Note 60 — JOURNAL. (continued 4)

It might be a curious and interesting matter of research to determine under what combination of external circumstances the spirit of poetry flourishes most vigorously, and good poets have most abounded. The extremes of poverty and luxury seem alike inimical to its well-being; yet the latter far more so than the former, for most poets have been poor; some so poor, as to enrich the world, while they themselves received so little return from its favour as miserably to perish of want. Again, the level tenor of a life alike removed from want and superfluity should seem too devoid of interest or excitement to make a good poet. Long-lived competency is more favourable to the even temper of philosophy than the fiery nature of one who must know the storms of passion, and all the fiercer elements of which the acting and suffering soul of man is made. Again, it would be curious to know, if it might be ascertained, whether those men whose inspirations have been aided alone by the contemplation of the inanimate beauties of nature, and the phenomena of their own minds and the minds and lives of their fellows, have been as great poets as those who, besides these sources of inspiration, fed the power within them with the knowledge of great writers and poets of other countries and times. Another question, which it would be interesting to determine, would be, under what species of government poets have been most numerous, and most honoured. As our modern exploders of old fallacies have not yet made up their minds whether such a person as Homer ever lived, it is rather a vain labour of imagination to determine whether this great king of all poets flourished under a monarchy or in a republic; certain it is, he sang of kings and princes in right lordly style: be that as it may, we have rather better authority for believing that the Greek dramatists, those masters, and sometime models, of their peculiar branch of the art, flourished under republican governments; but with them, I think, ends the list of republican poets of great and universal fame. Rome had no poets till she had emperors. Italy was, it is true, divided into so called republics dining the golden age of her literature; but they were so in name alone; the spirit of equality had long departed from the soil, and they were merely prouder and more arbitrary aristocracies than have ever existed under any monarchy in the world. If ever France can be said to have had a poetical age, it was during the magnificent reign of Louis the Fourteenth, that pageant that prepared the bloodiest tragedy in the pages of history. England offers the only exception that I have advanced, namely, that the republican form of government is inimical to poetry. For it was during the short and shameful period of fanatical republicanism, which blots her annals, that the glory and the might of Milton rose upon the world; he is the only great poet who ever flourished under a republic; and he was rather the poet of heaven and hell, than of earth: his subjects are either biblical or mythological; and however his stern and just spirit might advocate the cause of equality and universal freedom in the more arid regions of political and theological controversies, in his noblest and greatest capacity he has sung of angels and archangels, the starry hierarchy of heaven, where some of the blessed wore a brighter glory than their fellows, where some were inferior to other celestial powers, and where God was King supreme over all. In heaven, Milton dreamt of no republics, nor in hell either.