October 15. 1833.

THE TRINITY.-INCARNATION. - REDEMP

TION.-EDUCATION.

THE Trinity is the Idea: the Incarnation, which implies the Fall, is the Fact: the Redemption is the mesothesis of the two — that is-the Religion.

If you bring up your children in a way which puts them out of sympathy with the religious feelings of the nation in which they live — the chances are, that they will ultimately turn out ruffians or fanatics and one as likely as the other.

October 23. 1833.

ELEGY.-LAVACRUM PALLADOS. -GREEK

AND LATIN PENTAMETER.

MILTON'S

LATIN POEMS.

POETICAL FILTER.

GRAY AND COTTON.

ELEGY is the form of poetry natural to the reflective mind. It may treat of any subject, but it must treat of no subject for itself; but always and exclusively with reference to the poet himself. As he will feel regret for the past or desire for the future, so sorrow and love become the principal themes of elegy. Elegy presents every thing as lost and gone, or absent and future. The elegy is the exact opposite of the Homeric epic, in which all is purely external and objective, and the poet is a mere voice.

The true lyric ode is subjective too; but then it delights to present things as actually existing and visible, although associated with

the past, or coloured highly by the subject of the ode itself.

*

I think the Lavacrum Pallados of Callimachus very beautiful indeed, especially that part about the mother of Tiresias and Minerva. I have a mind to try how it would bear translation; but what metre have we to answer in feeling to the elegiac couplet of the Greeks?

I greatly prefer the Greek rhythm of the short verse to Ovid's, though, observe, I don't dispute his taste with reference to the genius of his own language. Augustus Schlegel gave me a copy of Latin elegiacs on the King of Prussia's going down the Rhine, in which he had almost exclusively adopted the manner of Propertius. I thought them very elegant.

You may find a few minute faults in

* Παῖδες, ̓Αθαναία νύμφαν μίαν ἔν ποκα Θήβαις πουλύ τι καὶ πέρι δὴ φίλατο τῶν ἑτέραν, ματέρα Τειρεσίαο, καὶ οὔποκα χωρὶς ἔγεντο· κ. τ. λ. v. 57. &c.

Milton's Latin verses; but will not per

you

suade me that, if these poems had come down to us as written in the age of Tiberius, we should not have considered them to be very beautiful.

I once thought of making a collection,— to be called "The Poetical Filter," - upon the principle of simply omitting from the old pieces of lyrical poetry which we have, those parts in which the whim or the bad taste of the author or the fashion of his age prevailed over his genius. You would be surprised at the number of exquisite wholes which might be made by this simple operation, and, perhaps, by the insertion of a single line or half a line, out of poems which are now utterly disregarded on account of some odd or incongruous passages in them; — just as whole volumes of Wordsworth's poems were formerly neglected or laughed at, solely because of some few wilfulnesses, if I may so call them, of that great man whilst at the same time five sixths of his poems would have been

admired, and indeed popular, if they had appeared without those drawbacks, under the name of Byron or Moore or Campbell, or any other of the fashionable favourites of the day. But he has won the battle now, aye! and will wear the crown, whilst English is English.

I think there is something very majestic in Gray's Installation Ode; but as to the Bard and the rest of his lyrics, I must say I think them frigid and artificial. There is more real lyric feeling in Cotton's Ode on Winter.*

* Let me borrow Mr. Wordsworth's account of, and quotation from, this poem:—

Finally, I will refer to Cotton's Ode upon Winter,' an admirable composition, though stained with some peculiarities of the age in which he lived, for a general illustration of the characteristics of Fancy. The middle part of this ode contains a most lively description of the entrance of Winter, with his retinue, as a palsied king," and yet a military monarch, advancing for conquest with his army; the several bodies of which, and their arms and equipments, are described with a rapidity of detail, and a profusion of fanciful