fell from inner entity.
" And Schiller, with heroic front
Worthy of Plutarch's kiss upon't—
Too large for wreath of modern wont.
" Here Milton's eyes strike piercing-dim!
The shapes of suns and stars did swim
Like clouds from them, and granted him
" God for sole vision! Cowley, there,
Whose active fancy debonaire
Drew straws like amber—foul to fair.
" And Burns, with pungent passionings
Set in his eyes. Deep lyric springs
Are of the fire-mount's issuings.
" And poor, proud Byron—sad as grave
And salt as life! forlornly brave,
And quivering with the dart he drave.
" And visionary Coleridge, who
Did sweep his thoughts as angels do
Their wings, with cadence up the Blue."
"Homer" we are not sure about we can only hope that there may be people whom the picture will please. "Shakspeare" is good. "Æschylus" (Miss Barrett's favourite, too,) is treated very scurvily and very ungrammatically. What on earth are we to make of the words "the women swooned to see so awful" &c.? It is well known that no pregnant woman could look Æschylus in the face when the fit of inspiration was on him, without having cause to regret her indiscretion. But though delicacy might have dictated that this fact should he only barely hinted at, surely grammar need not have miscarried in the statement. The syntax of the passage will puzzle future commentators as much as some of his own corrupt choruses. "Euripides" promises well; but the expression, "Right in the classes," throws our intellect completely on its beam-ends; and as we cannot right it again, in order to take a second glance at the poet of Medea, we must pass on to the next. "Sophocles" will be acceptable to scholars. "Hesiod" is excellent. "Cared most for gods and bulls" is worth any money. "Pindar" and "Sappho" are but so so. The picture of "Theocritus" is very beautiful. There is nothing particularly felicitous in the sketch of "Aristophanes." How much more graphic is what Milton, in one of his prose works, says with respect to the "holy Chrysostom's" study of the saint Chrysostom, it seems, was a great student of Aristophanes. Some people might have been, and no doubt were, scandalized to think that so pious a father of the church should have made a bosom companion of so profane and virulent a wit: but says Milton, the holy father was quite right in poring over Aristophanes, for "he had the art to cleanse a scurrilous vehemence into the style of a rousing sermon." Put that into verse and it would ring well. We thank Miss Barrett for the graphic touch of Virgil's "brown bees," which certainly are better than his gods. "Lucretius" is very finely painted. "Ossian" looms large through the mist, but walk up to him, and the pyramid is but a cairn. "Spenser" and "Ariosto," with their locks blended in one, compose a very sweet picture. "Dante" we will not answer for. "Goethe" is a perfect enigma. What does the word "fell" mean? δεινός we suppose—that is, "not to be trifled with." But surely it sounds very strange, although it may be true enough, to say that this "fellness" is occasioned by "inner entity." But perhaps the line has some deeper meaning, which we are unable to fathom. We have seen a better picture than that of Goethe in the hour of inspirations when his forehead was like a precipice dim with drifting sleet, "Schiller" is well drawn; evidently from Thorwaldsen's gigantic statue of the poet. Miss Barrett paints "Milton" in his blindness as seeing all things in God. But Male-
