At any rate, he spoke first, and spoke with great effect, though scarcely, I believe, with the same fire that he often put forth on more congenial subjects. Then followed Hallam, with equal, if not superior force. After him jumped up a gentleman from Oriel, who, in a bluff and burly manner, began to pooh-pooh the pretensions of Shelley, as to which, I need hardly say, he was absolutely ignorant; when, all at once, he caught sight of Mr. Richard Milnes, now Lord Houghton, sitting in his place. He caught sight of him, as of one still competent to speak in answer-still competent to make a pounce, and tear him limb from limb. The two former orators, then, were the mere velites, the skirmishers of the expedition, the foraging parties, in advance of the real army; whilst Lord Houghton represented in his own person the triarii of the tenth legion, the Macedonian phalanx, the Old Guard of Napoleon, irresistible in attack and inexorable to resistance. In the presence of that terrible antagonist the gentleman from Oriel lost heart and faltered. He changed his front at once, and went over to the enemy like the Saxons at Leipsic, in the very middle of the action, recording, as a deserter, his vote for Shelley, to the amazement and amusement of his hearers. Lord Houghton then stood up, and showed consummate skill as an advocate. In order to prove Shelley's gradual approximation out of his boyish atheism to the principles of Christian truth, he read, with great taste and feeling, that fine chorus from the 'Hellas,' one of Shelley's latest works, the chorus I mean opening thus

A power from the unknown God,

A Promethean conqueror came;
Like a triumphal path, he trod
The thorns of death and shame.

Anxious, however, perhaps over-anxious, to inculcate, or as somebody once phrased it, to tread the truth into the ignorant and unthinking multitude before him, he passed somewhat lightly over the fact that the chorus in question is a dramatic

chorus, and put by the poet into the mouths of captive Christian women. After him there was silence in the Union for several minutes, and then Mr. Manning, of Balliol, perhaps at that particular time the actual leader of our debates, with great propriety rose. He felt that it would be a somewhat clownish and inhospitable proceeding, if these bold guests went away unchallenged—if their shields were not touched with the arms of courtesy, by some daring Oxford cavalier. He spoke well, exceedingly well, but the framework of his argument—the backbone of his oration-amounted just to this: Byron is a great poet, we have all of us read Byron ; but (and this is my justification for introducing the topic at all) if Shelley had been a great poet, we should have read him also; but we none of us have done so. Therefore Shelley is not a great poet—à fortiori he is not so great a poet as Byron. In hanc sententiam, an immense majority of the Union went pedibus: the debate was over, and we all of us, including Mr. Gladstone, adjourned, as I have said, to supper.

Returning from this digression to the point where I left off, I may say that the era, looked at as a poetical era, to which both Byron and Wordsworth belonged, was one of unusual—I may say of almost unparalleled, splendour. Byron, Scott, Shelley, Wordsworth, Coleridge, Southey, Keats, Campbell, Moore, the ninth among them, whichever he may be, is still a considerable name. Nay, besides these, there are many others, such as Leigh Hunt, Barry Cornwall, and Landor, who ought not to be, and are not likely to be, soon forgotten. The headship of this mighty clan of poets is, as far as I can judge, now assigned by professed English critics to Wordsworth. By the English public, by foreign critics, by the world at large from St. Petersburg to Cape Horn-if anybody reads poetry at Cape Horn-it is awarded, I am sure, to Byron. It is true that the volcanic genius of Byron, working on in its inexhaustible affluence, poured forth, intermingled with higher products, smoke, and sulphur, and

mud, and scoriæ, but it remained also to the last a fountain of living fire. Poems like ' Don Juan' or 'The Vision of Judgment may be open to criticism on many grounds; still, in point of power, passion, and effect, they are marvellous productions. And though his more serious poetry may not always be as original and unforced, it has, nevertheless, a life and vigour about it that purer and more conscientious poets might often envy. After all, why should we not admire both Byron and Wordsworth, without measuring their respective heights to an inch? Why not remember Goethe's speech, when a question arose as to whether he or Schiller were the greater man? You should thank your stars that you have got two such fellows as he and I, instead of wasting time in so frivolous a discussion.' I will conclude with a passage from our author, conceived much in the same spirit—a passage written to show that all true poets, whatever their degree, should receive a just and generous recognition.

