Although he unquestionably in some points improved our correctness of style and our versification, there is not much to be said either for or against his poetry. It is as a whole a mass of smooth and easy, yet systematic, trifling. Nine-tenths of it does not rise above mediocrity, and the tenth that remains is more distinguished by grace than by grandeur or depth. His lines on Cromwell we have already characterised. It may seem odd, but in his verses on the head of a stag, which Johnson singles out as bad, we see more of the soul of poetry than in any of his other productions. Let our readers, if they will not be convinced by our assertion, listen to some of these lines:-- "So we some antique hero's strength, Learn by his lance's weight and length-- As these vast beams express the beast Whose shady brows alive they dress'd. Such game, while yet the world was new, The mighty Nimrod did pursue; What huntsman of our feeble race Or dogs dare such a monster chase? * * * * * Oh, fertile head, which every year Could such a CROP of WONDER bear!" In his amorous and complimentary ditties, he is often very successful. So, too, is he in much of his "Divine Poetry," particularly the lines at the end, beginning with-- "The soul's dark cottage, batter'd and decay'd," Lets in new light through chinks which time hath made. These contain a thought, so far as we remember, new and highly poetical. We may close by saying a few words on a question which Dr. Johnson has started in his "Life of Waller" in reference to sacred poetry. That great and good man, our readers remember, maintains that the ideas of the Christian theology are too simple for eloquence, too sacred for fiction, and too majestic for ornament, and "that faith, thanksgiving, repentance, and supplication," are all unsusceptible of poetical treatment. He grants that the doctrines of religion may be defended in a didactic poem, and that a poet may not only describe God's works in nature, but may trace them up to nature's God. But he asserts that "contemplative piety, or the intercourse between God and the human soul, cannot be poetical." It is curious to remember that, up to Johnson's time, the best poetry in the world had been sacred. There had been the poetry of the Bible, in which truth of the deepest import was expressed, now in "eloquence," now in "fiction," and now in language most gorgeously "ornamented," and in which "Faith" in Isaiah, "Thanksgiving" in Moses, "Penitence" in David, and "Supplication" in Jeremiah, had uttered themselves in sublime, or lively, or subdued, or tender strains --the poetry of the "Divine Commedia," of the "Jerusalem Delivered," of the "Faery Queen," of the "Paradise Lost" and "Paradise Regained," of the "Night-Thoughts," of "Smart's David," all poetry, let it be observed, not defending religion merely, or confining itself to the praise of God's lower works, but entering into the depths of divine