The Sun.
London, England, 1850-06-11 00:00:00

EVENING, JUNE, 11,

both Irish and English Members were most desirous to
hear. There was reason to believe that the greatest man
in England, the Duke of Wellington, had not changed
his opinion as to the inexpediency of abolishing this
high office, and the Right Hon. Member for Tamworth
was not in the House. There were other Honourable
Members whose opinions the people of Ireland were
most desirous of knowing. Under these circumstances
he should support the motion for an adjournment.
The gallery was then cleared for a division, and the
House divided, when there appeared—
For the adjournment ... 63
Against it ... ... 188
Majority
Mr. ROCHE again moved the adjournme4t of the
debate.
The O'GORMAN MAHON seconded the mi6tion.
Sir R. PEEL said he gave his vote for the adjourn-
ment, because he thought it was not unreasonable, as
many Irish gentlemen wished to deliver their opinions.
—(Hear, hear.) He thought the question was one of
such vital importance that an adjournment was not un-
reasonable.
Lord J. RUSSELL consented to the adjournment of
the debate until Monday next.
An HON. MEMBER moved the adjournment of the
House.

The House then divided, when there appeared—
For the adjournment ... 63
Against it ... ... 11
Majority
The other orders of the day were then disposed of, and
the House adjourned at a Quarter-past One o'clock.

LITERATURE.
ALETH.EIA; or, The Doom of Mythology; with
other Poems. By William Charles Kent. Longman
and Co.
There is considerable vagueness in the modern use
of the terms " poetry" and " poetical," which, on
many accounts, we think it is desirable to avoid. It
is the common phraseology of the day to speak
of the poetry of A beautiful face or an exquisite
landscape, of the poetry embodied in sculpture,
painting, or music. If by the word poetry thus
employed we understand, what alone can be truly
meant, that common element of the ideal which it is
the true province of genius in its different manifesta-
tions intuitively to perceive, and through the medium
of the fine arts in their various modes of development
to embody, no absolute misconception is indeed pro-
duced ; but it still remains true that such an employ-
ment of the word tends to introduce, more or less, con-
fusion of thought into /esthetic criticism, and to pro-
duce a forgetfulness of the true and peculiar pro-
vince of poetry as one of the fine arts, and of the poet
as its cultivator. The truth we take to be this, that

he creative and inventive genius of man, as mani-
ested in art, works on the same material by different
modes. The ideal, or, in other words, the truth of
nature as it presents itself to the shaping imagination
of the artist, is the common element alike of the poet,
properly so called, of the sculptor, of the painter, and
of the musician. The sole difference consists in the
mode of presenting this common element to the gene-
ral mind, in the selection of the forms or the symbols
by which the thought of the man of creative genius is
to be reproduced in the souls of his less-gifted fellow-
men. This it is the mission of the painter to
effect by combined colour and form, of the sculptor
by form alone, of the musician by sound, of the poet
by metrical language. The relative greatness of
painter, sculptor, musician, and poet, as men of crea-
tive genius, is to be judged of by the comprehensive.
ness, grandeur, and beauty with which the ideal or
truth of nature has shaped itself in their imaginations,
by the intensity and extent of their intuition into the
Divine workings of the universe—the opus quod
operatur a principio usque ad fincm—" the living gar-
ment," as Goethe expresses it, " which the Godhead is
eternally weaving for Himself." But as cultivators
of fine art, their excellence is to be judged of by the
degree of certainty and facility with which, by means
of the appropriate symbols of their respective arts,
they can succeed in communicating to their fellow-
men the beauty and the truth which their imagina-
tions have thus won from the universe of things.
Thus the painter, as artist, is justly..estimated by the
degree of his command over colour and form; the
sculptor, as artist, by his knowledge of form ; the
poet, as artist, by his resources of metrical
language. He who is such a master of me-
trical language as to be able, by the em-
ployment of the best words in the best places,
to call up in the souls of his readers with the most
vivid and vigorous life the conceptions he wishes to
convey, is, in the artistic sense of the word, a poet ;
and none other than he can be a poet in this sense,
however great his range of thought or power of ima-
gination. Therefore it is that in all ages and times
the name of poet has been, by common consent,
given to him who possessed this gift of
nature, improved by study, of giving life
and body to his own imagination in the minds of
others by the apt use of metrical words ; and it is
only in later times that, owing to a careless abuse of
language, the name of poet has been conceded to
any other. Tried by this test, Mi. Kent is unmis-
takeably a poet. His verse has a noble, flowing, and
sustained harmony, as exquisite as in the present day
it is rare. His words have a pictorial
and suggestive power, presenting, not only
the very embodiment of what he wishes to convey,
but frequently opening up long vistas of associated
thought, and making a landscape or a history start
to life out of a line. This is the result, as it appears
to us, not only of an intuitive happiness of nature, but
of ripe and manly study of our choicest models of
English style. Mr. Kent's poetry, be it understood,
is in its form what, for want of a better term, we must
call idyllic. It belongs to that class in which
Theocritus and Virgil among the ancients, Spenser,
Two, Fletcher, Milton, and Keats among the mo-
derns have been the most eminent masters. As in the
" Pastor F ido," the "Sad Shepherdess," the " Lycidas,"
and the " Endymion," the beauties which strike us in
Mr. Kent's poetry are those of picturesque felicity of
language—exuberant fertility of fancy—and a keen
observance of all the phases and aspects of nature.
But it is time to let Mr. Kent speak for himself. His
main poem, " Aletheia ; or, The Doom of Mythology,"
is a vision, or series of visions,
"In many a winding bout,
Of linked sweetness long drawn out,"

