once bore it, and which old Caleb took up, dried, and placed in his bosom! Nor are we sure that there are _any_ objects so small or vulgar but what genius could extract poetry from them. In Pope's hands, indeed, the "clouded cane" and the "amber snuff-box" of Sir Plume assume no ideal aspect; but in Shakspeare's it might have been different; and the highest order of genius, like true catholicity of faith, counts "nothing common or unclean." What poetry Burns has gathered up even in "Poosie Nancy's," which had been lying unsuspected at the feet of beggars, prostitutes, and pickpockets! What powerful imagination there is in Crabbe's descriptions of poorhouses, prisons, and asylums; and in Wordsworth's "Old Cumberland Beggar," who, although he lived and died in the "eye of nature," was clothed in rags, and had the vulgar, mendicant meal-bag slung over his shoulders! What pathos Scott extracts from that "black bitch of a boat," which Mucklebackit, in the frenzy of his grief, accuses for the loss of his son! Which of the lower animals less poetical or coarser than a swine? and yet Shakspeare introduces such a creature with great effect in "Macbeth," in that weird dialogue of the witches-- "Where hast thou been, sister?" "Killing swine." And Goethe makes it ideal by mingling it with the mad revelry of the "Walpurgis Night"-- "An able sow, with old Baubo upon her. Is worthy of glory and worthy of honour." The whole truth on this vexed question may perhaps be summed up in the following propositions:--1st, No object, natural or artificial, is _per se_ out of the province of imagination; 2d, There is no _infinite_ gulf between natural and artificial objects, or between the higher and lower degrees of either, as subjects for the idealising power of poetry; 3d, Ere any object natural or artificial, become poetical, it must be subjected more or less to the transfiguring power of imagination; and, 4th, Some objects in nature, and some in art, need less of this transforming magic than others, and are thus _intrinsically_, although not _immeasurably_, superior in adaptation to the purposes of poetry. The great point, after all, is, What eye beholds objects, whether natural or artificial? Is it a poetical eye or not? For given a poet's eye, then it matters little on what object that eye be fixed, it becomes poetical; where there is intrinsic poetry--as in mountains, the sea, the sky, the stars--it comes rushing out to the silent spell of genius; where there is less--as in artificial objects, or the poorer productions of nature--the mind of the poet must exert itself tenfold, and shed on it its own wealth and glory. Now, Pope, we fear, wanted almost entirely this true second sight. Take, for instance, the "lock" in the famous "Rape!" What fancy, humour, wit, eloquence, he brings to play around it! But he never touches it, even _en passant_, with a ray of poetry. You never could dream of intertwining it with "The tangles of Neaera's hair,"