system and of systematic intelligence, rather than of inspiration. The leading interpreters, even of scientific method, among the English of to-day recognize the essential necessity of a certain poetic gift, a "scientific imagination," as it is called, for the purposes of scientific discovery. In the British poets, accordingly, we find the best British philosophy. What English moralist, for example, is equal to William Shakespeare, who is not only the real historian of the modern mind (an office which of itself implies profound philosophic insight), but also, in the language of the title-page of a recent German publication, "der Philosoph der sittlichen Weltordnung,” “the philosopher of the moral order of the world”? What professed English philosopher has possessed so profound an appreciation of the idealistic philosophy of nature as Wordsworth? What religious philosopher in England has approached the subtlest problems of religious thought with more sympathetic and discerning insight than Coleridge? What living English thinker has fathomed in well-reasoned, systematic prose the dark questions of theodicy, and illuminated them more brilliantly with the light of rational faith and insight, than Tennyson? Not to mention many others, whose poetic flights have been ballasted with solid weights of thought. THE CULPRIT FAY. JOSEPH RODMAN DRAKE. ["The Culprit Fay" is the most purely imaginative poem in American literature, and displays a depth of fancy that has seldom been surpassed. It is the principal work of the author, though his shorter poem "To the American Flag" is the one by which he is best known. Joseph Rodman Drake was born in New York in 1795, and his first literary work consisted of humorous and satirical verses, published in the Evening Post, under the signature of "Croaker." The "Culprit Fay" is too long to give here in full, and we extract some of its more prettily-conceived verses, as an illustration of the whole. In the opening verses the fays are seen assembling, in countless numbers, "in the middle watch of a summer's night."] THEY come from beds of lichen green, They creep from the mullein's velvet screen; From the silver tops of moon-touched trees, They had driven him out by elfin power, And, pillowed on plumes of his rainbow breast, With glittering ising-stars inlaid, And now they throng the moonlight glade, Their little minim forms arrayed [The purpose of the assembly is thus given:] For an ouphe has broken his vestal vow; And left for her his woodland shade; He has lain upon her lip of dew, And, nestling on her snowy breast, For this the shadowy tribes of air To the elfin court must haste away :- To hear the doom of the culprit fay. [The fairy tribunal condemns the criminal ouphe to perform the following difficult labors :] "Thou shalt seek the beach of sand Where the water bounds the elfin land; Thou shalt watch the oozy brine Till the sturgeon leaps in the bright moonshine, And catch a drop from his silver bow. "If the spray-bead gem be won, The stain of thy wing is washed away: Ere thy crime be lost for aye; Thy flame-wood lamp is quenched and dark, Mount thy steed and spur him high To the heavens' blue canopy; And when thou seest a shooting star, Follow it fast, and follow it far: The last faint spark of its burning train Thou hast heard our sentence, fay: Hence! to the water-side away!" [The fay plunges into the wave in quest of the sturgeon, but is met by a host of the thorny and prickly inhabitants of the waters.] Up spring the spirits of the waves, From the sea-silk beds in their coral caves; With snail-plate armor snatched in haste, They speed their way through the liquid waste: On the mailed shrimp or the prickly prong, Some on the stony star-fish ride, Some on the back of the lancing squab, And some on the jellied quarl, that flings. [The activity of the army of the waves is described with much vigor.] Fearlessly he skims along; His hope is high, and his limbs are strong, At his breast the tiny foam-bees rise, But the water-sprites are gathering near And hem him round on every side. The gritty star has rubbed him raw, And the crab has struck with his giant claw; He turned him round, and fled amain And they stunned his ears with the scallop-stroke, When he reached the foot of the dog-wood tree! [Healing his wounds with fairy remedies, he essays the task again, this time taking a purple mussel-shell as a boat. The "drop from the silver bow" of the darting sturgeon is caught, and the fay gains the shore again, triumphant. He now arms for his second emprise. The arming is beautifully described :] |