rulers in the arts and sciences shall not be denied; -men too whom nature designed for mere common men in her ranks, not for commanders of her chosen band; -men weak, credulous, superstitious; -conceited through defect of talent, and arrogant for want of knowledge. But what then?-Is not Nature herself subject to laws? Do not all the original elements, from which the world is generated, possess essential properties, and move according to stated principles? Are not the heavenly spheres directed by the laws of motion? Is not the sun itself subject to laws no less than the planets, whose movements that great luminary more immediately influences? Are not the comets, though apparently more irregular and eccentric, yet as strictly subject to order as the other heavenly bodies? Is not every thing on our earth pos. sessed of its peculiar properties? Does not each move conformably to established laws? And has not each its appropriate organization? The winds, the rains, the fruits, the flowers, the whole vegetable no less than the animal creation, are they not all subjected to laws by the very circumstances of their existence,-by the original and unalterable energies of their nature ?

Is it reasonable then to suppose, that the intellectual world is less orderly than the natural? that mind should be less accurate than matter? that the analogies and properties of sentiment, of taste, and even of fancy, are not as naturally to be accounted for as all the qualities which are possessed by bodies, and all the relations which they bear to each other? And indeed, to put the question more directly, what is criticism but the display

of those means by which superior geniuses arrived at excellence? When Aristotle laid down the principles on which the drama and epic should be constructed, he did but exhibit the practice of the most admired Grecian writers long before his opinions were followed as laws. Longinus, in his Treatise on the Sublime, does but give us examples from Plato, from Demosthenes, from Homer. To Homer he looked as an oracle: and when some great effort is to be ventured, the advice of Longi. nus is, to represent to yourself how Homer, Plato, Demosthenes, or Thucydides, would have expressed the same sentiments, in order to produce a sublime effect. In like manner, Horace, though he recommends the poet to be acquainted with the writings of philosophers, as means of acquiring knowledge, yet sends him immediately to the Greek tragedians as exemplars of the poetic taste, and as the proper models for imitation. And what has been the practice of the French critics? To translate-for they have done little more the writings of Aristotle and Horace. Boileau in his Art of Poetry, and Bossu, when writing on epic poetry, copied the great masters of antiquity: so that, in fact, the most approved critics have only been the greatest admirers and the most successful followers of the greatest poets.

But a person of genius is beyond ordinary criticism, and may set common rules at defiance: let him then be a law to himself. In the very act of spurning the inferior rules of critics, he is obedient (let not the expression offend) to the superior laws of reason: he may, perhaps, scar higher, and see further, than ordinary critics; but he must not pass the bounds of fitness: would he pass the flammantia mænia mundi *, those flaming walls, that are the boundaries of the world? He cannot perceive propriety amid want of proportion. The man who transgresses these bounds, and sees such visions, loses himself in clouds, or buries himself in the darkness beneath. He may like Swedenberg soar above the heavens, and think to set angels right, or with Cervantes' hero fight and dispute with windmills; but he is out of the right way, and by his act of defiance against that order which harmonizes the universe, gives proof that he is neither a philosopher nor a poet, whatever he may think of himself as a genius. But no! the highest flights of fancy are not mere castles in the air: they have a foundation in nature; otherwise they could not be pronounced excellent. And the superior genius who revolts at the perpetuity of art, at the monotony of rules, is but trying new associations; plunging, if the expression may be allowed, into a mighty ocean; where, though the varieties are endless, yet symmetry and order prevail in every direction. And on these principles I should say that Shakspeare was more subject to rule than any man that ever lived.

The poet who disdains the maxims of ordinary eriticism, as reduced to an art, makes, it must be acknowledged, an experiment at some hazard: his experiment, however, may be crowned with success. The customs of ages are frequently the effects of the dawn of know

ledge, arrested and perpetuated by authority, before it could produce complete day; and that authority can only be dispossessed by the proud confidence and daring exertions of genius. The philosophy of Aristotle, to which Europe had been so long devoted, was found, at length, erroneous, and was superseded by another philosophy: nor can his Art of Poetry, nor any Art of Poetry, be looked to as an infallible and complete director.

Yet, objections have been too hastily made to laws of criticism by some, who are for preserving undiminished the claims of genius. To prescribe rules to poetic genius has been thought stripping the bee of its wings, and spreading before it a collection of flowers, lest it should wander too discursively, and extract too liberally from the choicest sweets. It should be permitted, they say, to take its free unlimited range; to enter the gardens most alluring to its nature, and to select the flowers most agreeable to its taste. "This little natural chemist," say they, "left to itself, best knows the properties of those flowers which are suited to its purpose."

The above allusion is ingenious, though I forget whence I copied it; but a maxim half conceived, being but half the truth, may be misinterpreted and misapplied: thus it is with the frequent remarks on the impertinence of rules, and the freedom of poetic genius: for the bee, though it seems to range without restraint, is obedient to the laws of its nature: and it is generally allowed by naturalists, that what is called instinct is as much a law, (and it operates more uniformly, more infallibly, in the animal and brute creation,) as reason in man. In like manner, genius, however discursive, is yet consistent; and even when it makes a world of its own, and peoples it with beings of its own creation, must not live among them in mere caprice, or govern them by unintelligible or contradictory laws: no, there is poetical as well as metaphysical truth *.

As there, perhaps, may be occasion to return to these principles hereafter, it may not be inexpedient to confirm them by a few authorities in this place.

Hooker, in discussing the general principles of law, makes them extend even to the great Author of Nature, much more to all her operations. As to the latter, he observes, "All things that are have some operation not violent or casual. Neither doth any thing ever begin to exercise the same, without some preconceived end for which it worketh; and the end, which it worketh for, is not obtained, unless the work be also fit to obtain it by. For unto every end every operation will not serve. That which doth assign to each thing the kind, that which doth moderate its force and power, that which doth appoint the form and force of working, the same we term a law."

The following eloquent passage, also, being not wholly inapplicable to the present subject, I cannot forbear copying. "Now, if Nature should intermit her course, and

* It may be proper to observe here, that all the preceding parts of this Essay were communicated by me several years ago to, at least, two periodical works; it may, for aught I know, have been copied into others. What follows has been added since.