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The appearance of such a poem at the present day is, indeed, an event of some interest; particularly as being the production of an author who, in his earlier compositions, appeared so decidedly to give the preference to a more romantic and irregular form of composition. It naturally suggests some speculation, not only as to the merits and prospects of this species of poetry, but as to the state of public taste and feeling on such subjects, and the chances of success or failure to which a writer (may look, who aspires to build the lofty rhyme' in this time-honoured and classical form. The persuation seems to be a very common one, that the age of epics is past. The epic, we are told, is the production of earlier and less critical periods of a nation's history: its lengthened and regular march, its formal addresses, its sustained pomp, its prescriptive episodes and machinery, are assumed to be unsuited to the taste of an age like ours, far advanced in civilisation, requiring a quick movement of events and rapid succession of feelings, and a strength of passion better adapted to the dramatic than the epic form. Though the epic, therefore, might suit the childhood of poetry, the maturer growth of national taste, and the opinions induced by the changes which society has undergone, now demand, it is said, a different vehicle of feeling, conveying more VOL. LXVI. NO. CXXXIV. S accurately the impression of that increased variety and intensity of emotion which these revolutions have produced. Hence it is inferred that the composition of a good epic poem at the present day is extremely improbable, and its popularity with the public still more so. If this representation be correct;—if the present age be indeed disinclined either to the production or the perusal of an epic poem, we are satisfied, at all events, that the reading public must not flatter itself with the notion that this disinclination is a proof either of its talent or its taste; or imagine that such works are suited only to a ruder state of the national mind, or to a period less illustrated by genius and originality of invention. The fact is, and it is one of somewhat ominous import, that all the great epics either of ancient or modern Europe, were the production, not of the infancy of national poetry, but of its maturity and full developement, when the genius of the nation had been exalted and called into action by great events and spirit-stirring recollections; that their production marks the culminating point in genius and masculine taste in each nation where they appeared; and that thenceforward we witness, on the whole, but a downward progress in literature,-first towards coldness and conceit, and then, in the attempt to regain something of pristine vigour, towards turbulence and exaggeration of language and sentiment. Homer, perhaps, is an apparent exception; but the question as to the true date of his great poems, in the shape in which they now appear, is so complicated and doubtful, that it is unsafe to draw any inferences from such a source. But Virgil wrote his Eneid when Augustus had made Rome but another name for the world, and when, to the recollection of her republican glories, was added all the calm and tranquil grandeur of settled dominion. It marks the period when the power of Rome was at its height, its genius most vigorous and inventive, its taste perfect: every thing afterwards is decline and decay, though disguised under a garb of rank luxuriance in Ovid, or stoical pretension in Lucan, or Asiatic pomp in Statius, or gaudy over-brilliancy in Claudian. Tasso's great epic was produced in the meridian lustre of Italian literature, shortly after Ariosto had carried to its perfection the epos of romance, and Berni had arrayed in graceful comic masquerade the graver strains of Boiardo; and when Leo had extended his munificent patronage to art and science, till poets, philosophers, and learned men were crowded upon each other in Italy, like stars in a galaxy. When Camoens engaged in the composition of that poem which was destined to immortalize the glory of his country,-the solitary great work of which she has to boast,-Portugal had already touched the highest point of her greatness; and from the full meridian of her glory was hastening to her setting,-in the decay of her commerce, the fall of her liberties, and all the calamities which followed the defeat of the chivalrous Sebastian at Alcazar. But as yet a high consciousness of national pride animated her councils, nor was that generous and enthusiastic spirit extinct in individuals, which had been awakened, when, under the reign of the great Don Manuel, Alvarez and Albuquerque first launched their prows into the Atlantic, and De Gama startled the Spirit of the Cape with his thunders. And, under what circumstances does our own great epic make its appearance? Milton stands on the outskirts of that glorious era which had listened to the majestic periods of Raleigh and of Hooker, and the almost inspired blending of wisdom with imagination in Bacon;-which had seen Spenser, in his 'Fairy Queen,' beautifully reconnecting the Spirit of chivalry with that earnest and religious feeling from which Ariosto and Berni had divorced it; that age which had witnessed the infinite variety, and bent before the magic and the mastery of Shakspeare. His own life was chiefly cast in those days of tempest and trial which develope the strongest energies both of the will and the imagination, and superadd to the attraction of an imaginative and poetical interest all the fascination of deep faith and earnestness of action. Thus educated in the close of the former period, and witnessing the dawn and the meridian of the latter,-uniting the chivalrous recollections of the Elizabethan age, with the enthusiasm of principle and intensity of will which characterise that of the Parliament, he gave birth to that great epic, in which, more perhaps than in any other single work, we recognise the imposing and majestic character of that period; when the seal of authority and high moral dignity was set upon all the productions of literature as upon all the institutions of polity, and Britain, foremost in arts and arms, cast the shadow of her greatness over land and sea. In every case then, we repeat, the appearance of a great epic has been coincident with the period of the highest developement of genius, and with the most masculine state of taste in the nation by which it has been produced. There are no epics produced in the evil days of a nation's history. Their very existence presupposes a crowd of ennobling remembrances in the national mind; a past to which it can revert with pride—a present to which it can turn without dishonour. It presupposes, in the individual mind, a grasp and comprehension of view-an indifference to petty beauties-a power of rising above the passing interests and changing fashion of the time, and a confidence in after ages, which are all connected with the higher manifestations ་་ of genius, and the simplest and most dignified condition of taste. Were it true, then, that the present age was incapable of either producing a great epic poem, or of appreciating such a boon at the hands of a great poet, this would, in our view, be only equivalent to saying that we had lost our relish for the simply great, and our power of apprehending a work,-not in parts, but as a whole; and, consequently, that we had fallen from the purity of our first intellectual estate;-and however unconscious of our backward movement-had retrograded, instead of advancing, in the career both of taste and imagination. But, with all deference to the common notion of an anti-epic tendency at the present moment, we really entertain a better idea of the direction of public taste in poetry, than to suppose, that this insensibility to the noblest form in which poetry has ever yet displayed itself, can exist. We'say at the present moment, because we should have stated our opinions on the point much more doubtfully some twenty years ago; if, indeed, we had not felt ourselves compelled to adopt the truth of the objection to which we have adverted, and to regard the epic as an obsolete form of poetry, which never more could be made to harmonize with modern tastes. At that time, the current of opinion was so strong in favour of a return to the ruder and wilder strains of our elder minstrelsy; there was so clamorous and insatiable an appetite for scenes of excitement,-such intolerance of every thing measured and tranquil, either in plot, sentiment, or expression, that it did appear as if any poetry of a calmer and more classic nature was permanently superseded. We do not blame that revulsion of poetical taste towards the fountain-head. It was a natural one, and we believe it has, in some respects, been a beneficial one. Poetry, deprived of all spirit and vitality, had begun to cream and mantle like a standing-pool.' It was something gained, therefore, to break down the barrier-to let the imprisoned waters loose, and give them life and motion,-even though the torrent thus produced was, as might be expected, turbid and muddy enough. But, if still waters become monotonous, men tire also in time of torrents and cataracts--which leave behind them nothing that freshens, nothing that fertilizesand long to see the useless current spread forth into an ampler and calmer channel; and gliding down to the ocean with pleasant interchange of motion and rest;-here reflecting earth and sky in its shadows, and there fretting over its pebbled bed, or rippled by the breath of heaven, fresh blowing.' It has fared thus with our poetry of passion and 'the movement.' We have already extracted from it all, or most of the good which it was calculated to yield; and now the bitterness of |