of those godlike forms with which the poetic imagi-
nation of the old Greeks peopled the hills and groves
and fountains of their beautiful land. The poet calls
up before him in long array, "like morning
mists enkindled by the sun," all the powers
of earth and air who " fled from the folding
Star of Bethlehem :" now with the sensuous sympa-
thy of the poetic nature mourning over the "glory
of the dream" that has vanished ; anon moralising
over the debasing and polluting influences of a false
worship—finally satiating his soul with the resplen-
dent vision of Aletheia (Truth), who sings to him in
lofty strains the blessings of love and the rule of hap.
piness. The very opening stanza touches the key-
note of that idyllic beauty of style of which we have
spoken : the line given in italics illustrates the power
of suggestive picture painting:—
Deep in the mellow shadows of a copse,
Where the ripe filbert sheds its ample nut,
Where, from the burgeon'd bough, the fir-cone drops,
And red leaves moulder in the wheel worn rut,
Ceucti'd on the verdant sod, alone I lay,
While fraught with glory died the glimmering day.

Lulled into dreamy reveries, the poet laments the de-
parture of the age of old, s
When myths of marvel strew'd the earth like balm,
And gods were in the grove and in the wold.

How completely does the Bacchanalian spirit of
Nicolas Poussin revel in the following lines :

The reign of youthful Bacchus now no more
Peoples the glade with sprites of antique grace;
7he sedgy reed no longer, to the core,
Thrills with the pipings lipp'd with quaint grimace.

• • • • • •
Pan with the riot of his rabble troy,
Narcissus brooding o'er the fatal pool,
Diana girded by a virgin group,
Silenus reeling like the wine-king's fool, -
No more may wander through' the Lesbian woods,
Or break the stillness of their solitudes.
Time was, alas! that time is now no morel
When the blue bunches of the melting vine,
Pierc'd by the point of thynus, dripp'd with ,ore,
The blood of Nature turn'd to bubbling wine,
When deep libations stain'd th' empurpled award,
And hymns of rapture hail'd the Forest Lord.
When silver cymbals clash'd, and ebon flutes
Shrill'd to the throbbing sound of nimble feet;
When the sweet murmur of voluptuous lutes
Made the glad riots of the night complete;
When virgin sighs with ecstasy were blent,
Ere the day glimmer'd in the Orient.
Here is a vision of Psyche which would have tasked
all the combined gorgeousness and delicacy of our
great English Titian :
Then Psyche in mid ether pois'd serene,
Her rainbow-pinions fluttering in the sun,
Would glance the darkness of the boughs between,
Her white robes gleaming thro' the foliage dun,
And.o'er the scene celestial smile above,
The spouse and gladness of enamour'd Love.
What a spell is this to call spirits from the vasty
deep !
Down from the violet arch of eastern skies
Descend, refulgent shadows of delight!
Up from the glad Agean depths arise,
From ruby caverns bath'd in sea-green light!
Flash, like the sunbeams, from the boiling surf
Bud, like the bluebells, from th' enamett'd turf
'What vigour of imitative melody in the following
invocation !
Drive o'er the billows in the raging Winds,
• Let Bolus give impulse to the storms,
When the huge breakers, on the beach that binds
The foaming surges, hide their beetling forma;
Let Boreas boom along his boist'rous path
Till heav'n re-echo with his giant wrath.
Rise, phrenried Aquilo, when morn tath -past,
And trample forest oaks with flying feet,
Come, frigid Corns, on the autumn blast,
And bkw thro brittle kayos the drifting skit)