Yet is it just,

That here, in memory of all books that lay
Their sure foundations in the heart of man,
Whether by native prose or numerous verse,
That, in the name of all inspired souls,

From Homer, the great thunderer, from the voice
That roars along the bed of Jewish song,

And that, more varied and elaborate,

Those trumpet-tones of Harmony, that shake
Our shores in England; from those loftiest notes,
Down to the low and wren-like warblings, made
For cottagers and spinners at the wheel,
And sunburnt travellers resting their tired limbs.
'Tis just that in behalf of these, the works,
And of the men that made them, whether known,
Or sleeping nameless in their scattered graves,
That I should here assert their rights, attest
Their honours; and should, once for all, pronounce
Their benediction-speak of them as powers

For ever to be hallowed; only less

For what we are, and what we may become,

Than Nature's self, which is the breath of God,

Or His pure word by miracle revealed.

LECTURE IV.

WALTER

SCOTT.

CONTEMPORARY popularity is like bloom upon fruit, while yet attached to the tree. Though afterwards its substantial qualities may still be there; nay, though in some cases they may even be matured and developed; all that freshness and splendour, derived from the sap and spirit of life, cannot but imperceptibly fade away, to return no more. Just so everything that is transitory (and there is often much that is transitory in the reputation of celebrated authors) must be allowed to evaporate and disappear before their real station in literature can be finally determined. For this reason, among other reasons, it is desirable that great writers-great writings rather, for it comes after all to that- should be weighed and sifted at certain intervals, with a view to their more accurate revaluation. I say at certain intervals, because I am by no means clear that the revised estimate, sure to be made as soon as the fashion of an author's day has become a little obsolete, is the one which will be, or ought to be, accepted in the end by mankind.

The generation that immediately follows a great writer is tired of hearing him called Aristides the Just by predecessors, for whose literary judgment they often entertain, I am sorry to say, no great reverence.

They see, and see truly, that interests purely personalinterests that grow up out of the man's special character-out of the accidental circumstances of his career, his political con

nections, his brilliant social qualities; perhaps, even out of his dazzling faults-account for some, if not for much, of the glory that he has won.

They soon, therefore, come to think that this favourite of their fathers has been over-praised. They lose their tempers on the subject, and rush into the contrary extreme, under-rating him as much as he has been over-rated of old. It is not until these prepossessions and antagonisms die off; until everything that does not spring, as it were, out of the root of the matter, has been weeded away, that a satisfactory decision is attainable. Then, and not till then, is the verdict of time, never to be disturbed again, engrossed and registered for all generations.

All this is true of Scott; true, perhaps, to an extent more than common. Nevertheless, it affects me but little on the present occasion. If I came forward as a profound judge, or subtilising critic, to estimate his pretensions, you might fairly, from the point of view natural to youth, address me thus :— 'You are too old; your notions have been superseded; your mind is warped by prejudices, from which we, happily, have freed ourselves. For us, the genius you insist upon our admiring is like salt that has lost its savour; so that we toss his works aside on behalf of poets and novelists of our own.' Out of such difficulties I escape, when I frankly confess that I appear before you to-day as an advocate-an advocate and a partisan. doing this, I think I act in harmony with the principles laid down by me on the delivery of my opening lecture. I said then, as I say now, that any man competent to decide, with unfaltering impartiality, under the guidance of that intellectual light called by Bacon 'dry light,' upon all the varieties and modifications of genius-to weigh them one against the other, and then to organise with exact skill proper tables of precedence—must be a second Aristotle. But Aristotles are not so easy to find. It is surely better to be less ambitious, to confess to yourself and to others that your judgment must be tinged by passion and

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