parts, and especially, upon what is rightly termed by Schlegel _the unity or totality of interest_. But the practice of prefixing explanatory passages is utterly at variance with such unity. By the prefix, we are either put in possession of the subject of the poem; or some hint, historic fact, or suggestion, is thereby afforded, not included in the body of the piece, which, without the hint, is incomprehensible. In the latter case, while perusing the poem, the reader must revert, in mind at least, to the prefix, for the necessary explanation. In the former, the poem being a mere paraphrase of the prefix, the interest is divided between the prefix and the paraphrase. In either instance the totality of effect is destroyed. Of the other original poems in the volume before us, there is none in which the aim of instruction, or _truth_, has not been too obviously substituted for the legitimate aim, _beauty_. In our last number, we took occasion to say that a didactic moral might be happily made the _under-current_ of a poetical theme, and, in “Burton’s Magazine,” some two years since, we treated this point at length, in a review of Moore’s “Alciphron;” but the moral thus conveyed is invariably an ill effect when obtruding beyond the upper current of the thesis itself. Perhaps the worst specimen of this obtrusion is given us by our poet in “Blind Bartimeus” and the “Goblet of Life,” where, it will be observed that the _sole_ interest of the upper current of meaning depends upon its relation or reference to the under. What we read upon the surface would be _vox et preterea nihil_ in default of the moral beneath. The Greek _finales_ of “Blind Bartimeus” are an affectation altogether inexcusable. What the small, second-hand, Gibbon-ish pedantry of Byron introduced, is unworthy the imitation of Longfellow.