in some measure, under its influence, and have prepared themselves to receive it by worshipping meekly at the shrine which it inhabits. “In the exposition of these there is room enough for originality, and more room than Mr. Hazlitt has yet filled. In many points, however, he has acquitted himself excellently; particularly in the development of the principal characters with which Shakespeare has peopled the fancies of all English readers; but principally, we think, in the delicate sensibility with which he has traced, and the natural eloquence with which he has pointed out, that familiarity with beautiful forms and images that eternal recurrence to what is sweet or majestic, in the simple aspect of nature—that indestructible love of flowers and odours, and dews and clear waters, and soft airs and sounds, and bright skies, and woodland solitudes, and moonlight bowers, which are the material elements of poetry; and that fine sense of their indefinable relation to mental emotion, which is its essence and vivifying soul, and which, in the midst of Shakespeare's most busy and atrocious scenes, falls like gleams of sunshine on rocks and ruins; contrasting with all that is rugged and repulsive, and reminding us of the existence of purer and brighter elements, which he alone has poured out from the richness of his own mind, without effort or restraint; and contrived to intermingle with the play of all the passions, and the vulgar course of this world's affairs, without deserting for an instant the proper business of the scene, or appearing to pause or digress from love of ornament or need of repose ; he alone who, when the subject requires it, is always keen, and worldly, and practical; and who yet, without changing his hand or stopping his course, scatters around him, as he goes, all sounds and shapes of sweetness, and conjures up landscapes of immortal fragrance and freshness, and peoples them with spirits of glorious aspect and attractive grace, and is a thousand times more full of imagery and splendour than those who, for the sake of such qualities, have shrunk back from the delineation of character or passion, and declined the discussion of human duties and cares."-Jeffrey.

Pause, in the following verses, may be made at middle and end of the first and each alternate line, and generally, but not always, after the third syllable in the intervening lines, and at the end of those lines.

Thus showers, flowers, seas, streams. :

See also remarks

on pause in reading poetry in chapter on Metre.

THE CLOUD.

"I bring fresh showers for the thirsting flowers,
From the seas and the streams;

I bear light shade for the leaves when laid
In their noon-day dreams.

From my wings are shaken the dews that waken
The sweet birds every one,

When rocked to rest on their mother's breast,
As she dances about the sun.

I wield the flail of lashing hail,

And whiten the green plains under ;

And then again I dissolve it in rain,

And laugh as I pass in thunder.

I sift the snow on the mountains below,
And their great pines groan aghast ;
And all the night 'tis my pillow white,

While I sleep in the arms of the blast.

Sublime on the towers of my skiey bowers,
Lightning my pilot sits;

In a cavern under is fettered the thunder,
It struggles and howls by fits:

Over earth and ocean, with gentle motion,
This pilot is guiding me,

Lured by the love of the genii that move
In the depths of the purple sea :

Over the rills, and the crags, and the hills,
Over the lakes and the plains,

Wherever he dream, under mountain or stream,
The spirit he loves remains ;-

And I all the while bask in heaven's blue smile,
Whilst he is dissolving in rains.

The sanguine sunrise, with his meteor-eyes,
And his burning plumes outspread,

Leaps on the back of my sailing rack,

When the morning star shines dead.

As on the jag of a mountain-crag,

Which an earthquake rocks and swings,

An eagle alit, one moment may sit

In the light of its golden wings.

And when sunset may breathe, from the lit sea beneath,
Its ardours of rest and of love,

And the crimson pall of eve may fall

From the depth of heaven above;

With wings folded I rest, on mine airy nest,
As still a a brooding dove."

Shelley.

METRE.

Metre is the characteristic of poetry as distinguished from prose. An attention, therefore, to musical cadence is essential to the proper reading of poetry. Each line is composed of a certain number of syllables; these are again distributed into feet, or arranged in such a way as to produce an alternation of light and heavy sounds. In a well-constructed line the rhythmical and grammatical accents should agree, that is, should both occur upon the same syllable. Take the line, "No useless coffin enclosed his breast": substitute for enclosed a word, such as covered, with the accent upon the first syllable, and it will be seen that the regularity of the line, which is its distinguishing poetical beauty, is destroyed. A trochaic foot begins with a heavy and is followed by a light sound, as in pleasure. The word never is a trochee. The line in "King Lear" in which this word is repeated five times, is one technically of five trochaic

feet. An iambic foot begins with a light and is followed by

A dactylic foot is one of three

long), and the two following The "Bridge of Sighs" is in

a heavy sound, as in content. syllables, the first heavy (or light (or short), as in general. this metre, "ONE more unfortunate" being two dactylic feet. The same may be said of "Cannon to right of them." An anapæstic foot is also one of three syllables, the first two light, and the third heavy, as in intervene. An illustration of this will be found in Cowper's poem beginning, “I am MONarch of ALL I survEY"-a line containing three anapæstic feet. Amphibrach is the name of a foot of three syllables, with the accent on the second, as receiving. But this title is rarely used, as three syllables with an accent in the middle can be otherwise classified. Another accented syllable such as now, after receiving, would make two iambic feet. The most popular line, perhaps, in English poetry is that which is commonly called the heroic, containing five feet or ten syllables. This is the line in which the greatest body of English poetry has been written; Cowper, Pope, Dryden, Milton, and it is used by Shakespeare in his plays. "As they pass by pluck Casca by the sleeve" is a specimen of the heroic line of five iambic feet, the stress of the voice being strongly laid upon the tenth syllable. Sometimes an additional syllable is to be found, but being unaccented, it does not alter the character of the line, as, "The games are done, and Cæsar is returning." Scott's octo-syllabic verse is also very popular, as—

"The chief in silence strode before,

And reached that torrent's sounding shore."

Each of these lines contains four iambic feet. Sometimes

two heavy syllables, without an intervening light sound, succeed each other. These, however, cannot be spoken without a pause between them which corresponds to the time that would be occupied by a light sound in another kind of foot, "When Ajax strives some rock's VAST WEIGHT to throw." There must always be an unaccented syllable next to the accented, or else a pause that would occupy the time of such unaccented syllable.

The first object in reading poetry, as in prose, is of course to make the sense clear by rhetorical emphasis, and this emphasis must coincide as far as possible with the metrical arrangement, so that the sense may not only be apparent, but the manner in which it is expressed musically effective. There must be three kinds of stress in a line of poetry, all working harmoniously, viz.: grammatical accent, rhythmical accent, and rhetorical emphasis. Exclusive attention to rhythm produces sing-song, and brings into too great prominence small unemphatic words; but correct pronunciation, rhythmical cadence, and intelligent emphasis combined are necessary to the effective and beautiful rendering of poetry.

There are three kinds of stress or weight of voice that have to be observed in reading poetry. 1. Grammatical accent or correct pronunciation, by which words are recognized. 2. Rhythmical accent, giving the pleasure arising from cadence and harmony. 3. Rhetorical emphasis, by which the relation of words to each other is shown, and the meaning effectively rendered. The skill of the reader must be exercised in cases where the grammatical and poetical accents disagree. He must pronounce the word in such a