The principal of poetical compositions is the epic, otherwise called the heroic. It gives an imaginative narrative of some signal action or series of actions and events, usually the achievements of some distinguished character, and intended to form the morals and affect the mind with the love of virtue. The longer poems of the epic genus embrace an extensive series of events, and the actions of numerous personages. The “Iliad” and the “Odyssey” are the principal Grecian epics. The “Æneid” is the most distinguished Roman epic. “Jerusalem Delivered” and the “Divina Comedia” are the most celebrated Italian epics. “Paradise Lost” is the greatest English epic. These are epic poems by way of eminence, but there are several species of minor poems which from their nature most also be ranked as epics. One of these is the “idyl,” a term applied to what is called pastoral poetry. The ballad is another species of minor epic. Critics agree that this sort of poetry is the greatest work human nature is capable of. But attempts at epic poetry are now rare, the spirit of the age being against this kind of composition. It is believed that several of our immortal epics could not have been written in the nineteenth century; because the mind would never produce that of the truth of which it could not persuade itself by any illusion of the imagination. In the room of epic poems, we have now novels, which may be considered as the epics of modern civil and domestic life. We have, however, minds of both sexes, in our midst, capable of furnishing us with epics, so far as genius is concerned. _BIOGRAPHY._ Elizabeth Barrett was born in London, about the year 1809. Her father was an opulent country gentleman, and not a West India merchant as several biographies represent him to have been. She passed her girlhood at his country-seat in Herefordshire, among the lovely scenery of the Malvern Hills. At least she says:— “Green is the land where my daily Steps in jocund childhood played; Dimpled close with hill and valley; Dappled very close with shade: Summer snow of apple blossom Running up from glade to glade.”